But in the van on the road, she’d drive me nuts. I had this little red van with a bunk bed behind the driver’s seat. Jane would stand on the bunk and vigorously eye-stalk passing cars, wiping her nose along the window as she did it. By the end of the day the window would be opaque with dog drip. If I put her in a crate, she would whine and scratch continuously or jump at imaginary objects. I didn’t understand why her behavior was so compulsive. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I just thought of her as a “bad dog.”

Meet Your Dog helped me see Jane’s experience in an entirely new light. Jane was essentially trapped in the van for hours, even days, when we were on a long trip. All the time her sensitive herding dog nerve endings were tingling inside her as the pent up energy built. A car passing was enough to release her innate herding behaviors. Even when I put her in the crate, the flickering movements of light released the motor patterns she had been bred to display. Jane’s genetics and environment were clashing, resulting in her compulsively displaying the very behaviors that made her a great droving border collie.

What I now realize from reading Meet Your Dog, is that, in a sense, I had taught her how to deal with her own impulses. The only way she could feel comfortable in the environment I provided was a way that drove me out of my mind.

What I like about Kim Brophey’s book is that it helped me understand what was going wrong with Jane’s experience, but also what was wrong with my expectations of her. It also allowed me to connect the dots between my experiences with Jane and the larger context of the puppy herding/guardian experiment. The relationship between genetics, environment, and behavior is an important one that we can’t afford to overlook.

Meet Your Dog is an original book that will lead even the best of us dog people to think about both dog behavior and our own behavior in new ways. It is an important book that creates a bridge between behavior science and its daily practical application by dog owners and trainers. I truly wish I had had this book to read fifty years ago.

INTRODUCTION

You scour the internet for hours reading personal profiles and gushing at the pictures of adorable faces. You find a prospect. You are captured by him and arrange a meeting, hoping for chemistry with that special companion you’ve been looking for. Maybe you’re getting over a recent heartache; it took months to get over him, but the empty house has gotten the better of you, and you’re ready to take the risk again. Life just isn’t the same without that kind of love—the magic between you and your dog.