Cover

Title

Dedication

Dedicated to the late Raymond Coppinger—the father of the modern canine science movement, whose life’s work revolutionized our understanding of dogs.

Your honesty, humor, and friendship were never lost on those of us lucky enough to know you.

FOREWORD

Raymond Coppinger
Professor Emeritus of Biology, Hampshire College

I wish I had read this book fifty years ago when I first started to train dogs.

Back then I was a college professor with a team of sled dogs, which were part of my professional academic research. I published dozens of scientific papers, often with my students, about the neurophysiology and anatomy that help make a successful sled dog.

Toward the end of the 1970s, my wife Lorna and I started the Livestock Guarding Dog Project at Hampshire College, where we raised and trained pups to protect American sheep from predation. Eventually we had records on over 1,500 dogs, most of them descendants of the original imports that we had collected in Eurasia as breeding and working stock. We placed them on farms and ranches where they did a brilliant job defending livestock.

In those early days of introducing this relatively unknown type of sheep dog to Americans, people would ask if you could train a dog to both herd and guard sheep. Could one dog do both jobs? We didn’t know the answer. So Lorna and I went to Scotland on our way home from a field trip with a pile of puppies from Italy and Yugoslavia, and bought ourselves six border collies. Many of the pups were born on the same day. Thus, we had a controlled experiment going where we raised those pups in a large pen for almost a year and watched their behavioral development. What we found was that each breed was different in the timing of their development. They also acquired very different kinds of behaviors.

So, we got our answer: No—dogs did not develop with joint guarding and herding abilities.

It was during that experiment that I acquired the most difficult dog of my life—Jane, one of the six Scottish border collies. She was an intense drover’s dog, so when I put her on a mountain road behind 3,000 sheep, she would work all day long pushing them up the mountain. We herding guys would sit on the roadside playing cribbage and someone would say, “Shouldn’t someone go and check on that dog?” And someone would answer, “Naw, she’s all right.” She was a hard worker.

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.

This canine relationship has the potential to be one of the most meaningful partnerships we will ever know. It is unlike anything else in this world—an honest and vulnerable friendship that invites us to exchange our own natural innocence, playfulness, and affection with another in ways not generally available in our relationships with other people. But as in all relationships, there is more to success and harmony over the long haul than just an emotional connection. There are certain natures, needs, desires, and expectations that a person and a dog each bring to the table. And there’s a lot more to the story than the warm, fuzzy feelings of love at first sight.

If you’re like most dog owners out there, you’ve come face to face with this reality somewhere along the way. When the honeymoon is over, you discover that a happy life with your four-legged partner may be a little more complicated than you had anticipated. But don’t panic. Dogs are more forgiving than most people, and are almost always ready and willing to cooperate as soon as some reasonable expectations can be established in the relationship (which might be more than you can say for your ex). When trouble arises in canine paradise, it’s often because we as owners have lost sight of (or never knew about) certain critical factors that affect our dog.

It’s far too easy to get caught up in the romantic notion of the “perfect” companion, holding every dog to a single black-and-white standard of our imagined ideal. In reality, of course, there is no such thing as a “good” or “bad” dog, any more than there is a “good” or “bad” human partner. What it comes down to is largely just compatibility between two creatures’ basic natures, needs, and circumstances. Getting exasperated about all the stuff we don’t like about our friend—taking it personally and trying to change him according to our fixed standard—is simply a waste of time. Though well-intentioned, our habit of treating every dog generically according to our concept of what a “good dog” is, while disregarding their inherent differences, may pave the way to some seriously undesirable ends.

For Rebecca and her dog, Dexter, the bump in the road of their love story came when she moved into her new mountain home. Two years earlier, when she decided to purchase a Wheaten Terrier puppy from a breeder, she knew she was getting a highly active and intelligent dog. She was up for the challenge, and raised her wickedly adorable little pup from the age of eight weeks old on her family farm in Tennessee. They spent their days together hanging about in barns and fields. She made sure he had the best food, health care, and provisions from day one. It was a fairy tale, and they were on track for a happily-ever-after future.

