Turning Beasts into Humans and Humans into Beasts

By Suzanne E. Grandchamp

Have you ever watched Cesar Millan on the National Geographic Channel? He’s known as the “Dog Whisperer.”

Cesar’s basic philosophy is that dog owners need to become their canines’ calm, assertive pack leaders. Otherwise, dogs distrust their owners. Lacking human leadership, distrusting dogs often become unbalanced and exhibit either unwanted or anti-social behaviors.

Cesar contends that humans, through ignorance, routinely relinquish their alpha status to their dogs by failing to consistently enforce rules, boundaries and limitations. Indeed, often the theme of the Dog Whisperer episodes is the same. Human loves dog. Human treats dog as a human. Dog misbehaves (read: soils the comforter, bites your neighbor, chews your new Anne Klein pumps, etc., etc.). Bad dog! No, bad human!

Why do humans do this? We’re ignorant and/or irresponsible. We’ve either forgotten, or more likely, never learned the rules and hierarchy of the dog kingdom. Humans also readily give away their power. We don’t want to hurt the dog. We want to be the dog’s friend. (How many dogs are named ‘Pal’ or ‘Buddy’?) Perhaps most importantly, we want the dog to love us, and we mistakenly believe that calm, assertive discipline on our part will rob us of the unconditional love we seek from our pet.

All too often we humans give away our power in human relationships for the very same reason. We worry that asserting who we really are will rob us of the unconditional love we hope to find from relationship.

By failing to articulate our own boundaries and limitations, we stop showing people who we are by refraining from telling them what is, and is not, acceptable to us. We become inauthentic. We think blending in, and not making waves, is going to make things copasetic. We just want to be loved. We don’t want hurt the other person. We’re afraid they’ll turn into big, mean, nasty ogres, who will react angrily. We’re ignorant of ourselves and/or don’t want to be responsible for making ourselves known. We would rather make that someone else’s job – kind of like asking the dog to discipline itself. And then we get mad when the dog misbehaves or someone rides roughshod over our needs or feelings.

But, the dog can’t discipline itself, and others can’t know what hurts us if we haven’t shared what’s important to us. The first step is to simply be aware that we need to articulate our expectations. In therapy, awareness is seen as fifty percent of the distance to the solution. So, we’re half way home if we can recognize that articulating our boundaries and limitations is important to any relationship.

The rest of the distance to the solution is made up from (what else?) practice, practice, practice! The more often we calmly assert ourselves, the better we’ll get. And as we take back our own power, these relationships will likely become more enjoyable.
If our dogs know that they will not be allowed to take us for a walk, and that every time they attempt to pull on the leash, we will calmly assert that this is unacceptable, then pretty soon we will be walking our dogs and pleasurably so. Likewise, if we calmly assert our needs in our human relationships, we increase the likelihood of our needs being met!

We have the ability to stop turning our beasts into humans, and our humans into beasts. Through awareness and practice, we can set and implement our expectations, thereby giving ourselves greater satisfaction in both our canine and human relationships.