Tips to enjoy a happy and well-balanced dog
Avoid the main errors of humanization and show your dog the right attitude to feel happy in the household:
If you want to read similar articles to Is it Wrong to Treat a Dog like a Baby?, we recommend you visit our Facts about the animal kingdom category.
Treating a dog like a baby is a very serious mistake
Even if your pet is still a puppy, you need to be very careful not to treat it like a baby. For example, when you repeatedly invite a puppy to climb all over you (as lovely as this might be at the time) you must consider if youll want it to do so when it is an adult. You must understand that dogs require order and a steady environment.
The absence of limits and a lack of discipline is a direct cause of dogs suffering from behavioral disorders, and even acting aggressively. Complications deriving from a lack of discipline can be very serious.
Very differently to babies, dogs need an active routine which must include exercise, walks, obedience training and socialization. You need to understand that dogs have their own nature which includes sniffing urine, drooling and acting in ways which arent very conventional for us humans. Its completely possible to understand that dogs are not human beings and still give them love and care. Put simply, you should treat your dog differently to how you would treat a baby.
Why I Treat My Dog Like My Child
Treating Our PUPPY Like A REAL HUMAN BABY for 24 HOURS *GONE WRONG*
Blame Bruiser. The canine star of Legally Blonde wasnt the first hound to be outrageously pampered – the tradition of lap dogs, tiny breeds cosseted by kings, emperors and their consorts – goes back at least 600 years. But the sight of Reese Witherspoons Elle Woods carrying her bejewelled Chihuahua around in a tote, closely followed by the sight of Paris Hilton carrying her bejewelled Chihuahua around in a tote, seems to have inspired a whole generation of dog owners to treat their furry companions like a cross between a Tamagotchi and a human baby.
In 2015 the Oxford Dictionary added the term “fur baby” to its official lexicon, acknowledging the trend. In its 2016 comprehensive survey of Australian pet owners Animal Medicines Australia, the peak body representing manufacturers of veterinary medicines, found increasing numbers of people (64 per cent, up from 59 per cent in 2013) regard their dog as a member of the family rather than just a companion (23 per cent).
Trish Harris, a dog trainer says the trend for owners to treat their pets as surrogate children can be damaging.Credit:Eddie Jim
Which is, you know, lovely. Coddling a dog is inarguably better than neglecting or abusing it. But are we loving our dogs too much? Or in the wrong way? And unintentionally doing them harm in the process?
On a Saturday morning at Four Paws K9 Training, a big obedience club in Melbournes north-west, a couple arrive for class carrying their small fluffy dog. Because it doesnt like to walk. Another young chap is there with his big Lab-cross because its developed some behavioural issues, but hes uneasy. Hes not sure he “believes” in training. He doesnt like telling his dog what to do.
Having dogs at work can boost productivity and workers wellbeing, the study shows. But will dogs want to be at the office? Credit:iStock
Others wonder why their dog doesnt like other dogs, or wont listen to them, or wont stop jumping on people, or pulling on the lead. About half the human students struggle to speak to their dogs in anything other than a pleading murmur.
“Twenty-odd years ago the mindset was quite different,” says Trish Harris, a dog trainer and owner of Four Paws. “When I started out, a dog was a dog. It had to be obedient. They lived in the family but it was a little bit more balanced. Over time what weve seen is a lot of these dogs becoming surrogate children.
“When I tell them you need to give the dog clear instructions, you need to set boundaries and enforce them they say, Wont he stop loving me? or Wont he stop listening? I say, well, hes already not listening.”
The AMA report also has some pretty staggering figures on expenditure. Australians spent more than $12 billion on pets and pet products in 2016. A third of that, $4 billion, was for dog food with another $1 billion for doggy accessories but just $274 million was spent on training. Yet if theres one really crucial thing you can do for your fur baby, its to undertake proper obedience training.Advertisement
Mini dachshund Chilli, dressed as a biker dog competes in the Hophaus Southgate inaugural best dressed dachshund competition.Credit:Getty s
A lot of the issues Harris sees in her classes are with the toy breeds – pugs, poodles, dachshunds. Because the dogs are small and adorable theyre allowed to get away with murder. But she sees the same problems with people who have adopted from a shelter. In an effort to compensate for what they imagine was the dogs previous life, they go all out to be “kind”. Without understanding what being kind to a dog actually entails.
“Our maternal instincts come out and we want to mollycoddle and love it and protect it. Which is great. But it can have the opposite effect. It can turn the dog into a really nasty, uncontrollable, undisciplined aggressive dog.”
Barking, jumping, lunging, snarling, snapping and biting are not the signs of a “naughty” dog, and certainly not simply a high-spirited one. They are almost always the sign of a dog that has never been taught how to get on in the world, and as a consequence is experiencing a lot of stress.
It sounds like heresy but after two decades in the business and a wealth of study and observation, Harris says dogs dont actually want our love – or not in the ways we tend to show it.
“They want your guidance. They want to feel safe. They need structure, and theyre the things people dont think of giving.”
