When a dog does not eat or eats very little, my first thought is to take this as a very important communication. With basic physiology similar to our own, I’ve long suspected that dogs are as prone as we are to food intolerances as well as true allergies (different from an intolerance in that allergies involve an immune-mediated response). There is no physiological reason why dogs should not experience these same physical sensations we experience after eating food that doesn’t agree with us: gassiness, cramping, nausea, headaches, sour stomach. But they cannot tell us this in words—though, as Bella did, they can and do report faithfully in their actions.
Far more attuned to their bodies than we to ours, dogs can quickly become aware which foods do not suit them. Nature arms even the simplest creatures with a good memory for avoiding foods that have made them sick. (We have this mechanism as well, but often disregard what our bodies tell us.) As a baby, I repeatedly refused to drink from a bottle, and sometimes went so far as to hurl the bottle away from me. The pediatrician suggested I was spoiled and that perhaps my mother was doing something wrong. After wading through the Sea of First-Time Parent Guilt, my mother knew that something must be causing this behavior since I would drink water or diluted juice from a bottle. She began to piece things together, and the truth was eventually discovered—I had a nasty response to cow’s milk, the basis of the formula I was being given. Given goat’s milk, I happily drank my bottle and became a picture-perfect baby. (I outgrew that, but still hate milk.)
Unlike an animal that hunts for its food, dogs have no control over what is put on their plates. Our dogs are unable to gracefully decline and say, “Thanks—you do make a delicious gizzard soup, but gizzards repeat on me something fierce.” Worse still, their food often arrives as a blend of many ingredients, and they can’t pick out the good from the bad. The whole food therefore has to be suitable or not. All they can do is eat what they must to stay alive, and hope that the next meal might be something more agreeable. Beth confirmed that Bella’s behavior fit the profile of a dog trying to communicate a problem with her food. The dog was always hopeful and bright-eyed when her meal was being prepared, but her enthusiasm quickly dimmed when the bowl was placed before her. “She just sniffs, and then looks up at me. Sometimes she eats a little, and sometimes she just walks away. She eats just enough to stay alive.”
What Bella was saying in the clearest way she knew how was, “I don’t like this.” Bella’s bluntly honest communication held no acknowledgment of Beth’s efforts, just the dog’s truth. Interpreted through a human’s need for acceptance and appreciation, Beth could not clearly hear what Bella kept saying. Trapped in her own emotional response to the dog’s rejection of the food she had worked so hard to prepare, Beth couldn’t see that Bella had also clearly told her, “I do like oatmeal, and I do like chicken.” This is understandable—after all, even a well-trained doctor who ought to have taken my babyhood behavior as important information found it easier to blame my upbringing for my bottle-related antics than closely examine my behavior for important clues. But sadder was Beth’s question as she considered my advice to replace the beef and rice with chicken and oatmeal: “If I do, isn’t that just letting her get her way?”
Countless training books and countless trainers urge the dog owner to not let dogs “get away with” misbehavior but forget to mention that behavior is a pure form of communication. If a behavior exists that an owner finds upsetting, there’s a problem that needs to be investigated and resolved. The dog has a reason for acting as he does, and it’s not always because, given an inch, he wants to take a mile. I found it quite sad that Beth had so thoroughly swallowed the battle cry of dog training—“Don’t let him get away with that!”—that she felt it would be somehow surrendering to Bella’s demands to feed her chicken and oatmeal. By switching the ingredients to eliminate the things Bella consistently avoided eating and to include the equally nutritious and more agreeable foods, the only thing the dog would be “getting away with” was not being hungry most of the time.
Once Beth realized that Bella was not rejecting her or her well-meant offer of delicious food, she was able to see how clearly Bella had been trying to communicate. When I assured her that she had been on the right track, and that her intentions were laudable, Beth cheered up. She brightened further when I explained that she and Bella already knew what the solution might be; all she had to do was give it a try. I also reminded her that in a world filled with rigid recipes, she wasn’t going to find too much advice on listening to the dog’s body as an important piece of creating the ideal diet for that dog. (This is not the same as the old Bill Cosby routine where a father listens to his children and agrees to serve them chocolate cake for breakfast.) She agreed to try substituting chicken and oatmeal.
A couple of months later, I got a call from Beth to report on Bella’s progress. The dog was eating eagerly, had put on quite a bit of much needed weight, and her coat was thick and shiny. After telling me about Bella’s new enthusiasm for her food, Beth went on: “You know, it’s funny. When I realized Bella was always telling me the truth, I finally figured out it was my job to figure out what she was telling me. And it’s not just about oatmeal and chicken. In training class one day, I asked her to pick up her dumbbell. She trotted out, started to pick it up, and then just dropped it. I was surprised: She knows how to do this—she’s done it for years. She just stood there and stared at me. At first I got angry. My trainer was telling me to go make her pick it up but then I remembered how Bella used to stare at me at mealtimes. It dawned on me that maybe she was trying to tell me something, so I didn’t do anything. I just stood there, staring right back at her, and thought about the whole thing. I wondered why she might drop a dumbbell right after picking it up. So I walked over to look at her more closely.”
