In September 2015 I graduated from Memorial University with my Masters of Social Work. It was a long program that really got me thinking about the work I did in Child Protection. One of my goals upon entering the program was to expand my thinking and knowledge into areas in which I had limited experience. One of the areas I choose to focus was Aboriginal Theory and World View. I will not go into too many details as I am afraid to do it an injustice. Explaining Aboriginal Theory in one or two sentences would be like saying: “The Mona Lisa is a painting” or “The Atlantic Ocean is a body of water”.
Well, yes….but there is so much more.
One of the concepts in the Aboriginal theoretical framework is that a person is more than the sum of his parts. What this means is that a problem cannot be solved with an easy twelve step cookie cutter solution. In order to help a person address an issue, you have to understand the root cause of the issue, you have to look at the whole person. A good analogy to this would be all my social work coworkers attempting to help a family deal with “addictions issues” without understanding what is causing the addictions issues in the first place. If you don’t deal with the underlying root causes when addressing an issue, the issue may disappear but other potentially more serious issues will take it’s place.
So how does this pertain to dog training?
I often have people contact me saying something like:
“My dog has started to growl at my child, I correct him but it has not stopped…this needs to be fixed”
The problem with this kind of thinking is that if you look at dog aggression on a scale where a behaviour like a dog averting it’s eyes is at the bottom of the scale, and a full fledged attack is at the top, a behaviour like growling is not necessarily a bad thing.
“GASP!!!!”
I can hear some of you now….”I can’t believe he just said that…you can’t have dog’s growling at you…the dog is showing dominance and needs to be put in his place”…
My response to that is usually…
”Well not really…if you look at growling…it is better than biting, it is better than attacking and if you eliminate the growl..you just took out one of the steps in the scale.” Do you see where this is going?
If you take out one of the steps, the dog may jump to the next more severe step. The growling is a WARNING that there are ROOT ISSUES which need to be addressed. Rather than looking at the growling as a problem itself, look at the big picture, examine why the dog is growling, address that issue and the dog will not need to growl.
Get at the root cause and the “problem” will fix itself.
I look at dogs like Leo, like Rayne, like Chance…dogs that had these issues. They tried to eat me starting off. Now, they are some of my biggest fans. I love them dearly and they do me. More important, each of these dogs TRUST me. That was what each of them were missing at the initial meeting. Instead of focusing on the aggression, I accepted they were attempting to communicate their discomfort to me. I focused on this, worked at making them comfortable. I built trust. Once they trusted, the aggression disappeared.
Last week I did a one on one for a local Rescue that had a Shepard in foster care. There was a young child in the home. Everything was going well and most times things were perfect, however, the dog had started to growl at the child. This is every parent’s worst nightmare.
Fortunately the mom was open to working through the issues.
I visited the home, explained the above concept to the mom, set her up with a plan so she could start managing all interaction between the dog and her little girl. Not only manage, but make any interaction between the two really really enjoyable. Precautions were recommended, and discussion of how the situation must be controlled took place.
The results, I am happy to report, were almost instantaneous. Mom started sending pictures two days later of the dog initiating interaction with the little girl. The dog became much calmer when the little girl was around. These interactions were encouraged and heavily rewarded by both mom and her daughter which resulted in more interactions being initiated. Mom made sure her daughter was not being rude with the dog and the dog reacted accordingly. It was beautiful. Some of the pictures and videoI received is really inspiring.
Not once did mom correct the dog for growling. Not once did mom force the dog to interact with the child. Instead she focused on the positive. She focused on the reason the dog was growling, began addressing that and the growling stopped. No, they are not out of the woodwork yet. It is too soon for total trust to occur but the progress has been very positive.
As dog owners on a smaller scale, and as individuals in this world on a larger scale, we have to stop trying to compartmentalize issues. Instead we must look at underlying causes and examine a problem as a whole rather than the individual symptoms that pop up. If we force a shift in our thinking like that, a whole new world of positive change can open to us..whatever the world is in which you are living
As always, your comments are welcome