Boundaries
Show me a person who struggles with a behavioral dog and I’ll show you someone who struggles with boundaries.
Whether it’s someone who the dog “just doesn’t seem to like no matter how hard they try” or if it’s an owner who can not seem to get the dog to behave in the presence of whatever triggers the dog’s behavior… it’s boundaries. Our society sucks at boundaries. We have become a culture of people who are terrified of being perceived as “bad” and so we often avoid conflict, lie to ourselves, and ignore our own needs in order to keep peace. There is a lot of praise in this society for performative behavior where we feel safe as long as we are being perceived as doing the right thing. The right thing is rarely the easy thing, and setting boundaries is far from easy. True safety lies in knowing where your line in the sand is and knowing you are capable of defending it. Your dog’s have lines in the sand too. All sentient beings have boundaries. Disrespecting them and putting our needs over the needs and limits of our dogs should literally only ever be done when it is truly in the best interest of your dog and ideally when you have built enough of a relationship with your dog for them to know that even though they hate having their toe nails clipped or to get a shot you won’t lead them astray or let anything happen to them that they can’t truly handle.
I worked for years with my dog Toad around trainers who would bark at me to be more confident or gently insist that I just try to “fake it til you make it” and I would sink deeper into despair, because I knew nothing about confidence and I just wanted to be accepted. Those trainer’s words were empty and just felt like a critique with no real guidance behind it. I was raised in a home with an abusive parent who regularly berated and humiliated me and everyone else in the home as we all tip toed around them. Confidence wasn’t something I was ever modeled and boundaries were not only nonexistent but borderline treason. Any attempts I made at being bold were literally and metaphorically often struck down, and when I got older I was often overly aggressive in an attempt to appear scary, because I myself was terrified and had nothing instilled in me to feel safe interacting with people besides a big mouth and a short temper. I thought aggression was confidence for a long time, it was the best I could conjure up with a major lack of data and experience to pull from. Maybe that seems like a lot of personal information for a dog training blog, but if we’re going to dissect a behavior then taking into consideration any and all nature and nurture related contributing factors matters. And my behavior very much is relevant when it come to my dog’s behavior. My dog’s behavior and my own were very much rooted in insecurity so spirals of hopelessness were common. Such as: I didn’t know how to be confident which meant I didn’t know how to help my dog which meant that I WAS worthless and the spiral continued to feed into my dog’s aggression because the workload of keeping us safe kept falling on his shoulders while I fell apart over my own personal shortcomings. Fun times!
It wasn’t until I had attended a Jay Jack seminar in Tucson with Toad, and Jay worked with me and my dog that I finally felt like someone TRULY saw just how beat down we were, even as my muzzled dog lunged after him from 15 feet away and I sat around not really talking to anyone while I wore an uninviting expression and kept my arms crossed. I stayed in touch with Jay between the seminar and the time I made the journey out to work with him and in that time he encouraged me to try Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I didn’t understand at the time what the correlation between self defense for me and training for my dog was, but this was the first person who didn’t seem scared of my dog or immediately dismiss him as an “asshole”, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions and I signed up for my free trial class.
Receiving a stripe in BJJ
My first few weeks of Jiu Jitsu were hard. I apologized constantly. I was reluctant to touch people. My social anxiety was through the roof. My programming to not be assertive was in overdrive. Over the months though I grew stronger not only physically but mentally and emotionally. I started to learn how to navigate undesired physical advances and without realizing it I was filing away tools in my tool box to more comfortably and CONFIDENTLY navigate the world. It sounds terrible, but there is something to be said about the difference of how it feels walking into a room when you know how to submit anyone in it and walking into one when you can’t. I’m sure there are other ways to build confidence in humans, but for a 20 something year old woman who lived the majority of her life in fight or flight mode because of a life of physical and emotional abuse and turmoil, when I learned how to physically defend myself that confidence everyone demanded I summon out of nothing finally appeared through the practice of being assertive and following through on whatever I set off to do in class to protect myself. For the first time I had something that no one could take from me and I walked a lot taller.
