The Good Enough Dog
Who would you be if you trusted there was nothing wrong with you? Tara Brach
People call me because they have a problem. The problem, they think, is their dog. Their dog is either not doing what they want him to do or is doing something they most definitely don’t want him to do. I gather some basic information on the phone – how old is your dog, where did she come from, where did you get her, how long has this been going on – and then I ask the $64,000 question: what is your goal? Invariably, the answer is some version of “I just want her to behave,” in other words, “I just want her to be the way I want her to be.”
That’s a pretty big “just!”
And how do you determine how you ‘want her to be’?
Can you imagine calling a teacher and asking him to help make your child be “the way I want her to be?”
Ah, well maybe you can! I don’t know about you, but I certainly spent much of my childhood, and especially my adolescence, feeling like the adults in my life were trying to force me to be the way they wanted me to be, which was definitely not the way I was.
You, too? And how did that feel? Like millions of people, maybe you’ve spent countless hours and effort (and money if you’ve gone into therapy or taken up meditation or hired a life coach) trying to uncover the person you would be if you hadn’t forced yourself to meet someone else’s expectations.
Expectations, of course, aren’t all unreasonable. If I go into a restaurant and order a salad I expect a bowl of greens to arrive, not a rack of lamb. If I’m driving toward an intersection and the light is green, I expect the person driving toward the red light will stop. (Although I do keep a wary eye on them, just in case they’re texting instead of paying attention to the light…)
Living up to expectations – either the expectations of others or our own – is pretty heavy lifting. And chances are, we’ll never meet those lofty ideals so we’ll spend a whole lot of time confused, frustrated, feeling like a loser. Maybe acting out. Maybe retreating. Maybe overeating or drinking too much or reorganizing the spice rack ten times a day.
So what does this have to do with my dog, you may ask. My dog doesn’t know from “lofty ideals” … and that’s exactly right! Your dog does not and can not know about your dreams of winning the Agility competition at Westminster or comforting Hospice patients at the nursing home or helping kids learn to read at the library or doing a freestyle dance routine together to ‘Pink Pony Club.’
Maybe your dream is just that he trots along perfectly by your side. But even that is unnatural to a dog. What comes naturally to a dog? Sniffing and exploring and barking and running and chasing and digging and rolling around in the slimiest poop he can find.
Hunting! Finding road kill! Something he can roll in and eat! These are all parts of the behavioral equipment he comes with and he has to learn how to not do these things, or to do them within certain parameters. And that’s on you, human.
Your dog can’t read your mind. What he can do – and he can do it better than you think! – is read your body. Read your emotional state through your body, your tone of voice, your stance, the look on your face. Even your smell! You think your dog doesn’t know how frustrated you are that you’ve asked him to sit twenty times and his butt still hasn’t hit the ground? Think again! He knows. And that frustration is no doubt making him even more confused and anxious and likely to offer a bunch of other behaviors instead of the one you want.
When you think about it, our expectations for our dogs are pretty outrageous. We expect them to come ready-made knowing how to behave in a human world where the rules are completely different from those in the canine world. We expect them to stifle most of their natural behaviors in order to be “polite” and “obedient.”
Take hugging, for instance. Primates love to hug. We, and our apey cousins, approach each other head on, arms outstretched, making direct eye contact. All three of these things are considered very rude, or even threatening, in the canine world. Dogs approach each other from the side, they turn their heads away to avoid eye contact, and a hug, well a hug is restraint, not affection.
But here’s the miracle – dogs are willing to tolerate or even in some cases, grow to enjoy these unnatural behaviors.
Do you want to understand your dog better? Enjoy your relationship more? Click the Contact page to set up a consultation.
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The three most powerful words for Pet Dog Owners: Lower Your Expectations
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