A website I often recommend to clients who are struggling to shed their reactivity in a favor of a more canine-calming one are the notes of a wildlife biologist describing her observations of an alpha female wolf training two generations of younger animals. When you read this, notice how subtle the communications are, and how much the alpha wolf apparently communicates while seeming to do nothing at all. Then compare this to how the average person communicates with his or her pets. It truly is amazing!
Here is another story showing that dogs too have more reasoning power than generally assumed and are able to communicate their thinking to us if we just pay attention. I live in a split level house in a rural area with a large partially wooded backyard. I had adopted a male stray cat “Tulip” to be a house mate to my beagle “Jennie”. After about four days of keeping the cat inside to get acquainted with me and the dog, I let Tulip venture outside. He promptly disappeared. I went out frequently to call him and left food and water for him in the open garage. Occasionally I heard Jennie bark somewhere in the backyard but did not pay much attention to it, in fact was a bit annoyed that her barking would frighten the cat off if he was still in the neighborhood. After several days of this Jennie came in through the porch door and walked across the living room looking back over her shoulder at me. It was unmistable that she wanted me to follow her. She walked down the stairs to the front door, waited for me to let her out and then silently walked across the yard to a tree. She looked up, seeming to say “here”, and there was Tulip. It became clear to me that Jennie, realizing that I was looking for the cat, had barked each time when she saw the cat and when this had no effect, had decided to try to lead me directly to him.
Experiences like this remind me that, regardless how some may still train animals based on a mechanistic model that maintains that they’re (the animals, not the people using these methods, although sometimes I wonder..)incapable of either thought nor emotion, anyone who pays attention to their animals will realize that this isn’t true. It’s also interesting to note that sometimes our animals have far more patience when it comes to getting a message across to us than we do when we want to get a message across to them. 🙂