The Road to Dog Hell is Paved with Human Misconceptions
Posted By Randy on June 24, 2010
J. Allen Boone said, “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.”
It’s an unfortunate fact that what a lot of dog owners “know” about dogs is actually an assemblage of loosely connected beliefs, absorbed more than actually learned, from a combination of childhood experiences, common misconceptions heard spoken so often, and for so many years, that they have assumed the mantle of truth, television programs, movies, and things the dog they have now is trying to tell them that they just don’t get, even though they think they do. Interestingly, a lot of these people have had a series of dogs over many years that they lived contented lives with. How did this happen in spite of clueless handling? Because dogs are incredibly perceptive, empathic, and adaptable, all of which gives them the ability to work around the crazy, delusional, and often stupid side of humans.
Now before you go off the rails and accuse me of saying that every person who doesn’t live with their dogs exactly the way Mrs. LFM and I do, or who doesn’t live up to our standards of dog handling, is crazy, delusional, or stupid, just cool it. That’s not my point. If you knee jerked into taking offense when you read the last sentence of the previous paragraph, go back and read it again. The part that lists the qualities inherent in dogs is the point we’ll be carrying forward. The fact that people can be crazy, delusional, and often stupid will henceforth go without saying because all people are capable of expressing those three traits in varying combinations, degrees and durations, and if you claim to be excluded from that then you have totally embraced all three and turned them into a life style. Congratulations! Now bugger off and don’t ever get a dog.
My first clue that I’m talking to a person who is … well … clueless is when I hear them speak some variation of the words, “I’ve been around dogs my whole life and I’ve never seen a dog that ….” The intention in this sentence, no matter how it ends, is to convey the message that there is something wrong with the dog they’re talking about because it doesn’t conform to the speaker’s belief system, built link by link over however many years and dogs gone by, which they employ as a yardstick for measuring the quality and normalcy of dog behaviour. What I’m actually taking from this is that, in spite of themselves, such people have a history of being blessed with exceptional dogs, and that the dog they have now either lacks the coping skills of its predecessors, or the people involved have somehow changed, and not for the better, since their last dog was around. Sometimes the family situation has evolved in some way that has removed an important factor that the people involved never knew was there. For example, I know of one case in which a couple raised their dogs and kids at the same time, finding themselves blessed with some of the most socialized dogs around. Later, after the kids had grown up and moved out on their own, the same couple got another dog that they raised into a child and stranger fearing adult. Why? Because the constant comings and goings of their childrens’ friends that naturally come with parenthood had effectively socialized their dogs for them, and they never knew it had nothing to do with their skills at dog handling.
Take a quick look at the news and you’ll find that society is more about assigning blame than solving problems. Marketing engenders and thrives on the propensity to discard rather than repair. But all of that is artificially constructed to suit agendas that have no business at all in relationships, whether between people or between people and other animals. A human pairing in which one member is under constant stress to cope with the instability of the other while simultaneously being powerless to correct that instability or remove themselves from the situation is, by definition, “abusive”. If marriage was subject to the same attitudes and expectations many people bring to their relationship with a dog, divorce would be the norm – and yet provided that its family members aren’t intentionally mean and nasty, a dog can happily soldier on in situations that a human would find intolerable. They don’t overthink things. They simply accept what is and work with that. While it represents one of many wonderful things about dogs, it’s this incredible ability to cope with situations a human wouldn’t or couldn’t tolerate that leads the misguided even further off the path so that when one day the square peg won’t fit in the round hole, things can and do go terrible wrong.
The good news is that even though a lot of people are bogged down in the mire of misconceptions, many are willing to change. Some are even overjoyed to learn that a lot of what they thought they knew was wrong! Confronted by inexplicably bad behaviour from their dog that has defied all their efforts to stop, or even to understand, and learning how its behaviour is actually a reaction to something they themselves are doing, the eyes grow wide and they blurt out, “You mean it’s NOT him? It’s ME? Thank GOD!” Far from being insulted, such people feel empowered because they know they now have something they can take control of – their own behaviour. And yes Pootz, that example was about you.
