{"id":1758,"date":"2012-12-02T21:43:03","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T11:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/?p=1758"},"modified":"2021-08-02T17:39:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T07:09:39","slug":"dunbar-leftovers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/dog-behaviour\/dunbar-leftovers-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Dunbar Leftovers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><small><small>This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar&#8217;s 2012 Australian seminars. See\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/aboutblog\/the-dunbar-index\/\">index<\/a>.<\/small><\/small><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bordercolliewithstick.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1861\" title=\"Wet merle border collie carrying a big stick.\" src=\"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bordercolliewithstick.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"403\" srcset=\"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bordercolliewithstick.jpeg 604w, http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/bordercolliewithstick-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dunbar talks a lot.\u00a0 He\u2019s a great speaker to listen to, because he has no hesitation in going off topic or talking about relevant experiences that are clearly not in his notes.\u00a0 However, this means I have a lot of good little bits that don\u2019t really belong in my other posts!\u00a0 So let\u2019s talk about some of them briefly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dogs should be integrated into society as much as possible, and dogs need good temperaments to do this.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Vets don\u2019t know enough about dog behaviour and socialization.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>We don\u2019t really know if off leash play between dogs is beneficial.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to measure, and no evidence exists.\u00a0 Dunbar suggested that off lead play may even be beneficial for people.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>The APDT foundation funds research into dog training.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Dunbar talked about teat appropriation in puppies. By 10 days of age, some puppies have started to \u2018claim\u2019 certain teats and hierarchies have begun to develop.\u00a0 The bigger \u2018brutish\u2019 puppies push their way to their favourite teats.\u00a0 The smaller puppies have to use their brains and think about how to get a feed, and normally move to another teat.\u00a0 The bigger puppies are normally less intelligent than the smaller puppies, who had to use their brains from an early age.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Dunbar described dog sex as a \u201cmassive temperament test\u201d.\u00a0 That is, dogs who can\u2019t mate naturally because they are aggressive, disinterested, or just unskilled, shouldn\u2019t be bred from as they have poor temperaments that aren\u2019t worth replicating in their offspring.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Dunbar said \u201cno male dog is worth more puppies than a bitch can have in her lifetime\u201d.\u00a0 That is, a dog shouldn\u2019t have more than about 6 litters in their lifetime.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>He advocated waiting for 10 years before using a dog at stud.\u00a0 A dog that is a \u2018good dog\u2019, structurally and temperament wise, at 10, is a dog worth breeding from.\u00a0 (Personal comment: While I agree with this in principle, unfortunately many dogs will become sterile before 10 if they are not used.\u00a0 There is a bit of a \u2018use it or lose it\u2019 case for dog fertility.)<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Apparently, someone called \u201cThelma\u201d (a scientisit, name suggestions welcome!) theorized that dogs would eat human faeces and that\u2019s the source of their domestication.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Dunbar suggested that breeders, when screening puppy buyers, should ask, \u201cWhy problem behaviours to you expect to see in your puppy?\u201d (as breeds have typical behaviours that are often problematic).\u00a0 From there, the next question should be, \u201cHow are you going to stop these problems occurring?\u201d\u00a0 This is a means of testing the buyer\u2019s knowledge of the breed, and also ascertaining the risk of the puppy ending up in a shelter at a later point.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Then questions that I thought as I listened:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dunbar talks about his dog Doon, and how his dog will never fight another dog.\u00a0 Dunbar described a number of scenarios where Doon ignored aggression from other dogs.\u00a0 While I think it\u2019s nice to have a pacificist dog, it also brings a degree of responsibility that an owner must have to protect the dog from aggressors.\u00a0 The stories Dunbar told made me doubt Dunbar\u2019s proactive prevention of Doon being the subject of other dog\u2019s aggression.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thank-you for working through our Dunbar series! I will soon summarise all the posts to help you navigate through the mass of content from three days with Dunbar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dunbar&#8217;s comments on many bits of the dog world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[12,11,477,376,375],"class_list":["post-1758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dog-behaviour","tag-dog","tag-dogs","tag-dr-dunbar","tag-dunbar","tag-ian-dunbar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4985,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions\/4985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}