I live in a relatively small farmhouse with oodles of sled dogs (currently seven, but I’ve been lucky enough to share my home with 13 of the rascals in the past). With the (rather formidable) exception of the need to sweep up a lot of hair, it’s a wonderful way to live. The dogs mostly get along, playing and gamboling together in our large fenced yard and on daily hikes. They have a lot of fun with each other, and we—the humans in the house—have fun with them, too. Like pretty much any dog owner, I talk about my dogs with anyone who will listen: my poor guests generally hear a tale or two, as do my dog obedience class students, my family, my friends... I’m always talking about my crew.

 My “crew”? Why not my “pack”? Whenever I talk about life with so many dogs, I’m very careful to refer to them as a crew. Or I might simply say my dogs. I scrupulously avoid calling them a pack, and I do this on purpose. Pack is a word weighed down with meanings and connotations and associations. It’s laden with some heavy baggage, most of which I want to keep far, far away from the canines I share my couch with.

Words matter

Language is not just the formalized way we express our pure, language-free ideas. Ideas aren’t born in the ether of our brains, arising without vocabulary or grammar in some amorphous thought-haze, only later getting a quick translation job into words and sentences so we can share them with others. Researchers who study human psychology and consciousness are quick to point out that, for humans at least, language and thought are truly inseparable. Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett suggests that language lays down the tracks upon which thoughts can travel. Language both constrains thought, and is the foundation for it. We think in words, and language is inextricably tied up in how our brains look and work, from the time we’re very young. And although Dennett refers to the system of language including grammar, he also includes vocabulary: word choice. Words really do matter. A rose by any other name just smells different. 

Pack terminology is problematic

Wolves, who share an ancestor with dogs, certainly organize themselves into packs. But there is a lot of misinformation about wolf packs fed to us, unfortunately. Wolf packs aren’t the same as what you see in a Disney movie or hear about on TV. The wolf pack is understood very differently by the general public and by those wolf biologists who study wolves in their wild, natural state.

In popular literature, a wolf pack refers to a group of wolves that hunt together and stay together. These imaginary packs aren’t a happy group, though. They seem to be in a constant state of some barely-controlled detente reminiscent of a B-movie prison or a contested border with razor-wire fences and armed, angry guards. Every member is scheming some kind of violent take-over and is barely kept in place through constant physical corrections from their superior pack-mates. Some kind of a social hierarchy is always included, but unlike human hierarchies such as company management structures or the armed forces, the hierarchies aren’t stable and non-violent. They’re always falling apart at the seams.

But for the very people who know the most about natural wolf behaviour, wolf biologists studying wild wolf packs? Things are a bit different. Wolf packs are families. There is usually a breeding pair who… you know. Breed. And then their puppy offspring, and possibly some older offspring too. While there is obviously some spats and squabbles (show me a human family without spats and squabbles, and…yeah, I won’t believe you), there is not a constant effort to both take over, and to quell uprisings. When wolves grow up, they usually head off into the great beyond—like a teen heading off to college, perhaps—and start their own families. Their own packs.

 So where did the rather sad human idea about wolf packs come from? In part from our own psyches, very likely: hierarchies matter to humans, without a doubt. We simply can’t help interpreting the world through our own experiences. And from research on captive wolves, too. Captive wolf research has certainly inundated popular literature. Captive wolves are generally unrelated adults forced to live together in a constrained, unnatural state (not unlike a B movie prison, if I think about it).

What does this mean for dogs? When a 21st century English-speaking person hears the word pack when speaking of dogs, that word will almost certainly evoke the popular literature version of a wolf pack (inmates in battle for world domination), not the idea of a family just trying to make a living in the world. This is a problem in two big ways. First of all, we know that wild wolf packs are very different from the popular conception of wolves so the very idea of a constant battle for status is murky. But there’s an even bigger issue. Hold onto your seats: dogs aren’t wolves.

Dogs aren’t wolves!?

Dogs and wolves share an ancestor, and a relatively recent one—possibly around fifteen thousand or thirty thousand years (the actual timeline is a hot topic among researchers right now). And while it’s true that dogs and wolves can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, which is one of the ways that biologists define members of a species, it’s not true that they’re the same, behaviourally. The likelihood is that the common ancestor of dogs and wolves is now long gone—a friendlier, less fearful wolf was perhaps the source of today’s dogs. There seems to have been a split: proto-dogs on one side, evolving at first naturally and then being bred for increasing friendliness. And wild wolves on the other, evolving to become even more profoundly fearful than before due to increasing pressure from their main natural adversary: people.

So if they can interbreed, aren’t they the same? That sounds compelling, but in real life it’s trickier. Biologically, they can interbreed. But behaviourally, they are pretty different.