A Border Collie Mrs. LFM and I worked with had a propensity to destroy furniture and had done some savage damage to the living room couch. He belonged to a married couple – the husband worked long hours that in some seasons ran to seven days a week, while the wife worked at a number of jobs that permitted her to return home periodically throughout the day. Almost every time she came home she found chaos that she reacted to very badly, roughly disciplining a dog that had no way of connecting her behaviour with anything he could understand or do anything about.
Perhaps this all began with separation anxiety, maybe boredom, possibly even a little of both, but what caused it is of no importance. The real issue was identifying and eliminating the factor that was keeping it going which, seen from the dog’s perspective, was the sudden, inexplicable, and inevitable display of crazy exhibited by the wife every time she came home. Combine that with a tendency to leave and return repeatedly through the day and it’s no surprise this Border Collie was a basket case. Chewing on things was his outlet for the anxiety of waiting for a doom he knew was coming the moment she started showing signs of preparing to leave.
We taught the woman involved to be calm and gather herself before even opening the door. Not to anticipate disaster even if that’s what she repeatedly found. Not to acknowledge the existence of her dog until she had calmly removed her coat, shoes, hung up her keys, and done every other little task required of a person who has just come home. If there was a mess to clean up we taught her to do that quietly and without fanfare, no matter how upsetting the destruction. Only after that was done, and when she felt fully in control, was she to look at, speak to, or touch her dog. The first time this was done she found some couch damage. While she picked up the stuffing and tattered fabric her dog watched and followed her tentatively. She made herself a cup of tea while she cooled down and then addressed her dog as though nothing unfortunate had ever happened. After that the destruction rapidly tapered to nothing. No more crazy, no more problem, and a woman learned some self control skills that she can use to good effect in other life situations.
Another misconception regularly encountered is characterized by the description of a particular behaviour that a dog allegedly did, “… for no reason.” Of course what this really means is, “… for no reason that I am aware of,” but that isn’t what the person speaking thinks they are saying, and for me every part of the anecdote that preceded those fateful words is thus cast into the same doubt I reserve for what is charitably called “eye witness testimony”. Here’s another example from personal experience.
A healthy adult male Retriever lives on a farm with an assortment of typical farm animals and his owners – a married couple. This couple entertains a lot and have friends, another married couple with an infant child and a small dog of their own, who visit regularly, dog included. This latter couple, along with their dog and baby, were present when things went bad “for no reason”.
A dinner party was hosted involving a large number of people and several visiting dogs. One of the women sitting around the table has several dogs of her own, has visited on previous occasions, and is known to the family’s Retriever. On this day, the dog approached the woman, placed his head in her lap, and she began to pet him. This petting was going on for a while before the dog gently took one of the woman’s hands in his mouth and softly held it while she continued petting him with her other hand. The woman made no attempt to remove her hand from the dog’s mouth. It was when she decided to lean over and kiss him on the top of his head that he suddenly bit her face, opening a tear that required stitches to close. The dog was immediately ushered outside where he stood, quietly looking into the dining room full of upset people. Other than the bite, it was reported that his manner was contrite and that he exhibited no other aggressive moves toward his original target or anyone else.
To her credit, the woman involved admitted that her actions were stupid and that she should have known better. Nevertheless, the couple with the baby were now fearful for the safety of their child, and the dog’s owners were concerned at the ominous portent of what they took to be an unexpected and unprecedented attack. Witnesses agreed that the bite came out of nowhere, but that the dog only bit once, made no attempt to pursue the woman’s face as it withdrew, nor did he make any threatening moves toward any other part of her body.
Interviewing the Retriever’s owners, it was learned that the dog involved had a model relationship with the man of the house, regularly being with him as he worked about the farm, and routinely travelling with him in his pickup truck when he went on errands. If a passenger was added to the load, the dog would move over to sit in the middle of the bench seat without a grumble, but not so if the wife decided to take him along in her car.
