Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (31 page)

what the dog is capable of makes us all
the more astounded by and grateful for how rarely they bring
their power to bear. It should also make us aware of the
tremendous responsibility we have as dog owners.

put down the pancakes and No one gets hurt
Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear
or desire.
jean de la fontaine

IF WE DELVE DEEPLY ENOUGH INTO OUR
OWN
RESPONSE to what we perceive as aggressive
behavior, we may be slightly embarrassed
to realize that our trust of dogs in general or even
of particular dogs we know extends just so far. It
halts precisely at the point where our understanding
runs out. The less we know, the less we are
likely to trust a dog when he is acting in what
we consider to be aggressive ways. If we do not
know what our dogs' behavior means, we may
respond with aggression of our own-because we are
afraid. If we are unable to distinguish a playful
growl from a warning, a complaint from a threat, we have
learned only a small portion of our dogs'
language and will inevitably respond
inappropriately and in doing so, run the
risk of damaging the relationship.
It's Sunday morning, and I'm preparing breakfast
for a guest. As always, the kitchen floor is awash in
dogs (our only carpets are live ones done in
natural colors, like black and tan]. I hand the
guest her plate of pancakes, urging her to eat
while they're still hot. Carson moves to sit
politely watching at her side, hopeful that the
guest might be abducted by aliens leaving the
pancakes ownerless, or at the very least that the guest
might offer a starving dog a bite or two. A
dog owner herself, the guest is accustomed to eating under
close surveillance and fending off potential
plate raids, so I don't bother to tell
Carson that staring at people while they eat is considered
rude in some countries. Other than
assuring Carson that the pancakes are indeed
delicious, my guest pays the dog no mind
until she hears a growl and looks down to see Carson
curling her lips back in an unmistakable snarl.
Though a dog lover, my guest is somewhat
intimidated by our small army of German

Shepherds. Suddenly finding herself with a
growling dog's head aimed at her lap, she
freezes, her forkful of pancakes held in
midair.
I've heard the growl and, knowing my dogs, don't
even bother to turn around. I have no doubt that it's just
part of a dog-to-dog communication; the times they've
ever directed a growl at a human being were few and
far between, and usually in response to threatening
behavior directed at me. But I have forgotten that
my guest is not as sure of my dogs, so her
tremulous "Why is she doing that?" surprises
me. (it's easy to forget that not everyone lives
amongst a swarm of dogs and listens all day to the
conversations and currents of the pack. Dogs do swarm,
you know--ask anyone who's visited us.)
As I turn, I'm already mentally assessing the
situation's components: Carson, pancakes
(carson's preferred breakfast food), guest
(viewed correctly by my dogs as a gullible
pushover who might be conned into giving them her whole
plate of food), and one or more of the other dogs
present. Sure enough, under the table where she cannot be
seen by anyone sitting there, Otter has moved in
to cover the guest's other flank. Carson's growl
and snarl are not, as my guest fears, aimed
at her vulnerable thighs but rather across her legs and
directed solely at Otter. Her message
might be roughly translated as "If there's any
pancakes to be had from this sucker, they're mine."
Quickly, I tell both Otter and Carson to go lie
down, and I warn Carson that those pancakes are not
hers to defend. She looks at me, and for perhaps the
thousandth time, I'm glad she cannot speak. I think
she might sound too much like a lawyer for my
taste-she's got a defense for everything. "Your
Honor, I was simply defending my food from
another dog, which, as we all know, is a
God-given right and a time-honored dog law." Questioned
as to the actual ownership of the pancakes, Carson
might develop the interesting argument of defense
by proxy and note that she was not only protecting her
potential future interests in the pancakes, but that
she was also acting nobly in assisting the guest in
staving off a possible raid by Otter. As Carson
throws herself into an
exasperated heap, sighing dramatically to underline how
unfair she considers the whole situation, the guest

