We Are the Aliens

Patricia McConnell (author of the book, ‘The Other End of the Leash’), introduces an interesting perspective when it comes to understanding our furry family members. Dogs, in a way, are abducted by aliens (humans), and consequently forced to follow the rules of this unknown society. Oftentimes, they are not even shown the rules they must follow before being expected to abide by them!

You Get Abducted (we’re in the dog’s shoes now)

You’ve just been abducted by an obscure alien race, and brought into their home to be a cute human pet. You go to pee in the toilet bowl that is there, as is our custom, and suddenly, the alien flicks you with a big long tentacle! They then start speaking to you in their unknown alien tongue in a way that you can only interpret as a reprimand.

Well, the only option is stop trying to go to the toilet in the toilet bowl, but you also don’t know where you are supposed to be going. You are left confused, frustrated, and frightened. You don’t know what to do to avoid being punished (that long tentacle was surprisingly solid), but you also don’t know what to do to be praised.

Training our Dogs to Understand our Expectations

We bring dogs into our society, which has weird, un-dog rules, and tell them off when they break them, without teaching them the right way to do it. 

We then immediately expect our dogs to make the un-dog choices, which are sometimes the more boring option too (don’t sniff, don’t chase, sit still, be calm in a busy environment). So not only are we expecting our dogs to make choices that are not in their interests, we think they’ll just wake up on the day we bring them home and know what our rules and boundaries are!

We often don’t listen to our dogs telling us that they are frustrated either, and instead label them as stubborn, stupid, or think they are trying to ‘show us who’s boss’. The fact of the matter is, if your dog is making mistakes, you either haven’t trained them for that situation, or you haven’t set their environment up for success.

Remember that the way our dogs’ communicate is drastically different to how humans share information, too. The concept of the human spoken language is not automatically transferred. Saying, ‘you know not to chew the furniture’, or anything along those lines, is just a babble of incoherent sounds to your dog. They will be reading your body language and tone, not understanding the concept of a sentence. 

On top of that, for dogs to even understand ONE word, you must have many repetitions of pairing it with a produced behaviour or consequence before it elicits a response, (think: ‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ after a routine of walking after saying the W word).

Let’s help set our dogs up for success. Teach them what we expect, and make it worth it to do those things. 

That’s how we can be functional, happy and successful, coexisting for our lifetimes together. Dogs give us so much joy, so let us give them joy in their lives too. And don’t go flicking them with your long tentacles.

Authored by Sarah Endres
Dog Trainer and Behaviour Advisor


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