The Trinity of Dogdom

I talked about the importance of full disclosure to adopters in the Honesty post, and now I want to talk about the things that can't be disclosed because they can't be know until the dog is in the home with the adopter.  We can make good guesses as to how a dog will behave in a new setting with new people but it is still not a sure thing.

Klee (front) is a completely different dog when she is with other dogs. As an only dog she has much less confidence and is less willing to try new things.

So while I will rant on about shelters/rescuers lying or withholding information from adopters, I equally rant about adopters who have pre-set expectations of a dog and then blame the dog (or often the shelter/rescue) when the dog is different than they expected.

One of the many great ideas talked about at the Sue Sternberg lecture I attended is that a dog's behavior/personality can be divided into 3 parts - kind of a holy trinity of Dogdom. There is the dog themselves - an amalgam of genetics and experiences. That part is clear to all of us. But there are two other parts that make up the dog we see in front of us and that is the environment they exist in and the humans who exist in that environment with them.

When you change the environment and the people, the behaviors that you see in a dog will also change. An energetic, smart, driven dog can become a bossy, pushy, aggressive dog when put in a home with quiet, inactive people in a small apartment. A skittish shut down dog avoiding human attention in the shelter will likely be very different when relaxed in a home setting with regular human interaction.

I have had foster dogs at my home who really struggled and I had to work on lots of behavior issues with them and then they were adopted and became much easier dogs. That is because the environment was a better fit. And sadly I've also seen the opposite - an easy foster dog who was not so easy once moved to their adoptive home.

Please don't read this post as me saying there is a perfect home and person for every dog. That's not what I am saying. Just realize that you as the human and your lifestyle, schedule, activities, what you are feeding your dog, when you are feeding them..... ALL those things are part of who your dog is. If we truly want to be our dog's best friend we will stop blaming everything on the dog and start to look at ourselves and see if there are changes that we could be making that will help our dog be more successful.