Your Dog’s Ecosystem: Treating, and training, the whole dog

It’s so easy to pay attention to just the things that we dislike about our dogs, isn’t it? The problem behaviour, or in many cases, the problem behaviours. The whining, the barking, the dreaded jumping up… the snarling, the embarrassing cue-ignoring at the dog park, the urinating inside during that last holiday meal. Problem behaviours such as these are often first and foremost on the “let’s talk about it” list with my dog training clients, and for good reason: problem behaviours are almost always what brings a dog trainer into their lives, so of course they want to talk about it!

Problems are salient, and it’s natural for us humans to pay attention to salient things. We also, I think, try to isolate them and fix them. “I want my dog to stop barking at my neighbour.” Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to open up our dog’s operating system, delete that app, and carry on, no extra effort required?

Note: in some dog training cases, we can essentially do just that: some issues do have a simple fix. But those aren’t the majority of dog training cases, sadly. Life, in all it’s ecosystem-ish complexity, intervenes again.

One of the things I appreciate about living on a small mixed farm is the attendance to our ecosystem. Food production is complex and involves extractive processes, no matter who or where or when. There are inputs which we bring in (mostly from farms as close by as possible, but the globalised economy is inescapable even with pretty colossal efforts), and there are outputs: the food which feeds the farm’s customers up and down the street. But there is also a ton of materials and processes that remain wholly on the farm…nutrients are concentrated in manure and used to revitalize the soil, pest and weed growth is interrupted with strategic crop cycling, and the weather is seen, as much as possible, as an ally, instead of something to be overcome. Instead of looking at the different problems farmers usually face as a stand-alone problem and coming up with chemical or mechanical solutions, a mixed farm can embrace a much more ecosystem-centric approach: how can the farm work with and within natural processes? And how can the farm supply what the land needs, in order to help the farm produce?

Dog training isn’t always about just “fixing” the issue that the client contacts us about. And even when it is, dog trainers are often looking at a bigger picture of the dog’s life: Exercise? Enrichment? Skills? Environment? Family interactions? Punishment history? We’ll also want to learn more about the dog’s inner environment: Breed? Joys and fears? Health? This is for two reasons. One reason is that we dog trainers really do care that our client’s dogs are living their best lives, as much as is possible. The other reason is that we can often use what we learn about the dog’s ecosystem to help with the problem behaviour.

For example, the dog who is barking at the neighbour. We’ll want to know in what context the dog barks at the neighbour (at the fence? When the neighbour comes over for a visit? During walks?). We’ll also want to know how the dog responds to other strangers, if he spends a lot of time alone in the back yard, and so on. We will want, perhaps, to ferret out how the neighbour responds to the dog. We’ll suss out the dog’s favourite treats and rewards—usually some type of delicious food, but for some dogs tug and fetch games might help to top out the list too. We’ll want to know if the dog might be feeling ill, pained, scared, or under-whelmed. It all adds up to a better solution, and hopefully, if needed, a better life for the dog.

As a dog trainer, I will want to find solutions that work within the rhythms and systems that already exist in my clients’ homes if possible, and I’ll want to use the natural behaviours and inclinations the dogs (and people!) have, to come up with a reasonable plan. If there are pieces of a typical dog’s ecosystem that aren’t present, and if they would improve the life of this dog, I’ll do my best to introduce them. Neither dogs nor their “problem” behaviours exist separately from their whole, and likely complex, ecosystems. Attending to this can only make our training—and our dogs’ lives—that much better.

Cover photo: Redtc | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images
Second photo: Jackryan89 | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images