Dog Psychology

This is Argos, our lovable, friendly, easily excitable, puff-ball. He's two years old now, and has been a member of our family for about 18 months. This picture was taken the day we brought him home.

From the time we got married Tammy had hinted at wanting a dog. She'd see dogs running around a neighborhood and point out that the poor things didn't have any home and we should pick them up and give them a new home at our house. Sometimes she was less subtle and would simply say something along the lines of, "We should get a dog."

I did not want a dog. Or any pet. Maybe a fish. You see, I grew up with pets. Cats, dogs, rabbits, fish, a turtle, a chicken, and my parents had horses. So I've had them, been around them, seen them get sick, seen them grow old, retrieved their bodies from the road. I've dealt with pets alive and dead, and I just didn't want to do it anymore. Dead pets are nobody's best friend, and they leave holes in my heart that never want to mend.

But as Cordy became more and more mobile, I came across an old photo of my niece when she was about Cordelia's age, and she was out playing with my brother's dog and her young litter of pups. The smile on her face was a mile wide and I realized that my selfish refusal to have pets would prevent my own child/children from experiencing the unfeigned love and joy that my pets had brought me my entire life. I couldn't live with the idea that I'd be preventing my own little girl from having her own pet-experiences, when animals had always been an extremely important part of my childhood... and adulthood, if I'm ging honest.

So Argos was Tammy's Christmas/Birthday present from me the year Cordelia turned 1 (Cordy's birthday is Dec 23, Tammy's is January 19, so the three kind of lump together when discussing past events). However, since Tammy is violently allergic to life animals, primarily those that tend to live with people, choosing a dog required a great deal of planning on my part. And I had to do it in secret, too.

So for several months prior to Christmas, I spent countless hours on www.dogbreedinfo.com and other websites researching dogs. In addition to Tammy's allergies, I wanted a dog who could be kept indoors (I grew up with outdoor dogs, and it always broke my heart to leave them outside without real company), and we needed a dog we could be comfortable having around small children.

Once the cat was out of the bag... or more precisely: the dog secret was revealed, Tammy and I started looking, together, at the list of most viable options for hypo-allergenic dogs that I had made. Since this was not just any old gift, but an actual living, breathing, potentially thinking creature who would be with us for many many years to come, we did not want to rush into it, and since it was going to be Tammy's dog, she certainly needed to have a say-so in just exactly what dog we got.

As we narrowed down the search, we also picked up season one of The Dog Whisperer on DVD and watched every single episode. We learned a lot about dogs, why they behave the way they do, and a bunch of techniques and tricks to help keep your dog happy. And it is unbelievably easy to do, with a little patience, and a lot of self-control.

Here are some basics:

1. Dogs are not people, and no matter what you may interpret, dogs do not think that they are people. At most, dogs think that their 'masters' are dogs.
2. When a dog is frightened or nervous, soothing sounds and cuddles do not reassure them and make them feel better. They are not people (see number 1). Soothing and cuddling them is interpretted as a reward for their behavior. It actually encourages them to be frightend or nervous! Yikes!
3. Dogs are instinctive walkers. They need to walk, to roam. A majority of behavioral problems in dogs can be averted simply by taking the dog for a brisk daily walk for 30-60 minutes (depending on the breed). And it isn't about exercise. A dog can get lots and lots of exercise playing fetch, frisbee, or just running around the back yard, but exercise doesn't physiologically trigger whatever it is the dog gets psychologically from a good walk.
4. Dogs are pack animals. They see their family as their pack. And as such they need a very clear understanding of the pack hierarchy. If there are other dogs in the house, they'll figure out which dogs fall where in the hierarchy all on their own, naturally. But because people are primates, our hierarchies form differently than those of canines, and we have to consciously make an effort to establish a pack order for the dog's benefit. It isn't hard to do, but it does have to be consistent. It is simply a matter of learning a little about pack behavior and then incorporating it:

• Whoever is physically in the lead during a walk, is the alpha dog. Do not let your dog walk you. Keep him/her beside or behind you. Use a leash that actually allows you to do that.
• The higher up in the hierarchy you are, the sooner you get to eat, in relation to the rest of the pack. Dogs should not eat before or while the rest of the family is eating.
• If a dog shows dominance towards a child, that dog should immediately be disciplined by getting him/her in a submissive position (aka, lying on its back), and the child should be placed standing above the dog, even straddling it, for a few seconds to allow the dog to imprint that the child is dominant.

