Three years ago I received a dog. He’s everything that a certain set would tell me he shouldn’t be: a pure breed (Wirehaired Vizsla), he was flown over from a foreign country (Hungary) and he has a relentless instinct to hunt. Roger is part of a larger group of dogs known as versatile hunting dogs and he’s gotten trained a bit in how to hunt upland birds.
Anyhow, much has been written about dogs and the rearing of them by people with great acumen. I’ve been around some of them (including my dog’s breeder, a European hunting champion) and I simply can’t do what they do. But like my dog, I’m eager to learn and I’ve paid attention.
And here’s something I’ve come to know about people and dogs: too many people want only the pleasurable parts of the human-dog relationship.
They’re either disinclined, unwilling or utterly averse to managing another part of the relationship. That has to do with an assertion of the self over the dog, usually with word indicators (also called “markers” as they mark the behavior) like yes or no.
And this is it: dogs are very challenging to most people. That’s because the dog’s master (even the term makes many uncomfortable) must, in a steadfast way, show the dog what the owner wants.
Show the dog what the owner wants—and be willing, when needed, to back it up. Who the hell wants to do that?
The owner must show the dog what the owner wants. If the dog goes outside of that the owner corrects the dog. And here we too often fail, just as parents do with their offspring. It’s been a national trend for a generation of children, this coddling that comes from this refusal on our part to do the dirty work of authoritative leadership. We avoid it at all costs.
Here’s the dirty little secret: we’re not just trying to protect our offspring from their feelings; we’re protecting ourselves from the feelings we have about their feelings. Parents are engaged in their own narcissistic act of safetyism.
Overvaluing our comfort
But why? I think we’ve come to overvalue our comfort, especially our emotional comfort. We have so prioritized it. And in the process we’ve cut ourselves off from exercising a kind of appropriate assertiveness—the kind that allows us, in the case of dogs, to not just feel good but do good. To do good for the dog and oneself.
Without a sense of this authority, and a tolerance for it, I can’t effectively raise my dog (or my children).
Much of our affection for dogs comes out of … call it what you will: its willingness to show affection or love, or to work or, in the case of my dog, to hunt birds and bring them to me—a willingness to please.
They work in our lives because of a cooperation. Yes, we give them food and affection but we need to give them more than that—namely obedience and limits and directives—or the relationship itself is completely unbalanced and onerous.
But if we can master that one little gesture—of showing another what we want, what we expect, and then making a correction when necessary—we can engage in a worthwhile, moment-to-moment act of assertiveness. We’ll all be better because of it.