Nature’s lie detector

By Kevin Glynn

When my wife, Erin, was in labor with Baby Nora, most of the dogs with us at the time wanted to keep their distance. They knew she was in pain. Zoe, however, much to my surprise, turned into a free labor monitor and therapy dog.

I was working in the kitchen for part of it with our formerly food aggressive pooch watching. Before my wife had a contraction, she would leave me, calmly walk over to Erin, and put her head in my wife’s lap. Erin would pet Zoe’s head during the contraction, and when it was over, Zoe would get up and return to me. The pattern repeated for hours.

In the hospital, monitors can detect contractions before the mom-to-be can feel them. At home we didn’t need one. We had our dog, who could sense the change in the energy and find the source before anyone else.

A few months ago I took the dogs out for last call, brought them up to bed, and we all settled in for the night. At some point after we were all asleep, Ellie sprung from her bed and ran to the doorway. She would cry, turn and run part of the way back to my wife and me, and then back to the door, stomping her feet all the while. She was pleading with us to come with her.

I got up and opened the gate, and Ellie ran into the adjacent bedroom where we keep our bird Simon, an English Budgie, and Sophie, a Dumbo Rat. We found Simon on the bottom of his cage. It wasn’t entirely unusual. He will occasionally fall from his perch when he is sleeping. I watched as he tried to climb back up and saw that he was struggling. Our little Budgie seemingly suffered a stroke. He stopped talking for weeks and had some difficulty with his motor skills. We expected him to die, but over time, they all returned to near normal.

I’m sure Ellie heard the commotion from our bedroom, but she’s heard it before - we all have - and she never reacted to it. I believe she reacted this time because she could feel the change in the energy coming from their room, just like Zoe could sense a contraction coming before it happened and other dogs can be trained to alert their owners before they have a seizure. When Simon died months later, it was Ellie who once again alerted us that he was lying quietly in the bottom of his cage. Thanks to her, we were able to be there with him in his final moments.

People can sometimes sense when something is wrong, too. But we aren’t in tune with nature and kinetic energy the way that animals are. As far as dogs go, Ellie, in my experience, is more skilled than most. She is excellent at meeting other animals and at showing me if another dog is acting aggressively or just inappropriately. When she’s around a lot of high energy people, however, she loses her nerve a little. It has improved with practice, but the collective excitement generated by large groups still overwhelms her.

While Ellie is extremely sensitive to emotion and energy, all dogs are connected to them and will react to it in some fashion. Some of what my wife and I do as behaviorists is to change dogs’ reactions to energy through repetition and desensitization. A dog that is reactive to other dogs is usually excited by the sights and sounds of them. The first step in helping them is to lower the energy level when they are around low energy dogs. The next, more difficult step, is helping them maintain a more even energy when in the presence of excited dogs. This all requires calm and confident energy from the handler and a lot of repetition.

If you pay enough attention to the way a dog is behaving, you can get a glimpse of how its handlers are feeling too. People who ask for our help are usually honest about how they feel. Those who aren’t totally honest at first are usually lying to themselves about how they feel when confronted with a problem. It isn’t a problem. I just watch the dog - nature’s lie detectors - and I can tell pretty quickly what’s really happening.

One of the most common mistakes I see with people is with the energy they provide when their dog is reacting to something. Instead of remaining calm, they become anxious. They repeat obedience commands quickly like it’s being pumped from a semi-automatic - Sit! Sit! Sit! Sit! Sit!

All of that noise and anxiety combines with the elevated excitement and can eventually lead to aggressive behavior as the dog now works to help its handler maintain an even energy level. The cycle quickly spins out of control. We start with a dog who is overly excited to say hello and play, and we wind up with a dog who acts aggressively to try and remove the new energy that has aggravated his or her handler.

The other common mistake I see with people handling excited dogs is the praise that they shower on them at the wrong time. The moment the dog becomes calm, the handler excitedly pets it and tells it how good it is. They shared a brief moment of calm and then quickly escalated the energy, once again reinforcing undesirable behavior.

For that reason, I generally don’t tell my dogs when they are good, and I recommend to my clients that they do the same. While the intent of the praise is to reinforce calm behavior, they are actually causing and reinforcing inappropriate behavior. Whether I offer praise or not, the dogs I am working with already know they are good because they can feel when I am happy. Conversely, when I’m not happy about a behavior, a simple look in their direction is enough for them to know that I do not approve.

As for the person trying to calm their dog down by telling it to sit, excitement is a behavioral issue, not an obedience issue. Once the dog is calm enough to listen to its handler’s commands, obedience may help, but you cannot solve behavioral problems with obedience alone. Only a calm, assertive presence can bring a dog back into a calm and even state of mind.

​So the next time you take your dog out for a walk, remember to not only remain calm and confident, but also quiet. Put your shoulders back, hold your head high, relax your arms, and walk confidently forward. Try to feel the calm energy shared between you and your dog. Whether you’re able to sense it or not, your dog can, and that’s the key to being the leader that he or she will be happy to follow.

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