Bones Would Rain from the Sky

by Suzanne Clothier

  A more submissive animal lacks the assertiveness to push for what he wants if it means he has to confront anyone to achieve it, and in the face of a conflict, is willing to go along with what someone else has in mind. For these dogs, their question (if raised at all) of “Why?” can sometimes be answered with “Because I told you to.” These dogs are often called smart, easy, soft, trainable, though the truth is that they are simply by nature much more willing to go along with our game plan than make a case for what they might prefer.

  Within the context of a relationship, I’m not sure that dominant or submissive have any place at all—do you describe any other of your friends in such terms? I have friends I might describe as determined, fearless, happy-go-lucky, pushovers, prickly, unflappable or any host of other descriptions that are informative in a general way. But I don’t describe my human friends as dominant or submissive. Increasingly, I keep stretching myself to find new ways to describe my canine friends and to do so in ways that accurately reflect their behavior as well as my feelings about them. This is an acknowledgment that the words we choose have great power to shape our actions. If I describe a dog to you as “confident, persistent, intelligent, intensely aware of others’ feelings and intentions,” you’ll have one picture in your mind and act accordingly. But I doubt that it’s the same one created by this description: “He’s dominant.” With the first description, you might ask about the shadings and range or degree of what I’ve described—just how confident or persistent is he? Intelligent in what way or compared to who? If I describe another dog as “agreeable, disinterested in confrontation, easygoing,” the picture in your mind and your response to that dog is much different than if I tell you a dog is submissive.

  Along the continuum between dominance and submission lies a whole world of possibilities, and to my mind, the term status—fluid, dynamic, contextual—is a better way of looking at the complex realities of how dogs interact with us and other people and animals. Status is a dynamic, fluid quality that can shift based on the situation and the context and may be quite specific to a particular relationship. For example, a mother driving her child down the road might well be seen to be the higher-status member of that pair; the child, appropriately, defers to her greater control of resources and is willing to accept her control and direction of his behavior. (All right, it’s a very young child… .) When Mom is pulled over for a speeding ticket, her status shifts. Relative to the police officer, she assumes a position of lower status; she is deferential to him if she’s smart, and assuming she’s not interested in a high-speed chase through three counties ending in a standoff at the local mini-mart, she’ll accept his control and direction of her behavior. Dropping the kid off at school where unbeknownst to her he’s the king of his class and even the teacher gives him her milk money, Mom then proceeds to work, where she is middle management and has status higher than those under her supervision but less status than her superiors. In the evening, she drives home alone. We cannot determine her status in that moment, because just like our dogs, no one is dominant or submissive, high status or lower status except in relationship to someone else. In this simple truth, the complexity of social hierarchies can be seen: It all depends on where you are, what you’re doing and who you’re with. In the absence of another, status is meaningless. A billionaire on a deserted island is just a lonely man.

  An understanding of relative status is critical to the dog’s understanding of his world because the very organization of his daily life and behavior hinges on the answer. In trying to sort out the relative status of his home pack, the dog is trying to figure out whose rules he must obey and for whom he can set rules. Like anyone, the dog does not wish to annoy or threaten more powerful beings; that way lies conflict, possible physical confrontation and maybe even bodily harm.

  Dogs learn that it is foolish and possibly quite painful to annoy or challenge those who are more powerful. On the other hand, it’s both possible and probably safe to take greater liberties with or simply ignore someone who has less status than you. But without an accurate assessment of relative status, the dog is not sure how best to behave in any given situation. This is not a comfortable position for the dog, no more than similar situations are for us. Many dogs I have worked with were anxious, confused and even angry in the absence of clear leadership. Loving our dogs is not enough, just as loving anyone is not enough. Knowing that our dogs need a clear delineation of their relative status, we must honor their need and provide leadership. However, thumping our chests—or more literally, thumping the dogs—is not necessary; leadership is not a clenched fist but a guiding hand. As Dwight D. Eisenhower noted, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.”

  I AM ALPHA—HEAR ME ROAR!

  If there’s a single word I could remove from the language of dog lovers and particularly dog trainers, it’s this: alpha. A Greek word meaning first, alpha has seen a lot of duty, mostly serving as the righteous rationale in the ongoing war between man and dog. Like the cross waved by the Crusaders as justification for a staggering list of atrocities committed on non-Christian peoples, the idea that we are acting as alpha has served as justification for a fair amount of unfairness and downright cruelty to dogs. Lurking behind the battle cry of dog training—“I can’t let him get away with that!”—is our fear that if we do let the dog get away with x, y or z, we will lose our status as top dogs.

  Borrowed from the language of animal behavior studies of social animals, alpha is used to indicate the top-ranking animal in a particular social group, or the top-ranking male and the top-ranking female. To be sure, all social animals have a hierarchy of power, popularly known as “the pecking order,” a term that originally arose from Thorleif Schjelderup- Ebbe’s 1935 research in poultry behavior. This model for describing a social hierarchy is much like a ladder. At the very top rung is the highest-ranking animal; the lowest rung is occupied by the lowest-ranking member, and the other members are assigned positions somewhere in-between, with some animals below and some animals ranking above them.