For example, wolves are uniformly predatory. Dogs are much more variable: some are happy to get their own meals to eat, some enjoy “predating” upon tennis balls only, and some have no urge whatsoever. Dogs tend to enjoy the company of humans, and I do mean close company (high fives to all the 50lb lap dogs out there). Wolves are a different story, even those who are raised with human company from birth. And when it comes to living in a tight-knit family pack, well, dogs and wolves diverge quite boldly. Studies of unowned dogs show that outside of the gaggles of googley-eyed males who gather briefly around a female in heat (ever hopeful), and groupings of adult friends who scavenge together and then disperse, it doesn’t seem that dogs do form packs. The family pack that is found among wolves seems, for dogs at least, to have gone the way of the dodo. This is not to say that dogs aren’t friendly! As mentioned, dogs tend to be social, enjoying the company of other dogs, and they almost always enjoy the company of their human companions. And like wolves, they will fight (i.e. use aggressive displays) to keep hold of valued resources like bones and comfy beds. But the adorable mom and pop pairs with puppies we see on greeting cards? That’s a human thing, not a dog thing. The likelihood is that “dad” isn’t out hunting kibble, coming back to his family and regurgitating it up for his wee ones. And when they’re a year old, those puppies almost certainly are laying on the couch chewing a bully stick of their own or playing with the poodle across the street, not out helpfully roaming with dad, scouting for kibble-beasts to help feed their younger sisters and brothers. Dogs are awesome; wolves are awesome; the same beast they are not.

Let’s put dogs in a new package

So, the pop literature understanding of wolf packs isn’t accurate. That in itself is unfortunate, but does that alone mean we should avoid the word? It’s so handy and brief, and rhymes with snack...and everyone loves snacks. But (unfortunately) there is even another problematic layer of misconceptions piled on top of pack. And this layer, this further misconception, is very bad for dogs.

Since the idea of wolf pack as a group of snarling, barely-constrained power-hungry predators reigns the popular culture, trainers who make use of outmoded, scary and painful training methods cash in on that misconception to lead us into buying what they’re selling (and upon consideration, it’s quite a natural fit, isn’t it?). If wolves regularly inflict pain and fear to sustain some ‘natural’ order, well then humans better do so, as well, is the thinking. And if every scheming member of a pack is always plotting to take over no matter the cost, then using painful or scary techniques—yelling or swatting, jerking on the leash, pennies in a can, sprays of water, collars that tighten to cut off a dog’s airway, or dig painful metal bits into their necks, or deliver electric shocks—well that’s a minor price to pay for maintaining order. These trainers are selling a rather scary falsehood: that if you, dog owner, don’t keep your pet wolves down and out, then they’ll take over and some horrible bloody pandemonium will result.

The bald truth of the matter is that there’s a better way to train dogs, now. The science of animal behaviour change has made fantastic leaps and bounds in the last decades. We can train dogs to do pretty much anything they’re capable of doing, and help fearful and aggressive dogs overcome their issues as well, all without hurting or scaring dogs. In fact, in the case of fearful and aggressive dogs, the research is in: hurting and scaring these dogs is dangerous and inappropriate, and leads to poor outcomes. It makes these dogs worse.

The myth that wolves live like B-movie prison inmates isn’t helpful in general, and the extent to which it allows painful training methods to proliferate is deeply troubling. And since I know that words matter, I invite you to start thinking about a group of dogs as anything other than a pack. How about an assembly? A class? A clutch, a posse, a passel, a community, a party, a retinue, a gathering. Your herd of hounds will thank you.

This piece was originally published on Dog International.

Photo of white puppies: skat | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Cover image: Saksoni | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Management, in the dog training context, is a bit tricky to define. It is worth the effort to understand it, though, if you share you life with a dog or two. Management essentially refers to anything (item, habit) that prevents a dog from doing, or experiencing, a thing we don’t want them to. I think a great way to explain is by triangulating with a bunch of examples:

A dog is jumping up on guests. The guardian puts a leash on the dog to ensure they don’t have access to the guests during the initial exciting moments.

A dog pulls hard on leash during walks. The guardian uses a front-clip harness, which prevents the dog from pulling by changing the angle of attachment.

A dog is scared of fireworks. The guardian goes camping in a quiet location during holidays.

A dog is scared of the veterinary office. The guardian uses a vet who does home visits where possible.

Two dogs scrap when they are eating supper. The guardian feeds them in separate rooms.

A dog is underfoot in the kitchen during cooking times. The guardian uses a baby gate to keep them out of the kitchen during prep times.

A dog chews shoes. The guardian buys a monthly box service of great new toys and keeps shoes in the closet.

In every example, there is a behaviour or emotional response that the dog has, which is being prevented by changing up the dog’s environment. It is not the same as training and behaviour modification. Behaviour modification would work in some of these cases, but it would look like this:

A dog is jumping up on guests. The guardian trains the dog to stay in a sit-stay when guests arrive, in order to earn greeting time and treats.

A dog pulls hard on leash during walks. The guardian trains the dog to walk with a loose leash, in order to earn forward movement and treats.

A dog is scared of fireworks. The guardian trains the dog to enjoy the sound of fireworks using classical conditioning, with the help of medication from their vet.

A dog is scared of the veterinary office. The guardian trains the dog to feel safe during veterinary appointments and procedures.

Two dogs scrap when they are eating supper. The guardian trains the dogs to eat comfortably across the room from each other.

