The concept of leadership is misunderstood and misused and I give details about the criticism from several modern ethologists of that concept. For instance, among pack animals in the wild there are no observations of a rank order based on aggressive power demonstrations.
In the speech I suggest that we nullify terms like leadership and rank order-based dominating learning, and exchange them for “teachership”. Instead of trying to be leaders, we shall examine ourselves as teachers. I point out the mistakes most of us do when training our dogs, and several in the audience recognize themselves – but with laughter.
And then we turn to situations in everyday life, where we are more just friends with our dogs. But even in that role we tend to create problems for our dogs, in spite of actually trying to prevent unruly behavior. Sometimes by just giving attention to the very behaviors we want to get rid of.
The speech lasts around an hour and a half. After the intermission there will be time for questions from the audience.
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