Some of this stuff sounds heartless, or mean, or even stupid to us as humans; but it's because we are humans. We have empathy and compassion and all kinds of emotions that either dogs don't have, or experience differently than we do.

Now, about Argos and his psychology. Today's main event.

We finally settled on an Australian Labradoodle. There are two Labradoodle breeds, one of them is just any cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. And then there are Australian Labradoodles, which are considered a pure breed. They are the result of professional dog breeders working to breed together specific traits of two separate breeds in order to create a new breed altogether. Whereas a "Labradoodle" is a mixed breed, an Australian Labradoodle is pure.

The breeders were looking to create a new breed of dog that could be used as a service animal for people with dog allergies.

Poodles are hypo-allergenic dogs, Labs are not. Both are very intelligent dogs. Both are traditionally "water dogs," which is to say their original breeding was as bird-dogs - the dogs that go and retrieve the duck after the hunter shoots it from the sky.

If I understand correctly, Poodles are just a little too independent for the service animal tasks (as a breed on the whole, though I'm sure some animals as individuals could do the job just fine). So the good folks down under started working on getting some of the submissive love from the Labs and mixing it in with the allergy-free coats of the Poodles. The result, several decades later, is a wonderfully obedient dog with all the energy a small family can handle. He's clever (sometimes sneaky), very friendly, very very patient with small children who poke him in his eyes, and he never barks. Well, never used to bark. Something has happened and I've caught him barking a couple of times in the past two months. But even with that... he's not a barker.

Oh, and he doesn't shed. At all.

Argos is, however, terrified of the vacuum. He hides under the bed, runs into the other room, gets away and gets away fast. I've tried the psychological fixes that Cesar Milan (the Dog Whisperer) uses. I refused to coddle him, and I've even commanded the poor dog to stay in the room, on the bed, close enough to the vacuum to see it, and have refused to comfort him in his fear. It hurts me (as a human) to do this to him, but it works. Or it has worked. It's kind of hard to be consistent with it, because once he's under the bed, he's not coming back out. Ugh.

So this is where I get confused. He's terrified of the vacuum, but he plays chicken with the lawn-mower!!!! What is wrong with my dog? As I mow the lawn he charges it, then dodges aside at the last second. He'll pick up his ball and make a mad dash across the path of the mower, just feet in front of me. Today he just stood in my path staring at the machine as I rolled closer. I finally had to stop and yell at him to move. He did it twice, the second time he ignored me until I started pushing on towards him.

And this lawn mower isn't safe. I had to stop letting Cordelia be outside with me while I was mowing the lawn last summer after the spinning blades threw a rock or a peach-pit (or something small, hard, and aerodynamic at high speeds) at the house at a frightening velocity. If it had hit a window it would have smashed right through. Cordelia had been on the other side of the yard, picking flowers or something. I stopped the motor right then and urged her quickly into the house, explaining to Tammy why people were not allowed in the yard while I was mowing.

I'm honestly not comfortable with Argos out there while I'm mowing, but he loves being outside so much and he usually stays clear, chewing on his toys or playing with fallen apples, that I'm not terribly worried about him. And if I'm being honest, dogs just aren't little girls, no matter how cute and cuddly they can be sometimes.

If anybody thinks they understand why vacuums = fear and lawnmowers = exciting fun toys, please don't hesitate to speculate at me. I'm interested in all kinds of whacky explanations for my dog's insanity.