A dog is underfoot in the kitchen during cooking times. The guardian trains the dog to lay on a mat during meal prep.

The difference here is that instead of preventing the dog from experiencing the trigger or being able to respond to the trigger in ways we don’t appreciate, we are changing the dog’s behaviour or emotional state when they are confronted with the trigger. Perfectly acceptable, but a different process! And, alright, I’ll be frank: a lot more work. Dog training is all about repetitions, my dear readers. Repetitions upon repetitions.

And if you’ve read any of my blogs in the past, you’ll know one truth about me: I’m pretty lazy. We’ll get back to this in a bit, but you’re probably already suspicious about where I’m heading. Hey, fun fact: you’re right.

Dog trainers use management in two main ways. One way is as the entire solution to a problem. When something as easy as using a baby gate or switching up walk times will solve our clients’ issues, we’re usually game. Or if a dog is fearful of something we can easily remove from their lives, we are doing our dogs a service to do so. When management is the whole solution, our clients tend to be delighted, their dogs tend to be happy as little canine clams, and everyone wins!

Dog trainers also use management as a stop-gap to prevent inappropriate behaviours or emotional responses while training takes hold. Training protocols can range from easy enough to welp this will take a pretty comprehensive incremental training plan. It’s a blessing, and in some cases it’s desperately important, to give our clients’ dogs (and our clients) a break from the behaviour or issue they hired us to solve. But management-only solutions can’t always be the end: some of these issues we really do need to train for. A dog who is scared of the vet will need to see the vet at some point, so helping them feel comfortable is welfare-boosting. A lifetime of management (home vet visits, or more likely and more distressingly, just avoiding the vet altogether) won’t really work, or has awful consequences. There are many other scenarios where a dog’s welfare and ability to have normal social interactions with other dogs or other people are at risk with a management-only solution as well, and welfare and joy should never be on the chopping block when we’re making dog training decisions. In addition, some people just genuinely like training their dogs, and like having non-management solutions. We dog trainers love these people, but we get that most people don’t really have that gene.

So, back to me. I’m personally all for easy solutions (except when welfare and joy are compromised, of course). I love management-only solutions and do a ton of management in my own home. If you’re struggling with your own dogs—if their behaviour is getting on your nerves or causing discord, or if you can tell they are experiencing distress—consider management. Take a real healthy step backwards, take stock of when and where the issue is happening, and ask if you could change up your dog’s environment to simply prevent your dog from being triggered. If the changes you’re considering will, over the long-term, reduce your dog’s welfare, then reach out to a dog trainer and consider the management to be perhaps an interim solution. But don’t feel like management is somehow second best. It can be life-saving, ear-drum-saving, dollar-saving, and family-saving.

There’s a reason why us dog trainers are delighted with, and experts at, management: it works, and it’s a beautiful thing.

This blog was written and published for the Academy for Dog Trainers March Is Management Month media blitz.

Cover photo by TranStudios Photography & Video from Pexels

A call recently came through to my dog training business. A dog owner needed help. His dog was chasing cars and not staying home. The dog took long trips across the country, and had even been seen at farms that were miles away. The owner wanted the dog to learn. The kids love the dog, he told me. So the dog needs to stay safe. And to stay safe, he needs to learn, I was told. The dog needs to learn that leaving the farm is wrong. “Lots of other dogs stay home”. So this dog just needed to learn to be more like those dogs.

Dogs are variable creatures, aren’t they? I’m not just talking about all the different breeds, either, although...how baffling is it that both Yorkies and Mastiffs are the same species? Some dogs are energetic; some affable and easy going. Some love snuggles; some enjoy ‘me’ time. Some are bright, and some, well...some are less so. Some dogs--for whatever reason--stay home, even without fences. Most dogs, however, given the opportunity to roam, will delightedly do so. A few of my own crew of sled dogs are the stay-at-home types, much to my amazement. Sled dogs are a breed known to enjoy long, long treks across the wilderness, a trait which is compounded by their rather fiendish escape capabilities: they climb over, they dig under, and they also find and then worry at any breach in the fence until it’s big enough to slip though. Fence repair duty is ongoing.

It would be delicious if we could simply ask them why. Why do you stay home, stay-at-home dog? Tell us what we need to know to get all the dogs staying home. Dogs can’t talk, of course, so we have no access to their thoughts. This means that any guesses about why dogs do what they do (outside of well-constructed and tested arguments coming out of academic fields like evolutionary psychology and ethology) are...well, conjecture. Ten minutes in the Dog section of any bookstore will fill you with more conjecture-stated-as-fact than most people can reasonably handle in a lifetime. But luckily, when it comes to dogs, we don’t need to know why (even though in a roaming dog’s case, we do have some good ideas, thanks to those very academic fields). We just need to get to work.

