When spring rolls around, I inevitably get into a clean-up fix-up mode. One of my vet school professors referred it as the modern human’s variation on the biological theme of nesting. My file cabinets with their bulging folders of materials amassed for past books and seminars remain a perennial target. This spring’s bout resurrected those related to my first book, The Weekend Dog, written more than 30 years ago. Flipping through all those articles and notes got me thinking about the weekend dog phenomenon. Has it changed since then?
The short answer to that is yes it has. But when change of any kind arises, a desire to understand why it happened, i.e. what motivated it, heads my list. Maybe my natural curiosity fuels this. Or maybe it’s my background in science. For sure it’s related to all the insights my wonderful clients have shared over the years. This month I pulled those thoughts together in an attempt to explore the human motivation that fueled the weekend dog phenomenon then and now.
Has the motivation changed? Again I would say yes. When I wrote the book, one key motivation fueled the bulk of the changes in the human-canine relationship and its effects on canine health, behavior, and the bond: guilt. Unlike most of the older women I knew back then, we female Boomers didn’t see keeping house and raising a family—that included the dog and other assorted pets—as our sole purpose in life. We wanted fulfilling careers in the “real” world in addition to all that. Oh, and along the way some of us fell into the trap of believing we had to be twice as good to be considered half as good in the working world. On the upside, this resulted in some very strong, capable women. On the downside, it didn’t protect us from the guilt we experienced when we discovered that we really couldn’t do it all, at least as far as the dog was concerned. Nor did men escape these effects.
When our motivation shifted, so did our perception of the family dog. Instead of perceiving the dog as just another one of the kids Mom trained and otherwise cared for full-time, we elevated (or so we thought) the dog to a treat that we working dog-owners relished during our nonworking hours. Consequently, we wanted to cram as many quality interactions and experiences with our dogs as possible into that time. Moreover and thanks to social learning, successive generations of working dog-owners adopted this same orientation. In that environment, the concept of all-positive training that (theoretically) made training fun for us and our dogs seemed a match made in heaven. And for a while this appeared to be the case.
But being motivated by guilt instead of knowledge of dogs as dogs wasn’t without its consequences. For one thing, it increased the distance between us and our dogs as beings with their own needs worthy of our respect and consideration. This then heralded the arrival of the current era in which people know less and less about normal dog behavior, and more about the activities they do with their dogs or any human needs their dogs fulfill for them. For another, it opened the door for other human emotions to fuel weekend dogs’ relationships with their people. And with each addition, the potential to further increase the distance between the real dog and the person increased too.
Alas and unlike laboratory studies, most weekend dogs and their people don’t live in controlled environments. In the past 30+ years, the pace of life and the stressors related to it increased dramatically for many. And as it did, the ability to cope decreased. When it did, feelings of vulnerability joined and sometimes replaced the guilt. Simultaneously, warm, fuzzy all-positive stories that usually ignored the canine half of the equation and instead touted all the positive health benefits our canine companions could offer us increasingly appeared in the media.
For a while human guilt and vulnerability shared equal billing as the primary motivators in the weekend dog relationship. But in retrospect, I believe the 9/11 attacks in 2001 caused human anxiety and fear to replace vulnerability and become the primary emotions in this country. The more anxious and fearful people became, the more they valued their dogs as physical and emotional protectors. Whereas the Era of Guilt was all about the dog and making life what we perceived as all-positive for the dog, the Era of Anxiety and Fear shifted the focus to expecting dogs to do everything in their power to make us feel physically and emotionally safe.
As our expectations of dogs changed, so did the dog population itself. When I wrote The Weekend Dog, most of the dogs I saw were mixed or purebred dogs of local origin. The remainder of the canine population came from a smattering of non-local sources. A few purebred puppies came from breeders in other states and fewer still came from breeders in other countries. Other dogs of all breeding moved into the area with their owners as the population became more mobile in general. The bulk of these human-canine moves were intra- or interstate; the smallest number came from other countries.
