Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (33 page)

relationship existed between client and dog so that
growling wasn't necessary, it's good to know that the dog is
still willing to offer warnings, giving us a chance to change
our behavior. He's letting us know just where the
tricky spots are, net simply attacking.
"Be careful," he tells us, "you are treading on
thin ice." Though their method of communicating may
sometimes be alarm ing if we do not understand that
growls and snaps are valuable messages, I am grateful that dogs
keep trying.
In any relationship, feedback (even unwelcome
feedback that indicates great frustration and anger)
is an opportunity to examine the underlying problem and
work to find a resolution. To ignore what others
tell us about their frustration or anger or fear is
emotionally cruel and will eventually erode
relationships at a very deep level. Dogs who do
not warn but bite are difficult on many levels.
Be grateful for and do not punish growls,
but do work to resolve whatever has prompted the
growl. Punishing or suppressing a growl does not
change the underlying feeling, no more than biting back
"Damn!" in the presence of delicate
Aunt Tillie changes the feeling that prompted
it. Punished into silence, the dog learns to not give
you that very important warning signal. Though it may
be more surprising to us when he bites "without warning,"
we forget that we've told him we don't want
to hear any warnings!
A growl can simply be a trigger for us to indulge in
our own worst fears, or it can be an important
signal and an opportunity for greater understanding. We
have to be willing to accept that not all of our dog's
communications will be happy and pleasant messages;
a dog may need to tell us he is afraid or
hurting or angry. If we turn a deaf ear
to all but what we want to hear, we are going to miss
opportunities to help our dogs resolve or
learn to handle whatever it is that has frightened, hurt,
irritated or angered him. If, as is far too
common, we actually punish the dog for these
communications, we will seriously undermine the
relationship. No relationship can thrive when
communication is blocked.

listening
When we seek understanding of a dog's behavior-and
particularly what we consider to be aggressive

behavior-we cannot lose sight of the fact that
behavior is communication, and communication does not
occur in a vacuum. It is aimed at someone for some
reason, and the full story is unimportant to our
understanding and to our ultimate decision of how best
to respond.
Understanding that aggression is a form of communication does
Not mean that the behavior is acceptable, no more than a child
slugging his brother out of frustration or an adult
yelling at the bank clerk because a check was bounced
is acceptable behavior. It does mean that we
make the effort to look for the message behind the
behavior. A dog who growls at a veterinarian
trying to examine painfully infected ears is quite
different from the dog who growls at someone for making
eye contact with him. A dog who attacks and
kills a rabbit is in a different category from the
dog who attacks and maims a child. A dog who
bites a burglar who has broken into our home is
quite different from the dog who bites visiting Aunt
Tillie when she stands up to totter off to the powder
room. A dog who acts aggressively on our
behalf, scaring off a would-be attacker or thief
is considered a hero; biting the hand that feeds
you is the act of a scoundrel.
When we understand the motivation behind the behavior, when
we can see what the dog was trying to communicate, when
we can see the situation from the dog's perspective,
we are better able to intelligently assess and
humanely correct the problem.
Whether with another human or with an animal,
relationships can reach new levels of understanding and
intimacy only when we learn to listen for the real
message behind the behavior rather than simply reacting
to it ourselves. If your closest friend suddenly began
yelling and punching you, how would you respond? I'd be
shocked, and would definitely take care to keep myself
safe. Depending on my experience with yelling and
screaming people and this person in particular, I might
wisely choose to leave, fearing that I will be hurt.
If I don't have trust in my friend and believe she
must have good reason for acting this way, I might take
her behavior very personally and react emotionally,
yelling back and maybe taking a swing or two
myself. My reaction does nothing to resolve the
situation-reactions rarely resolve anything but can
keep us alive in a threatening moment, which is
precisely what they were designed to do. When she