“Some farm dogs do stay home”, my caller reminded me. Yes, some do. But was there learning involved? Maybe there was--and we’ll talk about that in a bit. But more likely, they are simply the stay-at-home types. Are the stay-at-homers safer than the roamers? Absolutely. The stay-at-home types are just less likely to be out on the road. Statistics alone are on that dog’s side: they’re not on the road, or not on the road nearly as often, so they are much less likely to be harmed in a traffic accident. Are they perfectly safe, though? Does any dog stay at home all the time, with no fence? This is unlikely. Even the most homeward-oriented dog is occasionally interested in a squirrel, a fun new scent, or--heavens be--another dog wandering by.

It’s tempting to moralize about dogs in these scenarios. “She should stay home because it’s the right thing to do.” When dogs do stuff we really wish they wouldn’t, or don’t do something we really wish they would, it feels like an affront. But dogs don’t share our morals, and expecting them to is at the root of so much abusive behaviour that many dog trainers have developed a bit of an aversion to the word “should”. But my dog should stay home. Dog trainers ‘round the world shout out why? Is there something good at home? Is there a reason for him not to follow his nose and track that grouse or moose or feather? Is he safely contained in a fence? Dogs can be compared (poorly, but still usefully) to a human baby. “This baby should not reach out and grab the pre-owned lollipop on the floor and put it in her mouth”. Well, OK, sure...that makes sense to us, but no one would expect the baby to listen, nod wisely, and refrain from reaching out with that perfect little baby hand. The baby sees the lollipop, the baby thinks “mine, nom nom”. So instead of unreasonable expectations, we pick up and toss out the lollipop, put special closures on the cabinets, lift the baby up into our arms, and distract them with a silly song. Dogs aren’t babies, of course. But like babies, they aren’t grown-up people, either.

Training a dog to refrain from doing something

It is much more difficult than you’d guess to train a dog to stop doing something, especially something which the dog naturally enjoys, or something which has yielded results in the past. In most scenarios where people want this (“get my dog to stop jumping up”), dog trainers rely on a lovely switcheroo: do this instead. When the dog wants friendly face-time and jumps up? We train the dog to sit, instead. Dog pesters guests to get patting? We train the dog to stay on a mat for a few minutes, instead. Dog pulls hard to get from point A to point B? We teach the dog that the only way to get from point A to B is to walk without slamming into the end of the leash, instead. These are all much easier propositions than “training dog to stop doing X”.

So back to our roaming dog. Does this dog naturally enjoy roaming? Almost certainly. Roaming is a human-free walk. They get to sniff around, stretch their legs, and moooooove. Does roaming ever yield goodies? Almost certainly. The ground is the catchment zone for the gross domestic product of each and every member of the deer family...say no more. So we have a dog doing something they naturally like, and something which is being reinforced. How hard will it be to stop this dog from roaming?

The dog trainer’s credo of “do something else instead” is less useful in this scenario. Roaming usually happens when a human isn’t there. The odd dog can be trained to stay home instead, but like all “obedience” behaviours, the dog will only keep doing it as long as there is reinforcement. (See paragraph about “should”, above, if you find yourself thinking well they should. Lollipop. Baby.) Most dogs will learn to stay home when the human is around, and then as soon as they’re gone, recognize that the time to roam is neigh.

Reducing behaviour through punishment

This seems to leave dog owners and trainers with one option: punishment. Punishment comes in two flavours: the nice kind, and the painful kind. The nice kind is when you take away something the dog likes for a short time, like a time-out away from the dog’s favourite people. The painful kind is the bailiwick of old-time trainers, and includes hurting and scaring dogs with various kind of collars, or by yelling or striking.

Time-outs: a useful solution?

Although using time-outs can be exceptionally useful for some dog training, they aren’t a good fit for roaming dogs. Even if you could catch the dog as they leave your property line and give them a brief time-out inside, they would almost certainly learn to stay home when the human is around, and roam freely when the human is not. This is not because they are morally corrupt, of course. They’ve just learned when it works to leave, and when it doesn’t. (See paragraph about “should”, above, if you find yourself thinking well they should. Lollipop. Baby.)

Corrections

Since time-outs are not useful here, this leaves the final training option, the so-called corrections: painful or scary punishment. This type of punishment absolutely changes a dog’s behaviour. Dogs, like all animals, will work to avoid being scared or harmed. And in fact, shock collars, including shock collar ‘fences’, have been the usual go-to for training dogs to stop roaming. So why didn’t I just make a recommendation to my caller to hurry up and buy one of these devices?

I had a good reason, I promise. Shock collars have side-effects. Any training that relies on the use of scary or painful corrections does. You can probably guess what happens if you regularly hurt or scare a dog, of course: they become fearful. And dogs, like all animals, have a relatively limited suite of behaviours they can pull out when they’re feeling scared: freezing (hunkering down in one spot), flight (running away), and fight (aggression, such as growling, snarling, and biting).

So training with painful or scary corrections has two important side-effects. First of all, the dog will get scared. Maybe he’ll just be scared of leaving the yard. But maybe he’ll be scared of being outside, or scared of trees, or scared of you. Being scared is a welfare issue--living with fear is just an awful way to be. But just as importantly, these training techniques can make a dog more dangerous. Aggression is one of the standard behavioural responses to fear. A dog trainer’s heart does a nervous flip-flop when we hear that a dog who is around children is being regularly shocked.

