If you have dogs, you probably already know intuitively what their general energy level is; whether your dog is a hyper pup that needs to play all the time, or more of a couch potato that’s happy with a slow walk and then a nap. But how can you tell whether a new dog’s energy would be right?

When people ask Cesar what breed of dog they should adopt, he always steers them away from picking a specific breed, telling them instead to look for a dog with the right energy level — the same as or lower than the lowest energy level among your existing pack, whether it’s only humans or you already have dogs.

So how do you know what a dog’s energy level is? If you were a dog, you could tell immediately. But, since you’re probably human if you’re reading this, it takes a little more effort and a lot of observation. Here are five things to do to figure out a dog’s natural energy level.

1. Look at the breed — a little
   Dogs see themselves as animal, species, breed, and then name, so a dog’s breed is not the most important thing about them. However, their breed or mix can give you an idea whether they might lean toward higher energy. Dalmatians, Jack Russell terriers, and Siberian huskies are known to be energetic, as are many hunting breeds. Breeds like basset hounds, pugs, and bulldogs tend to be lower energy.
2. Try to see the dog in different circumstances
   Every dog is different depending on where they are, who they’re with, and whether they’ve just come back from a long walk or have been cooped up all day. If the dog is at a shelter, you may only be able to visit and not take her out for a “test drive,” but try to come at least once when the shelter is very hectic and again when it’s very quiet to get an idea. A calm dog in a hectic shelter is probably laid-back all the time; a dog that barks and runs around when hardly any people or dogs are around is probably very energetic.If you are adopting from a rescue or a breeder, then you probably have more opportunities to interact with the dog. See if you can visit before and after walk time, or see how the dog behaves in the car, interacting with a groomer, with strangers, and so on.
3. Go for a walk
   The walk is the perfect way to judge a potential dog’s energy. Again, at the shelter you may only be able to do this in a limited way, or only watch a volunteer walk the dog, but you can learn plenty. Is the dog a puller, trying to drag the human along? Or does the dog seem reluctant to go on the walk, turning back almost immediately? How long does it take to wear the dog out? This is one of the two most direct ways to judge a dog’s energy.
4. Try play time
   Find out what kind of games the dog likes to play. Some are into fetch, some are into playing with rope or squeaky toys, and others are only into playing with other dogs. Some dogs are not big players at all. If the dog likes to fetch, does she tire out quickly or will she play until you end the game? If he likes to “kill” the rope toy, how soon does he seem to lose interest and walk away? As with the walk, the longer a dog will go, the higher energy he or she probably is.
5. Watch interactions with other dogs
   Is your potential dog the one that tries to engage in play with every other dog, racing from group to group, or does she prefer to watch from the sidelines, engaging only a few dogs for a polite greeting and sniff, and not much more? When the dog does play with others, does it always turn into a game of chase, or is it more focused on play bows and wrestling that ends quickly? A visit to the dog park or watching dogs interact at the shelter are the quickest ways to judge your dog’s energy. Again, though, try to do this several different times, once after the dog has had a walk and once before — the latter time will give you a better idea of the dog’s true energy level.

The biggest cause of misbehavior in dogs is when their needs for exercise, discipline, and affection are not fulfilled, but especially when they do not get enough exercise to drain their excess energy and bring their minds to a calm, submissive state during which we can reinforce and reward that calm behavior with affection.

Dogs that have a lot more energy than their humans often don’t get enough exercise. This is why it’s very important to know your own energy levels, then know how to figure out a dog’s energy level in order to find exactly the right one for your pack.

How would you describe youd dog’s energy level?

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While it may seem like our dogs understand specific words and associate them with specific actions, they’re mostly responding to the intent that we have associated with the word. If you tell your dog to sit without intention behind it, your dog won’t sit. Conversely, you can approach your dog with the intent to get her to sit and say the word ‘toaster’ or ‘lamp’ ‘ or nothing at all ‘ and she will sit.