  The problem with this strict model is that while easily understood, it’s also vastly overly simplified. Real life with real animals is not rigidly linear, but a beautiful and fluid weave of understanding and reciprocity among the various members; authority is often not absolute but rather highly situational. Discussing wild wolf behavior in The Wolf, wolf expert David Mech offers his observation that the government of the pack is neither autocratic nor democratic. While at times the leader does unquestionably guide the behavior of all pack members, this is usually in a time of crisis or conflict. At other times, all pack members have influence on the behavior of all other pack members, including the leader.

  In trying to observe and understand how wolves interact with wolves, and how dogs interact with dogs, we have made a very serious mistake in modeling our own behavior after that exhibited by captive animals. It should be noted that the behavior of captive wolves, like the behavior of all captive social species including humans, is far more rigidly delineated than that of animals with normal, natural life situations. Drawing conclusions or guidance for our own behavior from the behavior of captive wild animals is a very poor springboard for understanding what is natural and right to a species. And we forget that dogs are not wolves, nor do they think that we are, and they’re fully aware that we’re not dogs either. While we can take a good deal of guidance from how dogs handle issues of leadership with other dogs, the truth is that we still have to find the balance unique to a dog/human relationship.

  We have a vastly oversimplified and wildly inaccurate set of rules of how to be a leader of canines. Some of the “how to be a top dog” advice found in the popular dog literature is purely nonsensical, some is based on poorly understood truth, and some is nothing short of strangely twisted interpretations of what dogs really do with dogs. In the end, our clumsy extrapolations result in a rather autocratic approach to dogs, as evidenced by the sad reality that there’s a whol
e lot of nevers involved. For example, “Never let your dog go ahead of you through doorways or on stairways.” I’m a bit confused on how to apply this consistently. Just how you get a dog into the car while following this rule is a mystery to me—are you supposed to get in first and then invite the dog to join you?

  “Never let your dog eat before you do.” This advice might work well when you and your dog are sharing a deer carcass. After all, wouldn’t you rather have the really choice bits for yourself? I mean, if you let the dog go first, he’ll eat all the delicious intestinal contents before you get a shot at them. I usually feed my dogs before I eat because it seems kinder and because I don’t need to make them drool and watch me eat in order to provide them with effective leadership. If a person needed to deny me a shot at the donuts in order to prove how powerful they were, chances are good there were some other issues they needed to work out with me and with their own notions of what constitutes effective leadership. If we actually look to wild wolf behavior for some clues on how best to handle the “Who eats first?” question, we learn that if there’s plenty to be had (as there might be with a moose carcass), all get to eat with no rank pulled by anyone. If there are young puppies, they often get first dibs, with Mom and other pack members literally regurgitating a hot meal for the kids. If pickings are slim, whoever can get hold of and keep the food is the winner; obviously, higher-ranking animals win this particular hand more often than lower-ranking members. For dogs whose owners insist on eating before their canine pals do, I wonder if some dim genetic memory stirs up a bit of anxiety that there’s not much available in the pantry? Do puppies who are not fed first wonder if they’ve landed in a dysfunctional pack that doesn’t understand the importance of feeding the kids first?

  The list goes on and on: Never let your dog sleep in your bed or get up on the furniture. Never let your dog have free access to toys or bones. Never pet your dog when he asks you to. Never go over to your dog to give him attention; make him come to you. (Strange advice this, particularly since a direct approach to another animal is a high status maneuver.) And one of my favorites—take your dog’s “kills” away from him. Huh? In fact, I understand this one pretty well. Banni once tried to sneak through the door with a possum he’d caught. Head down, he positioned himself in the middle of the whole gang of dogs waiting to get in, but I noticed something odd about him, which turned out to be a possum in his jaws. So I took his kill away from him. Actually, I just told him to drop it, which was a good thing since it was doing what possums do—just playing dead. Banni dropped it, and when I told him, “Let’s go,” he picked it up again, and when I said, “Drop it” he did; and when I told him, “Let’s go,” he picked it up again. We went around like this for a while, which just goes to show it is not easy to take a dog’s kill (even a live one) away from him unless you remember to add “Leave it” between “Drop it” and “Let’s go.” I offer this helpful hint for those who feel the need, as I did, to discourage dogs from bringing home their own pets or eating their kills on the couch.

  All of the simplistic never advice contains the implied but unspoken phrase of dire warning “or your dog will become alpha.” This is as silly as saying if you let children run and play, you will never have control over them. The truth is that if you don’t have control over the children in the first place, then when they do run and play and get terribly excited, you won’t be able to control them in that situation. If you can’t tell your dog to get off the furniture or out of your bed, it’s not because a comfortable couch has eroded the dog’s respect for you. Particular actions in and of themselves are not usually the problem when it comes to leadership issues. The lack of respect we have earned from our dogs is the problem. Our failure to provide appropriate leadership is to blame, not the comfy chairs. No matter how many of them you may have.

