7 Games Associated With the Predatory Sequence

I've written a lot about the predatory sequence in several other posts. Here's a more complete examination of this phenomenon, showing how and why playing seven specific games that stimulate and satisfy your dog's prey drive will have a very strong tendency to create calm, obedient behavior by reducing your dog's internal tension and stress.

7 Games That Stimulate & Satisfy Your Dog’s Prey Drive

In mammalian predators (which includes dogs), there are 5 basic steps in what’s called the predatory sequence. Each of the steps involves a fixed-action pattern, or hard-wired instinctive behavior, that leads to the 5th and final step.

These steps are as follows:

The Search

The Eye-Stalk

The Chase

The Grab Bite

The Kill Bite

It’s important to understand that for a predator, the act of leaving one’s den or home turf to find and kill prey animals of any size is a dangerous business. In many cases the predator, particularly a wolf, has to venture deep into foreign territory, with unknown changes in terrain that will have to be factored in to its approach to hunting. A predator could easily injure itself by twisting a leg in a rabbit hole, for example, or injure a paw by landing hard on a sharp rock, or rip a hole in its abdomen by running too close to a sharp tree branch.

In order to motivate predators to do their job, Mother Nature has a compelling tool at her disposal: the release of endorphins, one of the body’s own form of opiates. Nature does this at each of the 5 successive stages because the closer a predator gets to its prey, the more dangerous the enterprise becomes.

So in some ways, while we tend to think of predators as the dangerous ones, hunting is almost as dangerous for the hunter as it is for the hunted. Hunting is also more dangerous for wolves than it is for other predators, such as the big cats. That’s because the default setting on the wolf’s prey drive is to go after large mammals with horns and hooves. It’s true that a wolf will also hunt small prey, especially when large, dangerous prey are unavailable. But the wolf's prey of choice is usually over ten times bigger than the average wolf. Elk weigh around 800 lbs., moose around 1000, while the average wolf only weighs around 80 lbs. Also, a wolf doesn’t have powerful claws, as the big cats do. Nor does he have the tooth size or the kind of pressure in his bite that a cougar or cheetah does. So the odds are stacked against him.

However, he has two things working in his favor. One is that he doesn’t hunt by himself, so the feeling of danger inherent to preying on moose and elk is diffused, spread out across the entire pack; no one wolf feels the entire charge. And, since the wolf isn’t going solo, he’s also able to work in-synch with his pack mates: this means he can slack off, take a breather, if a change in terrain favors another wolf’s physical skills, or fall back if he sees an easier, more circular approach to the prey, etc.

The second element in the wolf’s favor is his relentless drive to connect to the prey animals, and his ability to outwit and outlast them. Big cats operate primarily on the element of surprise. So a cheetah or cougar always has to act quickly or lose the window of opportunity. Wolves, on the other hand, usually win by wearing down their prey.

It’s also important to note that wolves who settle near garbage dumps don’t form packs. Coyotes, on the other hand, sometimes do, but only when they need to hunt large prey. So pack formation is actually an ancillary function of the canine hunting instincts.

Finally, it’s important to know that captive wolves exhibit stress-related dominant and submissive behaviors, but that these behaviors are rarely found in wild wolves. The reason for this is that captive wolves aren’t able to relieve their internal stress by going out as a group and hunting large prey, so they engage in internecine squabbles instead. Dominant and submissive behaviors are rare in wild wolves because hunting and killing large prey is the ultimate stress-reducer.  

Is this really relevant to dog training?

Of course. Since hunting is dangerous, especially for wolves, and since predators are motivated by an internal, psycho-chemical process to go through all 5 steps of the sequence, and since dogs share a long evolutionary history with wolves, we can learn something about what motivates dogs to learn new behaviors or unlearn old ones by looking at what motivates their wild brothers to hunt large prey. 

Plus, all the basic obedience behaviors we normally teach dogs (except the sit) are analogues of the predatory motor patterns found in wild wolves. And since the wolf’s need to hunt large prey is the genesis of all canine social instincts (hunting as part of a group requires intense social cohesion and cooperation), knowing as much as we can about the way wolves hunt may be the most relevant thing we can do to learn about how to best motivate dogs to obey, and how to make a maximum use of their instinctive energy and emotions. 