begins to breathe again.
What might have happened if I did not have a deep
trust in and understanding of my dogs and a good understanding of
dog behavior? Carson was doing nothing wrong-she was
communicating to Otter, not threatening a guest.
Carson's actions were no different from a mother yelling
across a guest at a bratty kid threatening to pour
ketchup on her sister's head; the person being
yelled across certainly understands that the warning or
promises of various punishments are not directed
at her. Having warned the kid against trying to turn
her sibling into one of the Heinz 57, a mother might
turn and resume a conversation or sweetly inquire
if the guest needed a refill on her coffee.
Smiling at the guest, the mother might then turn a
split second later back toward the kid and
assume a frowning, threatening expression of warning,
and then soften her expression as she turned back to the
guest. She's not crazy; she's just a mother.
Dogs make such conversational shifts as effortlessly
and frequently as we do-it's part and parcel of life
as a social species, which sometimes necessitates
holding several conversations at the same time or in very
rapid succession. We, on the other hand, speak a
very slow, stilted form of Dog, so that the mere concept
of shifting effortlessly between conversations is beyond
us, and-being a somewhat arrogant species-we
assume that if it's beyond us, dogs can't do it either.
Unfortunately for dogs, our ability to see these
normal shifts is either nonexistent or it halts
the moment a growl begins so that from that point on we
literally don't see what the dog is really doing
second by second. Carson, once done with
Otter, might have looked up, pure doggy
politeness, and wagged her tail at the guest who from
Carson's point of view was not included in her
conversation with Otter. The guest, stuck in time back
at the growl, would be unable to notice and understand
Carson's unmistakably friendly expression toward
her and her pancakes.
If all I saw was a growling dog snarling at a
guest, if I did not trust Carson, if I
feared that my dogs might be dangerous, if lurking
in the back of my mind was a fear that maybe German
Shepherds do turn on people without warning, I might have
leaped to the wrong conclusion. I might have felt
justified in "correcting" Carson by grabbing and
yelling at her, which understandably would have been
perceived by her as an unprovoked attack by me. If she were
not Carson (a stable, trusting dog) but an unstable
dog who did not deeply trust me, she might
justifiably respond to my unprovoked attack
by growling or even snapping at me in
self-defense. And if I did not see
that
as reaction, an understandable act of self-defense, but
instead interpreted that as a further threat to me, things
could escalate quickly into a pitched battle, hurt
feelings if not actual injuries, and my final
assessment of Carson as a dangerous dog who had
threatened a guest and attacked me. All because
Otter hoped to share in whatever pancakes Carson
might be able to con out of a guest. Fear seems
especially fond of hanging out in vicious
circles.
Dogs find themselves in this situation time and again, their
absolutely normal, blameless and
nonthreatening-to-human behavior wildly
misconstrued by the people around them. It must be very confusing
for them.
give a dog a bad name and ...
The majority of dogs presented to me and trainers
all over the world as "aggressive" are more often
simply out of control, responding
to inconsistent or inadequate leadership,
undersocialized, afraid, misunderstood, in pain or
defending themselves against violent acts against them, some
disguised as training. This is not to say that such dogs
are harmless-a confused, scared, irritated, angry
or disrespectful dog can be quite dangerous; the label
"aggressive" is neither descriptive of the scope
and potential danger of the behavior nor helpful in
resolving the problem behavior. Yet even among
professional trainers, there is an appalling lack
of understanding of the wide range of behaviors that are
broadly categorized as aggression. For some
dogs, the lack of understanding can prove fatal.
Others get lucky.
The puppy, Chelsea, entered the room pulling so
hard she looked like a fugitive from the Iditarod.
Towed along behind her, the human on the other end of the
leash was serving more as a speed-moderating device than
a guidance system. Tail and ears up, the puppy
eagerly bounced around, unable to stand still for more than a
second or two as she looked
put down the pancakes and No one gets
hurt207
and sniffed. All signs were that she was simply very