Beth’s voice broke a little, and I could hear her take a deep breath before she continued. “When I looked in her mouth, I was so glad I believed her and that I hadn’t yelled at her or tried to make her pick it up. Somehow, she had broken off one of her teeth, and the nerve was exposed. Picking up that dumbbell must have hurt like hell. We got the tooth fixed, and she went back into training and did great. Now, every time Bella needs to tell me something, she stops and stares at me, and I know she’s telling me something important. It’s made our whole relationship better—I really trust my dog now.”
A GIFT OF LIGHT
Accepting the dog’s gift of complete honesty is not easy. It requires that we understand our own feelings and that we can make the distinction between what we project onto our dogs and what movie is actually showing at their theater. Learning to accept an animal’s honesty is very literally an act of trust, one sometimes made difficult by our human experiences. This has been a difficult process for me—my experience in life has not been one where trust is unfailingly honored, and I’ve not always been trustworthy. Without question, my experience with the human capacity for deceit influenced my relationships with animals. If trust and honesty are not a part of everyday life, an atmosphere of sus picion develops. Though we may not be fully aware of it, though we may think that we step outside of it in our relationships with animals, distrust begins to color all in ways we did not intend, a deadly gas creeping through the cracks of our self-knowledge.
Very early on in my career, when I was eighteen, I was bitten by a young dog. She was an impulse buy from a pet store by people who did not understand exactly how much was involved in raising a very active and determined puppy. Faced with no leadership and plenty of energy, the dog had quickly learned that she could shape the world to her liking with a well-timed show of teeth and a fierce growl. Puffed up with pride and armed with what was appallingly inadequate knowledge, I viewed her behavior as a deliberate defiance of my “authority.” (Does anyone have less authority than someone who even thinks in those terms?) In retrospect, I can see that my lack of honesty with myself was the driving force; I was not yet able to admit to myself how little I really knew about dogs and dog trainin
g. I was also emotionally suspicious, having not yet matured enough to resolve some deeply affecting experiences that had taught me how untrustworthy some people could be. As a result, I was not able to fully trust animals as well, though I was unaware at the time that my “authoritarian” response to the dog was a clear sign of my own fearful distrust. Just as I triumphantly managed to squash the “defiant” dog into a rough resemblance of the desired down position, she told me precisely what she thought of my stupidity and rudeness: She sank her teeth deep into my wrist. I don’t remember precisely what my response was, but I do remember bleeding copiously in the client’s bathroom and trying to explain to the very upset family what had happened. I’ve apologized many times in my mind to that dog for concluding the disaster by labeling her stubborn, dominant and difficult. She was the only honest one in that whole scenario.
I replayed that fiasco many times in my head—it was a horrible situation that I did not want to repeat. I did not mind the bite, and I value the scars as tangible reminders that I am capable of great stupidity. What I could not shake was the look in the dog’s eyes. Over and over, she warned me, absolutely honest in her communications; but faced with someone who would not hear her, she clearly felt she had no other choice but to bite me in order to communicate with me. I also remembered the horrified look on the client’s faces. In one brief moment created out of my arrogance and ignorance, they had seen their young dog turn into a fierce beast capable of biting and drawing blood. This was not a bad dog; this was just an untrained dog. My glib assignment of blame to the dog was unfair, and I knew it. Much later, I was willing to accept the truth that can be found in a dog’s eyes, the sometimes unwelcome but valuable truth about my own behavior. In that moment, I began to understand that a dog’s absolute honesty is a gift of light on the darker corners of my soul.
There’s another twist that complicates the issue of honesty. Though we can trust that what the dog tells us is an honest communication, the dog expects the same from us. And that can present some interesting dilemmas. Firmly fixed in their canine perspective, dogs assume that our communications to them are like theirs to us—honest, straightforward and meaningful. In this, dogs are very much like young children, unable to see us except as we are in relationship to them.
My all-time favorite comment on what this really means on a day-today basis came from one of my clients. She was trying to figure out how to solve some minor problems with her three dogs, and as the conversation went on, it became apparent that one of the underlying problems was her inconsistency in her communications with the dogs. Trying to help her understand why it was important that she be consistent in what she said and did, I mentioned that dogs didn’t understand how or why it was that she came home each day in a variety of moods. They didn’t see her as a hardworking saleswoman with a pain in the ass for a boss. They only saw her as the head of their family group and, as such, paid great attention to what she said and did. They always told her the truth and expected that she also meant what she said. There was a long pause on her end of the phone, and then a gasp as the full meaning of what I said sunk in. “Oh no!” she wailed. “You mean they believe everything I say?”
