Stray Dogs Living in Harmony

Here is an interesting discussion on Dog Star Daily about why there are so many large groups of stray dogs running around in many parts of the world all getting on fine together compared to the typical “unsettling aggression problems” often associated with pet dogs meeting each other.

They talk about the effect of neutering and also the benefit of dogs learning social skills from other dogs as puppies but their main point is that “these packs of strays don't have human owners around accidentally reinforcing and provoking antisocial behavior”. 

I agree with this but would just add that a very big factor to me seems to be that these dogs are all very familiar with each other and the individual relationships between them all have had time to develop to the point that they all know their particular place in the group. However, see what happens when a strange dog turns up. Then all the confrontational and aggressive behaviours that we find “unsettling” in our pets come to the fore. The point being that free-roaming dogs will try to avoid this by staying in their own area with their own group so we do not see it happening very often compared to us effectively forcing strange pet dogs upon each other.

Learn more about the lives and issue of unowned dogs in my e-book ”A Stray View” available from Bangkok Books (readable as .pdf on any computer)