Canine Capers: Boundaries

By Lesley Liddle

Lesley Liddle is a certified service and pet dog trainer. First Mate Lulu is a Corgi/Red Heeler with spots like a baby harbor seal; Crewman Leonard is a Chihuahua/Doxie with tall ears like a rabbit. Both dogs have very short legs and were originally found in California shelters.  Lesley has average legs and can be found on Orcas Island.

None of us get along very well without boundaries.

They might be called rules, commandments, laws. Taboos fit into this category. They have evolved to help ensure individual survival within the group as well as survival of the species.

We share a lot of these rules with our dogs, who twelve to fifteen thousand years ago as friendly wolves chose to move into caves with humans. It was a mutually beneficial relationship or they would not have stayed. No wonder we now have so much in common! We have evolved together.

It is obvious these days that we need each other on far more levels than we ever suspected — psychological, medical, as co-workers for search and rescue, police work and so on.  We still, after all these years, survive better in one another’s company, but only when we behave wisely and keep within life sustaining boundaries.

I remember the time many years ago when a friend came over who had a rusty colored male dog named, appropriately, Reynard .  That is French for “fox”.  Reynard was being purposefully raised without the word “No” which meant he had no boundaries, was completely out of control and emotionally desperate.

He paced around the living room jumping on furniture and people, grabbing and nipping hands and clothing.  I was astonished but too polite to say anything.  I had witnessed young children misbehaving in similar fashion, children who were being “progressively raised” whose parents were teachers in the Sociology department at Stanford.

We had dinner with this faculty family at a restaurant when I was a teenager, and the children threw their food on the floor and screamed throughout the meal without the parents saying anything.  They didn’t even pick up the food from the floor.  So years later, in Juneau, Alaska, I saw the same scenario repeated, except this time it was a dog at center stage.

We sat down to enjoy our dinner, Reynard made a couple of frantic laps around us and then jumped on the table and attempted to take the food from his masters plate by snarling over it.  They wrestled a bit, the plate went flying, the dog bit his master and they went home.  We cleaned up the mess, still very astonished.

It has since been my experience that boundaries themselves are “calming signals” for children and dogs.  Trying to rule the world without a foundation of knowledge and virtue or the security that a wiser power such as your parent is in charge is a recipe for disaster.  I liken it to a top that is spun, then in time without a helping hand begins to wobble and before long goes off center and collapses.