However, today in some parts of the country, the rarest pet dogs are mixes from long-established local breeding lines. That was a significant change in a relatively short period of time!
What lies ahead given the speed of this transition? I’d love to see the emergence of an Era of Balance, but I suspect that we need to experience an Era of Chaos first. (Some might argue we’re already in it.) While that may sound ominous, a period of resistance and uncertainly often precedes change because changing requires more energy than accepting the status quo. Consequently, it’s not uncommon for people to resist change until some crisis with their dogs or dogs in general occurs that makes change worthwhile. But even then, for weekend owners whose relationships with their dogs are fueled by guilt, fear and anxiety all held together by an all-positive gossamer bow, it can take a great deal of courage and commitment to risk the chaos of change to help their dogs.
But how to summon that courage and commitment when you’re scared? So often I see dogs who experience serious behavioral problems because their owners, usually inadvertently but sometimes deliberately, elevated the animals to positions as physical and emotional protectors beyond their dogs’ capacity. When this occurs, the most obvious way to help the dog means relieving the dog of that unnatural position and assuming it themselves. Over the years, I’ve discovered that the people most able to do that are those whose love of their dogs as dogs exceeds their fears. As the level of human anxiety has increased, it takes a greater love of and commitment to the dog to overcome that.
It’s impossible to write anything that compares past and present without thinking about what the human-weekend dog bond will look like 30+ years from now. Some studies suggest that the phenomenon may vanish because the traditional work week with its weekends will become the exception instead of the rule. If those surveys that concluded that millennials have less interest in owning dogs than their parents prove correct, the number of households that include a dog exposed to the weekend dog phenomenon also may become proportionately smaller. Or finding suitable dogs and caring for them properly may become too difficult, time-consuming, or expensive for more people as time goes on. Or those who work could decide that relationships with other people forged and maintained via technology that can be turned on or off at will are more rewarding than those with dogs. Or perhaps as in other parts of the world, the ability to rent clean, well-behaved dogs when the mood for canine companionship strikes will become a reality and negate the weekend dog phenomenon.
Or none of the above and something that never occurred to any of us at all.
The short answer to that is yes it has. But when change of any kind arises, a desire to understand why it happened, i.e. what motivated it, heads my list. Maybe my natural curiosity fuels this. Or maybe it’s my background in science. For sure it’s related to all the insights my wonderful clients have shared over the years. This month I pulled those thoughts together in an attempt to explore the human motivation that fueled the weekend dog phenomenon then and now.
Has the motivation changed? Again I would say yes. When I wrote the book, one key motivation fueled the bulk of the changes in the human-canine relationship and its effects on canine health, behavior, and the bond: guilt. Unlike most of the older women I knew back then, we female Boomers didn’t see keeping house and raising a family—that included the dog and other assorted pets—as our sole purpose in life. We wanted fulfilling careers in the “real” world in addition to all that. Oh, and along the way some of us fell into the trap of believing we had to be twice as good to be considered half as good in the working world. On the upside, this resulted in some very strong, capable women. On the downside, it didn’t protect us from the guilt we experienced when we discovered that we really couldn’t do it all, at least as far as the dog was concerned. Nor did men escape these effects.
When our motivation shifted, so did our perception of the family dog. Instead of perceiving the dog as just another one of the kids Mom trained and otherwise cared for full-time, we elevated (or so we thought) the dog to a treat that we working dog-owners relished during our nonworking hours. Consequently, we wanted to cram as many quality interactions and experiences with our dogs as possible into that time. Moreover and thanks to social learning, successive generations of working dog-owners adopted this same orientation. In that environment, the concept of all-positive training that (theoretically) made training fun for us and our dogs seemed a match made in heaven. And for a while this appeared to be the case.