Dogs Focus On Our Energy

Dogs pay less attention to our words because they are really focusing on our energy, expressed through our intention and emotions, the latter through our tone of voice and body language. Energy is how dogs communicate with each other, and you can see it in any dog park. A dog will indicate submission by lowering parts of its body, particularly its head and ears; show dominance by raising its head, ears, or tail; and show aggression by pinning its ears back and stiffening its body.

The word energy can sometimes be confusing. Cesar explains it this way: ‘Energy is how any being presents itself to the world. Think of it as your personality, disposition, temperament, or whatever word makes sense to you.’ For humans, energy is what we get when our intentions meet our emotions. Cesar expresses it as a formula:

Intention × Emotion = Energy.

This formula explains why calm and assertive energy works so well with dogs. When we are calm and assertive, our emotions are balanced and our intent is clear. Dogs understand this. On the other hand, negative emotions and lack of firm intent presents weak energy and confuses our dogs.

This is why you can’t stop a barking dog by angrily yelling. The dog doesn’t hear you commanding it ‘No!’ He hears you joining in the barking, so his excitement increases. That’s also why baby talk confuses dogs ‘ they read it as submissive and weak energy. Depending on their natural position in the pack, they may become anxious or very dominant in response.

Dogs follow balanced energy because it’s what their instincts tell them to do. It’s up to us to provide that calm, assertive balance.

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Two recent studies are moving us closer than ever to a definitive answer.

In a UK study, two researchers at Goldsmiths College in London, Deborah Custance and Jennifer Mayer, set out to determine if dogs are capable of empathy — an ability to truly understand emotion.

“I had talked to so many people who have dogs who say, ‘it’s like my dog is trying to comfort me,’” says Custance. Though she admits her own dog never offered comfort — “my dog was very hard-hearted,” she laughs — she set out to study whether dogs were even capable of caring in the way so many of us assume that they are.

They gathered a group of largely untrained pets, mostly mixed breeds and equally divided between males and females. Then they set up a situation with the dog’s owner and a stranger to the dog. The owner and the stranger would alternately talk, hum in an odd way, or cry. The researchers wanted to see how the dogs reacted.

Dog’s Responses

The dogs responded — 15 of the 18 in the study — by seeking out the person in distress, even if that person was the stranger. “On the surface, it certainly seemed as if the dogs were demonstrating empathy,” says Custance, who thought that if the dogs were seeking comfort for themselves they would go to their caretaker. She admits that the study raises other questions: What about other emotions, such as pleasure or anger? Would dogs respond differently to children?

However, the findings are being interpreted by many as proof that we’re more than just a meal ticket for our dogs. This doesn’t surprise Custance, who acknowledges that dog lovers want to believe it. “We were so careful to say there’s more work to be done.” Nonetheless, she says, “We have benefitted greatly from dogs. It’s definitely a symbiotic relationship.”

Gregory S. Berns, director of the Emory Center for Neuropolicy in Atlanta, Georgia, and a dog lover himself, might soon be able to provide definitive evidence of a dog’s feelings. He was inspired to take a peek into the canine cranium after learning about the heroic Navy dog that helped take down Osama bin Laden. He noted that the dog had not only learned to endure hostile conditions but apparently to enjoy it. What, he wondered, was the dog thinking?

“Why do an fMRI on a dog?” wrote Berns in an article on Psychology Today’s website. “The answer is obvious: To see what they think.”

He spent a year, together with an assistant and a dog trainer, to prepare dogs for the fMRI. Since the Navy dog had learned to handle the noise of a helicopter, Burns prepared dogs for the noise of the procedure by having them trained to wear ear plugs. He also, under strict ethical guidelines to ensure no dogs were harmed and were free to “quit” the experiment at any time, had the dogs trained to stay perfectly still in the scanner. Even a slight movement would ruin the image.

It took a year, but Berns reports that they were successful on the anniversary of the bin Laden mission. The unsurprising discovery was that the reward center of dogs’ brains lit up when there was a hand signal indicating they would receive a hot dog treat. Far more interesting, Berns and his team discovered that dogs’ brains are much more responsive when information comes from humans, as opposed to inanimate signals, like Pavlov’s famous bells. “They like looking at us, just as we like looking at them,” writes Berns. He goes on to say that this ability to map their brains provides the tool to answer questions relating to dogs’ ability to feel empathy.