And finally, since all misbehaviors seen in dogs are the result of an inability for the dog to relieve internal stress naturally, and since the prey drive has stress-relief built into it (thanks to endorphins, etc.), it's far more effective to use up your dog's energy by playing hunting games than it by taking him on long walks, or even going jogging together.

With that in mind, there are seven games designed to use up your dog’s energy, naturally, by stimulating and satisfying his hunting instincts:

The Predatory Sequence & 7 Games Associated With It

The Search – “Find” - hide a toy or treat then tell the dog, "Find!" (also called “Hide-and-Seek.” by some trainers, but that's actually a very different game where you hide when your dog isn't looking, and wait for him or her to look around to see where you are, then you suddenly reappear, act excited, and run away.)

The Eye-Stalk – “The Eyes Exercise” (the foundation for the stay)

The Chase – Fetch and “Chase Me” (get your dog to chase you), and “Hide-and-Seek.”

The Grab Bite – Fetch, and Tug-of-War

The Kill Bite – Tug and “Push-of-War” (push while playing tug)

“The Pushing Exercise” is also helpful, not just for using up a dog’s energy, but for removing any emotional blocks that prevent him from relieving his stress naturally through play.

LCK

“Changing the World, One Dog at a Time”

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Cesar Millan: Pack Leader or Predator? (updated)

This is an updated version of a previous post (now deleted), which includes a few more insights, and a helpful graphic.

Cesar Millan: Pack Leader or Predator?

One of the constant bits of advice you’ll hear from Cesar Millan on The Dog Whisperer is: “you have to be your dog’s pack leader.” In fact on his website he even sells T-shirts and hoodies with Pack Leader printed on them. Millan is not alone. This is a popular notion among a lot of trainers, and has been for years.

This idea has a lot of appeal for most people. “Yes!” they think. “That’s what’s wrong with my relationship with my dog. He doesn’t see me as his pack leader!”

Here’s the problem though. According to David Mech, the world’s leading experts on the behavior of wild wolves, real wolf packs don’t have pack leaders. The idea that they do came from studies done on captive packs, culled from various sources, who didn’t know one another, and behaved more like rival wolves than true packmates.

Here are some facts about wild wolf behavior:

No wolf always walks ahead of the group when they’re traveling. They take turns. That’s a fact.

No wolf always eats before other members of the group. That’s a fact.

No wolf always goes through an opening or crosses a threshold before other members of the group. That’s a fact.

No wolf ever puts one of his packmates in an alpha roll. That’s a fact.

No wolf tells his packmates how to behave. That’s a fact.

Dominance displays are rare in wild wolf packs and usually only take place between the mother and father over how to disburse food to their young. The female almost always wins these battles by acting “submissive,” which would mean she’s supposedly subservient to the male, when she’s actually almost always victorious.

These are all facts. And here’s what they all add up to: 

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PACK LEADER.

Yes, it’s true that in any animal group there will be one member who is more experienced, more knowledgeable, and who has more animal magnetism than the others. And most members of the group will tend to be drawn to or gravitate toward him or her. But animal magnetism—which is felt on a visceral level—is something quite different from rank, leadership, and authority—which are purely mental constructs.

There’s another factor. In wolf packs it was long believed that the alpha or leadership role changes hands during the hunt. We now know, through the principles of emergence theory, that the reason this seems to happen is simply because one member of the pack will have a better skill set for a certain type of terrain at some point during the hunt, or another wolf may have more emotional flexibility for adjusting to the changes in the prey animal’s energy during that part of the hunt, or what’s even simpler: one wolf may suddenly be in closer proximity to the prey at certain points, giving the impression that the others are now “following” his leadership when in fact the hunt is always led by the prey.

Going back to dogs, anytime dogs are in conflict it’s always about who has control over resources, i.e., things in the environment. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you automatically have more control over your dog’s environment than he does. Who has the keys to the car and the house? Who knows how to operate doorknobs? Who knows how to use a can opener? Clearly, if a dog is capable of perceiving things like leadership or superiority, your dog already sees you in that light.

So why doesn’t your dog listen to you the way the dogs on TV listen to Cesar Millan? Well, for one thing there’s a lot of stuff Millan does that ends up on the editing room floor. (I know for a fact that this is true.) Plus, to his credit Millan always seems to act fairly cool under pressure (as long as you don’t look at the anger sometimes simmering in his eyes). But ultimately he acts more like a predator than like a pack leader.

