Week 7: Whose World Is It Anyway?

The world is a weird place for humans. We try our best to abide by laws, the etiquette and fulfil our specific cultural expectations. But we understand why we do those things and we are governed with the knowledge of right and wrong in our everyday lives. Dogs do not have that luxury. They cannot tell right from wrong. There is no wrong. They go by mottos like: ‘this works to immediately satisfy my need’, ‘this looks and smells like food’ and ‘this made me happy I’ll do that again next time.’ Merely a preview of ‘how to think like a dog’ but I hope you get the gist. Think about it next time you feel like your dog is doing something to spite you, or even better, trying to dominate you. They are not really.

They just have their needs and sources limited and given access to by us to accommodate those needs. We control their sources, their sleeping arrangements, their toilet opportunities. Their whole life. Day in and day out. Where does a plan for dog domination fit in in this structured, man-orchestrated lifestyle? Dogs love a good routine because it helps them understand how they fit in our complex world. But how much structure and boundaries is too much? Us modern dog owners need to stop focusing on what we want our dogs to do all the time and give some thought to what our dogs want and need. Do not get me wrong here, to my great joy, there are many owners who are already on this thinking path.

In our desire to have everything fast, Amazon Prime style, we have been progressively detaching from our holistic selves more and more. Dogs are living such a restrained life with us. It's a high time we thought about the dog-human relationship more as a partnership (good cop and the goodest cop?) and less as a king and his jester. Think about your every day walks. Ask yourselves: Whose walk is it anyway? Is it for you or the dog? Are you just trying to get through it, walking from point A to point B, rushing your dog from every sniff he attempts? I’m going to go out on a limb and say: that walk did barely anything for your dog either. I am sure they did get to do their toilet and some exercise but was there fun, joy or adventure?

One of the things we have really been focusing on since day one with Cody was loose lead walking and he makes me extremely proud because the training shows. We have also been mindful of allowing him to sniff when it is safe to do so, encouraging taking chances and exploring novelty shapes and objects and meeting new people if they were happy to say hi to him. Of course he still struggles when the environment gets too overwhelming with too many birds, children or traffic around but that is tricky for any dog, not just a five month old youngster.

I wish we had more daylight so he got to say hi to more dogs around the neighborhood. Cody gets frustrated when he sees a dog in a distance and he doesn’t get to meet them up close. There is a lot of lunging and whining involved. It's still early days and Cody has to learn just like any dog that not all dogs are for him to meet. He is great up close with meets and greets so he is not exactly what trainers would call a ‘frustrated greeter’, rather a ‘wishful meeter’. This is one of the more persistent challenges.

Now for some positives.

Cody has had a lovely time travelling up to Lincolnshire last weekend to meet Tristan’s mum and from what I had been told he aced the drive up and back even with traffic at a stand still. He also got to meet our wonderful friend B this weekend and behaved like a complete gentleman. We have had great progress with his bladder. We have now signed off on toilet training as complete. We do not recall the last indoor accident. Cody sleeps all night with at least 9 hours from his last toilet break at night until his first in the morning. As a result of this, the boys no longer drop me off at the gym in the morning and get a lie-in until the sun comes up. With all his puppy teeth being gone, this is a great chapter of challenges closed. As you may now expect, there are other challenges that are still sticking around and in some cases literally biting us in the a*se.

Cody has driven me up the wall today, when I turned away from my laptop I saw him shredding my class plans. He did not do it to spite me. He was simply bored and the papers were within his reach. Another reminder that this is something not to be taken lightly and that we must manage and prevent. It's essential to find appropriate outlets for his growing brain and stamina. The puppy that slept for hours and hours is gone. Here arrives the thinker, the game changer and the twister of the established status quo. Training is maybe five percent about tricks and clicks and the rest is about understanding the dog’s needs, limits and how he communicates with the world.

Trying to understand Cody is proving to be a challenge but as any other human who decided to bring a dog into their life I must always remember: he is only doing what he knows. If there are no appropriate outlets and there is a very inappropriate ‘illegal’ folder of papers in his reach, naturally, he sees entertainment. If the humans are not available to occupy the fully rested and curious young dog, he will go self-employed. I decided that when things like the ‘paper-gate’ happen in the future, I will take a step back and say: ‘I did this’. Not to play a blame game but to remove the dog from the line of fire altogether while processing the situation.

He may have done the unwanted behaviour but the opportunity was presented by the lack of human supervision and foresight. The items destroyed have been made available by a human, lack of outlet has been underestimated by a human. The dog did not do something wrong, he was set up to fail. When it comes to checks and balances for a five-month-old dog, Cody is extremely well adapted to a very challenging environment in a big city.

Aside from his boredom inspired destructiveness the only thing that is still driving us quite mad is his evening tetchiness. We are yet unsure if it’s the lack of understanding of his routine or just the fact that humans are doing other things that do not involve him. There still may be some pain from his growing adult teeth which are a lot harder to pin down since there is a lot less evidence to work with. The bottom line is, he becomes a total turd in the evening for at least a good hour and sometimes also after his morning walk too. He does get plenty of exercise and stimulation so we are now back to the drawing board and will be journaling the whole next week to work out what makes him settle down reliably. I love his chatty nature but having an Entlebucher bark in my face at 10PM every night is not what I had on my 2025 bingo card.

I do not need him to be fast asleep more often, I just want a little less volume. Says I while raising what they call the 'laughing dog of Swiss Alps.' Entlebucher’s bark is no laughing matter, I will have you know! With Cody now fast asleep, Tristan snoring away, I am signing off a little late but I hope you enjoyed the read. See you next week!