installed the fight-or-flight response,
Mother Nature did not intend this as a mechanism by which
deep, intimate relationships might be developed;
she was just making sure that we'd live long enough to enjoy
such connections. It's a good basic rule that if
you're reacting, you're not connecting.
My reaction does not arise from a compassionate
interest in under-
standing why my friend might be acting this way; it is
simply based on the fear or anger her behavior
has now generated within me. This creates a vicious
circle of reaction: yelling and punching (prompted
by a yet- undetermined internal state in my friend),
met by my reaction (prompted by my fear, which leads
me to yell and punch), which is in turn met by yet
another reaction (my friend is now reacting to my
yelling and punching as well as the original, underlying
cause). This vicious cycle is characteristic of
immature human relationships, but sadly
typical of animalsthuman relationships as well.
If I am mature enough to understand that not all behavior
Directed at me is about me, I am then in an even better place
to carefully search for the real message behind the
behavior.
This book cannot and does not address specific
treatments or resolutions for aggressive
behavior. What it intends to do is place
aggressive behavior within the context of the
dogsthuman relationship and open the reader's mind (and
heart) to the understanding of aggression as communication. I
also intend to raise the caution flag in every reader's
head-
any aggressive behavior is a warning that needs
to be heeded and given careful consideration.
Even in the best of cases where there is no real
problem except that we have misinterpreted a dog's
innocent behavior as aggressive, this is a sign
that the relationship is not built on deep, intimate
understanding; we need to know more so that we can accurately
understand what our dogs have to say. Aggressive
behavior may be a warning that something is terribly
wrong in the relationship, a warning that we need
to rebalance the relative status between ourselves and our
dogs and provide clear, fair leadership.

Aggression may also warn us that something is
wrong within the dog, that he is experiencing fear or
anxiety or pain and that he needs our help. In a
loving relationship, we cannot turn away from such
warnings; we must respond, hopefully from a deep
desire to resolve whatever troubles the waters,
and-at the very least-from a recognition that in taking a
dog into our lives, we have accepted the
responsibility to answer his needs.
Quite understandably, within the context of our relationships with
dogs, we tend to take things rather personally. It's
one thing to read an academic discussion of aggression;
it's something else altogether when
our dog growls at us.
We are rarely grateful for this communication.
"Well, my goodness, Jethro. Thank you for that
timely comment on my behavior or gestures, which may
have threatened you in some way. I shall examine what I
may have done to provoke that and study on how best
to resolve this matter. I deeply appreciate
your growl, which I understand is your attempt
to resolve the perceived conflict between you and me." When
we learn to value the communication behind a
dog's growl or snarl or snap, we move
closer to an understanding of that dog and, quite often, an
understanding of ourselves.

what Timmy never did to lassie
Untii we have the courage to recognize cruelty
for what it is . . . whether its victim is human
or animal. . . we cannot expect things to be much
better in this world.
rachel carson
VlCKI IS UPSET THAT HER DOG
SALTY IS DIGGING HOLES in the yard.
Looking at the hole her dog has dug, she has
an idea. She grabs a spade and a shovel and
makes Salty's hole larger, more perfectly
round. When it's just perfect, Vicki dances a jig
of delight and, still dancing, uses the garden hose
to fill the hole and then holds Salty's head
underwater. She's surprised when Salty struggles
to free herself, and tells the dog, "But I thought you
loved hole digging!" Every day for three weeks,
Vicki improves Salty's new holes or
redigs the old ones and fills them with water and
holds her dog's head underwater.

Vicki exhibits no apparent remorse
whatsoever for her actions. In fact, she writes
about it in some detail, noting that she "has this
crazy, incurable response to the sight of a hole."
The only way to stop her from doing this to Salty is,
she says, to "keep me away from holes." She
notes that Salty is no longer digging holes in the
yard and is nervous even when she sees a hole out in
the woods, a hole she did not dig.
How do we respond to Vicki and her treatment of
animals? If Vicki were a child, we might be
urging all involved to get her professional help.
While not all children who abuse animals go on
to commit violent crimes, such behavior is a red
flag of warning that this is a child who needs help, and
most children who abuse animals are also victims of
abuse themselves. But Vicki is not a child. She is
an adult, and a dog trainer who offers to help people
discover the "poetry in obedience."

what Timmy never. did to lassie

She was a very real person, the late Vicki
Hearne, dog trainer, author, professor and
poet, and the actions described above are taken
directly from her own words in her
critically acclaimed 1986 book,
Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name.
Far from being censured or sent into therapy, Hearne was
lauded for her beautifully written
philosophical exploration of our relationship with
animals. How is it that Hearne's behavior is
acceptable? Is it merely because she is not a child?
Most readers would be appalled if a child did to a
dog what Hearne did to Salty, yet are
strangely silent when an adult-and particularly a
trainer, and expert
does the same thing. Evidently, somehow, at some
point, children become old enough to practice other ways
of dealing with their old pal Fido, ways that are
unmistakably not nice. Is this a rite de
passage that goes unremarked or uncelebrated but
is nonetheless real? Just where is that point where we no
longer need to be nice to the doggy? If maturity
entitles us to treat animals in such ways, where
exactly on our development path do we take the
turn that leads to this ugly landscape devoid of a
consistent compassion?

