07/25/2024
Well here’s a super unpopular subject. 😆
This was one of my very first insights when I started training: what constitutes an authority figure? The answer is simple, but detested and decried as unsavory, untrue, unfair, and ugly by most who prefer a reality drenched in less… reality.
Simply put, in the human/dog context, an authority figure creates the rules and guidelines for behavior, AND an authority figure is able to enforce these rules and guidelines.
Of course this sounds harsh, oppressive, and unfair. But not only does it need not be any of the preceding, it absolutely shouldn’t be. What it should be is a crystal clear hierarchy of goodness in which your dog is guided through our complex and overwhelming world with love, nurturing, and their well-being as the foremost priority. But creating that reality of goodness and safety typically doesn’t come from coddling, permissiveness, and a life without sometimes unpleasant consequences doled out by an authority figure tasked with forming and bringing about a dog’s best.
But let’s get back to our allegory. Because embedded within its somewhat silly details is precisely the problem that stymies so many owners.
You see, because of your behavior and how you’ve presented yourself to your dog, most of you are viewed as anything but an authority figure, and so most of you get the same reaction from your dog as our driver offers the civilian “enforcer” in the first example. Because you haven’t earned authority figure status you don’t get authority figure responses.
You can dislike this reality all you want. You can offer romantic examples of how life between human and dog *should* be… but disliking reality, and what’s more, ignoring it in favor of your prefered reality doesn’t change reality—it simply puts you at odds with it and ensures by way of your lack of reality-alignment mindset that you and your dog will struggle.
I don’t make the rules of reality. I just share them as I’ve observed them unfold. And deciding to align with reality, as unromantic, and sometimes uncomfortable as it might be, is the greatest gift you can offer yourself and your dog.
