A Small Dog

Strange days.

(photo provided courtesy of thegordons@flickr.com*)

The Moral of the Story is . . .

You can teach morality to a dog, or more correctly, you can teach your version of morality. You do this by rewarding certain behaviors, and ignoring or punishing other behaviors. Even after training, your dog will not have a moral code, per se. He will learn to behave in ways that you believe are right, and avoid behaviors you believe are wrong.

I bring this up because some of us believe our dogs are “bad.” We believe they intentionally do things to violate our trust, try our patience, and challenge our authority. When a dog violates our trust or tries our patience, he is not carrying on an internal conversation with himself to the tune of “Let’s drive the human crazy!” A violation of trust or test of our patience is our own human interpretation of what the dog is doing. The dog is just doing what comes naturally to a dog.

It Makes No Sense, Even for A Dog

Let’s talk about dog behavior that simply makes no sense to us. Rescued dogs often enter our lives with a broad repertoire of what we might call “weird behavior.” Examples:

• Hiding under the bed for no apparent reason.
• Barking incessantly.
• Chasing own tail.
• Pacing.
• Whining.
• Chewing or digging holes.

The list goes on.

It Does Make Sense—To the Dog

How are any of these weird behaviors helping the dog? Answer: they all help the dog cope with stress. For example, when a dog hides under the bed, he is placing a barrier between himself and whatever he feels is threatening. A dog that barks incessantly can either be:

• Trying to hold a threat off by counter-threatening with a bark.
• Self-stimulating to drown out stress.
• Blowing off pent up worry.
• Calling for help.

Each example of weird behavior is not weird for the dog when the behavior is placed in context. It’s not hard to guess a rescued dog’s context. It’s past life was unstable, to say the least. When it first arrives in your home, it has no idea what to expect. Combine past troubles with the uncertainty of here and now, and you get a nervous dog. Further, and this is even more likely, many of the weird behaviors you see in your rescued dog were probably established well before he arrived in your home.

What We Do

The two common human responses to weird dog behavior are:

• Worry; and,
• Frustration

If you worry and fret over your dog’s weird behavior, the natural human response is to try and comfort the dog. When you hug and pet a dog that is acting strangely, your response rewards and reinforces the dog’s weird behavior. Remember, dogs only do what works for them. If whining and pacing invites comforting strokes from a human, then pacing and whining works for the dog. It’s going to continue.

If your response to incessant barking is a frustrated outburst of anger, you’ve just poured gasoline on your dog’s fire. The dog’s stress will magnify. The barking will no doubt stop for a moment because your outburst startled the dog. Once the initial shock is over, your dog is likely to resume barking, probably at a higher pitch.

The Answer, in Two-Part Harmony

What’s the answer? It’s twofold. First, as long as your dog’s weird behavior is not causing any damage to the dog, yourself, your family, your neighbors, or your house, ignore the bad behavior. Your goal is to not give your dog any more reason to continue or magnify the behavior. Second, you must give the dog something better to do—a substitute behavior.

I’ll get into how to substitute another behavior in my next article. For now, these are the take-aways:

When your rescued dog acts strangely, realize:

He’s not plotting to drive you insane, he’s just being a dog;
It’s a product of his past, plus his uncertainty about the present;
Your worried or angry response will only make his behavior worse.

1. Come up with a personal game plan with the steps you are going to take to keep yourself calm and unworried when your dog acts strangely. Write the game plan into your journal.
2. Discuss what’s going on with your family, friends, and anyone else who has frequent contact with your dog. Be sure to explain your game plan and get everyone on board. Your effective plan can be wiped out by one uncooperative relative or friend.
3. Watch for my next article that discusses how to re-direct your dog towards behavior you can live with.

Tell Us What You Think:

The rest of your small dog community would like to know how your dog behaves strangely and why you think he’s doing this. Let us know by writing a quick blurb in the comments section below this article. At the very least, write something–anything–to let me know you are alive and thinking about this article.

*The opinions expressed in this article are my own and not necessarily those of the provider of the attached photograph. I make no claim that the dog pictured is a rescue animal, nor that it has any problems whatsoever.