“I wonder what he’s thinking…” might not need pondering much longer.

The post Inside Your Dog’s Mind: What They Feel For You appeared first on Cesar's Way.

As of now, three months later, parts of the island are still without power, there are outbreaks of disease due to insects and standing water, and over two hundred thousand Puerto Ricans have fled to the U.S. (Remember, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)

Because of this, I’m in Puerto Rico now, where I’ve come with a team of trainers as part of my PACK Project in order to help a group of victims who are often forgotten in natural disasters.

Dogs in Natural Disasters

Yes, I’m talking about dogs, of course, but their plight has been even more difficult in Puerto Rico because, like my native Mexico, bringing dogs into the home as pets is a fairly recent phenomenon. Otherwise, many dogs are strays, or they wind up abandoned when the family can’t take care of them.

Currently, life is very difficult not only for all of the stray dogs in Puerto Rico, but for the people trying to help and rescue them, which is why we’re down here. Shelters are not immune to natural disasters, and many of them were hit hard by the storm, suffering physical damage. But, since everyone down here was affected, local fundraising is very difficult.

One of the things you can do to help right now is give to the Cesar Millan PACK Project, where all donations collected from now until December 31 will go to the reconstruction and relief of Puerto Rico’s animal shelters damaged by Hurricane Maria.

Despite losing all power on the island for weeks, having landscapes changed or erased, and entire neighborhoods destroyed, the spirit and will of the people of Puerto Rico have not been broken. They will do what they have to in order to come through this.

The human pack comes together.

Wildfires

I got to see this last week in California during the wildfires, and I’m seeing it right now in Puerto Rico. When push comes to shove, more of us are inclined to help than not, and that is truly inspiring. It can be easy to give in to cynicism if all we do is watch the news, but if we watch what our fellow humans actually do, then we see a completely different story.

Despite reports to the contrary, the true human spirit seems to be more inclined to help than to harm. We really are more a pack than we aren’t, but that’s maybe the biggest lesson we can learn from dogs.

Every dog sees themselves in this order: Animal, species, breed, name. We tend to see ourselves in the opposite order, but all that does is divide us. Once we realize that we are all one species, then we can learn how to help each other without having to experience a disaster in order to do it.

Stay calm, and please give whatever you can to help us rebuild the shelters in Puerto Rico,

With Cesar in Puerto Rico this will be his last Sunday message until next year. Enjoy the holidays with your loved ones — Happy Hanukah, Merry Christmas, Habari Gani, Good Yule and Happy New Year to all. Cesar will be back in 2018!

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And, really, nothing actually changed except what your clock said. Every day still has 24 hours in it, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and everything goes on. Your dog may be a little confused by the change of schedule for a day or two, but to them all that’s happened is that you’ve suddenly started doing everything an hour later.

Humans are the only creatures on earth that run on clocks and calendars, which is why the time change is always a great opportunity to remember something very important.

Nature’s clocks are made by Nature. All of the plants and animals on the planet take their time cues from the intricate dance of three things: the earth, the sun, and the moon. Those three things are what give us our days, our months, our seasons, and our years.

If you were in a room with no windows and I told you, “It’s six p.m. Is it light or dark out?” would you be able to answer instantly? The answer depends on the time of year and your latitude. If it’s June and you’re not too far south, then it’s light out. If it’s December and you’re not too far north, then it’s dark.

In between, it could be either. Now, if you remember how seasons work, you could probably guess the answer depending on what time of the year it is, or how late or early it got dark yesterday. But those human answers are still based on artificial measures.

In the same situation, although without words, a dog would just know whether it was still day or night outside. They have a very strong internal clock that keeps the time.

People have asked me whether dogs can experience jet lag, and yes, they can. I’ve seen my dogs do it many times when they’ve traveled the world with me, although it seems to be worse going east than it is west — probably because going toward the sun makes the day seem shorter, while going away makes it seem longer.

