Don’t Shoot The Toddler!

In her seminal book, Don’t Shoot The Dog, Karen Pryor wrote that while you could just shoot your dog, there are other ways of changing its behavior and that applies to other animals in your life, including your spouse!

We have learned a lot since this book came out in 1984, not so much about changing behavior, a science which emerged in the early 1900s, but rather the recent research of canine cognition which studies include language, memory, reasoning, perception, and emotion.

Why this is so fascinating is that dogs have the same brain chemistry as humans, and when fully developed, they have the learning abilities of a human toddler. Yes, your dog is similar to a 3 years old child!  Clearly not impressive if we were talking about a thirty year old human, but we are talking about a different species that is capable of learning human words, use inferential reasoning, remembers where you hid the treats, and of course they have a wide range of emotions that few would deny unless we’re taking about one of those brain-damaged TV “trainers” who tries to convince the public that their dog needs a dominant leader to prevent him from stealing the car and going on a murderous rampage with his wolf pack!

Very few dog-parents know that they have the equivalent of a toddler living in their midst. And because they have been bamboozled into thinking that they need to be a drill sergeant to train their poor defenseless pup, things tend to go awry, when for example, the dog is punished for growling at the baby who, instead of being supervised, is allowed to crawl all over the dog, pull his tail or mess with his paws. Long before the dog displayed a growl, I promise you he gave more subtle clues that he was uncomfortable. And just like a human saying, “I’ve had enough” before retaliating, your dog’s growl is saying the same thing before he bites.

While many humans do not necessarily put the time into learning about dogs, they do know toddlers because, hey, toddlers are humans. My point is that they (hopefully) are better at reading their own offspring than their dog’s communication. At least that’s what I thought until I read an article about a new kind of idiot that is raising kids.

As always, I will digress….

The big picture about our relationship with dogs is that it has largely been shaped by our instincts and how lucky that, unbeknownst to us, our dogs evolved with a brain of a young child. This means that dogs are able to pick up on human body language, tones in our voice, as well as learn some human words. All of this makes training fairly easy until the dog doesn’t respond, so we labeled them, stupid, stubborn and spiteful, just to name a few choice words.

But regardless of whether we think of our dogs as a genius or dunce, without research, we get to make up things about this special species, and pretty much everything else.

Technology gives us endless information, a lot of it faulty, and we tend to glom onto the information that reflects our instincts and sensibilities. So when we read that the momma dog uses her teeth to parent her puppies, we have no qualms about purchasing a prong collar because this equipment has been designed with “teeth” so surely this is how we can establish ourselves as the dominant parent.

Fortunately, based on my childhood and what I see in society, we don’t raise our kids like we do our dogs. To be clear, many of us see dogs as family, as we should, but I’m talking specifically about putting prongs around their necks, keeping them confined in crates, and praising perfection in breeding without any consideration to their physical or emotional health. These are just few insidious ways we relate to dogs, not as sentient beings, but rather property, and for some a commodity.

Apparently I was wrong about parenting after I read an article about a group called pronatalism that believes the world birthrate is decreasing so it is their moral duty to help populate the earth with their “superior” DNA!

During an interview, a pronatalist couple said that their mission is to have a litter of kids. What drew the ire from readers was the account by the reporter who witnessed an incident where the dad slapped their two year old boy in the face for “acting out intentionally”. He went on to say that he could have used greater force on the boy’s arm, however a quick “bop” on the child’s nose was a less severe punishment, a style he modeled from observing wild animals!

Further findings from the interview, revealed that the couple doesn’t believe in heating their home in the winter, as this is too much of an indulgence. Apparently the children also wear iPads around their necks, although I don’t know why unless it’s way of keeping track of the “litter”.

According to the reporter, “In the pronatalist vision, the children themselves seem to be beside the point. The child is less an individual, with desires and dignity, than a vehicle for a political project, a dense bundle of futurity.”

It’s difficult enough trying to educate pet-parents to respect and treat their dogs like the toddlers they are, however knowing there are some parents that need to learn that their toddlers aren’t animals… oh my!

Perhaps they should read, Karen Pryor’s, Don’t Shoot The Dog because its sage advice provides insight for human behavior too!

HAPPY TRAINING & ENRICHMENT

© Fran Berry CPDT-KA, UW-AAB all rights reserved 2024