Blood Runs Cold in Fluffy Fluff Fluff’s Veins

Posted on Nov 20 in The Small Dog-Human Bondby Jeff K.Print

Oh, that little Fluffy Fluff Fluff is one cold-hearted, calculating bitch. (Note to Grandma and her Saturday afternoon Canasta club: I can use that word because I am talking about a female dog in a professional article. Please do not fall out of your chairs. Thank you.) Fluffy Fluff Fluff knows exactly how to manipulate the circumstances; knows exactly which buttons to push and when. She will fleece you in the blink of an eye. If you cross her path, you do not stand a chance.

Fluffy Fluff Fluff, like most other dogs, is a what animal ethologists call a “social parasite.” She does the sorts of things that manipulate people into meeting her needs–food, shelter, water, comfort, and plenty of it—really more than she needs. Does she do this consciously? She won’t say, so it’s open to argument. The point is, dogs are manipulative, but in ways we are hardly aware.

Dogs are expert people watchers. They will study a person’s facial expressions, a person’s posture, and a person’s tone of voice to see if now is the right time to take advantage. Dogs learn, for example, that a person’s low voice, frown and stooped posture probably mean that person is not in the mood to play. Through past experience, dogs can learn when it is exactly the right time to push for a treat, a walk or a scratch behind the ear. Most dogs even learn how to carefully change people’s moods, by probing with paw and snout and then watching for a reaction. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they don’t. It is those times, when dogs don’t get it right, that really annoy us:

“Morris, get your damn nose out of my crotch or I am going to whack you!”

Why does this matter? It matters because we dog owners are sometimes ill-equipped to meet the emotional challenges of dog ownership. You might say, “Big deal. Caring for a dog is not nearly as challenging as raising a child.” You would be right, and yet, caring for a dog in the right way is more difficult than it would seem on the surface. The dog stacks the odds against you.

Look at what the dog has working in its favor. It has, for starters, an appealingly warm and fuzzy body. It looks at you with big brown eyes. (Bear with me. This is important.) In the case of a small dog, its diminutive features remind us of a baby, which, (I have previously explained in another article,) makes us biologically pre-disposed to care and nurture the dog. Then there is the cute behavior. I’m talking about begging, bowing down, dancing on back legs, little yelps of joy, etc.

Curse you Fluffy Fluff Fluff! I am powerless in your grip.

I know all this seems a bit silly, but it does get serious when you consider the disconnect between what a dog actually does and what we think it is doing. Let me explain with an analogy. When you look at a T.V. screen, what you are actually looking at are tiny dots on a black background. Each of those millions of dots are either red, green, blue or yellow. Four colors, and only four colors. The difference between what is actually there, and what we perceive—millions of colors—is a trick of the brain. Our brains run those four colors together so we see purples and oranges, fuchsias and browns. Those colors are not really there, but we are biologically forced to see them.

The same holds true for us when it comes to our perception of dog behavior. Dogs are actually fairly simple creatures. Their brains are really only capable of producing a handful of behavior combinations we would call emotions: Fear, positive and negative excitement, sadness, and anger. We humans, given our own emotional complexity and our internal voice, add a personal interpretation to what a dog is displaying emotionally at any given moment. For example, a dog does not actually display “guilt.” We may look at a situation and think, “The dog did something bad and now look at him. He seems all droopy and withdrawn. He must feel guilty. I certainly would feel guilty if I did that.” In fact, the dog has studied your expression and posture and sees a combination that has led, in the past, to punishment. The dog is actually displaying fear, but you see guilt.

When we assign emotional complexity to a dog, it places a burden on the dog that the creature might not be able to handle. People who treat their dogs as humans set themselves up for disappointment. Dogs simply do not have the emotional underpinnings to hold up to human drama. They cannot and will not be our emotional sounding boards, our counselors, our complete and whole substitutes for human companionship, no matter how hard we wish it to be otherwise. Expecting dogs to be replacements for spouses, children or other important human relations is unfair to dogs, and not just on an ethical level. I am not saying you cannot talk to your dog about your problems. Just don’t expect the dog to be the solution. When we treat dogs as human children, or as human replacements for friends and family, we generally create neurotic, unbalanced dogs.
When I say “neurotic” and “unbalanced,” I am talking about a dog that does not know how to socialize with other dogs. I am talking about a dog that is more often fearful than calm because it does not know what is expected of it in any given situation. I am talking about a dog that clings to people, constantly seeking reassurance, because it does not know where it fits in or how to stand on its own. I am talking about a dog that cannot relax and be a dog.

In order to be happy balanced animals, dogs need to be treated as dogs. In order for we humans to do that, we first need to see our dogs as dogs, not people. The problem is, the dog’s behavior works against that effort. Dogs “know” how to push our buttons thanks to years of evolution and lifetimes of learning. They take advantage of our nature to treat them as people in order to gain more of what they want. We humans enjoy the payoff of a happy, prancing dog that fills our hearts with joy. The dog’s strategy works, so it is not likely to end any time soon, especially if we are not even aware of what is happening.

“Hey, how did that dog get to be so crazy?” or, “That dog is spoiled rotten!” comes up quite often. It is a problem that is not entirely our fault, but we are the only ones who can fix it. The answers can be found right here. Read on.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Related posts

• No related posts.

2 Comments

Trackbacks / Pingbacks

• Golly Mrs. Cleaver, Which Dog is Right for Me? says:

  November 28, 2008 at 9:14 pm

  [...] Blood Runs Cold in Fluffy Fluff Fluff’s Veins [...]
• Your Toy Dog Toys says:

  April 1, 2009 at 5:36 pm

  [...] hockey sticks has this got to do with the stuffed toy you bought from the pet warehouse for Fluffy Fluff Fluff? Everything. If your dog is housetrained and restricts his urine marking to outside, he has no way [...]