You Can’t Make Me

Photo by the amazing Kayleigh Guthrie

The question I get the most is “Please make my pet do/not do ___”

The blank can be filled with anything: stop barking, stop jumping, quit whining, not destroy ____ (another fill in the blank), “behave” (whatever that means), etc, etc, etc.

The trouble is I can’t do that.

Sure, when in connection with your pet I can explore the situation from their perspective, and then show them the situation from the human perspective and help fill in some gaps as to why it isn’t desirable for them to be doing/not doing whatever it is that the human is frustrated with. But that’s the limit of my capacity to “change” a pet’s behavior.

After that it’s between you and your pet.

Sorry to disappoint.

Here’s the truth: our pets are their own begins, with their own agendas and desires. They have their ideas about what is best, and what’s helpful, and how to do things. Until we set aside our ‘I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m the human and I know best’ attitude, we won’t get anywhere.

My horse trainer just sent out a lovely email (you can read the full message here) discussing the Socratic method of learning.

She writes, “An important premise behind the Socratic Method is the idea that intelligence is innate and teaching is a process of drawing out intelligence rather than putting it in.”

The longer I work with animals and pets, the more this becomes true for me. Our pets all have their own inner wisdom, and training is a joint venture that is much more successful when we are able to look for our pet’s innate wisdom and open a dialogue together to explore how to achieve the goals that we have.

This applies as much when we are working on basic commands that help make life easier for everyone (knowing when to be and where to be at any given time) as much as it does to highly advanced specialized training.

I would dare say it applies more to basic commands (How good is your dog’s recall?) than it does to advanced work. Once there is a strong foundation and ‘language’ that you can work from together, then advanced work is simply a combination of time and patience together. Without that foundation, nothing else will be possible.

So the next time you get frustrated with your pet’s behavior, check in and see where there might be a more collaborative way to achieve your goal rather than simply demanding they do/not do ____.