Teaching dogs and learning from them
This is an entry from my journal. I comment on how I interact with dogs and what I have learnt from them for life in general.
I laugh at the thought that my dogs are polyglots. They communicate in the dog language, which consists of a wide range of vocalisations and body motions. Though they also understand Greek and English phrases, as well as my gestures (plus whatever body language corresponds to the canine equivalent).
Their ability to pick up cues and establish connections is remarkable. They can associate words to situations, thus understanding the consequences of the concept in question. For example, when I am in a video call and I wave “goodbye” all four of my dogs get up and start stretching: they know that I will play with them imminently and most probably take them for a walk or, at least, go outside the house with them.
Dogs have an understanding of past and future. Many years ago, when Atlas would roll in dirt I would catch him on the act and tell him “shower”, meaning that I was planning to give him a wash as soon as we would get home. He eventually learnt to relate the word to its meaning and thus stopped rolling in dirt: he dislikes bathing. To this day, if I mention “shower” while we are on walk, he will do two things:
- First, he comes to me to effectively bargain for a better deal. He will establish eye contact with me and wag his tail. Then he will try to jump on me to reach my face, hoping to lick me. I will then appease him, to acknowledge that his negotiation tactic was successful.
- Second, he will keep a safe distance from me and will go hide somewhere once we reach the house. He remembers to stay cautious, even if what I said was a couple of hours prior. This is his way of making sure I do not renege on my promise not to bath him post the negotiations.
I have not had enough opportunities to teach this lesson to Raizou. Though he is better than the day I adopted him and continues to learn. The puppies, Meelon and Oreeon, still have ways to go.
Intrinsic to the dogs’ understanding of meaning as well as the temporality of events is their capacity to distinguish good from bad outcomes, even in terms of their potentiality. Atlas bargaining and then hiding from the potential shower is his way of saying “this outcome will be bad for me”.
If I promise to go buy their favourite food, i.e. when I utter “meat”, they jump around and bark in jubilation. It is like Greece at Euro 2004 all over again. Then, when I get back from the store, they immediately rush to see what I brought. At this point they can also pick up the scent, so they would not really need to hold any further information in their head. Though I have tested this without actually buying anything, only to see the disappointment in their eyes when they look around and realise I am not holding something.
I thus learnt to only make a promise when I can keep it. Though dogs are not petty. They will let go and revert to their usual ways. This is a quality I like and have adopted as part of my lifestyle. Everything flows by like a river. I hold onto nothing, as I enjoy the moments with what is available to me.
Dogs interpret gestures just as well. For example, I will raise my hands wide open and smile to communicate the message “time to go for a walk”. Usually I do this in conjunction with a loud “walk” call. I express joy the same way they do, because I like how excited they get. Even without the utterance of “walk”, they will acknowledge my gesture and get excited regardless.
Their capacity to discern cause and effect goes beyond direct chains of causality. They can spot an action and infer the intermediate stages which culminate in what they are anticipating. For example, if I am putting on my shoes, without showing any excitement or trying to call their attention, they will still understand that I am about to go out and, therefore, expect it is our time for some outdoor activity. They do not act immediately though, waiting instead to confirm that I am indeed heading to the door.
Plus they have a sense of the prevailing conditions. They will only respond to my actions if they had not gone for a walk a bit earlier or if the hour I am doing something of potential interest to them is not one of the usual times in the day where things are supposed to happen. So if I put my shoes on in the middle of a hot summer day, they will not make the mistake of thinking that we are about to go for a walk. But if I do it at around 06:00, they know we are about to leave.
Observing dogs has helped me improve my communication skills. Once you understand their ways, you appreciate how they mean what they say. Dogs do not send mixed signals. I have thus understood the value of being direct. This is because dogs cannot parse imprecise or contradictory messages. Dogs are a little bit like the Linux command-line: if you are precise, you get the expected results, else you get errors.
With humans we have more leeway in terms of how clear we need to be. Though we also benefit from clarity. Or, to put it differently, we suffer when we get into situations that involve too many incoherent points. This applies to communication at-large, from giving somebody directions on the street to sharing feelings.