A predator?

Yes. The spatial relationship between two dogs or wolves takes place on the horizontal. Their eyes face each other. They’re on the same level. But the spatial relationship between dog and human is quite different. We move through space on the vertical. Our eyes are far above theirs. They look up at us, we look down at them. Spatial relationships—which are concrete and visceral—are far more important to dogs than intangibles like leadership or status—which again are more abstract and conceptual.

This brings up an interesting point about wolves, which is that in the wild the only animal that poses serious threat of deadly harm to a wolf (other than homo sapiens) is the same animal the wolf usually hunts: elk, moose, deer, bison. These animals have sharp horns and hooves that could easily kill or maim a wolf. When a moose, for example, is running away from the wolf, the wolf is energized by its movement, and is highly attracted through his desire to chase and bite. But if a moose finds itself cornered, and as a result he turns and stares down at the wolf, brandishing his antlers, the wolf will stop dead in his tracks.

In the wolf’s experience the prey has now become the predator.

Here's the graphic again. 
 
Note the similarities in the spatial dynamics between the moose and wolf on the left, and the dog and man on right. Then note how different they are in comparison to the spatial dynamic of the two wolves in the center.

I’m not suggesting that a dog thinks his owner is a moose. What I am suggesting is that even there were such a thing as a pack leader in wild wolf packs (which there isn’t), and even if dogs had inherited that behavioral tendency from wolves (which they haven’t), there is no way a dog could confuse a human being for another dog, i.e., his “pack leader.” It simply could not happen. As I said before, the relationships between objects in space is concrete while the idea of the “pack leader” is more abstract and cerebral. So when you add yet another cerebral element—that the human owner or trainer is a stand-in for or symbolizes the already abstract idea of the pack leader—you’re getting into mental territory that is way beyond what a dog’s brain is capable of.

The facts of nature and evolution strongly suggest that wolves, and by extension dogs, have a long adaptive history of being cautious about any animal whose eyes are set in a large head and are looking down at them from above, particularly when that animal is facing them directly. They would feel even more fearful or cautious if that vertical being happened to be coming toward them.

Now think of the way Cesar Millan acts when he enters a room and believes he’s being a “pack leader.” Picture the way he stands and stares down at a dog. The level of gaze he has seems “magnetic,” correct? The dogs are on their “best behavior.” Is that because they see him as a pack leader? Of course not. The spatial dynamic is nothing at like that between a supposed pack leader and another dog or wolf. But remember, when a moose suddenly turns and looks down at a wolf, the wolf stops dead in his tracks. And that’s exactly how most misbehaving dogs act when Cesar Millan enters a room. So the feeling Millan is actually stimulating in dogs is the polar opposite of magnetism or leadership.

It’s really just a form of fear or intimidation.

Another way to look at it is that when Millan acts the way he does the dog isn’t thinking, “I respect your authority and position of leadership over me, so I will do as you ask.” It’s far more likely that the dog is thinking,“What can I do to survive this moment? Show me how I can prevent myself from being killed.”

So why does Cesar Millan (and others like him) get results?

This “pack-leader” act essentially stifles the dog’s energy. Then, once that excess energy is contained (i.e., the dog is no longer bouncing off the walls), Cesar takes the dog on 2 - 4 hour walks, sometimes forcing the animal to wear heavy weights, or he puts the dog on a treadmill for several hours to burn off all that energy.

Is there a better way to teach a dog than by stifling his energy and/or wearing him out?

Of course. The more intelligent and effective option is to give the dog a positive outlet for his energy and emotions. That’s kind of what the long walks do, except that while long walks may wear a dog out, they don’t really satisfy his true energy needs. That comes through playing games that stimulate and satisfy his hunting instincts. For example, 5 - 10 minutes of playing tug-of-war—where you always let the dog win and praise him enthusiastically for winning—is roughly equivalent to a two hour walk in terms of the amount of energy expended. Plus, when played correctly, tug always has the positive side-effect of increasing a dog’s desire to learn and obey you. The same can be said for playing fetch for about 20 minutes or so.

Cesar does sometimes play fetch with his dogs, but from what I’ve seen he doesn’t know how to teach a dog whose energy has been stifled to become un-stifled, or to teach a dog how to release his energy through play. From my perspective that should be the first order of business when working with any behavioral problem: teaching the dog to play.

