The Essence of A Dog: A Natural Pedagogy from a Free Choice Walk
A few weeks ago, I decided to just follow my dog Mischa on our walk. Wherever he chose to go, well, I’d go as well. I crawled under logs, I lumbered across frozen wetlands sinking thigh-deep in granular spring snow (hooooo boy that’s cold), and I paused, quietly, in the lee of a large spruce tree, where the snow had melted and the warming ground released delicious scents. When I heard a twig snap in the distance, I activated. I ran, leaping over stumps, to join my dog-kin at the base of a tree. Squirrel! Squirrel! I selected Mischa to be my guide over my other dogs for a simple reason: I could keep up with him, at least most of the time. He’s large, visible, and a senior citizen at 12 years of age. He trots more than he zooms, which describes me as well.
Usually, I strike out on our walking trail (or if I’m feeling adventuresome, I follow a random wildlife path—I stay in the same area and at about the same time every day, so we’re predictable to our resident wildlife). The dogs charge around at will, returning to me to check in if they want, or if I call them—this is a paid proposition from their perspective, as I always have food on walks. Sometimes a few stay companionably close, especially in the last half of our walk. Mostly, though, they’re off, being dogs and doing doggy things. I love it.
I’ve recently found myself thinking about the idea of behavioural choice and autonomy. I’m blessed, and my dogs are blessed, and I’ve worked very hard to set the conditions up right to give my dogs a lot of autonomy. They have a dog door to a large yard filled with delights, and every day they walk off-leash with me through forests, meadows, and sadly for me/awesomely in their perspective, swamps.
But on the day I followed Mischa, I wanted to take things one step further. I wanted see what would happen if I let the dogs take the driver’s seat, and make the choices about where we went, how fast, and why.
I’m not sure what I expected (a window into the canine soul? …no such luck), but an interesting thing happened along the way. I learned that my dogs, given the choice, do pretty much what I do. They trot along, looking loose and happy, with minor bursts of speed and excitement. They stay close to each other, mostly, and enjoy drinking in the beauty of their worlds (them: nose. me: eyes). But in learning this about my dogs, I stumbled upon—stumbled quite literally, as you have no doubt guessed—something else. There is a beautiful minutiae of life on our walks that I don’t normally take in, and during my follow-the-Mischa experience, I couldn’t help but see (one’s face is much closer to the ground when one slithers, precariously, under brambles). In the words of dog researcher and author Alexandra Horowitz, I think I experienced something closer to my dog’s umwelt. “The idea of umwelt, which originated with the biologist Jakob von Uexküll, is that the world of each animal is defined by how he/she perceives and acts on the world” (source). I focussed on the ground, stopping often to examine items and places that Mischa investigated. I looked way up, into the highest branches, and stopped to smell the air or listen carefully, catching my breath. I examined the signs left behind for us from many woodland creatures, big and small: deer prints in the mud, delicate and defined. An alder sapling, rubbed bare by a passing bull elk. An explosion of feathers from a spruce grouse unlucky enough to be someone’s supper. Owl pellets with tiny, perfect, bleached bones, gently disintegrating on last year’s cast leaves.
Every time I paused, I found myself very aware of my canine companions…in case they came across something exciting over the next rise, and I’d be off at a gallop, following Mischa. Usually when I walk, I stay aware of my dogs’ location and activity in order to police their behaviour: I want to ensure they don’t stray far enough to go to a neighbour’s field or cross another imaginary (from their perspective) behavioural line. And although of course I will continue to keep my dogs safe and sound, I admit there was a bewildering delight and a kind of clemency in following their pace, their curiosity, and their bliss.