But being motivated by guilt instead of knowledge of dogs as dogs wasn’t without its consequences. For one thing, it increased the distance between us and our dogs as beings with their own needs worthy of our respect and consideration. This then heralded the arrival of the current era in which people know less and less about normal dog behavior, and more about the activities they do with their dogs or any human needs their dogs fulfill for them. For another, it opened the door for other human emotions to fuel weekend dogs’ relationships with their people. And with each addition, the potential to further increase the distance between the real dog and the person increased too.
Alas and unlike laboratory studies, most weekend dogs and their people don’t live in controlled environments. In the past 30+ years, the pace of life and the stressors related to it increased dramatically for many. And as it did, the ability to cope decreased. When it did, feelings of vulnerability joined and sometimes replaced the guilt. Simultaneously, warm, fuzzy all-positive stories that usually ignored the canine half of the equation and instead touted all the positive health benefits our canine companions could offer us increasingly appeared in the media.
For a while human guilt and vulnerability shared equal billing as the primary motivators in the weekend dog relationship. But in retrospect, I believe the 9/11 attacks in 2001 caused human anxiety and fear to replace vulnerability and become the primary emotions in this country. The more anxious and fearful people became, the more they valued their dogs as physical and emotional protectors. Whereas the Era of Guilt was all about the dog and making life what we perceived as all-positive for the dog, the Era of Anxiety and Fear shifted the focus to expecting dogs to do everything in their power to make us feel physically and emotionally safe.
As our expectations of dogs changed, so did the dog population itself. When I wrote The Weekend Dog, most of the dogs I saw were mixed or purebred dogs of local origin. The remainder of the canine population came from a smattering of non-local sources. A few purebred puppies came from breeders in other states and fewer still came from breeders in other countries. Other dogs of all breeding moved into the area with their owners as the population became more mobile in general. The bulk of these human-canine moves were intra- or interstate; the smallest number came from other countries.
However, today in some parts of the country, the rarest pet dogs are mixes from long-established local breeding lines. That was a significant change in a relatively short period of time!
What lies ahead given the speed of this transition? I’d love to see the emergence of an Era of Balance, but I suspect that we need to experience an Era of Chaos first. (Some might argue we’re already in it.) While that may sound ominous, a period of resistance and uncertainly often precedes change because changing requires more energy than accepting the status quo. Consequently, it’s not uncommon for people to resist change until some crisis with their dogs or dogs in general occurs that makes change worthwhile. But even then, for weekend owners whose relationships with their dogs are fueled by guilt, fear and anxiety all held together by an all-positive gossamer bow, it can take a great deal of courage and commitment to risk the chaos of change to help their dogs.
But how to summon that courage and commitment when you’re scared? So often I see dogs who experience serious behavioral problems because their owners, usually inadvertently but sometimes deliberately, elevated the animals to positions as physical and emotional protectors beyond their dogs’ capacity. When this occurs, the most obvious way to help the dog means relieving the dog of that unnatural position and assuming it themselves. Over the years, I’ve discovered that the people most able to do that are those whose love of their dogs as dogs exceeds their fears. As the level of human anxiety has increased, it takes a greater love of and commitment to the dog to overcome that.
It’s impossible to write anything that compares past and present without thinking about what the human-weekend dog bond will look like 30+ years from now. Some studies suggest that the phenomenon may vanish because the traditional work week with its weekends will become the exception instead of the rule. If those surveys that concluded that millennials have less interest in owning dogs than their parents prove correct, the number of households that include a dog exposed to the weekend dog phenomenon also may become proportionately smaller. Or finding suitable dogs and caring for them properly may become too difficult, time-consuming, or expensive for more people as time goes on. Or those who work could decide that relationships with other people forged and maintained via technology that can be turned on or off at will are more rewarding than those with dogs. Or perhaps as in other parts of the world, the ability to rent clean, well-behaved dogs when the mood for canine companionship strikes will become a reality and negate the weekend dog phenomenon.
Or none of the above and something that never occurred to any of us at all.