Large Fierce Mammal

“Humans, like metals, are malleable, and you can deform a sheet of metal with hammer-blows and then tap it out flat again. But any metallurgist will assure you that the whole sheet has changed, and only melting it down and rolling it again will undo it.” ~ Freedom & Necessity, Steven Brust & Emma Bull

In this era of quick fixes and humans know best, what I’ve quoted above could just as easily be applied to the “training” of Dogs. In its reference to malleability, the words of the eloquent Ms. Bull and Mr. Brust also posit that forceful methods of modification come hand in hand with an intrinsic change from the Natural state of the raw material. A condition that can be reversed to its original and undeformed condition, but at what cost?

Everyone recognizes the term “Dog training”, but evidence garnered from my own observations leads me to the conclusion that little in the form of a standardized understanding exists in society. For clarity then, let us begin today by defining it. Quite simply, the concept giving birth to the term arises from the need for Humans and Dogs to live and function together in harmony and for mutual benefit, therefore necessitating a set of guidelines that are both understood and understandable by all parties. Keep that in mind as we go forward.

As most of you know, Mrs. LFM and I have Dogs in our family that would have been dead, or otherwise condemned to life in an animal shelter, if not for having met us. For each of them, the genesis of becoming a treasured part of our family was a combination of the serendipitous involvement of some very fine people, and  human misunderstanding. Ham handed cluelessness. Even the base malice of the bully against a perceived weaker target. I don’t say this with any intention to wrap our Clan in a mantle of nobility, but simply to point out that not a one of these Dogs was branded a failure by society through any fault of their own, and none carried any genetic or temperamental predisposition to destructive outbursts. As with all Natural things, they simply needed to belong to an understandable world, and in the condition they each arrived in, that world needed to be patient and unhurried. They needed to find Respect, both given and received, in a spirit of what the Esteemed Silvia Jay refers to as “Mindful Leadership”.

Mindfulness, Goode Reader, is a language we speak here, and that you are well advised to pursue to whatever level of fluency your own Nature permits. I’ve written of it more than a few times. It’s at the root of the Way of the Wild, and governs every encounter between creatures of Nature, whether those involved be species of like or unlike kind.

Every living thing in Nature, flora or fauna, has a Way that defines its ideal state of being. That balanced equation of form and function forged by generations of evolution against the anvil of environmental reality. This ideal state of being is, for each species, its own unique expression of the greater, all encompassing Way – the Way of the Wild – the Way from which all others spring. ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – The Way of the Wild

The making and raising of Mindful Leaders, of Humans worthy of being defined as such by the Way of the Wild, has motivated us LFMs to do the most Natural thing there is – conceive, birth, and raise up a kid or three. In this pursuit, we have taken a step back from our professional hands-on outpatient activities as heretofore offered by Golden Mountain Dog Solutions, and this hiatus has offered a perfect opportunity for reflection on the Dogs, Humans, and situations we’ve met over the years. The successes and failures, measured against the Truths, “truths”, half-truths, and overt lies we’ve heard spoken, although never by the Dogs involved.

“There’s facts about dogs, and then there’s opinions about them. The dogs have the facts, and the humans have the opinions. If you want the facts about the dog, always get them straight from the dog. If you want opinions, get them from humans.” ~ J. Allen Boone

The road so far has led us to a number of conclusions that I will no doubt expand on in the future, but today I will focus on one deplorable parasitic industry that owes its success to people who for one reason or another are “too busy”, or otherwise (though always self-excusingly) unwilling to be truly present in their relationship with a Dog. These people would be dead, maimed, unhappily married or (probably repeatedly) divorced, jailed, or (hopefully) have their children seized if they brought the same mindset to their interpersonal relationships with other Humans, and yet society accepts the methods they embrace in Dog “training” without a blink of an eye.

I’ve written before of a related industry now generically referred to as “invisible fence“, but today I speak in the broadest of strokes on the application of shock collar based aversive training methods, and its general acceptance as THE WAY to that perfect relationship between you and your Dog … or rather dog, because I only capitalize the name of a thing when the reference is to the thing in its entirety, and that is not what those who follow this path are looking for.

Early in the present century, while Mrs. LFM was finishing her last year of University, we rented an apartment in Halifax near the Dalhousie campus. In the neighbourhood lived a woman who was regularly encountered walking her Dog, off lead, on sidewalks that lay adjacent to busy city streets. The Dog never strayed from being in a perfect on the left, shoulders even with handler’s legs, position, and never looked right or left. Neither did it make any kind of eye contact with the woman, and nothing that happened around it was ever seen to break the spell. It was an automaton that just looked like a Dog, and while the woman appeared content, there was no detectable joy in the relationship for either of them.

We’ll never know for sure what methods were employed to kill the Spirit of a Dog to the degree necessary to convert it into a piece of walking furniture – although it had the earmarks of electric shock collar aversive “training” written all over it – but the Dog in question had clearly learned that its only hope of happiness lay within very narrow and strictly enforced limits of behaviour. The animal called Dog simply didn’t live there any more, in a manner I find reminds me of what I’ve read describing the assimilation philosophy underlying the Canadian Indian Residential School system – “Kill the Indian in the child.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Nature’s Rules?

Consider this:

“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.” ~ Gregory Bateson – Steps to an Ecology of Mind

All Teaching, of whatever sort, must be Mindful of this singular Truth, so that anything learned will mesh with the Way of the Wild as it expresses itself in the Student. Think on this, Goode Reader, and as you do, keep in mind what is left of Dogs at the end of shock collar and other aversive “training” methods, engendering as they do a requirement to be conscious of every motivation lest it end in correction.