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Allowing dogs to tell us who they are.

Feb 04, 2025

So much of the traditional model of dog training is centered on humans telling dogs what they should or shouldn’t do and there is no doubt the reality that we are responsible for these dogs. We have to keep them safe, and there is certainly a need to teach dogs what they can and cannot do. But beyond safety, beyond basic manners, beyond life skills. I want to open up a dialogue today about allowing dogs to tell us who they are.

16 years ago I brought a dog into my life and at the time I couldn’t imagine the trajectory he would send me on. Sunny was a little pitbull mix that I rescued from the shelter. When I first met him I couldn’t understand the severity of his fears.  He was seven months old, they found him behind a dumpster and his tail was plastered to his stomach. We didn’t even know he had a tail for weeks because he was so scared, we literally didn’t see his tail come up the first week he was with us. I naively thought that love and safety would be enough to help him. Admittedly, I was a young person, I was an inexperienced dog owner and I had a hard time letting Sunny tell me who he was in the beginning. He was very shut down and very scared and I put him in so many situations he didn’t want to be in. 

I didn’t know any better, but as he started to tell me how scared he was and how he didn’t like certain situations I slowly but surely started to listen. Sunny was telling me about who he was and by listening it allowed us to be much more successful in our lives. He told me he didn’t like busy, loud places. He told me he really liked the woods and as I started to acknowledge who he really was it allowed me to appreciate and understand him in a much deeper way. There were other times where he showed me who he was, and that was really scary. He could be very dog aggressive under the right conditions. I remember we took him to the dog park a lot when he was young, like a lot of inexperienced dog guardians do and I remember one day he got into a fight. A serious fight with another dog. It was really overwhelming and that actually became the catalyst for me to seek out the help of a trainer and later learn to be a trainer myself. 

There is this juxtaposition of I had to let him tell me who he was, but also acknowledge the realities of who he was and change our life according to that. (We obviously stopped going to dog parks)  In the work that I do with my clients, a lot of what I give them is an understanding of who their dog is, and how to best set them up for success because ultimately, we cannot change everything about a dog. We can’t shape and mold a dog to be exactly who we want them to be. We have to take a step back and we have to acknowledge who dogs are for better or for worse and put them in better situations.There is no doubt that the reason I am a trainer today is because I let Sunny show me who he was and through the ups and downs of our lives together, I learned lessons that still serve me today. 

We need to let dogs show us who they are and also simultaneously cultivate skills and coping mechanisms. Understanding that we can’t force dogs to be something that they aren’t. When it comes to your own dog and your relationship with them, I think that there is a healthy opening for both acknowledging who our dogs are and using training to enhance their ability to navigate this human world. Throughout Sunny's time with us, I learned that he could gain confidence and thankfully his tail finally came out from under his belly. I learned that he could make dog friends under the right conditions but he needed me to celebrate who he was and not resist it. I think that the real beauty lies in the intersection of letting our dogs tell us who they are and embracing them even when it’s not what we had hoped.

-Rachel



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