After about a year of Jiu Jitsu I went to Maine with Toad. We went to learn from Jay Jack about managing my dog’s human aggression and the first day I muzzled my dog up, clipped him to a long line, and Jay told me to let my dog do as he pleased. Toad hesitated briefly before hauling off into Jay. My worst nightmare, something I had avoided at all costs for the last 7 years. Toad leapt for Jay’s chest and face barking as viscously as he could as Jay calmly but firmly said “no” before spraying a pet corrector. Toad immediately retreated. I was totally adrenalized, but after 7 years of chaos of my dog being completely out of control and unsafe, 7 years of trainers being totally overwhelmed by my dog, aggressively correcting my dog, making excuses about why they couldn’t help my dog… we were in the right place. This man meant every single bit of that “no” and would undoubtedly go to whatever length he needed to to reinforce that boundary. And maybe even more importantly he saw right through both of our bullshit and knew he didn’t need to do much to be heard by us. I go back to that day in my mind often. Every time I meet a dog like Toad now I remember how calm and still Jay was and how quickly that knocked the wind out of Toad’s sails to get no reaction. Many times I would hear Jay say “insecurity is loud, confidence is quiet.” This memory is those words in action, and dogs know far better than us humans how true that is. Toad seemed to recognize it immediately that day. That is the code they live by and when we work with these dogs in order to truly reach them you have to be ready to live by that code too. The dog ready to do the most damage is never the one making the most noise and me and my noisy dog walked away from that session with our tails tucked and a lot left to learn.
As our time in Maine went on there were many times where I was pushed in lessons to learn more about my dog and myself. At the time of the session I’m about to describe it was pretty unremarkable, but I look back on it often now. Jay had me playing tug with Toad and Toad never would out the toy for me. He was very competitive for the toy and I had gotten frustrated and let him win many times over the years, because I “knew” I couldn’t get him to comply. Jay watched us playing and eventually instructed me to have Toad out the toy and so I did. At least I thought I did. Jay pointed out how when I asked for the out I put my head to the side, avoiding my dogs gaze, and halfheartedly said the word. He asked me to just look at my dog in the face as I told him to out. I remember glancing down at Toad and making eye contact and even though I looked at my dog often it felt like the first time in a long time and I repeated the command. Suddenly my dog blinked several times and then loosened his grip on the toy. He didn’t out, we had some more work to do to unteach my dog that I would roll over and let him win if he hunkered down before Toad finally would comply, but that flutter of a moment where my dog’s expression seemed surprised by my “meaning it” more than I had previously caught him off guard and meant more to him than any of the frustrated voice raising or toy swapping or treat bribes I had tried previously. I speak often of this session with clients, because it was the first tangible moment I can remember insisting on something with my dog and the first glimmer of my dog starting to take me seriously.
Jay and Toad in Maine
Insisting makes all the difference. Meaning what you say. Following through. If you are like me and weren’t primed in your youth to be the most self assured confident creature to walk the Earth this can be incredibly useful to have broken down. If you ask for a sit, you don’t get discouraged if your dog blows you off 3 times. You try again. If you are swamped in your brain about what everyone around you thinks about you or your dog or what you’re doing with them, you march on chin up knowing you’re doing the best you currently know how. Hesitation, second guessing, and surrender are not your friends in the world of confidence and nothing you can do in an effort to pursue this is going to damage your dog or the work you’re doing together worse than faking confidence with yelling and losing control of your emotions can. I wish I had understood this sooner. Toad changed drastically when he saw me step into that role. He started to believe, probably even before I did, that I could keep us safe. His behavior changed because not only was I showing him I could look people in the eye and tell them to give us space and not falter if they got offended, but he started to see me mean what I said to him too and he learned that things were different now. I would not get off of his case until I got compliance when I needed it. That didn’t mean I bullied him around constantly. It meant I was mindful when I made requests of him that I followed through on those requests and I was fair when my requests were truly unreasonable and adjusted accordingly.
Toad and I were the same when it comes to boundaries. We were both scared of everyone and we were mean and edgy to keep them away and a lot of times we were completely justified. People didn’t and still to this day do not see our discomfort as something to take seriously as much as they see it as an inconvenience to them. Those people do not get access to me and my dogs any longer. I spent 7 years watching my dog communicate his boundaries and have them blown off only to inflame his behavioral issues and at the time I didn’t know better to realize the true level of damage being done.
Once I understood that my dog’s intense and stressful behavior was all done in an effort to keep us safe, because I had shown him I wasn’t willing to do what needed to be done to keep us safe I stepped into that role for that dog and I did that job until his very last day on this Earth. The last day I had with Toad we stood in a parking lot in an emergency vet trying to get admitted. Toad was muzzled and in a lot of discomfort and a second vet staff member rushed up to us as I was speaking to another one and I practically jumped in between her and my dog to not let him be rushed at. He was in so much discomfort he didn’t seem to even care at that point, but I set that boundary. I promised to protect my dog and I did until the very end. He showed me what he needed in order to feel comfortable and safe and I committed myself to making sure his needs were met until his time on this planet was done.
If you struggle with a behavioral dog I would bet you anything you struggle with boundaries. I definitely did and addressing it made all the difference.
Me and my son during our time in Maine
