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Snapchat is one of the most popular social media apps out there, and if you’re one of the few people who don’t know how it works, I’ll break it down really quickly for you. Essentially, it’s a media sharing application, allowing you to snap pictures and videos with a whole host of amusing and beautifying filters, to then upload or send somewhere else. The draw of Snapchat is that it’s immediately deleted after viewing unless someone screenshots it.
That’s what makes it so popular for those instant moments that you’re not quite sure are worthy of internet stardom, but still want to share anyway, and that’s how you get so many snapchats going viral. Because of the sheer number of them being posted all the time everywhere, there’s bound to be at least a few that capture people’s eye. And in this case, the ones that caught our eye revolve around those sweet little pups.
There’s an article at NPR that outlines dog behaviour very well;
One of the most common problems owners face, says Bradshaw, is knowing what to do when a dog misbehaves. For example, many owners might be inclined to immediately physically reprimand a dog for jumping up on visitors. But Bradshaw says that’s the wrong way to teach your pet how to behave because dogs see any form of attention — even negative attention — as a reward. Instead, he says, owners should immediately ignore their pet completely.
“Most dogs require their owners’ attention [and] they want their owners’ attention,” he says. “They want people’s attention in general. And withdrawing that is a very powerful signal to the dog.”
“Then you’ll find that quite quickly the dog begins to realize that [their bad behavior] is not working,” he says. “You can then use a distraction technique to get the dog to do something else, like sit or lie down and then it will get the idea that this is what it’s supposed to do when visitors come to visit.”
Bradshaw says dogs naturally want to please and play with people, especially the people who love them.
“[When a puppy’s eyes open it has] a very strong ability to learn about people and … this behavior persists throughout life,” he says. “And surprisingly, most dogs, given the choice, will actually prefer human company to other dog company.”
Studies indicate that dogs will naturally gravitate toward humans, though Bradshaw says how that idea gets into a dog’s developing brain is still somewhat of a mystery.
“But they have an exaggerated tendency to learn from anything that people do right from the minute they’re capable of doing it,” he says. “They’re particularly sensitive to human body language — the direction we look in, what our whole body language is telling them, pointing gestures. They are much more sensitive to things like that than almost any other species on the planet.”
Bradshaw says humans also expect dogs to be companionable when they’re needed and unobtrusive when they’re not. City dogs, he says, are expected to be better-behaved than the average human child and as self-reliant as adults. But these expectations, he says, create problems for modern dogs.
What about you? Do you have any memorable pictures of your puppy?
