Dogs are Not Kids

In Monday's post about dog training 101 and the toxic marketing that is not required, I noted that most dogs are "broken" for the same three reasons:

• Not enough ACTIVE one-on-one time with the owner (including real exercise and long walks);
  
• No consistency, and;
  
• A confusion, by the owner, that the dog is a child.

A reader wrote to ask:

Could you explain your comment about confusing a dog with a child?

It seems to me that raising a dog to be a polite member of society and raising a child to be a polite member of society take basically the same skills. Adequate exercise and consistency in the rules are certainly the foundations of both a well behaved child and a well behaved dog.

Well yes, I can explain.

Lets start with reading the piece again, and paying particular attention to the fact that I note that dogs and humans are similar in many ways:

Dogs, like humans, are pack predators and scavengers that operate within a loose social hierarchy. Like humans, they have their own language, and like humans they learn best when instruction is clear and consistent and when it comes after a "recess" period involving physical exercise.

Like humans, dogs operate for rewards, but they also shy away from adverse consequences. Like humans learning the alphabet, dogs can learn to string small bits of knowledge together to form entire sentences of instruction, but first they have to learn the vowels and consonants.

That said (and I have said it!), dogs are not children.

As I responded in the comments, putting a bit more of a point on it:

A dog is a DOG.

Canis lupus familiaris.

It is NOT a "fur baby."

It does not speak English. It speaks DOG.

You cannot warn a dog about consequences, or explain to them why you are taking away their allowance.

A dog does not have morality, does not believe in heaven, and does not fear hell or what his grandparents will say when they find out.

If you punish a dog in the afternoon for what it did in the morning, it has no impact at all.

Not so with a child.

Know how to read dog and know how to speak dog -- it will save you a lot of time.

A dog eats on the floor and it eats dog food. As a rule, this is discouraged with children.

A dog needs a collar and a tag and it needs it to be walked on a lead for 30 minutes twice a day at the very least.   Do this with a child, and child protective service may be called.

A dog should sleep in a crate at night. Do this with a child, and child protective services WILL be called.

Do not give your dog the remote control to your TV and expect it to change channels. It will eat the remote, and you will have a very expensive veterinary bill.

Do not give your dog a computer. It will not turn it on, but it will eat your couch because it got very bored because you did not understand that dog's basic needs are NOT the same as a child's (or a fish or an elephant or a parrot).

Do not give your dog a book. It will only eat it.

Do not expect your dog to crap inside the bowl. If you do, it will crap on the rug.

Do not send your dog to a public school; they will not train your dog for you. Instead, they will turn your dog over to the pound where it will be put down, if unclaimed, within 3-5 days.

For more on dogs and dysfunction, see >> The Comedy of Dog Shows.

People who raise perfectly acceptable children may have dogs that are completely out of control.

Job One with a dog is to accept the dog AS A DOG.

A dog has different mental, exercise, social, and communication needs than a human.

It is NOT a child any more than it is a horse, or an elephant, or a squirrel or a fish.

A dog has a limited brain and the smartest dog does not think much better than a brain-damaged 4 year old. Accept this. A dog is not a child.

Dogs see colors differently than humans, and get most of their communication from scent. A dog is not a child.

Dogs are 100% fluent speakers of DOG but they generally only know 5 or 6 words of your language. A dog is not a child.

Dogs are social pack predators and meat-loving carnivores. They consider it normal to roll in shit and eat it too. They greet each other by sniffing butt, and they drink from the toilet if they have no other access to water because they do not have opposable thumbs to turn on a tap. Many dogs have strong prey drives and some will kill your neighbor's cat as quick as you can say "Bob's your uncle"

In short, a dog is not a child.

It is a dog.

Acceptance of this is the First Step to having a proper relationship with your dog.

I was not trying to be harsh, simply clear. Read through what I have written, and you will see that the notion that "a dog is like a child" underpins so much of what goes wrong with dogs.

A brilliant dog cannot reason as well as a stupid four-year old, has very little sense of the future, and cannot do much with even the simplest of abstract concepts.

Dogs drink from puddles, bark routinely, bite on occasion, and turn around three times before they curl up in the grass.

Do not deny the nature of a dog or its particular needs, any more than you would that of a woman, a man, a tiger or a hummingbird.

Not all dog training boils down to consistency and exercise. An acceptance of the dog AS A DOG, and not a child, is also fundamental.

As for children, I have raised two, and I have some thoughts here as well.

My kids are extraordinary individuals in their own right, but I cannot take much claim for that. Not only are my children adopted (yes, they really are good looking), but they were also raised by a community of people that included their mother, their grandparents, their friends, various schools and churches, the local police department, other parents, coaches, and even popular TV, music, and movies.

Even if I farked it up at times (and I did), the rest of the world did not.

And vice-versa.

But the dogs? If the dogs are a miracle or a mess, that's entirely on me.

The dogs are not raised in a community, do not go to school, do no watch TV or read books, have no experience with coaches or police, and their training (such as it is) has not been shopped out.

Do my dogs go to church? Oh yes. Most Sundays we go to the First Church of Field and Stream. It is an old church; the first church. And yes, we prey.

But that, as they say, is an entirely different post.
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