25/01/2024
The “Neutral” Dog
On just about every post concerning puppy socialisation these days, you will find comments or advice such as, “remember that socialisation means teaching your dog to be neutral about people and dogs – it doesn’t mean encouraging them to interact.”
These comments have started to really bother me, as I don’t think they reflect the reality of how living creatures respond to the world around them and set impossible requirements for dogs, especially for young puppies. I sometimes wonder if people making these comments understand anything about the mammalian brain or what the word neutral even means.
Just like us, dogs are emotionally driven creatures. They respond to the environment around them according to how they feel and how things in the environment make them feel. Feeling is the essence of what it means to be alive and conscious. It is the difference between an animal and a robot.
The term “neutral” means feeling neither positive nor negative about something. It implies feeling nothing. I would ask you to try and think of things in your life that you feel absolutely nothing about. Can you think of any? How many situations in our lives evoke zero emotional response, where we feel absolutely nothing about the environment we are in or about the people we are around? Maybe routine things like eating breakfast or cleaning our teeth in the morning don’t make us feel much on the surface, but if you scratch a little deeper, for most of us eating always involves some small level of pleasurable anticipation and hygiene chores can feel like drudgery or even an annoyance when we may be in a hurry. Driving to work we may feel pleasure listening to a radio station or music, but we may also feel frustration anticipating traffic or anxiety about being late for work. Arriving at work there may be people that we enjoy seeing and who make us feel cheerful and motivated and there may others who make us feel uncomfortable or slightly stressed. Our emotions are likely to fluctuate with every situation – not always extremely – but just little ebbs and flows of feelings throughout the day.
We are seldom, if ever, completely neutral and I believe that it is the same for our dogs. The idea of expecting dogs to ignore people, dogs and situations because they should not have any feelings about them, seems quite ridiculous to me. Dogs are sentient, complex emotional beings – they are not robots. They are going to feel something in all situations and that something is going to tend towards consisting of either positive emotions or negative ones, depending on their predisposition and life experiences.
So, what about habituation? Does that not mean learning that something has no meaning and so ignoring it? Yes, it does – however, this usually refers to learning to ignore simple stimuli in the environment as inconsequential rather than having no feelings about social situations and other living beings. For example, while I am writing this, there are insects creating a constant high-pitched hum in the garden outside on this hot summer day. However, I only become conscious of them, when I stop typing for a second and take a moment to reconnect to my surroundings. I can also hear the distant hum of the sea, but all these sounds are so familiar and constant that my brain habituates to them and almost blocks them out. This is a vastly different situation in comparison to me deciding to go for a walk down to the beach and passing various neighbours or their dogs – while I may be quite used to encountering other people or dogs on walks, having my brain tune them out completely would be completely bizarre and rather inappropriate.
Yet that seems to be exactly what people advocate for and expect from dogs these days. Dogs must be “neutral” and dogs that actually have feelings about other living beings and any desire to engage or interact are “rude” and poorly trained. Of course, dogs cannot always go up and engage with other people and dogs and we do absolutely need to be able to teach them how to cope when it is best to disengage or stay away – but never allowing them to engage at all in the first place as puppies or to have any positive interactions is not going to create a “neutral” dog. It is in fact more likely to create a frustrated or anxious dog that has no idea how to respond if they are approached and engaged with - something that will happen at some point if you live in the real world.
The socialisation period is a time of high social attraction in dogs – they are drawn to interact with others, because by interacting they learn social skills and communication. They also learn associations and whether other people and dogs are safe or unsafe. Puppies may be drawn to want to go up to everyone and everything, but contrary to popular opinion, this does not mean that they will have the same desire to do so as adults, if you allow them to engage and enjoy interactions with other dogs and people as puppies. Again, of course every dog is different and some dogs may remain more social throughout their lives as adults and require a bit more management and training in how to cope when they cannot interact, but for most, the high level of social attraction that makes them want to run to everyone wanes as they mature and they naturally become more reserved.
It really concerns me that people are being encouraged to expect puppies to keep to themselves and never interact with people or dogs when out and about. The idea of a puppy enjoying themselves playing with friends or learning that other people can be friendly, fun and pleasant to be around has become a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs. Heaven forbid that a dog actually develops a liking for other people or dogs and enjoys their company – don’t you know that this leads to all manner of “bad” behaviour and that a “neutral” dog with no feelings towards other dogs and people is a good dog?
Of course, there is a balance to strike. Of course, we can’t allow our dogs to run up to everyone and everything all the time. Of course, we need to protect them from bad experiences by choosing who is appropriate and isn’t appropriate to meet and greet and of course we need to teach them to handle not being able to engage or approach with minimum frustration or disappointment – but these are training issues which we can work on throughout our dogs’ lives and not an excuse to skip socialisation altogether.
At the end of the day, I would rather have a dog that was a little too friendly, than a dog that was uncomfortable in social situations due to lack of positive experiences. A dog that is uncertain is far more likely to become defensive than a dog who has positive feelings. Regardless of what we aim for though, our dogs will have all sorts of emotions, some positive and some negative – just like us. That is what it means to be alive. It is our job to understand and help them, not to try and isolate them into becoming robots.
