Your dog is not a human being. Stop treating her like one

Lucy the Dachshund would eat her own body weight, vomit it up, and eat some more if we let her.

Gizmo the Papillon will only pick at his food as he needs it.

Skippy the near-Maine Coon cat has the same eating habits as Lucy. We've created a system where the cats' food bowl is on top of the drier. The purpose is two fold.

1. It prevents Lucy from eating all their food too.
2. When Skippy gets too fat to jump on the drier, he'll slowly starve to a healthier (relatively speaking) weight. Realistically speaking, this isn't happening anytime soon. He may be morbidly obese but he can still jump over a 6' fence.

"Of course you can find the exceptions to the rule Olsen. But on average, this is fact…"

Yep. dogs are as diverse as the other animals we call humans. Is that the fact you're putting across?

Ken,
You know good and well it isn't.

Do I?

I had been struggling to get my dog to eat. She has been losing weight. i watched her approach and back off from the bowl as if it would bite her. Near as I can figure, she finally noticed after a year of using the bowl, there is a reflection on the side of her stainless steel bowl and it freaked her out. she starved herself for I don't even know. The minute I swapped with a ceramic bowl she ate a whole bowl in seconds.

She gets a full bowl each day, but won't eat until we are home and then only in bites here and there – she is with one of us, goes in for a bite, and returns to sit with us to eat it.

I enrolled in obedience class with her and dropped out. The instructor insisted I should give her treats as rewards. She would leave them on the grass and other dogs would fight over them. It took a full year before she took food from me and yet she was obedient most of the time. She will sit, stay, come, down – but only for me. She ignores commands other people give her.

She carries a pack, hikes for miles, wears a costume or coat without complaint. I didn't teach her to do this. She wants nothing to do with other dogs. She is on guard against other people. She loves walks and being petted – she will throw her body against our legs and rub against them like a cat. She refuses to pay any attention to a clicker. She refuses to walk in mud if at all possible and hates water crossings. When hiking she walks ahead sometimes but will wait for us to catch up instead of running back and forth.

She will eat poop, but never rolls in stinky things. She gets filthy on hikes but by the time we get home her fur is no longer muddy. She starts to chase squirrels but comes back immediately when called. She refuses to fetch or roll over. She likes our cat.

We have an AKC registered kid. A weird one.

I grew up in a home that always had a dog and we always loved them dearly. However, it was always very clear that they were not actually family, but a pet, and there was a mutually beneficial relationship there. We got a friend who was fun to play with and care for, they got an endless supply of food, water, and a home. If the dog chased the cows, destroyed property, or bit someone – the relationship was over. Meaning the family pet was now sleeping with the fishes. Now that I'm an adult, my home is a little more tolerant as I know that it's in a dogs nature to do some things(like chase cows). Biting is still an offense worthy of capital punishment, however.

I do know some people that say they love their dogs/cats like they would love their own child. Crazy stuff.

Ryan

"I grew up in a home that always had a dog and we always loved them dearly. However, it was always very clear that they were not actually family, but a pet, and there was a mutually beneficial relationship there."

Probably just a matter of semantics, but my pup is definitely family to me. She's a dog, I treat her like a dog, and I don't expect her to have human attributes, but she's family nonetheless.

Not semantics, and where we no doubt differ, is that a dog biting is not, to me, automatically a capital offense. It would really depend on the circumstances – I don't punish an animal for ignorant human behavior.

And where we'd really diverge, I imagine, is that I don't automatically put every human life above every animal life. But that's a different thread! :-)

We still talk about some of the dogs I grew up with in the '70s and '80s.

Amy and I had a 130lb lab/newfi mix dog named Jake. He was our baby until we had a baby. He was playing with our then toddler daughter in the backyard when unexpectedly he chomped down on her neck. Not hard enough to break skin but enough to cause immediate bowel evacuation of one of the parents. It wouldn't have taken much for him to break her neck.

