You Are Your Own Pet
I like to spend a lot of time imagining myself as a golden retriever. My long, pink, goofy tongue lolling out the side of my face as I stick my head out the car window — struggling to breathe and loving it. The same tongue flopping around as I chase my grinning child-master around a field of flowers, each bulb alive with a unique, deep, thrilling scent that my actual fragile human brain would break to experience. My tongue stuck to the hardwood floor as I nap on my plush bed in the living room near the feet of my joyful upper-middle-class family, somewhere temperate with endless squirrels to chase.
This started all innocent and without intent — as I’ve written here before, my first word was “dog” and I’ve always had an affinity for them. There’s a very strong possibility that I was a dog in my most recent past life. Or many of my past lives. Maybe I was a dog on repeat for the last few centuries. If it’s something I’m given a choice on when I die this time, I’ll choose to come back as a dog again. I won’t say dogs are my favourite animals, but of the creatures I’ve been able to pet, they’re the best. I love bears too but they’re much harder to snuggle.
These imaginings have grown from a pleasant and relaxing daydream, though, into a useful thought experiment that shifts my perspective and encourages positive change. Now I pretend that I’m my own golden retriever. Let me explain:
Animals learn through a process known as operant conditioning. At its most basic level this means that if a behaviour feels good, if there’s a reward after doing it, the animal is more likely to repeat it. If it feels bad they’re less likely to do it again. To be most effective, this reinforcement should happen immediately following whatever behaviour you’re trying to change. You want it to seem to the animal that if you tell them to sit, the sitting and getting the treat happen at the exact same time. Done right, obeying the command and the treat become inseparable in their minds, so that obedience is the treat.
We’ve discovered over time that the positive reinforcement side of operant conditioning is much more powerful than negative reinforcement for changing behaviour. Yelling at an animal or hitting it can backfire, they can get the wrong message. Your dog is not always sure what you yelled at it for. I can empathize with this as I’m in a long-term relationship. Animals don’t understand human language — they’re doing a dozen different things in the second you yell at them and you could be upset about any one of those things. For negative reinforcement to work it has to be repeated, and waiting for your pet to screw up so you can yell at them is a long process and counter-productive by nature. You’re also going to make your pet afraid of you. It’s much faster and more effective to encourage them to repeat good behaviour.
This is why good dog owners come up with tricks. As an example, instead of the near impossible task of teaching your dog not to bark when a stranger comes to the door, teach them to grab a pillow or a toy when someone arrives so their mouth is full and they can’t bark. Then instead of being greeted by a living alarm your guest gets a pillow brought to them by a happy dog, which is adorable. Two barks with one stone.
Great dog owners design a life for their pals to ensure they end up with the best dog possible. Your dog should have a regular routine, getting fed at the same time every day. They need exercise in varying amounts depending on breed and size. They need to play and be stimulated, and it’s not true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks — it’s best for your dog to keep training throughout its life well into its gray-muzzle years. More than anything they need social contact with other people and other dogs. If you can plan all these things out and provide them as required for your furry friend, they’ll reward you for it in spades (by not digging up your backyard) and be the miracle dog that all of your human friends are jealous of.
The beautiful thing about operant conditioning is it works on everything. We’ve proven that you can train fish, rats, cats, apes, lizards — the mechanism of learning based on rewards or punishment is essential to navigating life on earth so it’s built into the brains of anything that has one. You can even program an association into your pet’s brain by clicking a specific tool every time you give them a treat so that they learn the click means they did the right thing — and after you’ve got that association you can save a bunch of money on cut up hot dogs / blood worms / whatever other goody your best friend loves.
Another thing I have a mild obsession with is self-help books. I know, I know — if you’ll allow me to digress for a moment, I promise I’ll get back to the cute dog stuff real soon. Pay attention to the media and you’ll notice a stigma against the self-help industry — and in fairness there are definitely some hucksters out there peddling junk wares — but the negative perception is largely unearned. Because I was raised on TV though, for me self-help books have always been a guilty pleasure, and nobody should be made to feel guilty at attempting self-improvement. This isn’t the point of this post, it just chafes my nuts.
One of my favourite books, which is borderline self-help but has one foot placed firm in the more respectable territory of well-researched non-fiction, is the excellent The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I love it so much I got one of the key concepts, the habit loop, tattooed on my arm.
If I’d known how many people would ask about my tattoo, I never would have gotten it. The words are facing me for a reason you goons. Still, they ask, and I always explain it the same way. The habit loop is a neurological function at the core of every habit — it drives habits and makes them automatic. So the cue could be that you start feeling stressed out, the routine would be that you smoke a cigarette, the reward is the nicotine rush that gives the illusion of calming you down (sorry, but the nicotine caused your stress in the first place), and the craving for that rush drives the habit and makes it automatic.
It works with good habits too — the cue could be waking up and seeing your workout clothes by your door, the routine would be going for a run, and the reward is the endorphin rush, the mythical runner’s high that you start to crave which over time makes the “decision” to run easier. In reality, even if you think you’re making a choice, if it’s something you do as a habit that’s all a convenient delusion. Studies have shown that your subconscious mind has already set the habit in motion before your conscious mind is aware of it.
