Do You Need to Dominate Your Jindo?
“Jindos need to be trained by a dominant owner”
“You have to show a Jindo who’s the boss or it won’t listen to you.”
I won’t beat around the bush with this. Jindos are considered a dominant breed. Once they hit puberty, a Jindo is usually going to start trying to move up in the ranks of the “pack”. If you own 2 or 3 dogs, a teenage Jindo will eventually develop the desire to be the one to run the show, and they likely won’t to do very well with other dogs that challenge their authority. Now, I’m not talking about the “Alpha theory” here; I’m just talking strictly about family dynamics and the known fact that in animal groups, individuals will either act dominant or submissive towards each other, depending on their temperament. By nature, the temperament of a Jindo is often to be dominant. (fwiw - This is something to think long and hard about if you already have a dominant dog in the household, and you want to add a Jindo to the family).
Now even with all this being the case, I personally don’t think that you need to dominate your dog. And when I say “dominate”, I’m thinking about all the people who think that yelling, swatting, looming over their dogs, jerking them around, or manhandling them is how you show your dog who is the boss. While I do think Jindos do well with balanced methods of training (lots and lots of positive reinforcement, and judicious use of consequences - which could be something as small as ending a play time if they are getting too rough and not listening to “No”) - I don’t think you need to dominate them.
Personally, I’ve found that SunMi responds really well to consistency and follow-through. Here’s some examples of what I mean:
Recall: If I say “SunMi come!”, and she tries to blow me off because perhaps she’s investigating something really interesting in the grass, I will stop whatever I’m doing, go over to her (this also applies inside the house, even if I’m upstairs and she’s downstairs), leash her up, and “make” her come. You can easily start doing this at home with a puppy by keeping them on a drag leash in the house the first few weeks that they’re home so you can enforce the “Come” if they decide they don’t want to listen to you at the moment. Get up and go over and get them. Eventually they figure out that blowing you off isn’t worth while because they’re going to have to Come anyway, and if they do it of their own free will, there’s usually a tasty treat in store for them.
Place Command: If I ask SunMi to go to her “Place” because we have guests over and I don’t want her trying to rub herself all over them (she thinks she’s a cat) or pestering them for butt scratches, I’ll send her to Place (it’s a big comfy cot in the corner of our living room). Once in a while she’ll pretend like she didn’t hear me, even though everything in her body language is showing that she DID, and that she just doesn’t want to listen. I will ask my guest to excuse me for a moment, go over to where she is, and say “Place” one more time, and stand there and look at her until she -sometimes begrudgingly- goes over to her Place.
There’s also a training method called “Say it Once” that I really love. In theory, you’re only supposed to tell your dog to do something ONCE. Because the idea is that if you repeat the command multiple times “Fluffy, Sit. Sit! SIT. SIT!” - Fluffy eventually learns that he doesn’t have to listen to you the first time you say it, because you’re likely going to tell him five more times and he’s allowed to listen on the fifth or sixth time you tell him to do the thing. So the idea is to say a cue ONE TIME, and make sure the dog follows through with it on the very first time even if you have to wait for them to do it. I’ve found that it’s important to make sure I have SunMi’s attention first before I ask her to do something; ie. I’ll say her name to get her eyes on me, and then say the cue word. It’s also important to be fair and pay attention to the level of distractions that are around us. Obviously if we’re on the sidewalk and it’s a busy street with lots of cars and motorcycles flying past us, and maybe there’s some really loud construction going on in the background - I don’t expect perfection from her. But I can get pretty close to it because of the foundations we’ve built in our training. That’s why it’s so important to practice at home, and then graduate to the backyard, and then level up to the front yard, and so on and so forth and start increasing the level of distractions. As they age, their trust and bond with you deepens, and they’re more likely to listen to you when they’re in a higher distraction or higher stress area.
Jindos are known to be one of the more biddable Asian spitz breeds. They want to work WITH you, not FOR you. You have to accept that this breed is extremely intelligent and bred to think for themselves, and not rely on humans to constantly be told what to do like a lot of modern Western breeds (German Shepherds, Labradors, Border Collies etc).
Just think about the original function of Jindos for a second: Unlike a lot of modern hunting breeds that go out with their humans and work very closely with them to catch game, Jindos would traditionally go out at night on their own as a small pack, catch the game, and then one or two of them would go back in the morning to fetch their human to bring them back to the kill AFTER the hunt was over. In other words, Jindos don’t need us to survive, and they know it. They see us as their partners, not their “Masters”.
With this knowledge, it’s safe to say that it’s extremely important to not slack off on building your bond with them. Training classes and sports are an AMAZING way to strengthen your bond and learn how to communicate with each other! Be consistent, and be FAIR in what and when you ask them to do something, and you’ll find that Jindos actually aren’t as “stubborn” as the internet likes to claim they are.
So all that to say that, while yes, Jindos are a dominant breed — no, you don’t need to dominate your Jindo.
