Being an Advocate for Your Dog
One of the more common things I see is owners NOT being an advocate for their dogs. This is not the fault of the owners but the pressures of culture, not having knowledge in those areas, not knowing how to advocate for their dogs appropriately, and sometimes not knowing the needs of the dog. I am briefly going to touch on all these areas to better help you be the advocate your dog needs.
Let’s start with the definition of advocate and how this applies to you and your dogs. One of the official Meriam Webster dictionary definitions is the following “an advocate is one who supports or promotes the interests of a cause or group”. In our case the definition can be then extrapolated to “one who supports or promotes the interests of our dogs”.
The next definition to look at is interest which according to Meriam Webster is “a feeling that accompanies or causes special attention to something or someone”. So, what interests our dogs then is anything that accompanies or causes special attention to something or someone. This can be good or bad feelings towards these objects or people but either way it is causing interest within the dog.
So, for owners to be advocates for their dogs they first need to find out what interests their dogs both good and bad.
Generally, the good interests for the dogs are easier to see whether they like treats, tennis balls, car rides, dog parks, walks, and so on. Most things that a dog likes they give clear indications.
The same can be said about things that they don’t like strangers, men, children, cars, UPS drivers, other dogs, and so on. Those dogs that dislike these items usually give us clear indications that they do not like them.
However, there are also things that your dog probably doesn’t enjoy that much but they tolerate. Getting to know your dog’s likes and dislikes and what interests them is essential for you to advocate for their needs. Therefore, spend sometimes getting to know your dog all over again looking at this from their perspective.
Advocation is going to be for ALL dogs but not all dogs are going to need the same type of advocation. Age is not a factor in advocation, and you should as soon as you get your puppy or dog and once you know what their needs are, good and bad.
Now that you know your dog’s interests, both good and bad, you can start taking steps to advocating for your dog when the need arises. In this article we are going to look mostly at how to advocate for your dog’s needs in all aspects but are going to focus more on when the dog has a bad feeling about a situation and needs our help. However, the instance below is one where you are going to need to advocate for your dog when they are feeling “too good” about something.
That would be a dog at the dog park that loves tennis balls and is getting too excited about them around other dogs. This might be a situation where you need to remote your dog from the dog park. That way they do not start bad behaviors because of their intense interest in the tennis balls.
Most times however we need to advocate for our dogs when they are scared or feel uncomfortable about a situation or person. In these cases, whether the dog is a puppy or and adult dog they need to see that we as owners are going to make sure that they are safe.
So how do we do this and what does that look like in real life? This means for puppies/dogs that are fearful of either people or certain situations to not remove them from the situation but also not allow people to just come up and pet them. We need to show the dog that these situations maybe scary but nothing bad is going to happen to them. They also need to see you as a leader, someone who can take charge and protect them.
So, if you see that your puppy/dog is terrified by a certain person for example don’t try to make the puppy/dog go up and get pet. Instead, just stay where you are a safe distance away and allow your puppy/dog to be around the person but not in direct contact with them. If this is someone that you know and can-do meet and greets with in the future, then take this opportunity to do just that. Each time getting closer to the “scary person” without putting too much pressure on the puppy/dog. By taking it slow the puppy will start to see that you are a leader and someone that can be trusted to keep them safe. Many times, we force young puppies too much to be too social and it later backfires as a fearful dog that doesn’t trust their owners to protect them.
If you have a dog that does not like other dogs, then making sure that you do not do any meet and greets with any unknown dogs. This also means that if you are walking on the street, you should have a plan of action if a stray dog comes up and rushes you. You can use your body, feet or if you are carrying a walking stick to block the stray dog from getting to your dog. There are also other things you can bring on walks like canned air which sometimes can startle off a stray dog.
In either case you are probably going to offend someone by telling them “I am sorry you cannot pet my dog.” Society believes that if there is a dog in public it is theirs to pet. I am not sure when or where this type of thinking started but why should that be normal? However, because this seems to be the normal most dog owners feel pressured to allow their dogs to be pet or be near other dogs even when they know they should not be.
Would you go up to a stranger that has kids standing next to them and grab the kid, pick the kid up, give them a big kiss and squeeze, then set them down and walk away like nothing happened? No of course not!
However, it seems that this is okay if it is a dog. For the dogs their personal space has been invaded just like the child’s has in my example. So, the next time the dog sees a person they start to expect the invasion of personal space and start to fear, dread, and become defensive about meeting new people. This is where advocating for your dog and their needs are so important.
This also brings me to two points one is not all dogs are social and why should they be? Do you love everyone you meet? And what is socialization anyways? More posts on these to come.
As far as advocating for your own dog that is going to look different for every person and every dog. The first step is knowing what your dog’s needs are so you can then advocate for them appropriately. Through training and advocation a lot of the dogs we see learn to trust their owners more and can live very normal lives.
If you think you would like to learn more about how to advocate for your dog and get more training to help them better cope with the world contact us today, we would be more than happy to help.