excited-and more than a little out of control.
Upon spotting me, her body posture and attitude
changed dramatically: The dog backed up
rapidly and began to bark, her tail dropped and
wagging though held low in a classic anxious
attitude.
"I suppose you can see the problem," the woman
yelled over the din of the dog's barking. I just smiled
and asked her to have a seat about ten feet away from where
I sat quietly. I didn't see an
aggressive dog, only an excited, out-of-control
adolescent dog who was also uncertain. While her
barking was loud and impressive, there was no serious
threat in it- it was fairly high pitched and quick in its
repetitions. It was hard to reconcile this dog with the
opinions of the owner's previous instructor: that this
dog was very dangerous, would eventually bite, and should be
euthanized before she hurt someone.
While we sat and talked for a while, gathering some
background information, the puppy explored as far as
she could on leash, leaping back with a startled woof when
she accidentally moved a chair. She retreated to her
owner's side to consider the chair with furrowed brow, but
when it didn't move again, she decided it was safe
to approach it again. I invited the woman to move
closer, intending that the dog would be able to reach
me if she wanted to. Cautiously, Chelsea
approached and sniffed my shoes and legs. Ready for
her approach, I opened my hand and let a small
chunk of chicken fall to the floor. This pleasantly
surprised the puppy, who eagerly ate the
unexpected treat and sniffed around for more. As soon
as she glanced my way, I let another treat
fall and this time, made sure the dog saw my hand
open. She ate it and then stood staring at my hand.
I ignored her until she touched my hand with her
nose, and then opened my palm to reveal several
treats. I gave her one and then quietly asked
her to sit, which she did, and I rewarded that with soft
praise and the remaining chicken. Surprisingly
gentle she cleaned my hand and then looked up at
me, her eyes bright and interested. We considered each
other, and I noted that direct eye contact, at
least in this particular moment, did not bother her. Her
gaze was steady, alert and relaxed.
Keeping an eye on her, I shifted slightly in
my chair to reach the bag of chicken on a table behind
me. As I suspected it might, my movement
made her back away a few steps, her

expression shifting from relaxed to somewhat
worried. For a while, we played the simple game
of approaching and doing simple things like sit and down
in exchange for food, and soon I was able to pet
her, tug gently on her collar and run my hands
down her back. A touch near her rump made her
dance away, neatly placing her hind end well out of
my reach; at the same time, she wagged her tail and
bumped my hand with her nose-a combination of gestures
that I read as, "Please don't touch me there, though
I still want to be close to you." Her owner spoke
up, noting that she'd forgotten to tell me that
Chelsea did not like to have her hindquarters touched
by strangers, a detail that did not surprise me.
In my experience, dogs who are fearful or
anxious often do not want their hindquarters touched.
Some, like Chelsea, just move their bodies out of
reach; others protect themselves with growls or more. As
bodywork therapists and trainers like Linda
Tellington-Jones have known for a long time, emotional
patterns are often correlated with physical
patterns. We do this ourselves, holding the tension
created by our emotional states in various places,
such as our jaws, our neck and our shoulders. For
fearful dogs and horses, it is quite common to see
"goosiness" in the hind end. Like the
classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario, it's hard
to say whether goosiness in the rear helps create the
fear or the fear creates the goosiness, but in working with
dogs who are fearful, teaching them to feel comfortable with
having their hindquarters (in fact, their whole
body) handled is an important part of the treatment
program.
Far from the original instructor's assessment of
aggression caused by "dominance" (which would more
accurately describe a very confident dog using
aggressive behavior to get her way), what I
saw in this puppy's behavior was a lack of
confidence. Each time I asked for a little more or touched
her in a new place, there was a flash of concern in
her eyes and she drew back, though I did not push
her to the point where she felt the need to add barking
to further warn me. Her barking retreat was also a
classic sign of low confidence. But the tasty
tidbits quickly helped to convince her that this wasn't
so bad after all. I asked the owner to take off the
leash and turn the puppy free in the training room.
Chelsea began to cautiously explore the room,
sneaking up stealthily on the box of dog toys in
one corner. Her behavior was an interesting