Dogs Make us Better Humans
A kind of trigger for me is when people talk about how "spoiled" their dogs are. As if the dog is just sitting there receiving without giving. They give EVERYTHING they have, and quite frankly, they have little choice in the matter. A dog cannot choose where they live, or with whom. It's uncomfortable to recognize this fact, but that doesn't make it untrue. Often it feels like me and the dogs I’ve lived with are soul mates, and our connection was destiny. Whose destiny though? Mine? My dogs?
My life is devoted entirely to making a dog's life better - my own dogs and my patients — and I fully realize that in order to achieve that I must turn the finger around and look at myself, bluntly, in the mirror.
If I’m honest, some days that sucks. There are days I am tired, hurried, overthinking, distracted, or even short-tempered. I have terriers because I recognize how difficult I can be to live with so I choose dogs who have enough moxie to let me know when I'm not living up to my end of the bargain.
A dog provides an explicit, totally honest mirror for the humans around them.
Listen carefully, because this part is important: we must gaze upon that reflection with equal honesty and no small amount of bravery. On my best days, the reflection is a pleasure. My timing is perfect, I’m 100% present, and the plan for the day goes exactly as hoped.
On my worst days, I prefer to avoid the mirror entirely. Nothing goes as expected, I’m rushed, behind schedule, worried, and stressed. I cannot ignore my dogs, just because I’m having a bad day! They see, feel, and SMELL every nuance of my behavior. Our dogs have a thoroughly complete ethogram of us, their humans. I’m inclined to believe that dogs understand our behavior better than we understand theirs.
To make matters even more intense, dogs take on the stresses of their human family. We’ve now got actual scientific proof of that! (That study is actually the inspiration for this post.
We must learn to recognize what the dog is actually saying because dogs are communicating with us all the time. They do so with noises, but more commonly and subtly, with gestures and body movements.
Dogs have a wide and varied language that is fully developed and continuously evolving. If you want to explore this topic, type “dog ethogram” in a web search. An ethogram is a catalog of animal behaviors with proposed meanings. There are people who have been studying dogs and dog behavior for decades. You can easily start making an ethogram specific to your own dog or dogs – try it!!
Have you seen those “word buttons” for dogs? They are electronic buttons that a dog can press and a recorded word comes out (think “The Easy Button” from that office supply store). There is a special kind of foolishness (and selfishness) that inspires a person to attempt to make a dog speak verbal human language. Domestic dogs already have very little say in their lives. Dogs can’t choose where and whom they live with, when and what they eat; or where and when they leave (or enter) the house. All of this is determined by the humans who care for them.
It seems to me that the least we can do, as devoted dog parents, is to make attempts to speak the natural language that our dogs use every day.
Personally, I find watching my dogs endlessly fascinating. Lectures and webinars on dog behavior are tops on my list of desired continuing education because I want very much to learn what dogs are saying to me. I want to use this information to make their lives better, in a way that honors who they are.
I practice "holistic" medicine, whatever that means because I want a therapeutic tool kit that is wide open, ready to accept any modality that offers a benefit to the animal in front of me. Sometimes that means surgery, or pharmaceuticals, but it might also mean tuning forks and light therapy. Other times, it means simply understanding and accepting what the dog says to me – even if it’s “No Ma’am, leave me alone.”
It makes things hard! Yet that is what I agreed to when I decided to make domestic animals the focus of my life. I owe it to them, in return for the dedicated service they offer me daily. This isn’t a transactional relationship, it’s LOVE, and the more I give, the more I get. That’s a lesson I can take with me into the human world, and I have, and I am happier for it.
Dogs make me a better human
🖤Thank You, Dogs🖤
