Bones Would Rain from the Sky

by Suzanne Clothier

  Dogs, like all social animals including humans, live within a complex hierarchy of power and would readily agree with George Orwell that “some animals are more equal than others.” Whether or not we are comfortable with this notion, most of us can—though perhaps reluctantly—admit that an equal distribution of power is neither possible nor realistic in any social group, human or otherwise. Whether we like it or not, we understand that some people in the world have more power than we do, and others have less. It is a basic truth of social animals. As the old saying goes, not everyone can be a chief. Dogs expect someone will be.

  Our biases and beliefs about notions of power may bring us directly into conflict with our dogs, who have a thoroughly canine perspective on the matter. Most of the rules we have for our dogs’ behavior are not set so that we can live our lives as petty bureaucrats, exercising power over another living being. The rules we set and the leadership we provide are precisely what keeps our dogs safe while also ensuring that the dog has the greatest possible freedom and enjoyment of his life.

  Adaptable and adept as the dog is, he still must act in accordance with his canine core, which both defines and limits how far the assimilation into human culture can go. While a dog can adapt to life as a pam pered pet in Peoria or life with Australian Aborigines, the dog’s expectations and need for leadership do not change, though it is safe to say that the more “unnatural” and civilized his existence, the greater his need for leadership may be simply because such a lifestyle inevitably results in the dog bumping up against an increasing number of rules regarding his behavior. In the northern Sahara, the nomadic Tuareg people do not believe in tying up their treasured hounds; then again, they don’t need to—rush hour might consist of a few camels or an occasional motor vehicle. Such dogs also live within a more predictable, stable society. The more complex world of suburbia with its multitude of people and dogs and flux creates greater potential for conflict and confrontation (with neighbors, other dogs, vehicles, etc.), and the urban dog faces greater challenges yet. And more potential conflict and challenges means more rules, which require more guidance and leadership from us in order for the dog to remain safe and a welcome member of society.

  When we fail our dogs as their leaders, we may, without ever meaning to, deny them the fullness of life and sharply limit the degree of intimacy possible between our dogs and ourselves. All dog trainers have a steady stream of clients who, though they dearly love their dogs, cannot adequately control a dog’s behavior in certain situations, whether that is walking in the park, in the presence of other dogs, when guests visit, when a squirrel dashes past, etc. As a result, the dog is not free to be a part of many excursions or events, even if the dog’s human family would like to include him. The limits thus placed on the relationship are precisely what troubles these folks—they want to be able to enjoy being with their dog and have their dog enjoy his life with few, if any, limitations. They are also unhappily aware that the quality of the relationship in these difficult moments is not what they want. These problems do not rest solely on a failure of leadership; proper training and socialization are also critical to develop the dog’s ability to deal with the complexities of a life shared with people. But training and socialization alone do not and cannot compensate for a lack of appropriate leadership, especially in moments of conflict or confrontation.

  We would not hesitate to answer our dogs’ need for food, shelter and love, but we sometimes find ourselves uncomfortable with answering our dogs’ need for leadership in their lives. But the covenant of the collar obliges us to shape our own behavior in order to provide that leadership in ways that are meaningful and satisfying to the dog.

  WHERE DO I FIT IN?

  The dog’s need for leadership and a clear definition of his status, particularly within his core family group or the blended human/canine “pack,” is hard wired into his brain. In their third week of life, puppies are already beginning the lifelong work of understanding where they fit in the social hierarchy. By week five, the wrestling matches that may appear as simply play to the naïve eye are actually explorations of status among the puppies, who work relentlessly at determining their status relative to their littermates in every possible situation. If allowed to interact with adult dogs as they should be, puppies also receive messages about their social status beyond that established between littermates. And once they have left their litter and moved on to their own lives, the testing continues.

  Whether the dog’s family consists of a “pack” made up of one dog and one person, or a more complex social group made of many dogs and/or many people, the questions each dog asks are still “Who’s in charge? What are the rules? Where do I fit in?” Whether the dog comes into your home as a puppy or as an older dog, the questions are still the same. It’s startling to realize that even at the tender age of eight weeks old, the puppy has been working on these questions for nearly five weeks. In each situation, with each person and/or dog he meets, the dog asks the same questions. By way of answers to his questions, the dog is looking for particular behaviors from us that indicate high status and leadership: control of or undisputed access to resources, control or direction of others’ behavior and proactive intervention. Dogs arrive in this world understanding Donald McGannon’s comment that “leadership is action, not position.” While they need us to provide leadership, we are not always automatically given respect or the high-status leadership role simply because we walk upright and have opposable thumbs, though for some dogs, that’s good enough. Our opposable thumbs may be impressive (at least in our own minds), but most dogs need more, and they watch us carefully, taking notes on who acts in ways they understand to be high status.

