Obi’s Reviews > The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs > Status Update

Different environments bring out different aspects of your dog, and you don’t really know your dog until you’ve seen her in a variety of situations. “He does not!” a woman will say, frustrated that her husband is describing something that her dog has never done in his life. Ah, but her dog probably has done it, just not in her presence.

At the age of fifty-three, I am hardly a juvenile, but I still love to play. And so do my friends, and so does the whole global community of humans and dogs, for that matter. Our species is obsessed with play: we are either participating ourselves or watching others play for us.

What a joy when your dog hears “Enough,” turns away from the door or window, and comes to you, looking for her treat. Once it becomes learned, you can treat her intermittently rather than all the time.

The look that works best is that slightly snobby, hard-to-get look when we turn our head away in dismissal. It works with dogs as well as with humans. Honest. Dogs can take you for granted just as anyone else in your social group can, and most of us hate being taken for granted. You might be stuck with it from some of the people you know, but you don’t have to put up with it from your dog.

Sometimes I think that the primary purpose of dogs is to keep humans humble. Any dog trainer will tell you that they seem to be doing a great job of it.

Dad holds a hand out for “sit” the same way that Mom does for “stay.” Painfully it’s often the smartest and most willing dogs that suffer the most when the family is inconsistent. You can practically see smoke coming out of their ears while they desperately look for a predictable pattern from their humans.

our tendency to want to express love to a dog through hugging can get us both into trouble. Dogs often interpret hugs as aggressive actions, and so they defend themselves from this madness with the only means they have, their teeth. And there we were, just trying to tell them that we love them.