Somehow, there is a socially acceptable
progression from being horrified by the treatment of
Black Beauty to this question: "How hard do you hit the
dog? A good general rule is that if you did not
get a response, a yelp or other sign, after the
first hit, it wasn't hard enough." Who on earth would
buy such a book for their children? We would be horrified
to discover such advice included in a 4-H
manual or as part of a national "Be Kind
to Animals Week" program. If any teacher
proposed to include such a notion in our children's
curriculum, the resulting outrage would probably
both curl and gray the school board's
collective hair. And yet, many adults have bought
the book from which I took the "how hard do you hit the
dog?" quote-
How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend
by the Monks of New Skete, first published
by Little, Brown in 1978 and still on the shelves of
nearly every bookstore in the United States. It
is a title that answers the question of how hard to hit the
dog, but also talks about the spiritual nature of the
dogsthuman relationship. Strange bedfellows, these
two topics-or so it seems to me, though I am
well aware of the many justifications and rationales for not
"sparing the rod."
In Spare the Child,
historian Philip Greven offers a startling
study of
both the roots and consequences of corporal
punishment of children in America. Reading Greven's
work, I was struck with a tremendous wave of sadness
for the violence woven through so many of our most intimate
human relationships. Little wonder then that we may,
without thinking or with full acceptance, also weave this
ugly thread through the fabric of our relationships with
animals. But this is an old thread, handed down from
generation to generation, and in taking hold of the life cloth
we are given as children, we may not realize that among
the bright and beautiful threads, there lurks a darker
one. We can cut this thread, and remove it from the
tapestry of our lives, but first, we must tease it out
from where it is woven in and through.
the emperor's new career
Adam's Task
was not lightweight reading, and it's reasonable
to assume that reviewers and readers were intelligent
people. And yet the jarring image of a woman holding her
dog's head in a hole filled with water somehow

glided by without leaving an outraged cry of
disgust in its wake. Blinded by lofty prose and
philosophical contemplation, deft quoting of
Nietzche, Vonnegut, Auden, Xenophon and
Shakespeare, readers evidently lost sight of the
real dog in the real moment when a real person
perpetrated a real cruelty. Or perhaps the ugly
contradiction was noticed, but no one raised a
voice in protest. I hope not; I'd prefer
to think that readers simply were moving through page after
page in dull, unthinking incomprehension. While
unthinking acceptance is dismaying, it can't hold a
candle against the ugly darkness of soul involved in
observing inhumane behavior and saying nothing.
Forget the glistening, polished phrases. For a
moment, narrow your view to see only this: the dog.
See the dog standing beside her, even helping her dig.
The dog is a bit bewildered by but pleased to join in
the dancing jig Hearne does as she digs the hole
farther. See the dog's tail wagging, and the questioning but
happy look on the dog's face as she trots
along behind Vicki as the garden hose is dragged to the
hole. See the dog watching with curiosity and
interest as the water splashes into the hole, swirling,
churning the freshly dug dirt into a minute muddy
pond that rises toward the dog and the woman who stands
at its edge. See the dog's surprise when the
woman grabs her and pushes the dog's head into the
hole where the water is still chasing itself around. See the
reflexive arching of the dog's body upward, away
from the shock of the cold muddy water that has covered
her head, splashing into her ears and up into her
surprised nostrils before survival instincts take
over and stop the intake of breath. When the dog
fights free and looks into the woman's eyes,
tell me what you see in the dog-trust? joy? the
poetry that Hearne tells the reader exists in the
dog's soul?
I think we've had our blinders on for a long, long
time.
It would be almost a welcome thing to be able to write
about Vicki Hearne as some sort of depraved
monster, a singularly disturbed individual whose
philosophy is so far from that of the average person as
to make it nearly impossible for us to fathom the world in
which she lives. If Hearne were a bizarre,
inexplicable blip in our society, one of the
unusual fringe people so far out that they barely even
appear on the societal radar, we might more