Expectations…
So interesting.
Yes, being quite dog centric these days…
“Puppy brain”
One of our trainers describing puppies with “the attention span of a gnat…”
It seems that us owners sometimes have a similar problem.
Our world revolving around this new member of the family.
Takes a lot of time, can be very distracting…
Luckily, after lots of play, naptime can allow room to do some work, some thinking, some writing.
My family and I only had 2 dogs, the first, Midnight, was an unclear mix of Lab and Great Dane.
Arrived at about 3 months of age.
With expectations of a huge dog, we bought a huge crate…
Midnight only got to about 45 pounds…
A great dog, we probably could have done a better job of training her, but I was new Assistant Professor, working too hard, bucking for tenure…
I left most the training to my then wife and young kids…
Midnight did not eat like a Lab, you could leave food in her dish all day, and she would only eat when hungry… stayed muscular and thin naturally…
After Midnight passed on, my then wife lasted about a month or so, when the need for a puppy arose…
This time went for a purebred Lab…
Dakota was great dog, but ate like a Lab…
As a small puppy, we visited with family out of town, he found a bag of dog food, then proceeded to almost eat himself to death…
His belly was so huge, I was sure we would need to take him to the vet for surgery.
We were going on a trip, got cash from the bank. We left Dakota in the car for a moment, and he proceeded to eat the 200 dollars, including the bank envelope.
I processed his poop for about 3 days, somehow recovering all but 2 of the $20 dollar bills, required a bleaching process, that still resulted in bile-stained bills to be turned in to the bank…
Would eat toilet paper, and socks, more like a goat…
The kitchen floor was always spotless. Everything was licked and eaten, food, dirt, anything…
As I mentioned, both my current wife and I have had Labrador Retrievers.
She has had a similar experience.
Zev, is a standard poodle.
Does not eat like a lab…
You can leave food in his bowl, only eats when hungry, sometimes turns his nose up at anything but special “high value” treats.
You can drop food on the floor, it gets ignored…
Treats can roll out of his treat toy and he misses it on the floor, until you point it out…
Therefore, we often remark “Not a Lab” or “What kind of Lab are you!”
Expectations…
We humans fall into expectations…
Our minds develop grooves…
We fall into repeated ways of operating in the world…
We can be thrown off, when things change.
In the case of Zev, it is fun…
Fun to watch my mind look at amazement when he does not inhale his entire bowel of food in a minute…
It is actually nice that Zev does not scarf down everything, food and not food…
He is a chewer, “puppy piranha,” we are working on that…
This behavior is a natural part of puppyhood…
We are both working on training, my wife is taking the lead, and she is laying out quite a bit of money on training classes and instruction…
This is an investment…
It is a pleasure to have a well-trained dog…
And Zev is quite smart and trainable…
He is entering his adolescence…
We are doing our part, reading, taking the time to give him the attention he needs, help him be active, tire him out…
Training is patterning the brain…
Creating the grooves, when to sit, to stay, to heel, to come…
Learning, reading, about puppy growth, about dog communication and behavior…
Humans are complex, I’ve spent my life trying to understand myself, trying to understand other humans, how we grow, how we change, how we can live better lives…
Bringing dog energy into the family can also help reveal more deeply who we are as humans…
Humans have been interacting with canines for millenia…
“The genetic divergence between the dog's ancestor and modern wolves occurred between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog
Dogs are not humans…
With other humans, our mistakes are often with projection…
With dogs, we have to be careful of our natural tendencies toward, “anthropomorphism,” perhaps better defined as personification…
Seeing clearly,
Seeing everything,
Just as it is…
A never-ending unfolding…
With dogs and without…
Namaste
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