Stop Humanizing your Dog

By far, the worst thing you can do to a dog is humanize them.  Read that first sentence again and let it sink in.  Consider all of the different things people have done to dogs over the past century (and beyond) – abandoning them, abusing them, putting them in dog fighting rings, creating anxiety in them, developing cross breeds that have no purpose in the world etc., and I still say that humanizing them is the worst offense.

Here is why, your dog is a Wolf.  That’s it, it’s a domesticated wolf.  The word domesticated simply means dogs now rely on humans for food, that is it.  It does not mean that they are calmer, or tamer now compared to 1,000 years ago.  Somewhere along the way, humans started to blur the lines of what a wolf needs and ultimately what it’s predecessor, the domestic dog, needs.

To understand your dog, you need to understand how a wolf pack works, and how wolves interact.  Ask yourself this, have you ever seen wolves going around visiting other packs?  The answer is no; they do not visit other packs because they would get killed, as they are not their family.  Wolves have an extremely structured hierarchy within a pack where everyone has a job.  If anyone gets out of line, they are immediately corrected in the very instant that they misbehaved.  Correcting the misbehavior or identifying the offense at the moment it happens, helps to teach the wolf what was wrong and remind of them, “I better not do that again.”

Wolves don’t sleep on a couch, they don’t go on car rides, they don’t eat human snacks, they are not carried around in your purse, they are not taken to daycare or a dog park and forced to interact with other wolves, they don’t have toys to chew on, they don’t have friends in other packs they want to go hang out with, they don’t have human children pulling on their ears and tail, etc.  Yet, just because of the mere fact that our dogs rely on us for food, we now think our dogs want to do all of the above?

The problem is humans view dogs as children and not an animal.  In their eyes, little Fluffy is the equivalent to their 5-year-old child, not a wolf.   So therefore, they put human emotions on every decision they make for the dog.  They give the dog things a human would want, ex: fluffy bed, snuggles, expensive food, toys.  Dogs can’t speak, but if they could, they would tell you that they are miserable.  Your dog does not want any of that.  What your dog wants is a job, period.  What your dog needs is structure, shelter, food, water, and that’s it.  Your dog needs a job and basics necessities to survive.  All the other stuff is what a human wants, not what a wolf wants.  Remember, when you look at your dog, envision a wolf.

Everything a dog does, has been created and encouraged by humans.  When a dog does something good, we take credit for it: fetching, sitting, not chewing stuff, coming when called etc., but anytime a dog does something wrong like: biting, jumping up, barking, then the dog gets blamed and it’s no longer the human’s fault.  Dogs can’t speak, so they get blamed, they can’t defend themselves.  If dogs could speak, they would say, “but you encouraged me to do that” or “you taught me to do that.”  Humans have no problem taking credit for the dog doing something good, but it’s a hard pill to swallow to realize you are to blame when they do something wrong.  So, we do the human thing, we point fingers at someone else, the someone else being the dog.

Let me give you some common examples that on a daily basis.  One of the biggest complaints we see is a client complaining about their dog jumping up on them or anyone who comes over to the house.  Since that dog was born, it was taught to jump up on people.  Think about every litter of puppies you’ve ever seen, small, cute, fluffy surrounded by humans swooning over them.  Those same humans talking baby talk, reaching their arms out allowing and encouraging those cute little things to jump up all over them and into their arms.  When the dog is 10 weeks old, cute and harmless, no one blinks an eye at the little jumping bean, who is being taught and rewarded to jump up and all over their human.  Fast forward to six months later and now the cute fluff ball is now a 100 lb. dog with insane energy and sharp claws.  Mr. Fluff Ball is now knocking everyone over and scratching them to pieces, because that’s what he thinks he’s supposed to do.  After all, just six months earlier you literally told him and encouraged him to do it.

Another common complaint is a dog chewing stuff, whether it be furniture, socks, shoes, tissue, anything it can get its mouth on.  Rest assured Fluffy didn’t come from the wound with some weird fascination of chewing socks, you taught them to do it.  Here is how – remember the wolf pack and how they operate.  If a wolf gets out of line it is corrected instantly, if it is not corrected then the behavior is acceptable or else the pack would have stopped it.  So now let’s relate that to you bringing home a 12-week old puppy.  Breed does not matter; they are all on an even playing field at this age.  You bring home your puppy and give him a toy to chew, you encourage it because he needs it for his teeth, or so you are told.  At some point you will give the dog too much freedom, everyone does this.  At some point the dog will get out of your sight, run into a different room for example, and he’ll reappear with a sock that was innocently discarded by their human.  Naturally, you start to chase after the dog yelling and screaming for them to drop it.  This process will undoubtedly be repeated several times, as some people are better at watching dogs than others but the vast majority of people give their dogs way too much freedom, way too soon.

Here’s the issue with the above example.  The dog was allowed to grab the sock, whether the dog had the sock in his mouth for 2 seconds or 2 minutes, it doesn’t matter, because the dog was not corrected the instant it grabbed the sock.  The dog will never understand that it wasn’t supposed to have it.  In a dog’s mind, you left the sock laying there for him, and now you are chasing him yelling and inadvertently encouraging him to run from you and keep the sock away from you as much as he can.  What you just did was teach the dog to play keep away with anything he can put into his mouth.

