The Other End of the Leash

The number of people who don't seem to be aware of how their behavior is interpreted by dogs is frightening. I recently watched David Letterman, my favorite late night TV show host, get bitten by a dog on his show. He leaned forward, staring directly into the dog's eyes, put his hands on either side of the dog's face, and pressed his face within inches of the dog's eyes. Completely by accident, he then stepped on the dog's tail. But it wasn't stepping on his tail that was the primary trigger, which was Letterman's interpretation. Even before the bite, I was watching in horror as his eyes moved closer and closer to the dog's eyes, my heart racing with the inevitability of what was about to happen. I was so concerned that he'd be bitten, I was literally bouncing up and down in bed, yelling at the television like an idiot, as if somehow he could hear me. To an untrained human, just being a human, looking directly into the dog's eyes was a kind, friendly thing to do. That's the way Letterman greets Julia Roberts, and that's the way we all greet people we really like. In dog society that would be a scene from a sci-fi horror movie. You just couldn't be more rude to a dog unless you walked up and bit him. The most amazing aspect of Letterman's experience is that the dog didn't bite him sooner. Lest you get smug, remember that Letterman was just being a human—what else would he be?

If your dog pesters you for petting when you need to be doing something else, break off visual contact with him. You can use your torso to push him away with a body block (remember not to use your hands) or turn your head away (chin raised) in a benevolent but royal dismissal. It's amazing how fast dogs will go away if you break off visual contact with them. It's equally notable how hard it is for us humans to do that when we're trying to get our dogs to do something. All of our instincts seem to have us look at our dog, just as primates do when they are trying to communicate directly with another individual in the troop.

If you've thought about what words you use to communicate with your dog, the next step is to write down exactly what these words mean. In other, words, what do you want your dog to do after you say something? This sounds so simple, and yet even professional trainers surprise themselves when they sit down and write out a dictionary of their commands. A lot of us aren't even clear in our own minds what we expect our dogs to do when we ask, and not surprisingly, neither are our dogs. For example, many of us say “Down” to ask our dog to lie down and ten minutes later say “Down” to get her to stop jumping up on Aunt Polly. So which is it? What do you want your dog to do when you say “Lie down”? Lie down on her belly? Stop jumping up and stand there with all her paws on the ground? Leap off the couch? Of course, you know that the same word can have different meanings in different contexts, but we're supposed to be making things easy for our dogs, not doing IQ tests on them all day. Your dog's life will improve immensely if you learn to use a different command for each behavior that you want her to do.

The bottom line is simple: Use short, repeated notes like claps, smooches, and short, repeated words to stimulate activity in your dog. Use them when you want your dog to come to you or to speed up. Use one long, continuous flat sound to soothe or slow your dog, as you might when you're trying to calm her at the vet's. Use a burst of one short, highly modulated note to effect an immediate stop of a fast-moving dog, saying “No!” or “Hey!” or “Down” when you need Chester to pay attention and stop chasing that squirrel in the backyard.

It makes sense that we'd be attracted to different types of smells. Omnivores like our early humanoid primate ancestors were always seeking out plump, juicy fruits, and that legacy drives our attraction to fruity and flowery smells. Dogs are hunters and scavengers, attracted to, rather than repelled by, the scent of ripe carcasses. In the big scheme of things, one attraction makes no more sense than the other.

The Tragedy of Puppy Mills. One of the most tragic consequences of our reaction to cuteness is the inadvertent support of puppy mills. Puppy mills are dog factories, assembly lines for puppies that house breeding males and females in conditions that would turn your stomach. Puppy mills are everywhere, although they flourish in the South and the Midwest. They are one of the best-kept secrets in American society, and they cause tremendous suffering to untold numbers of animals. The last one that I visited raised each litter in small, hanging wire cages. The urine and feces were supposed to fall through the wire, except, of course, most of the waste remained, in the cage, so the puppies played in it for lack of anything else to do. (Good luck house-training those puppies.) The mother dogs were trapped with their litters for the entire seven weeks of their development, until the pups were sent to pet stores. Not letting a dog out of a tiny cage for seven weeks is abusive enough, but not letting a mother dog away from her puppies for even a few minutes is downright vicious. This particular puppy mill had more than three hundred adult dogs and one adult caretaker. There was no attempt to work with any individual dog and thus virtually no ability to judge the temperament of the dogs that were bred. The owner told me that “of course, all the dogs were gentle—even the caretaker's children could go into the pens.” But you can't necessarily predict how a dog in an empty pen will behave once he's part of a typical busy family. When I visited, I saw a variety of temperaments, from fearfully shy dogs to pushy, demanding ones. One set of dogs continually attacked another dog in the same cage every time we walked by. The dog was basically trapped inside a cage with a gang who beat him up daily for the hell of it. Many of the dogs had serious physical deformities, like over-and undershot jaws. Those problems can be serious and are genetically mediated, so no responsible breeder would have bred them. Dozens of the dogs at this particular puppy mill were covered in continuous tangles of matted fur, with hairs pulling on almost every inch of their skin. Most depressing to me is that this puppy mill (still going strong, by the way) is by no means the worst of its type. I stumbled across another one in which permanent cages were stacked three high, the higher dogs urinating and defecating onto the ones below. Each lower dog lived on a 1- or 2-foot-high mash of compressed urine and feces, her flesh covered in angry red sores. Their filthy water dishes were equally full of waste, with the colorful addition of green algae scum. Hidden from view, these concentration camps for dogs provide millions of puppies to pet stores and “agents,” where unknowing dog lovers take one look at that cute little fluff ball in the corner and just have to take her home. Even people who know better can't resist rescuing the poor little pup: after all, there she is, all big-eyed and needy, and what will happen to her if someone doesn't take her home? Once a puppy doesn't look like a puppy anymore, she's lost much of her value.8 Stores can't exactly stack the dogs on a back shelf until their fall sales come around. This isn't just a problem for the store; it's a potential crisis for the puppy. Even staying in the store for more than a week can compromise a puppy's development. Pet store “puppies” (read “adolescents”) learn to potty where they sleep and often can't be house-trained no matter what. Others are so socially damaged that they are miserable at best and dangerous at worst. By buying that cute little puppy, you are supporting puppy mills, allowing them to continue raising unsound animals from miserable, enslaved parents.