We can set aside the argument that it doesn’t really hurt, too. If it didn’t really hurt, the dog wouldn’t stop roaming. You may read that “it’s just a tingle”. Well, if my neck got tingled every time I reached for a piece of pizza, I would continue to eat pizza. If you wanted to change my behaviour, that tingle ain’t going to do it. If that baby’s neck tingled every time she reached for the dirty lollipop...it doesn’t really bear thinking, does it? If you want to stop a dog from doing something they naturally enjoy and something which has a long history of delivering goodies, a tingle isn’t going to do anything. It must register as painful. And as soon as we’re into painful territory, we have those side-effects.

Because of both the welfare issue, and the aggression possibility, modern dog trainers do not recommend painful corrections. What can we do with the friendly neighbourhood car chaser and roaming roamer, then?

Roaming dogs can be safely contained by fences, a most wonderful invention for the dog owner. In some cases, however, fences cannot be built, due to cost or neighbourhood rules. And furthermore, fences aren’t (and can’t be) the whole answer here. A dog who had the freedom to run for hours and miles was getting both the exercise and enrichment he needed. So fencing a roaming dog without any compensation for that loss will mean an unhappy, bored and frustrated dog.

So what’s the answer for my rather desperate caller? It was a bit unpalatable to a busy working father, I’m afraid. He needed to give his dog the one thing that so many dogs are in desperate need of, and yet is in such short supply in today’s world.

Time.

As my caller wasn’t able to build a fence, he needed to wrench open the wallet stuffed with his daily allotment of hours and just dole more out to his dog. A dog with less freedom to roam onto busy roads is much safer, but must be given something in return: exercise and enrichment. Exercise and enrichment are the meat and potatoes of a dog’s happy life. They are the very things we give dogs, above a bed and a bowl of grub, to keep them happy, healthy, content, and active members of our family.

Most dogs naturally roam, and that is in no way an excuse to harm them with outdated training techniques. They need the opportunity to roam safely, which is what walks are. And walks...loose or leashed, through town or park...take nothing but time.

My prescription for was both simple and surprisingly intensive, and I recognize that. His beautiful and well-loved dog needed to spend more time safely ensconced in the house, perhaps napping on the couch, and also more time out on leash or loose walks, more time chewing stuffed bones which take time to prepare, more time playing fetch, more time at playdates, more time in a basic obedience class learning manners, more time, more time, more time. A dog is not a cat (who also benefit from exercise and enrichment, by the way!). A dog is not a stuffed animal. A dog is a commitment of time, above and beyond anything else. Nothing matters as much as time. Time is both free and the most valuable commodity we have and can give those lovely and magic canines in our midst.

The idea of a dog roaming happily around an acreage, with no real human input except a bowl of kibble left out, but who then plays the part of the good family dog for the few hours in the evening they’re welcomed into the house...that’s a myth. A unicorn. My caller almost certainly had a dog, not a unicorn. I hope I was able to convince him to accept the inconvenient truth of the matter: dogs need time. But they are wonderfully giving in return, I promise. They give us joy, they give us exercise, they give us love, they give us laughs, and they give us a shoulder, however furry, to cry on.

A bit of time is a small price to pay for all that.

This piece was originally published on Dog International.

“Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s actually remembering—remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.”
― Desmond Tutu

I think forgiveness is an important gift we can give ourselves and our dogs. It can increase our dogs’ welfare, and give our dogs—and ourselves—a more joyful existence. Since the holiday season should have a bit more joy, I think it’s a reasonable time to ponder forgiveness.

Forgive your dog

Dogs do not operate out of spite or act in revenge. The majority of what they do is aimed at getting what they want out of the world, or avoiding the things they don’t want. They want more of us, typically, and more food, more glorious napping locales, more fun, more games, more comfort, and more play. Sometimes, in the seeking of these, dogs do things we don’t like. They jump up on us with muddy paws. They disregard a request to approach us when other things in their world are simply more engaging, which can be unreasonably embarrassing when other people are around. They lick their coats to groom themselves, even when we really need some peace and quiet. They play roughly and loudly inside our homes, they chew our most expensive stuff, they bark out the window during important Zoom meetings, they squabble and roll in odd and smelly substances and so, so, so much more.

But they are really only doing this because they’re amazingly, gloriously, dogs. Not in an indictment of us, I promise. So even though it can be frustrating, aggravating, annoying, rage-inducing, weep-inducing, and any number of other very human and very real emotions, we can’t blame our dogs for being the very thing that we love most about them: that they’re dogs.

For this reason, we must forgive them. But it doesn’t mean we must, or should necessarily, forget. If our dogs are being pesky by barking and chewing up a storm, we need to remember to meet their needs, with exercise, enrichment, and a bit of tidying up to prevent them from damaging things we want protected. If our dogs are behaving in ways we find frustrating, we must remember to book in with a trainer and figure out ways to live more peaceably together (for example, you can easily train your dog to refrain from jumping up, so you won’t even need to get angry in the first place). It makes sense to improve our dogs’ environments and update their behaviour so forgiveness is needed a bit less frequently in the future, doesn’t it?