Alone in a vehicle operated by the wife, this dog projected a clear message to anyone who approached that they should stay away, and the woman did not take him along on trips that would involve passengers. When she was interacting with the farm animals he persistently interfered with her and harassed the critters, something he never did when he was accompanying her husband. When she walked around the property, the dog would routinely take one of her hands in his mouth and hold it as he walked beside her. She thought it was cute and quirky, and she didn’t see anything wrong in it so she never corrected him or made any attempt to stop him from doing it. This behaviour was also reserved only for her.
Observing the family dynamics, it was quite clear that the husband and wife are very affectionate and respectful of each other. They are proud of their accomplishments together. And yet it was also clear that their dog saw himself as being on a social level that was directly below the husband, to whom he deferred with sincere respect and loyalty, and significantly above the wife who he treated as something akin to a very special type of farm animal. A farm animal with benefits though because, unlike the others around the place, she could also be a source of things he himself liked, wanted, or needed such as food, water, access to the outside, and car rides. Like the other animals, she needed to be looked after. Since his Master clearly held her to be a critter of extreme value to him, the dog took care of her when he wasn’t around. Interacting directly with the dog ourselves, it was also clear that he was very self confident and quite willing to communicate his resentment at being influenced into cooperating with people he didn’t know.
Another factor in this equation was the regularly visiting couple, their baby who was not yet old enough to walk but was quite nimble on all fours, and their dog. They reported that the child pursued their dog relentlessly, routinely took toys away from it, and played in its food dish while it was eating. They proclaimed this as evidence of what a “good dog” theirs was, and expressed reservations about the Retriever that had growled on one occasion when the child approached his food dish.They said they were worried about what might happen if their baby did the kind of things to him that were routinely permitted to be done to their own dog.
The bite at the dinner table had its genesis in the years leading up to it, in a lifestyle that explained away clear behavioural warnings. Even once the dog’s head was actually in the lap of the woman he corrected – and that’s what this was; a corrective bite, not an attack – the warning signs were mounting, completely unnoticed even by the woman whose actions constituted the last trigger this dog needed in that particular situation.
Any dog will bite. Any dog. Even the so called “good” ones, but that doesn’t make any dog a bad dog. All that’s required is the right triggers to be present in the right combination and timing. What society calls a “good” dog is simply a normal dog that has been fortunate enough to live in a situation wherein it doesn’t encounter such a combination, and disturbingly often, this is more the result of dumb luck than knowledgeable handling.
The husband of the couple with the baby explained that he felt the bite was uncalled for because the dog had approached the woman and placed his head on her lap of his own volition, and “all she did” was try to kiss him on the head. Well clearly the dog saw the placing of her head over his, if not the approach of her mouth, as a move deserving of correction. If the woman had been another dog there is a likelihood that no blood would have been drawn. The human face is, unfortunately, not so durable. He was happy with the petting, which he invited, but was not about to tolerate the woman taking liberties.
Taking this into a comparable human context, let’s say a man asks a woman out to dinner and a movie. She accepts and the date goes well. After the movie they walk along the waterfront and he takes her hand. She doesn’t resist, in fact shows willing acceptance, and they walk for a while. Then the man puts his hand on her breast and finds himself lying on the ground with a bleeding lip. What has just happened here was that the man exceeded the degree and type of physical contact the woman was prepared to accept peacefully – so much so that she jumped straight over a simple verbal command to remove his hand from her breast, she didn’t give him a shove or slap his cheek, and yet on the other hand he still has his testicles. This therefore constitutes a correction and not an attack.
We supervise children on swimming pool decks. We put baby gates at the top of stairs, annoying plastic things on door knobs, and caps on bottles holding medicines and cleaning products that senior citizens can’t open. We turn the pot handles in while they’re on the stove and make sure the kettle cord isn’t dangling. We stick plastic plugs in unused electrical outlets. Why? Because children need to be protected from doing things that will hurt them while they’re learning not to do those things. Yet it is seen as a failing on the part of a dog when it decides that enough is enough, or when it’s feeling ill, or is arthritic in its old age and its joints hurt. In this case, the parents of the infant sincerely saw nothing wrong with letting their baby use their dog as a primary source of entertainment, and yet would never hesitate to take action against injury due to any other cause. If their dog had been another child whose food and toys were being constantly stolen, whose hair and ears were being pulled, an intervention would have been staged long ago and the behaviour of the offending child corrected. The Retriever involved won’t tolerate being disrespected in this fashion and this is seen as somehow a sign of instability. And while all eyes are focused on him, the small dog is a time bomb because, left to fend for itself with owners who will do nothing to help it, we can only hope that the child grows out of its behaviours before the dog runs out of options. This situation is responding well to treatment but is still a work in progress.
