I hate movies and cartoons about dogs. Genuinely, sincerely hate them.
The image of dog ownership that they promote is a single reason why so many people struggle with their dogs today. Specifically, these people watch the movies and cartoons about dogs and then acquire dogs not because they seek canine companionship or are fascinated by inter-species communication, but because they firmly believe that by adding a canine to their family, they adhere to standards of behaviour as depicted in Disney animation films and soapy movies like “Marley and Me.” I kid you not, back in the early 2000s, I had a couple of clients who purchased Dalmatians after watching a sequel to “101 Dalmatians” and were perplexed and disappointed because their dogs weren’t nearly as smart as those depicted in the cartoon.
The movies and cartoons about dogs strongly promote animal anthropomorphism, which leads to people humanizing their dogs and treating them like children, ultimately believing that their needs are similar to children’s needs, too.
For instance, because children need to be taken for walks and to playgrounds, dog owners who are busy with their lives and don’t really want to invest their time into their dog often hire dog walkers to fulfill their pet’s needs. They purchase spa days for their dogs. They seek doggy daycare. They send their puppy off to a board-and-train program because a dog, just like a child, needs schooling. At the end of the day, they feel good because they checked all the marks that characterize them as a responsible pet owner; a pet owner as movies usually depict them.
What the movies usually omit—whether due to the lack of knowledge or, more likely, because the truth does not sell well—is that the human-canine partnership is built on clear rules of the game that are expressed and perceived through consistent and coherent communication between a dog and its pack members. However, this coherence and clarity can only be achieved when you and your family members are the ones doing the communicating.
In different humanitarian disciplines, to depict varying levels of communication, we use the term “mediation,” which, essentially, refers to the process of informational exchange between parties.
There are many levels of mediation. Perhaps, the easiest way to understand the multitude of these levels and their effect on the informational piece being exchanged is to play a game called “Broken Telephone.” In this game, one person whispers to the next one a word or a phrase, such as “flying crocodile.” The next person whispers what they thought they heard to the next person, and so on. The last person in the chain loudly articulates the verbal information they have received, and everyone laughs—because the “flying crocodile,” which underwent many levels of mediation, can easily become “dying yellow bile.”
A similar thing happens when different people you are paying for taking care of your dog—the dog walker, dog trainer, dog sitter—start mediating their information to your dog. It might be the same “sit-stay-come” idea, but every single person will mediate it differently. This leads to your dog not understanding what the rules inside your house are. Metaphorically speaking, after being exposed to the information that underwent all these levels of mediation, is your dog supposed to repeat “yellow duct bile” back to you or “flying crocodile”?
But more importantly, your dog is not given a chance to build a meaningful communication system with you. It is not allowed to fully participate in your life or to connect to your soul, and this inability turns dogs into compliant but very sad and shut-down animals who drag their feet following the pack of twenty other sad and shut-down dogs on their walk with a fancy dog walker.
You will end up having an animal who listens to a dog trainer with whom it boarded for a few weeks and established a resemblance to a connection; however, it ignores your commands because yours and your dog’s souls are not synchronized, and you are not willing to open up your mind and soul for this type of communication.
Remove all the levels of unnecessary mediation. Walk your dog, play with it, and train it – this is not that hard and not very demanding, but it is all that your dog really needs.
With play and training sessions incorporated into their walking schedule, your dog is perfectly capable of spending an eight- or even ten-hour day without you and without destroying your house. They don’t need a sitter or a walker or a come-to-your-house trainer. They will simply chill and sleep, happy and unbothered, dreaming about all the wonderful things they will do with you on their next walk.