  A few years ago, actress Winona Ryder appeared on a talk show, and in the course of conversation, she revealed a bit about her childhood and what it was like growing up in a remote, safe area with liberal parents who set only vague rules, such as a curfew that required her to come home at least a few nights a week! When asked by the show’s host if she liked having such a loosely structured childhood, Winona paused for a moment, then shook her head. “No,” she said, “I didn’t really like it. You know the old saying that square parents raise round kids? Well, I had round parents and I wanted more square in my life.” The pure geometry of her description caught my attention, and glancing down at the dogs scattered at my feet, I wondered what “shape” I was as a pack leader—round or square or something in between? Further, what were the shapes my dogs expected or needed from my leadership, both individually and as a pack? Some dogs do beautifully under even a “round” laissez-faire approach to leadership; others see it as a loophole to be exploited to their best advantage. (Sounds just like human beings, doesn’t it?) Like Winona Ryder, our dogs may need more “square” or clearly defined leadership than we are offering; the definitions of status are blurred and thus confusing to dogs. In their behavior, they let us know whether our approach is working or not. Regardless of your personal leadership style and your dog’s individual personality, there is no one correct approach to providing leadership, no more than there is only one effective way to manage or lead people, be an effective parent or have a solid marriage. As the corporate world would ask, what does the bottom line say?

  To assess the bottom line in your relationship with your dog—the effectiveness and appropriateness of your leadership style—there are only two basic questions to be answered: First, do you have undisputed access to the resources your dog considers important? In other words, if you ask, does your dog willingly surrender to you anything he considers valuable? Second, in times of excitement, importance or conflict, does your dog yield to your direction of his behavior? It doesn’t matter how beautifully trained your dog may be when all is quiet and calm; it does matter how your dog responds to you out on the street, at the vet’s office, when the doorbell rings or guests come and go, when a cat dashes past or another dog passes, etc. If you answer no or “only sometimes” to either or both of these questions, then those
are areas that your dog’s behavior is pointing to as problems that need to be worked out. Resolution needs to occur at the foundation, at the primary level of leadership and respect.

  A good friend of mine was bemoaning how annoying her dogs’ behavior had become. Despite countless hours of training throughout their lives, each of her three dogs had started acting in less-than-desirable ways. One was bolting out the front door at any opportunity, another was apparently stone deaf to any command that didn’t quite suit him, and another had merely smiled without apology when caught in the act of standing on the kitchen table and eating butter. “What is wrong with my dogs?” Karen asked. I assured her there was nothing wrong with her dogs. They were simply acting like dogs and pointing out in ways she didn’t appreciate that her leadership of the pack was slipping. She admitted that she’d thought about that. With a demanding job and three children, Karen was pulled in countless directions to act as mother, employee, manager, wife, daughter, and leader for her dogs. Sometimes, overwhelmed and tired, Karen acted in ways her dogs perceived as less than worthy of their respect. In her next statement, Karen neatly summed up the difficulty at the heart of the issue: “You know, if I could just stay home and be nothing but a dog leader all day, I’d be a great leader!” Couldn’t we all?

  Every one of your interactions with a dog is one that the dog takes seriously as your answers to his questions. Let me repeat that—every interaction with a dog is one that the dog takes seriously. He has no other way of interpreting his world. The dog’s world does not contain careless interactions. In every interaction with another dog or person, a dog says what he means. This is a good and delightful thing, and one of the finer aspects of life with dogs. Would that all we loved were as meaningful in their communications with us! But this cuts both ways—unfailingly honest in what he says and does, the dog assumes everyone around him is doing the same. All day. Every day.

  TOP TEN WAYS TO LEAD WITH STYLE!

  With so many demands on our time and energies, honoring our commitment to any of our relationships is not always easy. Lurking under our hectic attempts to find time for the relationships we value is a pitfall that unfortunately traps many of us: the tendency toward compartmentalization, which in turn leads to simplification. I think of this tendency to simplify as the Cosmo approach, a journalistic style made famous by such Cosmopolitan magazine articles as “Ten Easy Tips to Become a Red Hot Lover!” The intent of the Cosmo approach may be to encourage us to remember that we can enhance the quality of our lives by taking just a few extra minutes or giving a bit more attention to something. That’s just nifty when we’re being offered recipes for Snow Pea Surprise or Make Ahead Cream of Kidney Soup. However, when the Cosmo approach is applied to relationships, the unfortunate result is that lovely, complicated aspects of our lives are reduced to bulleted lists and simplified advice.

  Whether it’s being a great lover, a better parent or a terrific dog owner, we all know that relationships are not layer cakes. There are no recipes that can be followed step by step to create a profound, intimate relationship. The deep connections we seek, whether with a life partner or a child or a friend or a dog, require far more than a few minutes a day to develop. “Look honey, I’ve got ten minutes for you, and right now, I’m ready to be your mom. So, let’s do it!” Under such conditions, it is doubtful that we could provide anything even vaguely resembling the ongoing guidance and leadership children need, never mind develop a profound connection. We are not parents in short, intensely focused sessions where we “train” the children, but rather parenting is the sum of our actions in every interaction with our children.

