World Dog Relationship Survival Key:

1. Recognize that she’s going to LEARN what things mean for her, what works for her, and act accordingly.
2. Enjoy her adaptability to different ENVIRONMENTS and socialize her to their elements.
3. Remember that she is a GENETIC freeloader and embrace her innocently selfish ways.
4. Know that she is one in a million, and your relationship with her is completely unique.

CHAPTER FIVE

Self

He is one in a million. There is no other dog on the planet exactly like him. He is an individual with his own story and his own personality, living in a body only he can inhabit. He is Bob.

You brought Bob home from the shelter a year ago, eight years old and mostly deaf. He has a limp in his rear left leg from a break that never quite healed right, and the arthritis to go along with it. You were not looking for an older dog. But he met all of your requirements for a companion, and you and Bob just hit it off.

Bob’s environment, his learning habits, and his genetics all play a huge role in his behavior, as you now know. But there’s one last piece of the puzzle: the self. The self is the umbrella that contains all the aspects of your dog that are unique to him. A dog’s sex, particular hormonal makeup, his age, his health, and his life experiences are all part of what makes him one of a kind. These factors can have profound effects on how he behaves throughout the course of his lifetime. Disabilities, his diet, or illness may change his perceptions, his moods, and his habits. Whether he is feeling the blinding thrill of testosterone hitting his system for the first time as an adolescent male or the edgy defensiveness of a vulnerable elder dog compromised by his declining functions, your dog is subject to these influences.

You love to tell all of your friends about Bob. For the first month you had him, he had to wear the cone of shame because he wouldn’t leave his stitches alone after his neuter. He bumped into everything, and you laughed harder than you had in years, as he merrily brought you that little green ball time and again, no matter how long it took him to manage to scoop it up with that thing on his head. That ball might as well have been made of gold for how important it was to him. He was uninterested in dropping it even for his gourmet meals. You wouldn’t have thought he was underweight back then for how stinking snobby he was about his food, turning his nose up at everything but the highest-quality home-cooked chicken dinners. All of these nuances that make Bob and his story unique are a critical aspect of the self. Just like we are, dogs are individuals.