Owners often turn to dog trainers when they’re feeling exasperated. They report that their dog has the following behavior and training issues:
- Has no idea how to walk on a leash!
- Chews their shoes!
- Jumps all over the guests!
- Barks wildly at other dogs!
- Chases the cat!
Of course, we trainers have detailed behavior-modification dog training plans for all of those things. But to start with, I like to suggest this all-purpose, magic tip:
Pretend you have a tiger, not a dog.
Dog training – like so much of life – is all about expectations. If you’re in the wrong headspace, it’ll ruin any training plan you try. The right mindset is your greatest advantage when it comes to creating a home where you and your dog are living happily together. That’s where the tiger exercise comes in.
If This Were a Tiger, Would You Be Mad?
Close your eyes. Think about that last unfortunate incident with your dog. Now, adjust that visualization, and picture your dog as a tiger you took into your home.
How does that tiger alter your reaction? You’d probably feel a little less mad, and it’s likely that your thoughts would shift like this:
- He has no idea how to walk on a leash.
“Well of course he doesn’t! It’s amazing we’re out and about together at all, given how unnatural this is for him.”
- She chews all of our shoes.
“Good Lord, why did we leave our shoes out where the tiger could get them?”
- He jumps on the guests.
“How did we not realize that it was ridiculous to put the tiger in that situation when a tiger’s method of greeting is utterly unlike anything we humans would want to see?”
- She barks wildly at dogs.
“It’s natural that she’d have big feelings about those other animals. Clearly we should help her with carefully guided experiences before expecting her to just be chill.”
- He chases the cat.
“Why did we let those two species meet and interact without supervision?”
Don’t Expect a Dog to Know Our Human Ways
Obviously, your dog really isn’t a tiger, but every one of the empathetic reactions you’d probably have to a tiger’s behavior is 100% appropriate for a dog. Like captive tigers, dogs are a different species of animal just trying to adjust to living in a human world. Our expectations that dogs should immediately fold into our lives like Lassie are worse than silly; they’re terribly harmful – both to the dogs who are set up to fail and the humans who feel like they’ve blown it because their dogs aren’t perfect.
That’s why it helps to remind yourself (and everyone in your home) that you have a tiger in the house! A tiger is serious business, so:
You’re going to be proactive and set that animal up for success.
You’re going to think hard about how to manage guests.
You’re going to work diligently to tiger-proof the house.
You’re going to expect to be “on duty” when young kids or other animals are around.
You’re going to understand how completely weird all of this is for a creature who’s not in his native habitat, so you’ll expect those bumps in the road.
Finally, realizing you have a tiger who’s missing out on what he’d get if he were out in the wild, you would think like a good zookeeper would. “How can I better meet the needs of this captive animal, who wasn’t designed to Netflix on the couch?”
How Your Tiger Becomes the Best Dog
Flipping that mental switch from dog to tiger makes owners smarter, kinder, and more open to problem-solving. Do you know what that kind of nurturing does after a while? It turns that tiger into a dog who’s a pleasure to live with.
Mind you, most owners will still benefit tremendously from a great trainer with a dog behavior modification training plan, now that you have the right mindset. But the best trainer in the world can’t help you when you have impossible expectations about a member of another species who landed in your human home.
Excellent article offering a way to approach training from another perspective. Based on some of the overly critical responses I’m again reminded that humans need training as well.
Excellent analogy does make you at least think effectively rather than having unrealistic expectations
I understood this artical simply stating the fact that WE the owners of dog must REALIZE that it is my error if my dog chews my shoes. Don’t leave the shoe out where dog can get.Also I have been guilty of giving my dog too much space on which to rome. I come home from errand and I did not put dog in crate. So puppy chewed another object i.e.edge of sofa!!! Dog is 20 month old. Do not expect puppy to act like a 3 y
O. Well trained dog. So it was my expectations that caused the problem…not the dogs ! I loved the artical.
I loved this article too! I wish more people could have understood it and took away from it the meaning, guidance and pointers it gives readers! It definitely rang true for me and I needed to read an article like this after an incident of my young dog getting into something recently, and now after reading this article I more so wish I had handled it and reacted differently! In the event of another incident, I will definitely remember this article and what I took from it and react to the situation differently as well as try to prevent it from happening in the first place! Dogs have natural instincts and are a different species living with humans and we HAVE to remember that!
You mean dogs aren’t people, too?
Very good discussion. If everyone agreed on everything, what a bore life would be. I would add one thing.. I think many breeds, including bird dogs, herding dogs and hound dogs until recently ran long distances and not on leads. I run my Welsh Springer Spaniels a half hour or hour every day off lead in a safe area (not a bark park). This really burns energy. If you are lucky enough to have a safe area to do this in, it really helps out. Good for you and the dog.🙂
I totally agree! And you made a wonderful point! Although I wish most of them never even inputted their ignorance and negativity on this thread. However, moving on from their nonsense, you’re point about exercising dogs I couldn’t agree with more! I also have a working/herding dog and I too find it so beneficial and necessary to let him run off lead in a safe area ( not a dog park) for an hour every day to burn off energy. Exercise is so important to a happy and healthy life. And it’s true as the saying goes, a tired dog is a happy/good dog!
If we don’t exercise our herding dog sufficiently, she finds an excuse to do her Zoomies before bed. Smarter than some people, as evidenced here. 🎉🥳💫🥳
Good article! Tiger, very young child, or whatever creature not human (except for the child of course) is not going to understand our world. The point of the article is communication and learning. Simple!
Woof woof!
That’s so true! It hadn’t even occurred to me until I read your comment!
Lots of people commenting here just don’t seem to understand the premise of this article which is very simple and the author could have used virtually any other animal as an alternative. The premise is that too many people acquire dogs who are totally ignorant of their needs and just assume they will fit in with their household without any guidance or training – no matter how dysfunctional that household may be – and then blame the dog when the dog doesn’t understand what it is supposed to do.
I agree, Sheila!