Dogtology by Lazarus Jeff

Author:Lazarus, Jeff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2015-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Commanding Talk

Humans do nothing to relieve Dog’s anxiety by the way they issue commands. (The word “command” here does not refer to the Ten Commands, but to normal, everyday orders.)

Commands are an essential part of human-dog relations, because on rare occasion the human requires the dog to actually do something. Commands, however, are a common source of communication breakdown. That’s because many Dogtologists are uncomfortable issuing orders, as they feel this is a disrespectful way to treat the being they revere so much. So they frame their commands to Dog as polite requests, couched in terms like “please,” “excuse me,” and “would you mind?” Dogs, once again, are confused by this. Since the human does not seem to fully grasp exactly what he wants, neither does the dog. And the dog ends up feeling anxious, gnawing on its foot, and suddenly realizing there is a tail connected to its butt, which must be caught.

Some dog-training experts claim that, since dogs are pack animals, they only respond to the alpha dog of the pack. These experts promote a kind of tough love, whereby the human asserts his top-dog status by giving firm commands to the dog. Firm commands do work, but probably for a simpler reason than one might think: clarity. Dogs just want to know exactly what the hell humans want already. It’s not about who is alpha; it’s about What in the name of God are you asking me to doooo?

Humans don’t realize how wishy-washy and noncommittal they sound to dogs. Dogs tune in to key words like “walk,” “ride,” or “treat,” and to specific intentions, movements, and attitudes. When the human fails to utter key words—or mutters them in a casual, passive way, buried in an avalanche of filler words or meaningless movements—the dog is as lost as a reality-TV star at a theoretical-physics convention. Dog behaviorists confirm this. They have observed that issuing commands to dogs in the following format is remarkably effective:

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