Again, fast forward 6 months and you have a dog that is chewing your house apart, grabbing anything he can because he had been unconsciously encouraged to do so.  I could go on and on with examples of humans teaching dogs negative behaviors.  All of these examples could have been completely avoided if everyone just viewed their dogs as a wolf and not a child.  In this case, if the dog was never left alone to go into a room and pick up the sock, he would have never thought it was allowed to begin with.  It boils down to the dog having too much freedom.  If the dog was corrected the instant he reached for the sock, he would have never developed the behavioral act of picking things up to begin with.

How would a wolf pack have prevented this from happening is the exact same way that humans should prevent this from happening.  First off, limit freedom.  Random wolves are not allowed to get out of eyesight of the pack, ever.  Secondly, instant correction.  The millisecond a wolf gets out of line it is corrected.  In this case the second the dogs’ teeth touched the sock, he should have been corrected.

What is a correction?  This seems to also be one of the most misunderstood concepts for humans to understand as well.  The answer is simple, again, go back to the wolf.  If a wolf in a pack gets out of line the pack leader grabs it by the neck and constricts it sharply and quickly the instant the wolf did something wrong.  Not a minute later, not even 10 seconds later, literally the second the wolf did something wrong.  The wolf knows exactly why this is happening to them because its happening the very second they are doing the act.  Wolves don’t speak English; they don’t have the concept of someone explaining to them the following day why something happened.  Instead, they live in the now, always.  The pack leader does not kill the dog, they don’t even injure them, they quickly grab them by the neck to say “hey, don’t’ do that again” and just as fast as they grabbed them, they let them go.  Its very quick, clear and in the moment.  It needs no explanation, every wolf understands it and has never had to read a book or take a class to figure out what the pack leader is trying to communicate.

The only tools I use to train a dog do the exact same thing; they communicate to a dog through the neck just like they would be in nature.  A slip chain, a prong collar or an e-collar all attach around a dog’s neck to clearly communicate to them in dog language, not human language.

If a client gives me the above example and says their dog chew socks, or their dog jumps up on them, or their dog barks excessively, I always ask them, “Well what do you do when your dog does that?”  Almost everyone says, “I tell them no.”  Well, dogs don’t speak, so all you have done is let them get away with the act, and then showered them with random words that make no sense, which means you unconsciously praised and encouraged them to no end.  Conversely, if a dog jumped up on you, or went to grab a sock on the floor, and in the very instant of their offense you corrected them with a slip chain, they would stop those actions very quickly.  You wouldn’t have to say anything, they would know by feeling a natural correction the second they did the act.

But we humans, we humanize things.  So instead of correcting the dog properly, you yell at them and tell them No, which does nothing but encourage.  A lot of people tell me that they ignore the act in hopes that the dog doesn’t get a reaction from the human and thus stops doing it.  That is assuming a dog is doing something to get your attention and that will only get you so far.  Ignoring or distracting a dog is just prolonging the problem and kicking the can down the road.  Instead of avoiding situations, using treats to distract or hoping it goes away, just correct the act.

As a rule, if your dog is not wearing a slip chain or a prong collar with a leash attached to them, or if your dog has not been properly trained on an e-collar then you do not have the ability to correct them.  Harnesses or similar apparatus are not good substitutes for either slip chains or prong collars.  Remember a dog ages about 7 times faster than we do, so you could have a 2-year-old dog sporting a harness, who is equivalent to a 14 year old human, that’s never been properly corrected for anything its entire life.  You can only imagine how bad the barking, jumping and leash pulling would be when dog has never properly been told NO its entire life.

We don’t stop there when it comes to pushing human emotions onto an animal.  Let’s talk about socialization and how that works in the wolf pack.  I asked the question earlier, have you ever seen a wolf going around to other wolf packs?  Of course, the answer is no. Why would they, it’s not natural nor is it encouraged in the pack or the circle of life for that matter.  Humans go out and do the exact opposite with their dogs.  Take the dog to the park for example, I’ve said it 100 times, it’s the worst idea ever created by humans, it’s basically a bad idea to use human socialization tactics for animals.  Remember you are looking at a domesticated wolf, not your 5-year-old child.  You do not and should not force your dog to go and “play” with other dogs.  Your goal with an animal should be neutrality.  I want dogs to look at dogs or other people as if they were a tree, they should mean nothing to them.  You don’t want your dog excited to go see a person or dog, conversely you don’t want your dog afraid of a person or another dog.  Stop putting human characteristics onto your pet, and you’ll see the vast majority of the “problems” you are having will go away.

Here’s another example of humanization I see quite often.  I’ve met many people over the years that were bit in the face by a dog.  I have clients from time to time who bring me a dog and during their evaluation they will tell me that the dog bit them in the face.  Every time I’ve heard that statement, my question has always been, why was your face so close to a dog’s face?  The answer is almost always the same: they were giving the dog kisses or snuggles.  WHAT? Have you ever seen two wolves kissing?  It’s the most ridiculous idea ever to think that your dog would want to be treated like your spouse.  Remember it is a dog, not a person.  We must extrapolate this idea from our brains that dogs want the same things people do, it’s ridiculous and it leads to almost every issue I see with dogs.

To understand your dog, or any dog for that matter, keep it very simple.  Do not get caught up in the human propaganda push of treats, toys and harnesses, keep it simple.  Give your dog what they need: a job, structure, basic necessities.  If you shower your dog with praise and affection for nothing, it will just create anxiety and exacerbate those issues in which you are wishing to change.  Treat your dog like a dog, not a human.  Correct the dog in the act, if you do not have the ability to do so, then you should seek professional training and learn how to do so.  Dogs are amazing animals, but remember they are an animal!