Forgive Yourself

Our dogs aren’t the only ones who deserve forgiveness. If you’ve used training techniques in the past that you regret, or if you’ve taken stock and realized you would like to do things differently, it actually makes more sense to forgive yourself rather than feeling painted into a corner, defensive about your (previous) skillset. And if you got angry at your dog for chewing noisily when you were on the phone or jumping up and managing to pull your pants right down to your knees when your mother-in-law was visiting (and if you perhaps banished your dog to their crate as a result) well, forgive yourself for that, too.

But of course, you do need to remember, along with that forgiveness. Remember and revel in the chance for a new beginning. Support dog trainers who use dog-friendly, welfare-forward techniques. Brush up on how to train and enrich your dog’s life with kindness and by understanding their unique canine motivations and behaviour.

Forgiveness means you remember, and it means you won’t strike back. It’s a platform to move forward, with finesse and joy. What could be a better gift to give yourself and your dog this holiday season?

Cover photo credit Allison Lamminen of Delighted Dogs Minnesota.

Earlier today I was installing a dog gate to keep the dogs out of the basement (useful tangent: dog gates are the best thing ever, and if you have places in your home where your dog shouldn’t be, feel free to install them—the nice ones, because life is brutish and short and we may as well have nice things—wherever you’d like). I was following the instructions very closely because I’ve certainly learned that lesson one or two or forty seven thousand times, and I came upon this line, which just made me cringe: 

“Turn the hinge until tight. Do not over-tighten.”

The problem here is that the hinge, when “tight”, stuck off in an odd direction that would not have functioned in our actual physical world. I was left with two options: unscrew the hinge so that it sat in the right place but was wobbly and loose, or tighten with a wrench as needed and hope that this act did not invoke the terrible and horrific “do not over-tighten” clause, perhaps ending life as we know it.

(Pro tip for those installing the same dog gate: go with option B). 

In the face of uncertainty, unclear instructions are pretty much the worst, right? What does over-tightening actually mean? How much pressure could I safely apply? Does my hand need to be a go-go-gadget torque wrench? What will happen if I over-tighten? My hands aren’t particularly strong, so does the fact that I needed a wrench to turn the hinges the last ¾ turn still rest within regular tightening and not over-tightening? 

Help.

This is a similar dilemma to instructions that come with prescription medication. If you miss a dose, the instructions will say to take it anyways, unless you are close to the next dose. OK, sure, but...how close is too close? One minute? One hour? Five hours?! The medical establishment probably also recommends avoiding stress whilst you’re taking your pills, but then they issue instructions that are pretty much guaranteed to cause stress, in the somewhat likely event that the patient in question happens to be, you know, human. And, you know. Forgets things. 

Sigh.

Aren’t clear instructions a beautiful thing? Imagine if my dog gate installation instructions had said “screw the hinge into place by tightening by hand until you can no longer move it, and then use a wrench for the remainder of up to a single rotation.” Imagine if the pill bottle said “take your missed dose unless you are within two hours of your next dose”. 

Well, my dog-gate-loving friends, I’m here with some good news. I can offer you that exact kind of instruction, and I can offer it in a context that really needs it: training your dog to do a new thing (or to do a known thing, in a new location). Get ready for certainty. Get ready for clarity. And trust me, you’re going to love it. 

Professional dog trainers who use production-style dog training have this glorious, wonderful bag of tricks: they use training plans with a list of things the dog needs to do to earn reinforcement at each step, and they use easy-to-understand rules about when the dog should progress to a harder step. My personal fave in the “rules about when to move to the next step” works like this: 

1. Train your dog, repetition after repetition. Learning a new behaviour requires reps, typically. 

2. But don’t just bang out the reps, do a bit of minor counting in your head: count each run of successes (when your dog does what you ask and earns a treat) and count each run of fails, too. A fail is when the dog does something but it’s not the right thing...you ask for a sit, and they spin, or you ask for a down and they do a sit pretty. If the dog is thinking and working you for treats but doesn’t commit to an incorrect behaviour, you can wait them out...they’ll get faster over time. 

3. Yes, this does mean if your dog fails even once, you have to start over at “one”, for the next successful repetition. Sorry. Pro tip: have a lot of small, delicious treats at the ready. 

4. Once your dog does five correct behaviours in a row, move to the next harder step. 

5. If, and this will absolutely happen and is no big dealio, your dog fails out of school three times in a row, drop back a step immediately. 

See? Easy. Peasy. Pumpkin Cheesy. The numbers make the decision so you don’t have to. You can save all that angst over the blistering uncertainty of life for times when it’s actually kind of delicious, like part way into an excellent thriller or part way into a new recipe or part way into that new series on your fave streaming service. When it’s fine to let yourself feel a bit…over-tightened. Say, about two point three five hours before the next dose.

Photo: Sutashiku | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images
Cover photo: Mellie430 | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

My dogs might not be “great, wise teachers”—I mean, teaching is a skill and an art, and none of them seem to have gone to school for a PhD in Pedagogy that I know of. But I can still learn from them, right? Of course I can.

