But does the dog not just have to do as he is told? Well, that depends.. Even if you love your boss if he asks you to do something that is dangerous, unethical or illegal, would you do it. I hope not.
It is a bit different with dogs but not that different. If you ask your dog to do something he is scared of, you have not taught properly or he actually knows better than you, why should he do it?
In the ‘good old days’ when teaching a dog to track they would have a clearly visible track of food prints so the handler could correct the dog when the dog was going off the track. The only problem being that the scent might be in a different position than the track so the correction actually taught the dog the wrong thing, to visually follow the track and not the scent. That is not really making use of the dogs different abilities than ours.
Interesting isn’t it.
This goes for other situations as well, if a strange dog approaches your dog and your dog tries to get away he might be right because your dog is reading the body language of the other dog better than you are.
There are a lot of situations where ‘blind obedience’ is not the best way to go.
Like in most other areas, team works is actually best!