The answer, of course, was yes—dogs do believe what we say. They have no other way of interpreting our communications. The blessing of being able to trust that what our dogs say is what they really mean is not without cost; in return for their trustworthiness, dogs expect no less from us.
Understanding that a dog’s responses are always honest ones is easy to accept intellectually. Bringing that understanding to bear in the moments of day-to-day life is something else altogether, particularly since so many of our daily interactions are dishonest or only partially trustworthy simply because they are interactions with other humans. Even if we practice what we preach, it takes a long time for our belief in a dog’s honesty to sink deep into our bones. As J. Allen Boone discovered, it is possible to open yourself to new ways of seeing and conversing with animals, but to do so requires that we work to resolve the stumbling blocks within ourselves. When we clear away the blinders we have placed on our own eyes, we see standing before us animals who offer us the amazing gift of honesty in their communications with us. Accepting this gift opens a new world of possibility in our relationships with our dogs.
NOW IS A GOOD TIME
Dogs offer us another gift that, like their truthfulness, is a double-edged sword: the gift of immediacy. What they have to say is said honestly and in the very moment it needs to be said. In their immediacy, dogs are like young children. Whether unhappy or ecstatic, they don’t wait for weeks to tell you about it. (And like honesty, this isn’t out of choice—it’s just the way it is with dogs.) What a dog feels, he tells you. Right then. Not a few hours later, or a year. From the moment you even think about putting on your shoes, grabbing a coat and reaching for the leash, the dog tells you how thrilled he is that you’re going for a walk together. At every step of the walk, the dog tells you how much fun he’s having, and how very glad he is to be with you. One of the great pleasures of being with dogs is their spontaneous expression of what they are feeling. A dog never needs to say “I may not tell you enough but… ” That’s a phrase humans need, especially adult humans.
You would think in a society that wants instant gratification and immediate feedback, this quality of immediacy would be welcomed. But immediacy requires an equal response. This is not always convenient. No matter what else may be going on, you cannot tell a sobbing two-year-old to stop crying and promise her a thoughtful discussion later about balloons and their tendency to drift away once the string is released from a small hand. The loss is now, and the upset child needs attention now. No mother dog ever told her puppies: “You just wait until your father gets home” or “We’ll discuss this later.” Whatever needs to be dealt with is dealt with at the moment the need arises.
Dogs do not understand delayed responses—it’s just not part of their world, though it certainly is part of human experience. To be successful in communicating with dogs, therefore, we need to really understand what that means in a practical, daily sense, and not just in theory. In canine culture, responses are as immediate as the communication that prompted the response.
There are benefits to delayed responses, such as allowing us to gather our thoughts, deal with our own emotions and not act impulsively or hurtfully. But most of us have learned that delayed responses can also be hurtful or at the very least surprising. Few things are as destructive to a relationship as long-held resentments or hurt unexpressed, sometimes stewing and festering for years before erupting in painful and shocking ways that can do serious damage far beyond the scope of the original cause.
In our relationships with dogs, delayed responses to a dog’s actions can create very serious problems. With a human friend, we might simmer slowly for a few hours before pointing out that something they did or said hurt or upset us; a discussion at that point can be helpful, since our human friend is able to go back in time and understand that it is the past being discussed. But we cannot do this with a dog—yelling at a dog who chewed up your best loafers hours or even minutes before you walked through the door and discovered the dastardly deed is not only useless but very confusing and even frightening for the dog.
Dogs draw very straight lines when connecting the dots in life. Faced with a place mat meant to entertain bored children at a diner, a dog would not bother to search out the convoluted path from Start to Finish—they’d just draw a line that went directly from one to the other. In terms of our relationships with them, dogs believe that however it is we are acting, whatever it is we are doing is directly connected to that moment and to their own behavior in that moment. Thus the dog who merrily greets his returning owner and is promptly yelled at or met with an angry face does not think, “Oh, I’ll bet she’s not happy I ate those new Nikes a few hours ago!” The dog may simply tiptoe away, unsure of what provoked your (to him) inexplicable wrath. Or he may draw a straight line from Angry Own
er to Greeting, and assume that you are angry that he’s approaching you. In contrast, expressing your displeasure when you actually catch the dog in the act of chewing on your new sneakers allows him to do a little simple dog math (if you do this, this happens) and reach the proper conclusion: Shoes do not constitute an appropriate food group.
There’s a lot to recommend an approach to life where everything happens in real time, so to speak. Imagine having a friend let you know at the very instant things between you went out of balance. We trust our closest friends to tell us that there’s a bit of toilet paper stuck to our shoe or some spinach in our teeth. The world would be a far different place if our trusted intimates could also help us maintain more than our physical decorum. It would be good to have someone let you know that your emotional zipper needs adjusting, but such friends are rare. Coupled with the understanding that your friend would always be truthful, this would provide an amazing freedom in which to develop a profound relationship. Dogs do let us know our mental flies have come undone, though we don’t always care to hear the message.
Bones Would Rain from the Sky Page 14
