It is Will Atherton who coins the phrase ‘Leadership is Love’ on his TikTok channel. He is a dog trainer and behaviourist. He correctly says that the most dangerous dog is not a specific breed but the dog without an effective leader and one that is not trained. This undermines (correctly) the concept that some breeds are more aggressive than others. They are not inherently more aggressive. If they are more aggressive it is down to human behavior in providing poor training and/or leadership.
When the leadership is good, the dog is happier. It improves dog wellbeing which feeds back to the caregiver whose wellbeing is also improved.
The phrase ‘Leadership is Love’ certainly applies to dogs. When I considered it for a short while I realised it applies to cat caregiving as well. The human caregiver is the leader in the relationship. They create the environment which is so crucial to cat wellbeing. And the caregiver is the mother to a permanently subadult cat companion. In the wild the mother leads her offspring to independence at which time they leave the den to find their own home range.
In the world of domestication that moment never arises because the adult cat is kept in a permanent state of reliance on the human and therefore mentally never really an adult cat except when they do outside – if allowed out – and revert to their wildcat mentality.
Ultimately, with cat and dog ownership comes responsibility; a lot of it actually. Sometimes more than the person might have imagined. Responsibility equates to leadership. Good leadership equates to love. Dogs demand a leader. Without one they are bereft of that which is most central to their lives.
For cats good leadership is less critical but important nonetheless. They live in a world of our creation, literally when full-time indoor cats, a growing trend in cat ownership.
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