Let me apologize upfront for an anthropomorphic lapse in this podcast. For some it would be bad enough that I attributed—gasp!—thought processes to a dog. To have the dog verbalize those thoughts is a lapse that must be recognized as the grievous sin it is.
And so I do. BUT, and surely you knew there would be a but, the scenario I described and the outcome are legitimate. If we do communicate one message via our body language to our animals and prevent them from responding to that message the same way they would to a similar message that came from one of their own kind, we will put them in a conflict situation. At that point the animal’s physiological and behavioral flexibility and resiliency will determine the result. If the animal can absorb any stress created by the conflict, then we can say that the treatment worked. If not, the problem behavior will continue or, and the crux of this meandering, a completely different problem may arise as the animal attempts to dissipate the stress.
Doing so doesn’t require any great thought processes unique to us bigger-brained humans. On the other hand, if you told people who engaged in annoying behavior—such as foot-tapping, chain-smoking or twirling their hair—or those whose guts churned every time the boss asked them to do something that jeopardized their own well-being, I doubt they’d say is was just a knee-jerk response. My guess is that they would tell you exactly what kind of conflict the boss was creating for them and what thought about it.
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