Every dog guardian must ask themselves two questions, “who am I now?” and “who does my dog need me to be?”
Welcome to the first post from The Dog Element blog, where the focus is going to be on the connection between humans and dogs, and all that goes into creating trustful, respectful, and caring relationships between the two. Topics of discussion will include dog behavior (which naturally includes dog psychology and emotion), dog communication & socialization, dog parks, dog day cares and many other canine related issues. I will also cover topics on what I believe to be the more important subject of the human-dog relationship…ourselves! I want to discuss human behavior (which naturally includes human psychology and emotion), human communication & socialization, and how the many and varying factors of human culture affect the way in which we relate to our dogs. And in the spirit of getting to know ourselves, let me tell you who I am.
My name is Lenny Flek and, as of this writing, I am a life-long dog lover and a dog trainer of 14 years. I’m also a husband of 7 years, a father of 6 years and a son of 39. As a child, I did not know specifically what I wanted to be when I grew up. I don’t have any memories of dreaming to be a fireman or doctor or professional athlete. I enjoyed learning and playing sports, but I never became enamored or obsessed over any one subject or activity. There were a few things I did love from childhood on though – food (I was a little chunky), basketball, and our pets. We had a cute black toy poodle until I was about 6 years old, Linda. I don’t have many memories from that young of an age, but I do remember playing with her and sometimes even pretending to be a dog myself. On my 10th birthday, my parents adopted a kitten and I fell in love with him. He was a domestic shorthair with a black and white tuxedo coat. My older brother named him Giorgio Armani, but I found that ridiculous and shortened it to George. That cat was my little brother. We played together, slept together, and grew up together. He lived to be 21 years old and when he passed, I had never cried harder. It was through these experiences that I realized I wanted to make a career out of working with animals. However, when I was transforming from a teenager to a young adult in the mid to late-90s, dog trainers and dog day cares were not in the mainstream and definitely not what they are today. I remember getting a job at a boarding facility in 1999 or 2000. On my first day, I walked in and the place was cold and dark like a prison. Each dog was separated in their own chain link cage, there was horrible ventilation and minimal access to fresh air, the floor was covered with rocks, and the rocks were covered with you can imagine what. After about an hour of shoveling said rocks, I kindly quit. Surprisingly, the manager appreciated my honesty and paid me for the hour I was there (but that’s a lesson for a different post). Because there weren’t many other options, the natural idea that came to mind was to become a veterinarian. My parents obviously loved that idea. And I thought I did too, until I deferred my college acceptance to go work at an animal hospital for a year. After that year of observing surgeries, tending to injured and sick animals, and witnessing euthanasia first-hand, I was certain that was not how I wanted to work with animals. I preferred for my typical interaction to be with healthy and living animals. I’m grateful for all the amazing veterinarians and vet techs out there who heal and save millions of lives, but that was not the line of work for me.
So, I went off to college like most students, not really knowing what I wanted to be. When it came time to declare my major, I chose Applied Psychology because I enjoyed the couple of psych classes I had taken up to that point and a lot of the lessons seemed intuitive to me. Although I didn’t know it at the time, that education would prove to be very relevant to my future work. Where it did not prove relevant was in my first job out of college. Through a friend’s mom, I got an interview for a word processor position at a law firm in Times Square. I was hired and after approximately two years of this relatively well-paying, secure job with benefits, I simply couldn’t stand to be in that corporate environment anymore. I knew I needed to quit, but what would I do? It just so happened that around that same time, The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Milan was becoming popular. From the first time I saw that show I was hooked. Watching not only how Cesar helped dogs to better cope with their world, but how he also helped people understand their dogs better, truly inspired me. It all came together. That’s what I would do – improve the relationship between dogs and people for everyone’s benefit. In 2007, I promptly signed up for a dog trainer certification course with Animal Behavior College, quit the law firm job and found a position at a dog day care.
I wanted to work at a day care facility so that I could be surrounded by dogs and have the chance to observe and learn their behavior directly. That decision turned out to be priceless. No course or book or Dog Whisperer episode could match the wisdom that all those dogs have imparted on me. From working in a couple of different day cares to eventually managing my own facility from 2012 – 2020, those 14 years of interacting with, observing, and training thousands of dogs continue to be the most significant lessons in my education of dog behavior and communication.
My goal with this blog is to take all that I have learned, and continue to learn, and pass it on to you so that your relationship with your dog can flourish. I want to help you understand yourself and your dog a little better so that you can develop an even deeper bond with them.
That brings us to our first lesson – understanding your dog requires that you first have a better understanding of yourself. Your dog’s behavior is heavily influenced by your behavior, which is nothing more than the manifestation of your psychological and emotional state. If you do not have a firm grasp of who you truly are, then you will find building rapport with your dog more difficult than necessary.
Are you more emotionally reactive or even tempered in times of excitement? Are you more of a “softie” or firm when dealing with unwanted behavior? Are you uncertain or confident? You must be honest with yourself about who you are. The main reason being that your dog will know immediately who you are at each moment in time. There are two important ideas in that previous sentence that I want to expand on.
First, your dog will immediately know who you are – dogs read our state through our body language, tone of voice and scent. They use these signals to assess our state and they respond accordingly, regardless of what you may say to yourself or others. For example, I’ve had clients who display clear fear signals around their dogs – hesitant to pick them up or even pet them, pulling their hands back when the dog turns its head, uncertainty in their tone of voice when addressing their dog – yet when I ask them if they are scared of their dog, they say no. Despite what their words tried to convey their actions spoke a thousand times louder. If you do not know what state you are in, you cannot adjust to better communicate with your dog. You cannot fix a problem if you don’t think there is one.
The second important idea mentioned above is that your dog will know who you are at each moment in time. What I’m implying is that our internal psychological and emotional state (who we are) can change. Not only can it change from day to day or week to week, but it can change considerably from one minute to the next. All it takes is one positive or negative event in your life to dramatically alter your psyche. It could be something big like being hired or fired, or something as small as finding a dollar or stubbing your toe. If it affects how you feel, it affects the chemicals and hormones that your brain sends throughout your body, which, in turn, affect how you think and behave. And your dog will pick up on these changes immediately and react accordingly. However, if you can be more introspective and honest with yourself about your emotional state at any specific point in time, then you can make any necessary adjustments (take a deep breath, think happy thoughts, etc.) to bring you back into a better state for communicating with your dog (I’ll opine about that better state in a future post).
Let me quickly summarize this first quick, yet fundamental, lesson.
- Dogs use our body language, tone of voice, and scent to instantly read what state of mind we are currently in (they do not use our words for that assessment).
- Our state of mind can change at any given moment for a variety of reasons, big and small.
- If we are unaware of our true current state, then we are unaware of how it is affecting our dog’s behavior.
- On the other hand, if we become more in tune with our current mindsets, then we can practice regulating them. And if we can control our emotional states, we will have an exponentially easier time communicating with our dogs.
I will leave you with the same advice from the very beginning of this post:
Every dog guardian should ask themselves two questions, “who am I now?” and “who does my dog need me to be?”
Feedback, questions and comments are greatly welcomed and appreciated.
Resources: Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
The Genius of Dogs, Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods