Your natural dog will know your emotions and intentions. She will know if you are sincere, if you are scared, or if you are confident. She will be as dialed in to you as she is to the world around her—naturally, instinctually, intuitively. She wants you to do the same for her. She will expect you to be concerned with your own interests, and for you to understand that she is with hers.

Finding your way together in this modern age, far from her ancestral roots, will be a challenge at times. The world we live in expects her to be something she is not—a passive, permissive, and dependent “pet.” Your happiness as partners depends on your constant ability to appreciate her for the animal she naturally is, and to meet her halfway.

KEY CONCEPT: Ritualized Signaling and Communication

One of the most unfortunate crimes of ignorance we have, as people, committed against our pet dogs is the demonization of normal, natural, species-specific communication as “bad.” The incredible range of a dog’s signals is not only an impressive evolutionary feat, but this great body of messages is their language. All too often, we rob them of speaking.

Because we don’t speak dog, we misunderstand what they are saying. The language and cultural barriers between our two species cause us to speculate, make assumptions, judge, and punish accordingly. We do this, quite simply, because we are scared when we do not understand. But so are they. And we create incredible confusion for them when we don’t hear what they are saying or react in strange ways to their “words.” We even enable misunderstanding and conflict between our pets when we tell them that their communication is “bad,” even when it is beautifully stated.

A dog raises a lip when a stranger reaches to pet them—I am uncomfortable—and we punish her for saying so. She snaps at another dog for jumping on her back—I don’t like what you are doing—and we tell her, “Be nice!” The comb catches a knot in her fur at the groomer’s and pulls her skin, and she growls—That hurts me—and she receives a pop on the nose. We tell our dogs over and over: No talking. We pave the way for the moments when they just can’t take it anymore, and reach the end of their rope because nobody has been listening to them.

Shiba Inu