This is why your dog listens to you when you tell him to sit. If you’ve done the work of training your pet well, the command is ingrained so deep in his brain that it happens on auto-pilot. He’s not balancing the options on whether the exhilaration of chasing that duck outweighs the consequences of disobedience — and deciding he loves you more than ducks. He really, really loves ducks. His brain isn’t giving him the chance to choose. You’ve buried the sit command as a habit loop in his brain so the choice has been taken away from him. He hears the “sit” cue and his body sits as an instant reaction beyond his control. The best part is, because you associated it with the amazing feeling of a little morsel of meat he doesn’t even resent you for it.
At this point I bet you’re starting to see what I’m getting at. Up to now you may have been spending your life imagining that you’re better than your pets. Well, you’re not. You could have a more complex inner life (debatable), but there’s no way of knowing. I sometimes like to pretend that our dogs have a perfect understanding of our technology and experience life in a constant mathematical wonder that lets them realize how much happier they are living all simple and unencumbered by possessions or jobs. I know there’s no evidence of this but I like it anyway. Without a doubt there are facets of our dogs lives that we can barely begin to comprehend; living a single second within your dog’s awareness of the world as an endless and intense symphony of scent and sound would likely shatter your grasp on reality.
This is the problem you’ll run into with a lot of self-help books, the missing piece of the puzzle. They’re written for humans. Even if their ideas are great, because they’re written by and for humans, they make things too hard. The reality of it is, getting caught up in your ego and this illusion you have of yourself as a complex individual is not making your life any easier. This picture you’ve drawn of yourself through the years does nothing to encourage positive change. The trappings of your life; your cell phone, your language, your career — these may be more complicated than your dog’s experience — but your needs and your biology are not. You are a simple animal just like every other bleeding thing walking the earth.
Because we imagine ourselves as these higher beings, we subject ourselves to a lot of unnecessary stress and guilt. Remember the last time you met a misbehaving dog? Barking at strangers, running wild chasing the wildlife, ignoring the frantic commands of its human companion. You didn’t blame the dog. You saw it as a product of its environment and the poor choices of its owner, and if you’re anything like me, you loved it without reservation all the same. You knew that if given the proper attention, training, and care, that dog could be rehabilitated and become excellent. It too could one day be a wonderdog that your friends would envy.
If you recognize a bit of yourself in this “bad dog”, if you’ve had trouble with personal growth and can’t stop chasing your proverbial duck, I’m writing this to let you know that you too can be a wonderdog one day. Here’s the trick of it: try and accept that deep down, you are a very simple creature — that you already are your own pet and you always have been. Maybe you’re lucky and you’ve been a good pet owner, being sure to meet all of your needs and design a good life for yourself. If so I really appreciate that you’re still reading this. Maybe, like me, you’ve spent most of your life being a bit of an abusive ass to your inner pup. The bad news is, you can’t call the SPCA on yourself and find someone to take better care of you. The good news is, you can learn to take better care of yourself.
Here’s how we’ll start:
Close your eyes for a few seconds with me, and imagine the cutest dog you’ve ever seen. If you don’t like dogs (weirdo) it can be a cat. For me it’s either a golden retriever puppy or a blue-nose pit bull. For you it could be a corgi, or a gorgeous fluffy husky. Could be you’re insane and it’s a chihuahua, or even a shih-tzu. There’s no wrong answers (only strange ones), as long as the dog you’re picturing is so cute (again, cute to you, objectively shih-tzus are nasty, yapping little butt-monsters) that it’s impossible for you to be mad at it. You need to be picturing a dog so adorable that it necessitates you taking care of it — giving up on it when things get hard isn’t an option.
Got it? Good. This dog is you now, inside and out. Every bad thing this dog has ever done is not the dog’s fault. Any persistent issues the dog has can be fixed with a healthy amount of patience and the right strategy. Observe the dog. What exactly does the dog need to be calmer? Happier? Less aggressive and more loving? How can you help your new pet to be the best, most confident wonderdog it can be; a true champion your friends will want to steal when you’re not looking?
Design a good life for this dog of yours — take notes on some of your ideas. It’s going to be with you for the rest of your existence so you may as well help it be the best dog possible. Remember that you need to:
If you want, you can buy a clicker and practice clicking it whenever you feel good. It might work better if you give the clicker to a close friend or partner who you spend a lot of time with and get them to click it whenever they see you smile, so it’s associated with the best available positive feelings. Then once this link is concrete in your mind, you can click it whenever you notice yourself exhibit a behaviour you want to repeat. It’s a stupid, cheap trick — but I promise you it works. If done right this simple clicking noise will be able to make you grin like a schoolgirl all by itself.
Here are some things I like to click myself for (not an innuendo):
In the end, you can and should be a better companion for yourself than any dog is capable of. The more time you spend practising this technique, the easier it will be to give yourself the unconditional love that until now you might have believed only a dog can. Another benefit is, unlike a real dog who is very likely to pass away before you do and break your heart — you and your new pet are guaranteed to die at exactly the same time. Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not advocating against dog ownership at all. If anything it’s one of the best examples of how the best way to learn is to teach — taking really good care of a pet is an excellent path to self-mastery and personal growth.
If you’re interested in reading more about the inner life of dogs, I’d recommend Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horrowitz or How Dogs Think by Stanley Coren. Also, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein is a delightful work of fiction from a dog’s point of view that I’ve read a few times now — but fair warning, it will make you cry. For self-help, books that made a huge impact on me were Mastery by George Leonard, Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink, The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook, and of course The Power of Habit — though it’s a given that with any self-help book your mileage may vary.
I hope this post helps you become the wonderdog I’ve always known you are inside.
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Originally published at slootweg.ca on March 27, 2019.
You Are Your Own Pet
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