I had just gotten home with my infant, who was sleeping. It was his first real nap all day, and he desperately needed it. Boo was whining, which wasn’t surprising since she has separation anxiety, and in fact her whining wasn’t all that bad. I settled my infant in his swing so I could monitor him, and then let the dogs out of confinement. They are generally confined in the basement when the family is away, more out of habit than anything else. They raced out of the basement with all the enthusiasm of a dog reuniting with a pack member after an absence. After all, they are dogs!
I told them to Settle, but they were extremely excited, and the stress in my voice only made them want to appease me- and therefore, go through more elaborate greeting rituals! All in all, as I’m sure you can guess, they woke up my infant. I’m ashamed to say that I, being stressed out, compounded my mistake by scolding them. My poor dogs were very confused! They slunk into the office behind me, keeping their distance from me, as I was confusing them and was obviously mad at them. I gave myself a chance to cool off, and then realized my mistakes.
1) Not letting them outside right away to burn off their excitement, and greeting them out there.
2) Doing some calming petting away from my baby, satisfying their greeting ritual and also communicating what I wanted in a way that they could understand more than just the Settle command- that is, helping them to perform the command.
3) Keeping myself calm and unstressed- the very fact that I was stressed out that the dogs would wake up the baby in fact caused the dogs to behave in such a way that they inadvertently woke up the baby.
4) Scolding the dogs for simply doing what I had set them up to do- fail.
Well, once I realized my mistake, about ten minutes later, boy was I embarrassed and ashamed of myself! So I and the dogs made up, which decreased their social stress and made everything right in their world. Dogs are pack animals. They are not “programmed” for us to leave them as much as we do, and when a pack comes back together, you see lots of greeting rituals that serve to strengthen the bond between pack members. Dogs cannot think human and therefore change their behavior to fit our social structure of their own accord. So we need to begin thinking dog. It’s very important that when you and your dog are at odds, that you make up to your dog afterward. Lots of calming petting and soothing words from you will help strengthen the bond between you two, and put the world to right for your dog. If you have a chance to observe packs of dogs, you will see that when two dogs have a disagreement, there is an appeasement ritual that repairs their bond. You need to let your dog go through this with you, because they won’t understand why you won’t let them make up. If we are indeed the smarter organisms, we should begin acting like it and using some of our brain power to Think Dog.