A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me

The relationship between a dog and a human is always complicated. The two know each other in a way nobody else quite understands, a connection shrouded in personal history, temperament, experience, instinct, and love.

Whenever I hear people clucking about the decline of civilization, what's wrong with young people, how vulgar popular culture is, how confusing and frightening they find the internet, alarms go off. I know I'm around somebody whose hinges are rusting. Death will be bad enough, but for me, this early harbinger is more fearsome, because a part of one's spirit and openness and ability to learn and grow disappears.

I am lucky in marriage and in dogs.

Politics are abstract to me. I can’t relate to liberals or conservatives. Dogs live on a scale that I can comprehend; their lives are an outcome I can affect.

Some of the reasons for this change were obvious: Devon understood that he now had a leader, someone he had to obey. He knew his place in the pack. This seemed to calm him, soothe his anxiety. I think he understood my promise, which I could now make freely and could truly mean: now he could feel my love, relief, and appreciation. Whatever happened, this dog had a home with me.

Deanne had nailed it: this was a battle of wills, and victory would go to the most stubborn and patient. I couldn’t really say I had him beat on the first count, but I had an edge on the second.

think Devon sensed that we were going to duke it out, and gave no quarter. In this context, we were both true to our natures. He could have given in, I could have looked the other way. Somehow, I didn’t think that was going to happen. The battle was joined.

If you don’t establish your dominance, you’re not making life easier for the dog, you’re condemning him to a life of confusion, disappointment, and destructive behavior.

But the foundation of a good relationship with any dog is a clear line of authority. They’re pack animals. You have to help a dog understand exactly where he or she ranks in the pack, and the dog can never be number one.

It inspires a bit of awe to see working dogs really do their jobs, to see thousands of years of history, instinct, and breeding well up and become manifest in a sunny pasture. It transforms the way an owner sees a dog, and the way the dog sees himself. This, perhaps, is the bond people talk about between working dogs and their masters. Working