Like thousands of other unhappy dog owners, these clients had been searching diligently—if unsuccessfully—for answers to their dogs’ behavior problems. Internet searches, advice from friends, and reruns of dog training shows turned up some pretty confusing information. What they were finding and hearing just didn’t add up. Intuitively, they sensed something profound was missing.

This is the missing link: we don’t have the big picture. We have forgotten that dogs are animals. We have forgotten that there are major differences between different types of dogs, so we fail to meet their specific behavioral needs. We struggle to train them to be as we wish them to be, expecting the wrong behaviors from our canine companions. We need to understand that it’s not their behavior but our expectations about their behavior that are broken. Our pet culture has failed to question the fundamental soundness of what we ask of our dogs in our day-to-day lives—when we have company over, when we pass other dogs on the street, when we leave our dog alone in a crate for over ten hours a day, when the neighborhood kids barrel through the front door at all hours unannounced. There are very good reasons why some dogs handle these kinds of events with ease, and why others come apart at the seams. Put simply: We can’t have the same expectations for a German Shepherd that we would for a Pug. Treating all dogs as if they were the same—operating from a standard recipe and ignoring their elemental variations—sets them (and us) up for certain failure.

On the flip side, you are about to consider the common ground shared by various dogs as you never have before. You are also going to see that you and your dog have more in common than you realized. In my experience, this discovery is a joyful one that leads to a new appreciation for your dog’s life experiences, and will challenge any existing perceptions of him as a “pet.”

In this book, you will be given a new way to understand your dog’s behavior so that you have a shot at a love that lasts, built on true understanding.

While anthropomorphizing your dog is not the goal, this book does encourage you to consider your dog with a new kind of empathy. Though there are some big differences between you and your dog, this book operates from the basic tenet that your dog is a sentient being having an individual experience on this earth just like you. There is just as great a danger in the kind of reverse anthropomorphism that would cause us to assume a dog’s experience couldn’t possibly be similar to our own; in doing so, we risk dismissing the animal experience as less than ours.