Max von Stephanitz, one of the originators of SchutzHund, wrote, “Before we teach a dog to obey we must teach him how to play.”

There’s a great documentary called “In the Company of Wolves,” where Timothy Dalton goes to the Arctic Circle with David Mech and observes these wonderful animals in their natural habitat. (By the way, if you’ve seen footage of the wolves in Yellowstone, keep in mind that those wolves were taken captive in British Columbia, drugged, outfitted with electronic monitoring collars, and forcibly relocated to a completely new, and in many ways, quite foreign environment. So while they’re still living in the wild, Yellowstone is not really their natural habitat; not yet. So their behaviors are sort of halfway between those exhibited by a truly wild pack and a group of unrelated wolves held against their will in captivity.)

At one point in the Timothy Dalton film a papa wolf (i.e., the pack leader), rolls over on his back, “signifying submission” to his puppies, and encourages them to jump on his stomach and chest and even allows them to nip at his ears and nose. In other words, he’s playing with his pups. (Do you ever see Cesar encourage a dog “dominate” him like this? Why not? If his intent is to be a true pack leader why wouldn’t he want to imitate what a real pack leader, i.e., papa wolf, does?)

Immediately after I saw this documentary for the first time, which was in 1995, I decided to imitate what the papa wolf did with my own pup, an unneutered male Dalmatian named Freddie.

First I got down on my hands and knees, did a play bow. Then I started batting my hands at Freddie’s body, getting him riled up and in the mood to play. Then when he was really in the mood to play bite, I rolled over on my back, pretending to be submissive.

“Oh no! You got me! You killed me! You’re alpha! You’re the king dog!”

He loved it! First he jumped on top of me. Then he tried to get lower than me! Then he began to twist around the way dogs do when they’re rolling around in the grass on a nice spring day. When he was done he raced to find one of his bones and began chewing it, quite happily.

Later, on our evening walk—as he wandered a bit too far ahead of me—I sort of absent-mindedly gave him his recall signal, expecting him to do his usual routine, which was to cock his head, look at me, then look back at whatever he’d been sniffing, and then slowly come trotting back about halfway or, if I was lucky, a maybe a little more.

That’s not what happened.

As soon as I called him he turned on a dime, and like a shot, he came running back at full speed, ending up in a perfect sit right in front of me.

I was astonished! I tested him further by quickly giving him the down command. He dove into position as fast as he could, eager to hear what I wanted him to do next. This was totally amazing and unexpected. I had no idea why this happening until I realized that for some reason, when I’d acted “submissive” toward him a few hours earlier I’d changed something about the emotional dynamic between us. As a result he was immediately far more obedient to all my commands. Plus his response time went from semi-lacksidasical to lightning-fast!

Over the next few months I tried my “submissive” act on most of the dogs I was training (you have to know how to choose which dogs are ready for these kind of shenanigans and which aren't). And in every single case it made the dog far more responsive and quicker to obey.

Why? Because I did what a true pack leader—a papa wolf—does with his pups. I got down on their level and let them “conquer” me.

And here’s the real distinction, which goes back to the dynamic between the wolf and the moose. Remember, when the wolf is chasing the moose he’s releasing his energy in the most optimal way possible. It’s what he was genetically engineered to do. But when the moose stops and turns, the wolf is suddenly like a deer in the headlights, in fear for his life. He’s not a happy camper. So when Cesar Millan thinks he’s acting like a “pack leader,” he’s not only stifling the dog’s energy, he’s instilling a lot of fear into that dog, which would be fine, I suppose, if fear had a positive effect on learning. Sometimes it does (very rarely), but for the most part it creates an inability for the dog to learn anything new.

But when you become a prey animal, by getting down on the dog’s level and playing with him—which is closer to the way dogs learn naturally—you’re opening up an enormous encyclopedia of learning that goes far beyond anything that Cesar Millan or others with the pack-leader mentality could possibly imagine. (Maybe Cesar will get there one day, but he’s not there yet.)

If you want to be a true pack leader, just imitate the papa wolf. Get down on your dog’s level, act submissive, and encourage him to play with you. (Please be careful and use common sense though; don’t try this with just any dog, particularly one you don’t know very well.)

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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