Dogs have helped me better appreciate the value of the little things. I too will celebrate with them the occasion of a walk as if we have just won the Champions League. Like them, I stay in a cheerful mood and always find reasons to smile and to laugh. In other words, I am not searching for ways to be angered or to feel upset at something. This is one of the reasons I get off the computer if I do not have work to do and also why I do not use social media. If you want reasons to be sad, the Internet and the news in general will give you an inexhaustible source of negativity. Well, they will do it anyway until you are beaten into submission.
One may think that going out is such a banality that it is not worth the excitement: there is nothing “special” about it. If you ask a random person what they think of “special”, they will try to invoke something grandiose, like a once-in-a-lifetime event. This is because they take what they have for granted. There are lots of phenomena that can occur at the blink of an eye which will deny you the luxury of doing all the little things.
I enjoy what I have access to for as long as I do. I know it is not mine, in the sense that it can be taken away from me without my consent and without me having any power to regain it. I thus remain humble and grateful for what is. I do not dwell on the what could have been. I have no regrets and no big hopes. Even though I am committed to projects, I do not cling on to the hope of certain outcomes. I let go and revert to my present state. If this is how my world is configured, I deal with it. I extend this attitude to everything I do, such as by giving every meal my undivided attention or actually listening to people I talk to. Such is my gratitude for having the little things, the passing moments, the trivia that will not impress those who expect grandeur.
My dogs are not necessarily smarter than other pets. Their behaviour is conditioned by their continuous interactions with me. What I do right is to be consistent. I do not have mood swings and do not say things that mean something else. This way, I teach them the meaning of my language and provide clarity about my expectations.
I am firm in my interactions with them, in the sense that I mean what I say, I know how to get it and whether I should demand it in the first place, and am not fooling around. Some dog handlers justify cruelty in the name of discipline. To me, if you have to resort to violence, then you failed at earlier stages: the perhaps understandable need to act with force is there because you let things spiral out of control.
When people ask me how to deal with their dogs, I say “show me your dog and I will tell you a little bit about yourself”. If, for example, a tiny dog is pulling a big man in all directions, this means that the man has failed to provide guidance. Why that is comes down to many possible explanations, though the point is that the handler must go back to the basics.
Teaching dogs requires patience. If you are rushing things, you are doing it wrong. Why? Because you will be pressed for time, which effectively means that you will not be thinking clearly and you will not be responding well to potential setbacks. Impatience causes frustration and is a common source of more troubles. Taking it slow is how you are taking it easy and, ultimately, how you operate from a position of strength.
Then comes consistency. You must always communicate without ambiguity and must do things right. If you flip-flop the whole time, then you are embedding errors in the dog’s behavioural patterns; errors which will manifest as undesirable attitudes.
There is formal training I do with my dogs, the puppies in particular, though most of the instruction happens outside those confines. The dogs are with me the whole time, not just for the few minutes of the training routine. Consistency is key then. I have learnt to mean what I say and to act accordingly. I thus do not say much, because words are easy while deeds are difficult.
One case of conditioning my dogs to behave in accordance with the framework I establish is during walks where they are on leash. I hold two on each hand and always keep them by my side, never allowing them to move ahead of me. Their combined weight is already more than 120 kilograms. If they try to pull in a certain direction, I hold them back: we go where I want. I have the balance/strength to force them, if I need to, though in practice they know to just be in sync with my steps. We move as a unit.
This is not an inconvenience for them. I do not drag them anywhere they do not want to be. I take them on leash when the weather is not too hot and only after they have already ran around the mountains without any restrictions (there are no houses around me and we move further into the wilderness, anyway). In effect, I make it a positive experience rather than some task I halfheartedly try to check off my list. If they are not feeling it, then we simply do not go. I am in tune with their emotional state, energy levels, and prevailing conditions.
All this is no different to how we interact with people. Dogs may not be as intelligent as us or not have as rich of a vocabulary, though the fundamentals are the same. If, for example, you are unreliable in your dealings with someone, then your relationship, which is the shared magnitude of associations that binds you two together, is replete with doubts and uncertainty, among others. In Greek we say “good deals make good friends” (οι καλοί λογαριασμοί κάνουν τους καλούς φίλους), which we can generalise as “consistency leads to predictability which engenders trust”.
I know how the world works. There will be those who try to fool you. When you can tell that reasoning with them is futile then you have to either leave or be forceful. Though there are people who will appreciate plainspokenness and respect you for not doing tricks and gimmicks.
To the dogs we should learn to be dogs and to the wolves we should be tigers.