Within the pack 1: On the couch

To live with many dogs is to be part of a pack. Much emphasis is placed, in the dog training literature and media, on being the pack leader, keeping the many in line to exercise your will. By and large, this is what the pack leader does, and is paid back in adoration, grooming and being followed round by dogs. To summarise only thus far, however, is to ignore the functioning of the pack as entity and to consider the ways in which it expresses its collective will.

I may direct the pack, but the pack continually pushes back. Sometimes this is in straightforward acts of resistance: the rare not coming when called and the far more common pretending not to come when called. Sometimes the pack attempts to carry out surreptitiously what it has been told not to do. Have you ever seen a dog dig or chew while pretending it is neither digging nor chewing? Sometimes the pack will direct its junior members to carry out the forbidden acts. There are also more benign pressures. Many of us have heard the story of the pet border collies at a house party who, over the course of the evening, subtly herded all the guests into a cluster in the living room, then sat contentedly to survey their work.

If my pack had its way, my day would consist in staying very still in a selection of locations in which they could pile on top of me: the bed, the couch, the other couch. I would only get up to feed them or open the door. While pack law dictates that this wish cannot be directly expressed (by standing on the couch and barking at me, for example), it can be conveyed in other ways: through disappointed silence as I work at the desktop or in the kitchen for example; through polite and theatrically selfless waiting outside the bathroom while I shower.

Fundamentally then I see the pack as a sophisticated system that is both part of and extrinsic to its members, containing them, serving their needs and developing, over time, into a composite world view. My presence in the pack means that in many ways I live like a dog, sensitive to their social ordering and particular needs. In exchange for maintaining the pack’s solidarity, I get to be the object of their affection. This works well for both me and the señor, the pack’s adjunct senior member.

Tagged as: dogs, home, pack