At the same time, though, dogs get over it and make the adjustment a lot more quickly than humans do. I’ve had quick trips overseas where it seems like I never do adapt, while Junior seems to be ready and over it within a day or two at most.

But dogs also have a great psychological advantage: They don’t know they’re not supposed to be awake at three in the morning, so they don’t worry about it. Humans, though, know they’re “supposed” to be asleep in the middle of the night and get worried about it when they aren’t. If there’s one thing that’s great for inspiring insomnia, it’s worrying. Our own intellects and clocks and calendars help make the problem even worse.

This is where we can take a big lesson from dogs and learn to prioritize. In a dog’s world, all of the important things revolve around survival: protecting the pack, eating, sleeping, and relieving themselves. If there’s a stranger at the door, their favorite toy is suddenly not important.

For humans, we have pretty much the same needs with only a few exceptions. We definitely need to pay our taxes and rent or mortgages on time — but those, for us, are also survival things. But when it comes to other things, like seeing the latest movie, or knowing the score of that big game right this second, or dropping everything to answer an email immediately, well — nobody is going to die if those don’t happen right on time. You can put the toy down!

So when the stress of thinking you have too many things to do and no time to do them starts to get to you, remember how dogs tell time — not by minutes and seconds, but by hours and days. Remembering this can be especially important at this time of year as the holidays — and the stress that comes with them — approach.

Just keep in mind that you have time. You’re going to get everything done. Relax, and look at Nature, not the calendar.

Stay calm, and tell time like your dog!

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It’s easy to take that kind of thing personally even when it’s not, but it’s also easy to miss when we do it to others. And yet, it’s the kind of thing we do to our dogs constantly without knowing it.

We mislead our dogs when we are not absolutely clear in our intentions, and we lie to them when we give them affection at the wrong time. The end result can be dogs that are frustrated, fearful, confused, or even aggressive, but the solution is very easy.

Stop deceiving your dog.

Lack of clear intention leaves your dog uncertain what you want. For example, if you want your dog off of the sofa but you say “Down” in a weak and uncertain way, your dog reads your energy as telling her that you really don’t want what you’re asking for. If you’re not confident in your body language on the walk, then your dog will try to lead because you aren’t.

Confuse your dog like this enough, and he might start ignoring you completely because he’ll have learned not to rely on what you’re telling him. It’s a lot like that old story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” At first, when there was no wolf, the townspeople believed him, but by the time he was serious — and really needed their help — no one did, so no one came to his rescue.

If your dog doesn’t believe you’re serious when you want her to do something, then she’s not going to pay attention. How many times have you heard someone say — or said it yourself — “My dog doesn’t listen to me?” Well, this is exactly why.

There’s another form of lying to your dog, though, that is much more difficult to catch yourself doing and also much more damaging, and this is when you inadvertently tell your dog that you approve of their behavior when you don’t.

If you have a small dog, have you ever picked him up when he’s gotten aggressive toward another dog? For a dog of any size, have you ever petted or held them when they were scared by something, like a loud noise or a stranger? Have you ever let your dog have that treat after they failed to carry out your command?

In each case, you’ve rewarded your dog for doing exactly the opposite of what you want. And dogs are all about figuring out what brings them good things and what brings them bad things. All animals are because they learn instinctually and react by association.

This is the same reason that you cannot punish a dog for doing their business in the house unless you actually catch them doing it. Otherwise, the negative association attaches to whatever the dog was doing in the moment. If he happened to be lying down calmly when you started yelling because of the mess on the rug, then you’ve just taught him that you don’t want him calm.

This is why it’s so important to be absolutely aware of when we’re giving our dogs affection, and to only do it at those times when they are behaving the way that we want them to, whether actively — by behaving on the lead, or following a command — or passively — by being calm and submissive.

This is also why we have to be absolutely clear in our attentions and express them to our dogs with completely certainty. It is only when what we want and how we express it match up that we are telling our dogs the truth, and only when we are truthful that we can get our dogs to do what we want.