I guess we could have hired a dog whisperer or dog psychologist but instead we found a family with teenage sons on a farm who adopted him. I miss him but I couldn't take a chance that his behavior would escalate and he might harm our daughter.

That should have been an easy choice but it wasn't. I think about him all the time.

A couple years ago, our dog Molly was starting to fail. She was in obvious pain and the vet told us that there wasn't anything he could do for her. We didn't want to say goodbye but we didn't want her to keep suffering because we were unwilling to let her go. He gave her the injection, and my wife and eye bawled our eyes out as she passed. I have a lump in my throat now just thinking about it.

They may not be human, they may play by a different set of rules than our children do, but they are a very special part of our lives, and they are certainly family.

Frankly, I really like my dog more than many, many human beings.

He's ALWAYS happy to see me, he doesn't get upset if I leave a mess in the kitchen. He always wants to go out for a walk or to play ball or to just lie at my feet and watch TV. He'll watch what I watch, he'll hike where I want to hike and he'll truly be happy about it.

He doesn't judge me, he doesn't ridicule my innate inability to dress myself each day…and all he wants in return is a smile and a scratch and maybe a treat or two (or seven).

Yes, he plays by different rules than humans, he's a dog. I have to treat him like one, NOT a human, but that doesn't make him any less important to me than some people in my life. As a matter of fact, in many ways he's more important to me than many humans in my life.

Of course – maybe that's why I'm still single???

"As a matter of fact, in many ways he's more important to me than many humans in my life."

I'll bet you would have gone to eaten lousy greek food with him instead of watching some silly documentary….

"Not semantics, and where we no doubt differ, is that a dog biting is not, to me, automatically a capital offense. It would really depend on the circumstances – I don't punish an animal for ignorant human behavior."

Yeah, I wouldn't punish ours for biting if it was caused by someone hitting them or mistreating them. I was really thinking of scenarios where it was unprovoked or relatively so. Biting a stranger if it tries to pet them is unacceptable to me, but if that stranger kicked them for no reason, that's a different story. Then someone has to put down the stranger. lol

Ryan

"Then someone has to put down the stranger. lol "

I knew we'd find something to agree on… :-)

Resurrecting this old thread in anticipation of someday getting a backpacking with dogs forum. It’s still a good article, IMO, with good thoughts on the human/dog relationship.

I’ve recently found myself trying to humanize my pup a bit too much, I think. I bought her a nice fleece dog blanket for her bed. I drape it over her before turning out the lights. It’s completely off her in the morning.

It’s probably completely off her within five minutes, but this I don’t know. I figure when I drape it over her she’s looking at me and saying to herself: Dude, I’m a husky. It’s 60 degrees in here. Are you kidding me? Get that damn blanket off me! :-)

Wow, I had forgotten all about this 6 year old thread. I never saw the question posed in response to my post above where I said the following:

“Seeing your dog as a ‘little-furry-human’ isn’t necessarily wrong,” says Roland, who is a proponent of positive relationships between people and their pets. “But it is a failure to accurately see them as what they are… what they want, and what they need.”

This quote isn’t necessarily wrong, it is just complete nonsense.

whoisthisguy then said:

“Not sure I get you Allen. How is it nonsense that seeing them for what they aren’t is a failure to see them for what they are?”

The reason this quote is nonsense is that he first states “Seeing your dog as a ‘little-furry-human’ isn’t necessarily wrong,” and then goes on to say that “But it is a failure to accurately see them as what they are… what they want, and what they need.” – which is another way of saying that it IS ABSOLUTELY, NECESSARILY, WRONG.

In other words, I think we can all agree that dogs are NOT little furry humans, so seeing them as that IS necessarily wrong, and this author is spouting nonsense when he says it is not. That’s all I was saying.

A dog may not be human, but humans aren’t, either.

We’re just monkeys with anxiety disorders.

And avocado toast.