And then life happened. When Dexter was two years old, a family member of Rebecca’s who was having health issues needed some support, so Rebecca and Dexter left the farm and set down new roots. They settled into a little cabin in the woods near Asheville, North Carolina. After just three weeks in the new house, Rebecca found herself at the veterinarian’s office asking about the possibility of Prozac for a suddenly psycho dog, who had “gone completely bonkers, literally spending his entire day barking and scratching at my walls. What on earth is wrong with him?” She feared that the recent move had triggered some latent genetic abnormality, an obsessive-compulsive disorder that caused him to endlessly run along her walls—digging, yipping, and frothing at the mouth. She wondered about neurotic shadow-chasing behavior she had read about online; did Dexter have that condition?

Things were coming to a head very quickly, and the looming cloud over their once-perfect relationship showed no signs of clearing. Rebecca reported that Dexter hadn’t eaten in forty-eight hours, and neither of them had slept in days. Dexter had no interest in going for a walk other than to relieve himself, dragging her back to the house to scamper violently along the walls once again. He wouldn’t play ball. He refused her affection. The once-perfect pair was in deep trouble.

Rebecca asked her vet for a diagnosis and a prescription to help her friend. Instead, she was given my phone number. Her vet suggested she consult with a qualified dog behavior consultant before putting him on any medication, just to be sure they weren’t missing anything.

As I sat on Rebecca's sofa in her lovely new cabin and observed Dexter’s curious behavior, I had an instant suspicion. Though Dexter did look a little nuts while he was doing it, his behavior seemed perfectly appropriate to me—if my suspicion was correct.

“I don’t think Dexter is crazy at all,” I said. “I think you have mice in your walls. If I’m right, he’s just working very hard to do his terrier job. And he’s getting really frustrated because he can’t reach the little buggers.” Rebecca’s face reflected her total surprise, embarrassment, and relief. I crossed my fingers that I was right as I handed her a referral to another specialist—my trusted exterminator. Dexter might simply be following his instinct as a dog designed to destroy rodents. Rebecca thought terriers were cute, with their wiry hair and long beards; she hadn’t considered what a terrier actually was in the first place, how he might be different from all the other dogs she had known. Suddenly, all that time Dexter had spent running around behind the haystacks in the barn in Tennessee made a lot of sense, too.

Three days later, Rebecca called me, laughing, to say that her walls were indeed infested with mice. Traps had been set; and already Dexter’s behavior was a little less intense. Her natural varmint hunter who had secretly rid her family’s barns of mice for two years on the old farm had found himself in a sudden predicament when he was unable to get at the mice. Inside his new home, his genes had collided with his environment and quickly turned into an addiction that wreaked havoc on their daily lives. Thank goodness, I thought, that she had the benefit of the big picture. She didn’t come to drastic conclusions about Dexter’s behavior, mistreat his symptoms, or give up on her wonderful friend after an exasperating period of frustration and sleep deprivation. We got to the bottom of Dexter’s behavior quickly and were able to put our efforts toward addressing the source of the problem right away. The rodents in the walls had been exciting his terrier instincts into madness.

It’s not always so simple, to be sure. Relationships are complicated, and the ones we share with our dogs are no exception. Sometimes the solutions are not as handy as a phone call to pest control. But they may be. The only way you will know, and be able to get through the rough patches with your friend when they arise, is to get a clear picture of what you’re dealing with.

Sometimes, the most valuable therapy is the one that helps us to see the big pink elephant in the room. Looking at our big pink elephant of a dog, and understanding and accepting him for who and what he is, can be a powerful and transformative exercise. Getting clear about the critical factors that affect our dogs is the first step to finding and maintaining healthy relationships with them as their conscientious stewards and friends. This is a necessary and powerful undertaking. We need to unravel our assumptions and expectations about these canine partners of ours. We start by examining, and challenging, a broken cultural concept—the pet dog.

The Fairy-Tale Pet

We get a dog. We take him home and give him a name. We buy him food, a bed, some toys, a leash, a collar with his name on it. We take him to the vet to get his shots. We take him out on walks, brush his coat, and kiss him good-night. He is our “pet.”

