Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (7 page)

A year later, I received a Christmas
card with a photo of Hobbs that I treasure as a
reminder of our wonderful dance. To anyone who does
not know the whole story, it seems an
insignificant though cute picture of a
black-and-white dog perched in a pet store
Santa's lap. But I remember the first steps that
started Hobbs and his owner on the journey to that happy
moment, just as I remember my own journey that led
me to this place, with this dog, and this dance.
listening for the Music
Learning to find the dance that is possible within a
relationship is not simply a matter of hope or
desire. It is a journey of a lifetime. In
order to develop profound and intimate relationships
with animals, we begin with a shift in our awareness.
When we open ourselves to believe that the dance exists, that
there is new music that our souls might dance to,
we have taken that first, important step. From that moment
on, moving forward in our journey means that we need
to learn new ways of thinking and behaving while at the
same time we sort through, question and perhaps discard the old
beliefs that once shaped our thinking and
informed our actions. Philosophically speaking, in
opening ourselves to new possibilities, we put on
our dancing shoes.
More than a little stands between us and the joy of mutual
connection. The scientific approach so favored by the
Western mind insists that we view the dog as an
intelligent creature whose behavior is merely the
result of either instinct or conditioned responses (like
Pavlov's dogs drooling in response to a
bell). There is a powerful taboo that insists we not
anthropomorphize, or assign human features
or characteristics to something nonhuman like a dog. While
appreciative of the dangers of
anthropomorphizing, I have never understood why the
Western mind works so hard to maintain this distance between us
and the natural world. I have often wondered, How am
I made any less human or my dog any
less canine if I am willing to grant that
animals feel pain, joy, grief, love,
anger, loyalty and more? Respected
anthropologist Franz de Waal, writing in
Natural History Magazine,
points out that this taboo is a terribly lopsided
one. While it is acceptable to use words like
enemy, hate and rage
when describing animal behavior, it is not
acceptable to say friend, love or grief.
While we are all too willing to share the uglier
side of emotional life with the animals, we'd like
to reserve the really good stuff for ourselves. Even the
rules of correct grammar dictate that it is
never an animal who behaves but rather an animal
that behaves-a rule that is deliberately broken
throughout this book to continually underline the idea that a dog
is someone who, not something that.
We hold ourselves above them as if something dreadful
might happen if we allow ourselves to embrace the
notion that perhaps the dog lying at our feet chewing on
a tennis ball is also a sentient being with feelings
and emotions and thoughts and humor and language and
loves and fears and creativity, and we may choke
hard on the idea of the dog as a spiritual being.
Of course, that something dreadful is just this: If our
dogs do feel and think and reason (though not as
incomplete versions of us but as fully splendid
versions of themselves), then we'd best think long and hard
about how we've been treating man's best friend.
To be sure, there is a very real danger when we see
our dogs as merely little people in fur coats. When we
do this, we cannot see past our projections to the real
animal that stands before us. Not only does this
inevitably limit the full expression of that
animal's life, it also under
mines our relationship with that animal. When we cannot
see an animal or anyone as they really are, we
are bound to be disappointed. We are also bound to act
in cruel ways. Think of the grief created by the mother
who sees her son as she chooses to see him-a
future doctor-when the reality is that her son
wants to be a baker. Our dogs cannot be little people in
fur coats, nor should they be asked to be. The
glory of any relationship is not in finding ways
to shape the other to suit our needs, but rather in
celebrating the fullness of who they are.
In accepting the view of the dog as an

attractively packaged, user- friendly
blend of instinct and conditioned responses, we put
on blinders that work to exclude anything that does not
fit neatly within that explanatory framework or that
cannot be "proven" via scientific method. Even the
great scientist Albert Einstein pointed out,
"Everything that can be counted doesn't necessarily
count; everything that counts can't necessarily be
counted."
If we cling to a stubbornly Western notion of
animals, we may deny the mystery and beauty of
what we experience in our daily lives with
animals and build barriers that keep us from what is
possible in deeper levels of relationship. It is
sobering to remember that until relatively
recently, the mute or deaf among us were considered
inferior in countless ways simply because they could not
share the largely verbal language that we use.
What makes Helen Keller's story so timelessly
compelling is that one person, Anne Sullivan, was
able to reach past the known and embrace the possibility
that within the damaged physical shell of a blind, deaf and
mute child, there was nonetheless a mind and a heart as
fully human as her own. In that simple but
profound perceptual shift, Anne Sullivan was
indeed a miracle worker who opened the
floodgates of possibility. To explore the
possibilities, we must be willing to shift our
view to include dogs as thinking, feeling beings who-
while vastly different from us-are very much like us in many
ways. In the shift to a view of the dog as a thinking,
feeling being, we open floodgates of our own.
