plural

[navi tasan]

Which one is correct (given the fact that every pack has one leader and every family has most likely one dog):

1-When people treat their dogs too nicely they think that they are the leader of the pack and might attack their owners.

2-When people treat their dogs too nicely they think that they are the leaders of the pack and might attack their owners.

[Casiopea]

Given the "given", you might want to try,

When people treat their dog too nicely, it thinks it's the leader of the pack and so it might attack its owners.

If you use "dogs", then you may want to reduce the co-referential ambiguity (people, dogs = they, their) by making the adverbial phrase passive, like this,

When dogs are treated too nicely, they think they're the leaders of the pack, and so they might attack their owners.

Using leaders of the packs makes it sound as if the dogs have more than one pack. Likewise, people who treat their dogs has the same plural reading.

[navi tasan]

Thanks Cas,

Your reply is as usual brilliant. Given that we have gotten used to your astute explanations, I almost forgot to mention this.

"Given" used with this meaning is one of my favorite words. Maybe I should stop using it. I didn't mean to sound stuffy. I just like that word. But your "given the "given"" is absolutely wonderful.

[Casiopea]

"given" is one of my favorite words to, Navi. Please note, I was too lazy to type out the entire 'given. . . ' phrase; that's why I used "given" on its own in quotes. No message attached to it.