Most of us were born into a world in which the idea of a pet dog is normal, but not so many years ago, the entire idea was pretty absurd. While dogs may have been pets on a relative scale in various cultures throughout history, the practice of bringing them into our homes as captive full-time consumers and family members is far more recent. It is also mostly unique to modern developed countries like the United States. The entire pet industry has emerged—and subsequently exploded—in little more than sixty years, feeding an impractical and unrealistic perception of the dogs in our lives in order to attract our attention to their more marketable “needs.”

In 2016, Americans spent over 62 billion dollars on their pets, a figure projected to keep growing by leaps and bounds. A Pet Industrial Complex has emerged to cater to the billions of dollars consumers are willing to spend—from beef-flavored Prozac to smocked dresses and spa treatments for dogs.

Endless gourmet treats and toys, day-care visits, dog-park playdates, personal groomers and trainers, and better medical and dental care than many Americans receive—these are the standard amenities for many pet dogs. Born, as most of us were, into this pet-dog era, we rarely question these preconceptions and practices.

In recent times, dog behavior problems have become increasingly common and severe, with communities struggling to navigate everything from bites and lawsuits to overcrowded shelters filled with unwanted dogs. This means that certain myths about the needs and natures of our so-called pet dogs need to be examined. Every day in my practice, I pass a box of tissues to another desperate dog lover sharing deep frustrations and heartache in their first consultation. A few examples:

1. Wally cracked a tooth breaking out of the crate and destroyed the Persian rug and new designer curtains, so Donna and her husband have given up date nights and Sunday drives in order to take turns babysitting the dog 24-7 and to help cover the bills.
2. Buddy and Boomer have been fighting so much that they have to be separated at all times and can no longer be walked together. This doubles the amount of time Ron spends trudging around the neighborhood in the dead of winter waiting for the dogs to pee instead of helping the kids with their homework.
3. No one in Patty’s house has had a full night’s sleep since they brought Dolly back to Manhattan after that trip to the Smoky Mountains. Her howling at sirens has resulted in three noise violations in three weeks.
4. Leroy won’t let Lexi’s new boyfriend back in the bed at 3 a.m..; she had to remove the little snarling beast from his arm two nights ago. The guy has, understandably, dropped a few sour hints that she needs to choose between him and the dog.

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.

If we are bold enough to extend a true compassion—one built upon a deep understanding—rather than just sympathy, towards our dogs as we try to understand their behavior, we take a necessary first step toward an authentic relationship with them. If you are reading this book, you are about to take a giant leap forward. You are about to experience an entirely different kind of bond with your dog. But first, let’s clear just a little more baggage out of the way.

Bad Eggs and Dropped Balls

When things go wrong, such as a dog bite, it’s so tempting to point a finger. We often default to the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture.

One prevalent cultural myth is “It’s all how you raise them”: the notion that dogs are blank slates on which we write our own influence through nurture (raising, training, care, or medication). The notion that we can prevent potential behavior problems with basic obedience training or simply “rehabilitate” problem pets into “fixed” ones through such measures is simplistic and naïve. Solid training practices and healthy provisions can go a long way toward ensuring better chances at success and can exact remarkable changes in certain behaviors—even helping animals to overcome traumatic experiences from their past. But there are also some things we just can’t change—like a dog’s basic design features.

When it doesn’t appear that any balls were dropped by a perfectly good owner, we may look to the other polar extreme for an explanation—nature—assuming that the dog must be a “bad egg.” Maybe there’s something genetically wrong with him, like bad breeding or another identifiable disorder.

Looking through such a polarized lens, we’re likely to completely miss the point. We are not seeing the dog for what and who he really is. The truth is, it’s not nature or nurture. It’s the interaction between nature and nurture. It’s about the daily choices we make in handling and managing our dogs once we understand the instincts, capabilities, and limitations they bring to the table. One thing (nature) must work harmoniously with the other (nurture); this is the very essence of compatibility.

Good Intentions

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