  Yet more than one dog-training book takes a Cosmo approach to our relationships with our dogs, offering promises that you can have a well-behaved dog in just five or ten minutes a day, or that in one month, your dog can learn everything you’d like him to know. A truthfully titled book on dog training might be Your New Puppy and the Next Two Years You’ll Spend Helping Him Become a Wonderful Dog. The book would probably not sell, though false promises that you can have anything you want without much effort certainly do. It is true that you can train a dog to do something in just a few minutes a day. Dog owners everywhere faithfully grab their leash and collar, the homework sheets from obedience school, and head out to the backyard or neighborhood park to “train the dog.”Thus it is dogs learn to sit, stay and heel, and other niceties. But they may also be learning that outside of this dedicated training time, there is a lack of leadership in their daily lives.

  Leadership and training are not synonymous, and to the detriment of our relationship with our dogs, we sometimes confuse the two. Training has to do with what the dog knows how to do—specific actions or activities. Leadership is the foundation for the dog’s understanding of how his world is organized, providing him with information about his relative status, directing his actions as necessary and setting the limits on his behavior as well as setting the tone for how important situations will be handled. If we mistake training for leadership, we will find ourselves bewildered by some of the things our dogs do. A dog may graduate at the top of his obedience class and still growl at someone who tells him to get off the bed. It is quite possible to have a dog that is highly trained and obeys a multitude of commands and even wins countless awards and ribbons but who still has no real respect for you. It is also quite possible to have a dog with very little if any formal training but deep respect for his people.

  How can this be? We all know that there can be a world of difference between a polite, respectful child and a child who knows a lot of stuff. Just because a child has learned his alphabet, can tie his own shoes, and knows his name, address and phone number, this is not a guarantee that he has respect for his parents or others. He may also speak French, be an algebra whiz, have a good grasp of American history, be a great tennis player and a talented violinist—and still be as rude as hell. No matter how wonderfully our dogs perform in class or in the backyard, even if they graduate as the valedictorian of their obedience class, if we fail to provide the leadership they need in every interaction, all we have is a dog who knows stuff. And some of that stuff may include the fact that we’re not really calling the tune on the dance of man and dog.

  In a world where it sometimes seems that there is never enough time, dogs remind us that now is the only moment we have—and the only one we need. In each interaction, we always have the time to act in careless ways that are devoid of leadership or guidance; we also have the same time to provide our dogs with what they may need in that moment. When we consciously choose to create the event of quality with our dogs, we discover that being aware and fully present when we turn our attention to another requires no more time than a hasty, incomplete connection. As ever, a small investment of our full selves reaps rewards without measure.

  THE DYNAMICS OF STATUS

  Raise the question of leadership, and you’ll inevitably hear the words dominant and submissive. Like all labels, the terms dominance and submission are not terribly informative, though they may describe the far ends of a particular behavioral spectrum, just as night and day describe the presence or absence of the sun. But does the word night really tell us much at all? To an Alaskan, a summer night is largely a glory of light. In more temperate climates, where the sun’s departure defines the night, there are still endless variations on what a night might be: moonless, moonlit, cloudy, clear, cold, stormy and endless combinations of these and other aspects of night. If I would have you understand what a particular night is really like, I need to describe in detail what I am experiencing. The more detail, the more specific a night I can describe.

  To label a dog as dominant or submissive tells me very little. The beautiful shadings of what is possible along that vast spectrum of behavioral possibilities are lost, neatly obscured by the clumsy, crude labels. Labels also have the unpleasant bonus of shaping our view of the dog in rather rigid ways, leaving us unable to see the real, complex dog in front of us. We may see nothing more of t
hat dog than fits neatly in the label’s frame. If we are unable to detail the intricacies of how our dogs express themselves in a particular moment, if we cannot define the subtleties of gesture, then we also cannot deeply, intimately know an individual dog; we will be able to go so far and no further. At deep levels, intimacy is built on knowledge so complex that it defies labeling or explanation to someone outside the relationship. The more fully we understand our dogs as individuals, the less willing we are to sum up the loveliness of an individual with a label.

  Dominant and submissive are useful terms only when we’re trying to give a rough sense of typical reactions. If a conflict arises, will the dog respond in a confident, assertive way, or will he typically yield? Generally speaking, a more dominant animal has greater self-confidence and is willing to push for things to go the way he’d like them to if it’s something he cares about. When attempts are made to direct and control his behavior, the more dominant animal asks (rather persistently) “Why?”—and he expects a damn good answer. Lacking a satisfactory answer, his confidence is turned toward shaping the world to suit him. Such dogs are often labeled stubborn, hardheaded, independent, even difficult to train, though the truth is they simply expect a very good answer to their questions and are willing to work—even fight—for what they want.