1. It’s OK to be scared of whatever it is that scares me. I mean, don’t hang out in a place of terror, get the heck outta there, but we are scared of what we’re scared of and it’s no one’s right to judge.

2. There is, actually, enough time and cheese in the world to overcome a lot of my fears. Yes, if I’m cautious and caring with myself, and have the good stuff at hand to reward myself, I can overcome.

3. The game can be fun even if I don’t win. Timber likes having a ball thrown right at his mouth. He tries, but misses almost every time. He still is having a blast. His joy in the process gave me courage to sign up for an art class, even though I am legitimately terrible at all things art.

4. If I put something away for a long time and then pull it out, it’s both fantastically new and fun, and somehow deliciously familiar. Soleil and her giant horse toy. Me and my banjo. Enough said.

5. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine to slump on the couch and eat right out of the mixing bowl. Manners are over-rated.

6. A good sleep and a good place to sleep are worth protecting. Be it on the comfy chair / be it on the basement stair / be it really anywhere / a good sleep truly matters.

Who knows what next week’s lessons will be?

We all have beliefs and ideas that we hold on to about how our world works. Some of these beliefs come from our friends and family, or our schooling, or what we’ve taught ourselves about the world. Our beliefs and ideas are a part of who we are, and help us form attachments with the important people in our lives.

Our beliefs and ideas can change, though. Change can be both painful and liberating. When we first change our minds, there is a lot more in the way of pain and a lot less in the way of liberation, so we tend to avoid changing our minds about the big stuff, and quite reasonably. But change is actually a good thing, and once the whole “well that was painful” part fades, the liberation is a beautiful thing.

Although this reads like a self-help manifesto hiding on a dog trainer’s blog, I do have a point: changing our beliefs can be a good thing for dogs.

The beliefs and ideas we have about dogs form the scaffolding for how we behave towards our dogs in the real world. These beliefs can be small in scope: if we believe that dogs are spiteful or dominating towards the cat, we may punish the dog for chasing the cat. If we believe that dogs are curious about or playful towards the cat, we will prevent the dog from pestering the cat and train the dog to be a bit more circumspect. These beliefs can also be broad in scope, though: if we believe that dogs are scheming and dominating in general, we may rely on punishment and browbeating as a way to ostensibly reduce our dog’s status for their own good.

So our beliefs matter to how we interact with our dogs, and we all want to do good by our dogs. When can we tell if it’s time to change our beliefs? Obviously, we shouldn’t keep holding on to ideas and myths if they are damaging to our dogs, or damaging to ourselves. It can be hard to know when to let go of the old and welcome the new, and that’s where science can be helpful. Science isn’t a belief system, it is simply a structured way to describe the world as it really is, not how we interpret it to be. Since our ability to understand the world using science is always improving, the results of scientific study are always being refined and updated. When multiple scientific studies come together and say “this is how things are, and they’re different than you believed”, well, it certainly makes sense to pay attention.

It makes sense to pay attention, and it makes sense to change our beliefs. And yes, it makes sense for us to change our beliefs even though this can be profoundly painful. It can put us at odds with our previous selves and at odds with the people close to us. But don’t dogs, and don’t we, deserve the best and most caring approach?

Here are some beliefs which I would encourage you to consider changing, based on the confluence of scientific research.

1. Myth: Dogs who misbehave are doing it on purpose as a way to act out towards us, or to establish status. Fact: Increasingly, science shows us that dogs behave in ways that keep them safe and happy, even if that is at odds with our human world.

2. Myth: Dogs must be put in their place or they will behave aggressively or go out of control. Fact: Increasingly, science shows us that dogs being trained in this way are actually more likely to behave aggressively.

3. Myth: Dog training tools that cause dogs to feel physical discomfort or pain, like prong collars or shock collars, have more benefits than risks. Fact: Increasingly, science shows us that reinforcement based training is better, and that the side effects from using those tools are important and worrisome.

Changing our minds in the face of overwhelming evidence might be awkward, but if it will increase our dogs’ safety and joy, or increase the safety and joy of ourselves, our friends and family, and our community, then it is worth it in the end.

Cover Photo: Yorkshire Terrier credit Cynoclub | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Imagine if you landed in a new country and everyone talked about the importance of earlobe attachment. It does sound vaguely familiar…you poke through your memory enough to recall some distant high school science class lesson about earlobes being attached or not, and that it’s governed by a single¹ gene. But why are people in this wonderful new country talking about it so much? Like, all the time. You’re in a line up to get a nice taco from the new food truck, and…people are talking about earlobe attachment. At the dentist? Talking about earlobe attachment. In the bank? Earlobe attachment. Watching the game? Earlobes.

Earlobes, earlobes, earlobes.

Sure, you think to yourself. Earlobes are attached or not. This is a thing that exists, but it is so absolutely not important to the reality of day-to-day living.

