eThoughts : Dogs and their People

Since I’m on a roll here, let’s take a look at having pets–especially dogs.

More than 21 years ago I purchased some land in a rural area because it represented peace and quiet. Mostly it was. Property values took over 20 years to go up, but I did not buy for an investment, I bought for space and peace.

In the last 18 months housing has been hot, and so has this little rural enclave. The result is that the ecology of space and peace has been disrupted, mostly by dogs–at least on the surface of it.

Move to the country and get a dog seems to be the order of the day out here. Hey, it’s the country, better get five or six of them. Now that you have them, and they have a space and each other, simply provide food and water. Dogs never had it so good.

Yep. Except that is not how dogs work. Dogs do not like uncertainty. They are programmed to find the holes in the relationship fabric and assert themselves. In a dog world, comfort is knowing the holes are filled. This is the way of it as I understand it. It is the hierarchy of a dog’s world, it is the way they find their place.

If no one is paying attention, the dogs don’t get attention. And they get confused. This prompts them to push at the boundaries to become unconfused. They need to know who’s in charge. They need to know if being in charge is up to them. And they are relentless about it–almost constantly assessing the situation to see where the lines of demarcation are.

People are not so good at seeing this. Mostly, it seems to me that people believe if they provide the basic staples like food, water, and shelter, and maybe a space for the dog to romp, and a little attention (hey, they’re cute when they’re puppies, right?), including some idea of training (which is somehow supposed to last without ever reviewing it), then the dog is good to go.

If the dog is not good, and the owner happens to notice, a simple command will work, right?

Right. Until the dog notices no one is paying attention, or that any attention is only temporary (just wait and the human stop sign will disperse).

Dogs require an enormous amount of attention. Humans don’t have that kind of attention for the most part–we have enough trouble keeping up with our children or our relationships with other humans.

The result of this inattention around here is that the neighborhood has turned into a kennel. The dogs bark, and they bark, and they bark. They bark at each other’s barking. They bark at the night. They bark because they’re bored (I found one neighbor’s dog just sitting there and barking–a rhythmic barking that had been going on for over two hours). They bark because no one pays attention.

Oh sure, they sometimes bark at all of the coyotes or another dog or a person passing by. But that’s the kind of barking that stops. That kind of barking is fine. The problem is the ongoing, rhythmic barking, like an autistic child endlessly engaging in some small repetitious act.

Maybe the idea of dogs is to have a friend–they’ll love you no matter what. That’s a great reason to have a dog–it’ll be there when you need it.

My position is that we can have dogs and we can have peace. But the neighbors have almost always been startled that their dogs are barking for hours. But they want their dogs to bark they say, so they’ll know if an intruder is out and about. Sure–but apparently the owners are too asleep to hear them bark in the first place (maybe a lot of alcohol is involved). That’s not peace, it’s inattention.

All right, it’s a mess. And to be sure, I’ve gotten way more cooperation then I would have expected. But then again, I didn’t expect much.

Still the neighbors just don’t seem to get it. It seems as though animals, and dogs in particular, are nothing more than living knick-knacks. I’ve got one neighbor who has now been cited for nuisance dogs (continual barking) and kennel violations (there’s 10 dogs on the property!).

Perhaps attention is just too much. And ownership of something, anything, is a status symbol. Not to mention the status and illusion of having control. If the dog barks and you tell it to shut up even once a month, and it does, well, the owner believes they’ve asserted their alpha-leaderness.

Meanwhile, the dogs do what dogs do–look for certainty in an uncertain world and attention in an attention-deprived world.

Now that I think of it, maybe that’s what their “owners” are up to.

Perhaps they should trade off every once in a while–put the dogs inside and the humans out. Since the “owners” are asleep anyway, the rest of us, including the dogs, would probably get a bit more rest.

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