Not surprisingly this is a bottomless topic that I will wallow in again with a future article, but I think I’ve bent your ears enough for one sitting.
Hi Randy
I really appreciate your insight regarding Dog issues. I sincerely believe these blogs of yours of various topics should be published. Keep on keeping on. Salute !!
Peter
Thank you Peter. I appreciate your support. Actually, by definition, posting them here means they are published, but I know what you mean – they should be in PRINT so people could either read them in the bathroom or wipe their bums with the pages, or both. The Large Fierce Mammal is nothing if not ecologically sound !
Being a blogger is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.
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[…] I own firearms and am exceptionally skilled in their use. To own them required that I obtain appropriate training, demonstrate my competence to a National standard, and conduct myself in a responsible, forthright manner thereafter. If I ignore safe storage regulations, load one of my guns and leave it cocked with the safety off on my dining room table, in the absence of human interaction with that gun, all it’s going to do on its own is rust. It is not, in itself, dangerous, but it can be made so by human negligence, irresponsibility, and malicious intent. Much in life is like that, including the juggernaut I strap on every time I enclose myself in an automobile and start the engine. Unlike machines, dogs are sentient creatures, but their behaviour and its consequences to the world around them will inevitably be a reflection of the human handling they receive. A dog will always act the way it feels it must. It is neither a walking anti-personnel mine nor an animated piece of furniture, and most especially not a playmate for the kids, and yet somehow for much of the population, what a dog actually is has been terribly garbled in the 14,000 years since dogs and humans got together. For more on that, read my 24 June 2010 article titled The Road To Dog Hell is Paved With Human Misconceptions. […]
[…] and water – never to mix? Of course not. To quote myself in reference to a case discussed in a previous article: We supervise children on swimming pool decks. We put baby gates at the top of stairs, annoying […]
[…] spoke on this subject, and the hellery it can unleash, in my 24 June 2010 article, The Road to Dog Hell is Paved With Human Misconceptions, and if you haven’t read it, I suggest you do so […]
[…] it to shreds, and all this leads me to introduce an excellent article supporting my argument that the road to Dog hell is paved with human misconceptions. Nature is, at once, infinitely complex and wondrously simple. Her complexity should not concern […]
This particular paragraph clearly expresses the quality of a ‘human’ with regards to a creature that is put here for our comfort and grace. Unfortunately, as you clearly point out and to paraphrase, it is either lack of awareness of anothers wants and needs or simply arrogance in thinking that anything less than a human is just that, less than divine and without need for comfort and respect. The reality is, in my view, that we are the creatures to be tended to and not the other way around until there is selflessness in each others joy and pleasures.
“We taught the woman involved to be calm and gather herself before even opening the door. Not to anticipate disaster even if that’s what she repeatedly found. Not to acknowledge the existence of her dog until she had calmly removed her coat, shoes, hung up her keys, and done every other little task required of a person who has just come home. If there was a mess to clean up we taught her to do that quietly and without fanfare, no matter how upsetting the destruction. Only after that was done, and when she felt fully in control, was she to look at, speak to, or touch her dog. The first time this was done she found some couch damage. While she picked up the stuffing and tattered fabric her dog watched and followed her tentatively. She made herself a cup of tea while she cooled down and then addressed her dog as though nothing unfortunate had ever happened. After that the destruction rapidly tapered to nothing. No more crazy, no more problem, and a woman learned some self control skills that she can use to good effect in other life situations.”
Thank you Steve. One of these days Tango will join us for a drink while we talk about this.