This, my dearest of dear readers, gives you some sense of how dog trainers feel when we hear about dominance. Sure, it exists in the field of ethology, and it’s obviously super dooper pooper important to humans and other primates. But when it comes to changing a dog’s behaviour, or helping a scared dog feel more confident, or helping our lovely human clients live more peaceably with their dogs…it’s all earlobes. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t matter. There is literally no evidence that harping on about dominance helps us or helps our dogs. Period.

But tuck your shirt in, friend. It gets worse.

Imagine now that the earlobe talk was the premise for a ton of abuse, in your vacation destination. Maybe people who have attached earlobes get all kinds of painful stuff tossed their way. They are regularly struck, threatened, yelled at, electrically shocked, or have their throats constricted by metal chains to reduce airflow. Imagine they live a life of wary uncertainty, but we call it polite obedience. Imagine.

Awful stuff, right?

Well, dog trainers don’t have to imagine. We regularly meet dogs who experience all that stuff, and experience it because the dogs have been called dominant…even though they are not being dominant, they are just being dogs. They are jumping up, but they do this out of doggish joy. Or they are not coming when they’re called, because there is something interesting out in the world and they are not well-trained. They are showing affiliative behaviours or acting out of fear, and instead of getting help, they are labelled dominant. And in the most heart-wrenching of happenstances, humans feel like they must quash dominance in an animal, and pull out training methods and techniques that produce no reduction in rank but instead, produce an animal that lives a life of wary uncertainty, which is labelled polite obedience.

So sure, earlobe attachment is a thing. But it’s not a useful thing to talk about at length, is it? And if it were being used to inappropriately harm people, shouldn’t we…you know, kinda stop putting it on a pedestal? And yeah, social dominance is a thing in some species. But it is absolutely not an important, or even particularly interesting, thing about dogs. It gives us no way forward to change a dog’s behaviour and no way to improve our relationships with dogs. And as a concept, no matter how misapplied it is to dogs, it has given dog trainers who choose to use painful devices and dog guardians who have been misled about this stuff a reason to continue hurting and scaring dogs in the name of training.

So here is what us dog trainers are screaming into the void: Dominance doesn’t really matter, even if it exists. It gives us nothing useful or helpful. It doesn’t give us insight into our dog’s behaviour, which is much better characterised by evolution and learning. And furthermore, the idea of it is used every single day to justify harming dogs.

Or maybe we’re not screaming, maybe we’re just thinking it into the void. Because here is the abject truth of the matter: our earlobes are really, really tired of hearing that word muttered out loud. Whether those earlobes are attached or not.

1. Well turns out it’s probably more complicated than that. Science, am I right?

Cover photo: Saspartout | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Photo Above: Xuying1975 | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Your brain is responsible for keeping you alive, not keeping you happy. You have to be intentional about bringing joy into your life.

— ApRiL (@greasybishh) July 26, 2021

This tweet came across my feed today, and although it was about humans helping other humans, I immediately thought about dogs. Because of course I did: I use everything as an excuse to think about dogs.

Brains are just another organ, and they serve the same general purpose as all our organs: keeping us alive, and helping us to make more copies of ourselves. This is true for humans just as much as it is true for dogs.

• dogs will use avoidance and aggression when they feel threatened, even if the threat is not “real” from our perspective (we don’t get to decide what dogs find threatening).

• dogs will seek food and mates even when they’re well-fed and simply can’t get in the family way.

• dogs will identify and guard resources that they feel are important to their survival.

Due to a mismatch between their evolutionary environments and their current contexts, they may make decisions to behave in ways that are baffling (why do you chew drapery, dog?) or dangerous (why do you eat drapery, dog?). But that doesn’t change the truth of things: their brains, just like ours, are wired to keep them alive. Dogs do what works so they can greet another day.

So, what does this mean?

It means that we must be intentional about giving them opportunities to find delight, especially by allowing them to behave in ways that scratch that “I’m a dog” itch: sniffing, chewing, walks, exercise, play, social time with other dogs, and so on. That’s our job, and dollars to doughnuts it’s more fun than any real job we might have.

It also means that we must protect them from things that make them feel truly threatened or fearful. For example, dogs aren’t enjoying themselves, feeling loyal, or protecting us when they are aggressive towards strangers. They are feeling like their lives might be at risk. This is not a good way to live.

That’s not all of it, though. Accepting this fundamental truth about dogs means that we must release our dogs from the human-centric box we have stuffed them into. Dogs don’t exist for us, their brains aren’t wired to make us happy, and much of their behaviour really, really is about meeting their own needs, not doing stuff for us or to us or to spite us. Dogs’ brains are wired to keep them alive. They love us, but they don’t exist for us. Seeing them as the beautiful and whole animals that they are keeps them safer and happier, opens our eyes to all the ways we can protect them and give them more joy. And seeing our dogs for who they really are is just about the best thing we can give them, at the end of the day.

Our brains, and our dogs’ brains, aren’t perfect. But they’re what we’re stuck with. And if the zombies have anything to say about it, they’re good enough.

Your personality is located at the part of your brain that is most likely to get punched, which gives you a sense of how much Evolution cares about your inner self.

Zach Weinersmith, in “Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness” 2017.