The technicalities and mechanics of behavior and
training are useful and valuable to our understanding of
dogs, and I urge all readers to educate themselves
continually. As Goethe noted, "There is nothing more
frightful than ignorance in action." Limited knowledge
means limited
choices and limited expression. Every artist, every
craftsman, every practitioner of an art (such as
animal training) strives to master the tools of their
trade for one reason: to allow the full, clear
expression of their heart to shine through. To long
to express one thing but actually create another,
lesser or incomplete thing is a terrible thing to the
soul.
Still, it is good to balance knowledge with the reminder that the
Western mind's rigidly scientific approach
to animals is a recent development in the long
history of man and dog. Long before learning theories
and jargon such as positive reinforcement or
stimulus control
crept into the world of dog training, long before Skinner
ran a single rat through a maze, men and dogs had
found ways to dance together. Science cannot explain the
beauty and mysteries that deeply move us. It cannot
explain the power of a dog's head laid on our
knee, or why a man might lay down his life for a
friend, or even why we love as we do. Nonetheless,
even scientists fall in love, and it is said that some
even talk to their dogs.
An intellectual understanding of canine psychology,
behavior, learning theories and more is helpful and
sometimes necessary. By degrees, our knowledge combines with what
our hearts tell us, and we move forward in our
search for a way to dance with our dogs. To learn to dance
with a dog or any other being, the desire must come from
within, from your heart. In our search for deeper, more
meaningful relationships, we must be careful
to recognize that while knowledge is helpful, it can also be
limiting, serving to block our view of what is
possible, weighing us down so that we cannot move
lightly without stumbling. A dancer who concentrates
on technicalities may forget to hear the
music.

on the way to the dance
As already noted, finding your way to the dance is not
simply a matter of making the right turn somewhere in
childhood or when you first acquire a dog. In one
way or another, and most often without meaning to, we
will stumble against the realization that there are levels of
relationship. This is something we already know from our
human experience. From the intense bond of parent-child
to the very casual one of, say, that with your local dry
cleaner, we understand that there is a wide range of
possibilities encompassed by the word
relationship.
As we mature and learn more about ourselves and develop
greater awareness, we come to understand that even within a single
relationship, there are levels, beautifully
explained by Stephen Sloane in his brilliant
essay "Spirit of Harmony," which appeared in
Equus
magazine in July 1995.
The first level is what Sloane calls the
"mechanical" or technical level of
relationship. At this level, the relationship
between man and dog is a matter of mechanics: You
apply the stimulus, the dog responds. The
relative simplicity of this level is best
exemplified by Gary Larson's cartoon showing two
amoebas, one complaining to the other, "It's always the
same old thing-stimulus, response, stimulus,
response." Though simplistic when placed in the
context of a relationship, this mechanical approach can
be used to train an animal to perform quite complex
tasks. Problems are solved mechanically, often
through the use offeree. If the dog won't do x, y
or z, you make him. The dog won't sit? Push
down on his rear and pull up on his collar until
he does sit. The puppy bucks and pulls when the
collar and leash are put on? Tie him to a
doorknob and let him fight it out there.
Recipes are not only possible but quite popular at
this level. To be sure, if the recipe is a good
one, a large percentage of dogs will respond
nicely, especially when such a recipe is
applied by an expert hand. With a high degree of
skill and a thorough understanding of learning principles,
a trainer may never move past this purely
technical level yet still be very successful
(assuming that success is measured solely
by the animal responding in the desired way). It
is also possible to be technically proficient and
yet fail at a deep, soulful level. Notable
in its absence at this level is a sense of
partnership-the animal is little more than a living,
breathing machine, though he may be taken care of
diligently. Technical proficiency is a
dispassionate thing, though it may be admired for what it
is-competent workmanship. My view of
relationships is that they are living works of art. And so
when I consider the purely mechanical as the basis
for a relationship, what rings true are the same four
words considered the most damning commentary on any work of
art: "It has no heart."
The leap from the mechanical level to the next
level, what Sloane calls the "motivational"
or psychological level, is a fairly easy
one, requiring only that you become curious about why an animal
will or will not do something. Motivation is defined as "the
psychological feature that arouses an organism
to action." In trying to understand what motivates the
dog, you begin to learn more about him. At the
mechanical level, the question is how to make
the dog do what you want him to do. At the
motivational level of relationship, you are trying
to figure out how you can make the dog
want to do
what you want him to do. The trick is to discover in
what way (or ways) your dog is motivated
to act as you'd like him to. There are many ways
to motivate a dog: food rewards, toys,
play, freedom, praise, attention.
That sounds good and pleasant, doesn't it? When we
think of motivational,
we often make this word synonymous in our minds with a
pleasant, happy approach. But there are other,
darker ways to motivate. Waving cash in someone's
face may be a good way to motivate them (if cash
is a meaningful reward for them); waving a gun in their
face is also motivational. A dog may be
motivated pleasurably or through pain, fear and
deprivation. Pain is delivered in any number of
ways: collar "corrections," remote-control
shock collars and, of course, the human hand. Fear
is another great motivator, and it is possible
to make a dog more afraid of one thing than another.
