Repairing the Dog-Human Bond

Most of us live with dogs whose relationship to humans tends to be ambivalent at the very best. Whether it is because of certain things we've done to the dog in the course of our relationship or its previous life before. Few of us are lucky enough to have dogs that were reared in our households in an environment that we could perfectly control, most of us will probably acquire dogs where very little is known about the dog's history and many of these dogs have experienced certain events that have damaged their relationship to humans. A broken bond between a dog and a human may be, depending on the dog and its history, broken between that individual dog and humans in general or this specific dog and a specific human. Symptoms of a broken bond vary in severity ranging from human-directed aggression to milder symptoms such as not coming when called or constantly escaping when left alone.

There are many thing that can happen to damage the human-dog bond. Depending on the individual dog certain events can be more or less damaging to the bond. Spanking a dog may, because of that individual dog's temperament, have no effect on the bond, while with another dog it may lead to the development of fear aggression towards humans. There are so many things that can happen that can affect the bond, that instead of going into different examples I will explain what the bond is. The dog-human bond that as I've already mentioned previously is rooted in the co-evolution of dogs and humans. The basis of this evolution was basically trust. Trust by both early humans and early dogs that their proximity would be mutually beneficial. Early ancestors of the dogs would be able gain food and at the same time benefit from the safety that they would get around early human settlements. Humans as well were able to feel the safety associated with the proximity of the canine ancestor.

We look back at these tens of thousands of years of canine-human evolutionary history when we want to repair the broken dog-human bond. Repairing the bond requires first and foremost that we do not do the behaviors with the dog that initially damaged this bond. These include hitting, using spray bottles, shouting, startling, rough play, choke collars and yanking on the leash. The idea is that dog must once again associate our proximity with pleasant feelings and sensations. This means paying very close attention the dogs body language and not taking for granted the small signals they give us to let us know how whether they are overwhelmed or stressed out by our voice, posture, game we are playing and even petting (Check out Turid Rugaas's "Calming Signals in Dog"). Naturally, once I tell many people this they immediately ask the question of how to correct their dogs when they are making mistakes during this period of repairing the bond. First of all, during the period of repairing the bond we try to avoid the dog making mistakes. We set the dog up to succeed. Lets say your dog chews your rugs, well during the period of repair we remove all the rugs to avoid having to correct the dog. Secondly, we change how we correct. The dog's brain is wired to think human-close equals I'm doing something good and I should repeat it. Human-far equals I'm doing something bad and should not repeat. When your dog is chewing on the rug, if you go up to it and maybe pull the rug out of its mouth, you are first telling the dog what its doing is good because human-close equals good. Second, you could also be creating a negative sensation in your dog so all of a sudden human-close does not give the dog a good sensation and becomes very confusing for the dog, and this where the bond starts to break down. While this method of correction is extremely effective it is not as effective with dogs whose trust in human beings has been damaged, but as you slowly repair your bond with your dog you will notice that your dog becomes more responsive to you moving far away from it and is less likely to repeat the undesired behavior. In such a way you are correcting your dog by going back to an evolutionary psyche that even though it is a correction it brings you and your dog closer.

There have been many times in my practice where I've wished that behavioral problems could be solved through waving a magic wand or reciting a secret incantation, unfortunately, fixing a bond that has been broken requires a slow, systematic, consistent, constant and repetitive changes in, not the dog's behavior, but the dog owner's behavior.