Stay calm, and communicate!

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However, being human and emotional, we take our empathy a step further and do something that animals do not: we feel pity for other living things, and we can feel pity for ourselves.

Dogs don’t do this, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, particularly in the case of lacking self-pity, it can be a powerful lesson to all of us.
 
If you’ve ever met a dog that’s missing a limb, or that is blind or deaf, probably the most noticeable thing is that, to them, it isn’t noticeable. They don’t let their limitations get in the way of them being a dog. Instead, they use what abilities they have left and make the adjustment seamlessly.

A blind dog will use its nose and ears to navigate the world, and a deaf dog will use its nose and eyes. A three-legged dog will trot along almost as quickly as a four-legged dog, and even dogs with two legs will adapt to bipedal locomotion — front, back, or one side.

Dogs do this by instinct, and it should be pretty clear why. In the wild, a Pack will abandon or kill dogs that are crippled and that cannot continue on with the rest of the group. It’s a life-or-death choice that’s hardwired into the animal. You could almost call it a case of “persist or perish.”

People can have this resilience as well, but we often need to be reminded of that fact — and our emotions can lead us to too easily give up when the odds seem insurmountable. I saw one such case a few years ago when a young man named Erick Cruz came to my Fundamentals of Dog Behavior and Training Course at the Dog Psychology Center. Other than a slight stiffness on one side of his body, he seemed perfectly healthy — but then I found out the real story.

Erick, who is from Guatemala, was living an entirely ordinary life until the day he had a stroke. Even though he was only in his early 20s, it completely changed everything for the worse. He went from being very physically active and vibrant to being a shut-in who could barely crawl across his room. While the stroke was physically debilitating, it was his self-pity and defeatism that could have kept him trapped in a ruined body and a tiny room for the rest of his life.

Fortunately, Erick had a dog, Fibi, a Chihuahua that his (by then) ex-girlfriend had given him and, while the dog could feel empathy, it didn’t feel any pity. Instead, the dog basically started badgering Erick and wouldn’t give up on him… until he learned to not give up on himself.

His recovery didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen, and the dog was there through all of it, cheering Erick on. A couple of years ago, he told me, “Fibi was always there to encourage me. She was so patient. It didn’t matter that it took me fifteen minutes to walk five yards. She wasn’t in a hurry. Time didn’t matter to her.”

That last part is probably the biggest key to how dogs do it. As I say often, dogs live in the moment. They don’t worry about the future or regret the past. Contrast that to people, especially modern ones, where everything seems to be ruled by the clock — and our obsession with deadlines and schedules can make us forget how to be human or even make us sick.

Fortunately, we have our dogs to remind us how to stay healthy and to encourage us to overcome our setbacks. Sometimes, it makes me wonder who the smarter ones are in that relationship!

Stay calm, and don’t quit!

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We actually have a lot more than just five senses, but only considering the classical five, this leaves the sense of smell as the one that a lot of people would give up if they had no choice. And I’m not just guessing here. Surveys have shown that this is the overwhelming answer.

But your dog would answer the question quite differently.

While humans may not even really notice their sense of smell until it’s assaulted by a very strong odor, for your dog, it’s their primary way of experiencing the world. It’s their first sense to begin functioning, even before they can see or hear, and it’s the way they first learn about their mothers and how they find their only food source.

To a dog, your scent makes up most of your “name,” and it’s how she knows you. It’s also how she’ll know when you’re ill or not in a good mood. Her nose lets her know what’s going on in the neighborhood, what kind of animal ran through the garden and how long ago, and which way it went when it left. To a dog, their nose is Google, GPS, and Facebook.

This is also why dogs that lose another sense, particularly sight or hearing, can make up for it. Their noses are so powerful that they can provide all of the navigational assistance or environmental information necessary. In fact, this can sometimes make it difficult for humans to even notice that their dog has gone blind or deaf for a long time, because they can “cheat.”