For example, a dog may break his sit
stay because he's afraid of being left by his owner.
If the owner dashes back, shouting imprecations, and
shakes the dog to "correct" him, the dog can
quickly learn to be more afraid of the consequences of
getting up than of being left behind. Deprivation of
food, social interaction and even water are also
used in dog training. Though depriving a dog of
water is rare, social deprivation is not. A
hungry, thirsty or lonely dog is "highly
motivated" to please the person who controls these
critical resources. Take great care to find out
what the motivation actually is when someone claims
to be a motivational trainer, and be sure to carefully
consider just how your dog is being motivated in any
situation.
It is possible to progress no further than the
motivational phase and have a good relationship with a
dog, especially if there are no real conflicts and the
level of achievement is agreeable to the trainer.
If through motivation you can get where you want to go, why
go any further? Understanding how to motivate a dog
(through pleasant or unpleasant means) can result
in successful training, though not always in a great
relationship. If the motivation used is largely
positive (i.e., reward-based training), it is
also possible to be quite humane.
Many training problems can be resolved when the training
shifts to a purely motivational level. But not
all problems will yield to a romping game of ball
or a fistful of tasty treats. While Wendy was
able to improve much of Chance's performance in training
when she incorporated food rewards, his bolting
behavior could not be altered by this approach. And as
Chance proved, new problems may arise from the
training technique itself if pain, fear, and/or
deprivation are used as motivation. While the
motivational level offered Wendy some answers, there
were other questions that could not be satisfied because the answers
did not lie in technique but in the dynamics of
two hearts in relationship. Like Wendy, many dog
lovers go just this far and, failing to find the answers they
long for, assume that there is nowhere else to go. As
Wendy nearly did, many resign themselves to making the
best of what they have been able to achieve.
The motivational or psychological level is where
I got stuck as a trainer for so many years. It was
easy enough to do, especially when the majority of dogs
I worked with were successful and happy in their
training. Two things kept me searching for something more.
The first was that I knew something more was possible. There was
no denying the beauty and joy of what I experienced
with my animals. Though I did not yet know of
Sloane's essay on levels of relationship,
what I was experiencing in those lovely moments was the
third level, and I wanted more of that experience. The
other driving force of my search for more (that indefinable
thing!) were the dogs that I could not reach and the dogs who
only partially succeeded. While it would have been easy
to blame the dogs or their owners for the failures or
incomplete successes, it would not have been honest or
fair. Nor would I have been motivated to continue
my search. The sense that I could help these dogs if
only I knew another way nagged at my heart,
and it still does. If I could go back in time and bring
with me what I have learned, I would go to these dogs and
apologize for what I did not know, and ask for a
chance to try again.
What I found that cold morning in Maryland as I
watched a woman and a horse was what I wanted: the
dance. The true dance of relationship is possible
only at the third level, what Sloane terms the
"spiritual" level. Here, the focus shifts from how
to make the dog do something or how to make the dog
want to do something, and the question becomes, "How do
we accomplish this together?" Such a simple question, but to even
ask it, we have to make a profound shift within ourselves.
Remember the trainer's advice to me? "Learn
to train without ego." Moving to this third level, the
spiritual level, requires that we are willing to set
aside our egos and let the relationship between us and the
animal take center stage. The focus is no
longer solely on the dog, but on the partnership between
us, and on us as partners in this dance. At times, I
think of this level as the Snow White phase, because
once you reach it, you spend a lot of time saying,
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall. . . This
level requires a willingness to look honestly at
ourselves and at our motivations comand to look again and again.
It is not always a pretty picture we see before
us. Staring at the uglier wrinkles in your soul,
you'll realize that some hard work with fresh crayons
is called for, because the map of the world that you've lived
by is going to need to be redrawn. (i'll concede that
perhaps your map needs only minor revisions; mine
has needed entire new editions on a regular
basis.) It is not easy work, but this is
where the dance truly begins. I do not know if it's
possible to live completely at this level, but I
hope so. I keep trying, mirror and crayons
at the ready.
While the three levels seem clearly defined on
paper, in practice there are rarely such crisp
distinctions; many of us drift between all three, though
we will spend a majority of our time operating at one
level or another. For many readers, there will be a
shock of joyful, excited recognition when reading
about the third level-"I've been there!" It is the
magic of connection that we experience with animals, the
moments that we cannot explain or perhaps even understand,
moments that only another animal person can
comprehend with a knowing nod, moments that keep us coming
back for more. But we may not understand that these elusive
moments of connection can be more than just fleeting
experience, ephemeral and unpredictable as a
rainbow. The third level is not a moment but a
philosophy, a way of life, an awareness of
what we can create every day, in ways large and
small. We can, if we direct ourselves to follow the
less-traveled trail, find our way more often to this
most blessed place of deep connection where the dance of
two is possible.