EMOTIONALIZING DOGS

It has long been a pet peeve of mine that many dog owners do not allow their dogs to BE dogs.  Author Jon Katz wrote a wonderful entry on his Bedlam Farm blog today about how our emotionalizing, anthrophomorphizing, and projection are the "new and real abuse" that harms so many dogs. I cringe when I see neurotic behavior in dogs caused by the lack of training and parameters laid by owners -- dogs floundering because an alien existence has been thrust upon them by needy owners. 

Jon Katz writes:

People have been wondering about animals and our communications with them for thousands of years. Lots of opinions, mine only one. But here is where I am going with it, after some years of researching, experimenting, and thinking and writing about the subject. I’m considering a book of short stories focusing on the way people and dogs talk to one another.

It is well known now that humans and other animals – especially dogs – emit biochemical smells (hermones) when they feel love, anger, or other intense emotions. Humans perhaps once knew how to smell these feelings, but have mostly lost the gift, scientists believe. It is very pronounced in dogs. It’s one of the elemental ways in which they talk to each other.

It is, I believe, the language of our relationships with them, the words they use to speak with us, spiritual connection to them and the way we train them. They smell our affection or anger or need, and they react to it. We use words, they use feelings, smells and other instincts.

Because we are not, in many ways, as evolved as they, we insert our words into their minds and think we know what they are saying and feeling. What’s the harm?

To me, the emotionalizing, anthrophomorphizing, projection and transformation of dogs into children prevents us from communicating with them and leads to what I call the “new abuse” or the “real abuse” that harms so many dogs. Many more dogs are harmed by being treated as children than are chronically abused by humans, I believe.

In America, the rescue ethic is noble, and powerful. “Rescue” is a powerful term, and lots of dogs could use it. But it also projects a sense that we are “saving them.” And people tell me all the time that their dogs were surely abused, even though they usually can’t possibly know that. This feeling comes sometimes from our need, not theirs.

When you emotionalize a dog, and project your thoughts into their heads, then you overfeed them, can’t train them, or confine or crate them --and can’t help them understand or live by our many rules, leading to so many losing their lives in various ways, being medicated, sent off or back to shelters because they bit, or have accidents, or bark or chew up the furniture.

The great trainers I have known do not patronize dogs in this way, do not talk to them the way humans talk to one another. They listen. When you project pity, “cuteness,” piteous notions of abuse – even when they are true – then you project a sense of superiority. We all think we are superior to cute or pitiless things, and it makes us feel good to nurture. That is sometimes a selfish response -- about us, not them.

I don’t like to be patronized, or treated like a child, or seem as piteous and abused. I try not to do it with the animals I live with. This is a lofty goal. I often project emotions onto my dogs, anthropomorphize them – I’m not sure it’s even possible to never do it – but I do try and be aware of it, and to leech it from my training, listening, and communicating with them.