Reply #11: If the humans are the "pack leaders" as they're supposed to be...

[pipi_k]

then it makes sense that dogs would imitate their behavior.

This is something I've been thinking about for the past couple of days myself. I have two young German Shepherds who lived in a kennel till they were ten months old, intended to only be bred, but their owner died, and the daughter wasn't sure what to do with them for a while and eventually put them up for adoption.

They're sisters...very sweet. Unfortunately, not well socialized. I live in the woods so there aren't a lot of visitors, and both of them become violently ill in the car, so taking them anywhere is torture for them.

Anyway...my point here was that whenever we do get visitors, they bark and show lots of fear. And what I realized was that, since I myself have lots of different anxiety disorders, one of them involving people coming into my house, it's quite possible my pups are "reading" my anxiety and responding to it with anxiety of their own, triggering all the fear barking.

On the positive side, though...we have "sing alongs" here...human howling that prompts the same kind of howling from the pups. Pack bonding, sort of... :)