  People love to substitute rules and formulas for understanding of complex issues. I don’t know why, and I doubt that dogs have a clue either. I suspect it’s because rules make complex issues seem easier to understand. In the initial stages of learning anything, having some basic rules helps us feel less lost and gives our rudderless flailings something akin to direction. Within the context of a loving relationship, I find such rules offensive, and deadening to all involved. One tip-off that a relationship has not achieved a high degree of intimacy is the need for strictly adhered to rules. Reliance upon rules reveals our desire for quick, easy fixes and our unwillingness to do the work necessary to gain the understanding of our dogs and the respect from our dogs that makes such rules unnecessary. Learning to become fluent in Dog has to extend past mere theoretical understanding into a shift in our behavior so that we are truly communicating in ways that make sense to the dog.

  When two living beings are involved, a soulful approach requires, perhaps even demands, that we remain open and attentive to the reality of what is happening dynamically between the two; anything less is life lived by rote, not by feel. In the long run, the very beauty that complexity makes possible is denied and made unavailable within the confines of rules; the dynamic quality of a connection bound only by mutual agreement and understanding, not by rules, is lost. Following a list of rules, our hearts are not free to dance in response to another—we are only dully plodding along in an imitation waltz. We cannot help but be disappointed with what rules create within a relationship: a static unsatisfying version of the real thing that neither broadens nor warms our soul.

  12

  LEADERSHIP IS ACTION

  One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem

  before it becomes an emergency.

  ARNOLD GLASGOW

  I’VE YET TO MEET ANYONE WHO SAID, “I hoped this dog would take over my household and he has. Praise be!” Instead, there’s been a steady parade of bewildered clients who find themselves unable to control the dog they love very much, who are frustrated by the dog’s behavior and unhappily aware that something has gone quite wrong. Without ever intending to, and simply because they don’t understand the dog’s perspective on leadership, owners have abdicated. In the absence of clear, consistent leadership, dogs do what dogs do—the best they can and in a way that suits them.

  In every interaction with their family and with other dogs and people they meet, dogs are getting answers to their questions about who’s really in charge. And they’re taking very, very good notes. Dogs are always just being who they are—dogs and nothing else—and if they fail to respect/obey/cooperate, chances are good that they are reacting to a perceived void. Remember just how honest dogs are? Well, here’s where that honesty may come back to bite us in the butt—sometimes, quite literally! The respect dogs accord us is precisely and exactly the respect we have earned. According to their scorecard—according to the expectations every canine brings to a social interaction.

  On casual examination, having a dog who mistakenly believes he’s in charge of his own little fiefdom seems relatively harmless. So what if the dog is “spoiled” or out of control? (The smaller the dog, the less like ly anyone is to be concerned about a dog’s lack of respect for people; a “spoiled” dog with paws the size of dinner plates tends to get attention.) But having created a four-legged Napoleon is not merely a matter of annoying visiting guests. While the concept of a dog believing that he is the emperor of his own little empire may seem amusing, this kind of confusion can be very dangerous.

  There’s a very serious problem with a dog who believes he is the highest-status animal in his family. According to proper canine protocol, the dog who believes that he has the right to set the rules for how others will behave is also entitled to enforce those rules. This can put us in direct conflict with our dogs and create some very ugly situations where both parties are feeling righteously entitled to their behavior. If we act in what he considers unacceptable ways, he’ll let us know in purely canine fashion, dealing with us precisely as he would deal with a bratty pup. Displeased, a dog will not write a nasty letter or call you up to complain; he will,
however, growl, snap, snarl or bite. I’ve worked with countless dogs who were led to believe that they ruled the world or at least their small corner of it and then were labeled “aggressive” by their angry, scared and bewildered owners. Some of these dogs ended up dead, victims of the lack of understanding from the people who claimed to love them yet did not set rules for their behavior.

  Generally speaking, our dogs do not want to be in conflict with us, though they often find themselves in that unhappy position. This is usually not because dogs desire to thwart us, thumb their noses at us or deliberately defy us, though they are capable of doing all three. They are usually acting in good faith, and though we may not like it, are giving us accurate feedback on our leadership and the degree of training and socialization they have received. If we lead the dog to believe he’s the one in charge, he is.

  Though many training approaches emphasize “deranking” the dog or taking him down a few pegs socially speaking, the truth is this: The dog does not need to be “deranked” so much as the people need to learn to act like people worth listening to. The emphasis is on the wrong end of the leash; the failure rests with the two-leggeds, not the dogs, though it is certainly easier to blame the dog than accept the responsibility for our behavior. Insubordination is very often a charge leveled at inferiors by incompetent leaders. When we take the responsibility to shift our own behavior so that we become people that dogs want to be with and respect, dogs act accordingly. On a daily basis, dogs remind us of the truth that to get respect, you have to act in ways that deserve respect.