This is also the reason that a dog with perfectly adequate senses may appear to be selectively blind or deaf as we wave for or call him from across the dog park. He can see and hear us perfectly well. It’s just that something has engaged his nose for the moment, and he’s gathering all of the information he can.

Don’t actually try this at home, but if you want to be amazed at how powerful your dog’s nose is, imagine how hard it would be for you to find your way around the house just by following your sense of smell. You’d probably walk into a wall in the first minute. You can try this, though: Take a moment to close your eyes, see how many different scents you can identify, and if you can tell where they’re coming from.

You might be able to smell that coffee brewing, although to your brain the aroma may seem to be coming from everywhere. You may catch a whiff of the shampoo you used this morning, or the detergent you last cleaned your clothes in — but you’ll have no idea just from the smell how long ago you washed your hair or did your laundry.

Meanwhile, your dog can probably detect the last dozen meals cooked in the kitchen, and every visitor who’s been to the house over the last couple of weeks, as well as how long ago each meal or visitor happened. At the same time, she can smell the unfixed neighbor dog who’s going into heat, the nest of squirrels in the attic, the opossum living under the house, and the exhaust from the engine on the letter carrier’s truck, which hasn’t come around the corner yet but which is a looming threat.

And she’s sensing all of that and processing it without thinking about it. Why? Because information coming in through the nose is processed in a part of the brain called the olfactory bulb, which is in the limbic system.

This part of the brain is sometimes referred to as the “lizard brain.” It is the center for fight or flight reactions and emotional responses, so it operates in the world of pure instinct, meaning it interprets all of the incoming odor information without your dog having to consciously process it.

To a dog, smelling is knowing, and his response to this information is instantaneous and instinctive. This is why we can go so wrong when we think that our dogs perceive the world in the same sensory order that we do: sight, sound, touch. But if we really want to perceive the world as they do, or at least understand how they do, then it’s one time where we’d learn more by not listening and not looking.

Take a deep breath, and welcome to your dog’s world.

Stay calm, and smell the roses!

The post Making Scents appeared first on Cesar's Way.

In my home country of Mexico, the date is fixed on May 10. In my adopted country of the U.S., it’s always the second Sunday in May — which means that sometimes it’s the same day in both places, like it was in 2015 and will be in 2020.

But there’s a more important lesson in the day than the when and why and, again, we can turn to dogs to learn it.

When a mother dog is with her litter, all of the other dogs leave her alone or soon learn to, because trying to violate that space would lead to at least a strong warning to stay away and everything else including up to death in case the warning was not heeded. A mother dog will fight and kill for her puppies because she instinctively understands their importance.

But something interesting happens. Once the mother has done her job by making sure her puppies are fed and cared for long enough to become independent, are taught the rules of the pack along the way, and can make it on their own, she sends them off into the world and stops protecting them from the rest of the dogs.

She doesn’t do this out of some cold-heartedness, though. She does it because she trusts the pack to take care of itself once her job is finished. There are two skills necessary to create this trust. Dogs have them, but we need to relearn if we’ve forgotten them. One is respect. The other is letting things go.

For the most part, dogs will respect another pack’s territory, so they don’t get into things like wars between different “tribes.” The only exceptions happen when there is a sudden and severe shortage of something vital to life, either prey or water, that drives more than one group into the same space. Even then, it’s not impossible for one big pack to form and work together.

Ultimately, dogs don’t see things like breed. They see dog. And they’re much more inclined to cooperate with each other than to fight. But even if they do fight, their second skill helps them tremendously. Dogs let go. They don’t hold grudges. Two dogs that have a violent fight today can still be friends tomorrow.

Both of these skills together create that necessary trust within the pack — and they are vital for humans to learn as well, if we’re going to regain the trust in our entire pack and in our common humanity while we still can.

On Mother’s Day, we honor our moms with things like cards or flowers, breakfast in bed, fancy dinners, or other rewards. But what we should remember to honor is what motherhood represents. Our mothers, all of them, created us. We were formed inside of another human being who then bore us and, quite often, fed us from her own body and helped us learn how the world works. Yes, our fathers had something to do with that but, like dogs, our fathers weren’t necessary for our births once conception had happened.