And while she would say this – shes a dog trainer, after all – the science backs her up. Happy dogs are well-trained dogs, or at least dogs that live in a world with consistent rules and routines.
“Dogs dont understand grey areas,” Harris says. “They can either always do something, or they can never do something. And once a dog understands that, he feels safe and happy.”
Dogs arent people. But in the 21st century a lot of them are suffering from a similar malaise to their owners. They dont get enough exercise, and they eat too much. Obesity in a dog is every bit the problem it is in a human. It puts stress on the skeleton and on the joints, on the heart and lungs, it makes moving and breathing difficult.
In the US, things are so bad theres an Association for Pet Obesity Prevention, which estimates 54 per cent of that nations dogs are obese. Its unlikely things are much better here.
“Too much food, too much love,” says Kerri Bradley, a dog trainer with a particular interest in canine nutrition. The most common issue she sees is simple over-feeding. A beloved pet gazes at you mournfully, longingly, with perhaps just a little drool trickling out of the corner of its mouth. What do you do? Hand over a snack, of course.
“I also see problems with the kinds of things people are feeding their dogs, especially processed foods,” says Bradley.
While we know, just looking at them, that their physiology is completely different from ours, we dont always factor that in when were choosing their dinner or their treats. Dogs teeth are designed for ripping and tearing, not grinding. Their gut has a higher acid content, to digest fur and bone. Their mouths dont produce amylase, the enzyme that helps process carbohydrate.
Unfortunately the perfect canine diet looks pretty repulsive to most people. Raw meat, raw offal, meaty bones, finely shredded raw veg – thats a dogs idea of fine dining. (In fact, if you snapped a rabbits neck and tossed the still-warm carcass in front of your dog, that would be his equivalent of a trip to Noma.)
One feature dogs unfortunately do share with people is “sweet” receptors on their tongues. Dogs get as addicted to sugary treats as we do. We also get just as sucked in by pet food marketing as we do with our own treats. “People see the cute ads, and think Ill get that for my dog. But a lot of these treats have a lot of sugar in them. Of course the dog loves them, but that kind of food isnt doing your dog any favours,” Bradley says.
But not giving you fur baby something it thinks is yummy? Its a tough ask. “Even my mum does it, Im ashamed to say,” says Bradley.
Perhaps one of the strangest trends in modern dog ownership is playing dress-ups with our dogs. Sure, it looks hilarious. A pug in a party frock is quite a sight. But even putting a raincoat on your dog can have unexpected consequences, and were often not good at reading our dogs behaviour.
Tim Munro is a trainer and behaviourist who specialises in a form of doggy physical therapy called Tellington TTouch. While he concedes some dogs are temperamentally better equipped to handle being corseted than others, its an area where we should be proceeding with caution.
“I absolutely dont think its automatically bad,” Munro says. “But I do see a lot of people who think their dogs are fine but Im seeing things in the dogs body language that show its not OK.”
The feeling of constriction produced by being strapped into clothing can activate the sympathetic nervous system, the fight/flight/freeze response. A dog that starts running around like a loon when its dressed up is probably not enjoying itself. There are more subtle signs, too.
“Sometimes you put something on a dog and the dog suddenly goes really quiet,” Munro says. “You think thats good but in fact the dog might have just frozen, completely shut down.”
You see that a lot in those YouTube videos of dogs in Halloween costumes: motionless except for their bulging eyes and anxiously flicking tongues. You may be laughing, but thats a very unhappy dog.
Professor Paul McGreevy, a vet and animal behaviour specialist at the University of Sydney is a big fan of treating dogs as dogs.
In her influential bestseller Inside of a Dog, cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz talks about umwelt, the world as its perceived by a particular organism. McGreevy talks about a dogs telos: its purpose, its reason for being. What McGreevy and Horowitz are both saying, in essence, is instead of imagining that your dog is human, imagine what it might be like if you were the dog.
“We assume that their needs are the same as our needs, but thats not the case,” McGreevy says. “Dogs have evolved to be dogs. So canine company, rules and routines that facilitate their ability to spend time out of the house, to access other social groups including other dogs – thats what they need.”
In other words, training – so you can be confident about having your dog out and about. Lots of time with other dogs – providing the dogs get along. Vigorous exercise. And plenty of opportunity to sniff stuff. Thats how you get a happy dog. And a happy life.
McGreevy says the key to being a good “fur parent” (although he would never, in this life or the next, use that term) is to establish a relationship where were relevant to the dog, without needy co-dependence.
“Thats the critical blend or balance. Being there for the dogs, being the social group member that the dogs look to for activity, fun, excitement. Without them being entirely dependent on us.”
So staging a birthday party for your dog could actually be a great thing to do – as long as it gets along with the other guests and youre not feeding it chocolate eclairs. (You could probably leave off with the party frock, too.) Taking your dog everywhere with you is terrific – just dont carry it around in your handbag.
Melinda Houston is a Fairfax Media television critic and is studying to be a dog trainer.,