While we all know on some level that part of living with dogs is trying to make sense of the behavior of an individual sentient being of a completely different species that we don’t share a common language or cultural understandings with, we don’t tend to think about it much or truly consider the impact it can have. And when we do try to educate ourselves, we are bombarded with conflicting and inadequate information everywhere we look.

When we are experiencing behavior in our dogs that is difficult to live with for any reason, addressing the dog’s behavior is only part of the equation. Getting more clarity on how we interpret the behavior and what we think it means about our dog (and about us) can make all the difference in the world in the approach we take to address it.

Unfortunately, much of what we assume to know about dogs is based on the unregulated field of dog training and behavior. Anyone can proclaim themselves as an expert and preach lore, falsehoods, and oversimplifications that get in the way of us truly understanding what is really going on with our dogs and what they most need from us. And how we interpret what our dogs’ behavior means can take us down an unhelpful, and often harmful, road, leading us only further away from addressing the true issues at hand.

The truth is that we all tend to overestimate both how well our dogs understand us, and how much we understand about them. We ascribe motives, thoughts and feelings to them as a way of explaining their behavior in a way that makes sense to us. We are often unaware that our interpretation is often more based on the stories in our minds that are running in the background about how things are “supposed” to be and then mistake this narrative for the truth, which leads to assumptions and labels that don’t really serve us or our dogs.

These stories directly influence how we react and respond to our dogs and how we interact with them in general. For example, if we interpret a particular behavior as the dog being “stubborn,” we tend to become more easily frustrated and annoyed, which often leads us to be more forceful and coercive. But if we look more closely, we might see there is a reason the dog is not responding the way we want, a reason that is actually on us to address rather than blame the dog. This could be anything from the dog not truly understanding what we are asking to something in the environment or within them preventing the response we expect, such as physical discomfort or pain.

At the same time, the less invested in this narrative we are, the more space we have to focus on the observable behavior of the being in front of us to make connections and have insights that can help us more clearly understand, and more skillfully address, a given situation.

Being lost in our stories gets in the way of truly seeing the dynamic sentient being in front of us.

To be clear, having and believing these stories does not make us “bad”. It is what our brains do naturally. Starting to develop more awareness of the process, catching ourselves in the act, so to speak, is what gives us the opportunity to make different choices than we have in the past. This awareness does not need to involve beating ourselves up for our past actions. Not only is that unhealthy for us, it is also unhelpful for our dogs. It takes energy and focus away from developing our skills and knowledge. Awareness helps us perceive here and now. Yet awareness is not something we can force; we need to cultivate it with practice.

We can learn more about how dogs communicate, hone our observation skills, and cultivate compassion for ourselves for being human and our dogs for being dogs. Then we are more likely to approach our journey with the precious dogs in our lives right now with curiosity and a willingness to learn and grow.