A Letter To Family and Friends without Dogs (From Dog Owners)

We know that you want to love all over our dogs, give them tons of affection, praise, and treats, let them take up your space, and lick you constantly. You may even love that they jump all over you, scratch your leg for attention, or want to be on top of you every second. We get it! But here’s the thing. To us, many of those behaviors are really not something we want our dogs doing. You see, how dogs do one thing is how they do everything. They have a hard time generalizing. Let's take this scenario: If you’re praising and petting my dog when he's jumping all over you, when I never allow him to jump up on me, my dog is getting a big dopamine dump and he’s going to want to do that again! Therefore, all that work that I’ve done to train my dog not to jump has been highly rewarded by you (unintentionally). It is even more significant to the dog when it doesn’t happen every time, because now he’s going to be thinking “Am I going to get away with it this time? Or this time? Or this time? YES! I’M GETTING AWAY WITH IT!” You get the idea. You don’t catch a fish every time you cast a line but your brain is always wondering if this is the time you’ll catch that monster, and when you do, your brain rewards you big time. And that’s why people get so hooked on fishing (no pun intended).

So now, my dog wants to jump on you every time he sees you. And not only that, but that last time we visited with my sister, my dog knocked over my 3 year old nephew and now she doesn't want me to bring the dog over anymore. See where I'm going with this? If dogs start getting away with behaviors like this, they are not isolated events. They start happening in lots of different scenarios. 

So, what to do if you are a friend or family member of someone who owns a dog? We know you’re coming from a place of love, and since you don’t have dogs yourself, you didn’t even know that what you were doing might be working against the owners!

The best plan is to simply ask the owner, do you mind if I ______? Pet your dog? Give him a treat? Let him lick me? Whatever the question might be. And if the person says no, take no offense, they are simply advocating for their dog! That is the sign of a great dog owner! And when in doubt, just wait until the dog is more settled and calm, and then you can give praise and interact (again, with permission). That is always a good rule of thumb! Just remember, any state of mind you are interacting with, you can easily be reinforcing - make sure it's a good one.

Sincerely,

Dog Owners

And a side note to all the dog owners, never feel badly for asking someone not to treat your dog in a certain way. No, it is never easy, especially if it’s someone you normally look up to or you’re not used to standing up for yourself. But use your dog as an excuse to learn how to set and stick to your boundaries. And if you need any help with that, pass the blame along to your trainer! “You know, I used to love letting my dog jump up on me, but my trainer said not to let him do that anymore.” And leave it at that. Piece of cake!