Without our mothers, there would be no us. Every mother is a symbol of life and of hope — the hope that someday we will learn to follow the clues that Nature has given us and which dogs live out so effortlessly.

It doesn’t matter what you or your mother look like, or where you live because we all live in the same place and we all got here the same way. And, ultimately, we all have the same mother — we’re standing on her.

If your mother is still alive, give her your love. If she’s not, remember her with your thanks. Either way, honor her by learning what the dogs know: respect and letting go leads to trust.

Stay calm, and happy Mother’s Day!

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Now, I could say the same thing about gophers, hedgehogs, and a lot of other animals, but I don’t think anyone is going to immediately think that they’re just like us or vice versa. And yet, with dogs, a lot of the time our first instinct is humanization — to treat a dog just like a person — which is how a lot of canine behavior problems begin.

Ever talk to your dog like they’re another person? Of course you have. I do it too from time to time, and that’s okay. Just talking to your dog is a lot different, though, than treating them like human children and dressing them in little evening gowns or in polo shirts and khaki.

When it comes to dogs, we need to be constantly aware of how we are different and how we are exactly the same as them.

Naturally, most of our common traits come down to anatomy. Dogs breathe with lungs and have hearts that circulate blood the same as we do. They have most of the same organs as humans, like a brain, liver, stomach, and intestines. Dogs even have prostates, although they do not have an appendix. They do have blood types like humans, but in a lot more varieties than our A, B, and O.

Along with similar physiology, dogs have similar vulnerabilities to humans, and can also develop diabetes, heart disease, various types of cancer, and arthritis and other joint diseases. Like humans, dogs can become overweight and can become very sick if they eat something toxic.

There are differences in anatomy and diseases, of course.  Humans aren’t affected by distemper or parvovirus. On the other hand, we can catch campylobacter from our adult dogs, who aren’t affected by the bacteria that causes it. It can, however, be dangerous to puppies under six months.

In terms of psychology, science has already established that dogs and humans have similar brain structures and biochemistry, and even process information and emotions similarly, particularly in reacting to voices. However, dogs don’t react to things in the same way that we do when it comes to intellect and emotions. To assume that dog psychology is the same as ours is to be as mistaken as B.F. Skinner was when he assumed that humans, like animals, just mindlessly react to all stimuli.

On the one hand, dogs do need quite a lot of the same things we do — exercise, structure, and a sense of purpose. On the other hand, if we try to fulfill those needs in a dog the same way we would for another person, all we’re really going to do for the dog is give it a sense of anxiety and confusion.

Not humanizing your dog’s mind is the best thing that you can do.

It’s okay to realize that your canine friend isn’t like a toddler intellectually and never will be. Dogs can certainly be smart, and as smart as human children in many ways, but in a lot of others a dog will never think like a human — and yet people often expect them to. But that’s about as counter-productive as thinking that a human two-year-old would be capable of doing your taxes — or driving a taxi.

So the real key is to keep in mind in what ways a dog’s needs are similar to ours and in what ways they are very different:

Similarities and Differences

• Certain biological needs, like food, water, and exercise, are identical in dogs and humans, although humans will always be better marathon runners because we have more long-range stamina.

• Our dietary needs can be quite different, though, so some things that humans can eat safely, like grapes and chocolate, can be dog poison.

• Mentally is where dogs and humans differ the most. We tend to live in the past or future, while dogs live in the “now.”

• Instinct is something that dogs rely on, but which many humans have forgotten how to use.

No other animal has formed the kind of bond with us that dogs have, so they will always hold a special place in human culture — and human hearts. They also have a lot of lessons to teach us about ourselves, Nature, and how to balance our own intellect and emotion.

Go ahead and love your dogs or talk to them. Indulge them when they’ve calmly earned it, but always remember that what your dog needs is not always the same as what you do — and vice versa.

Stay calm, and celebrate the differences!

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