Unleashing Your Dog is a thoughtful guide to improving the life of your pet. Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, and a former Guggenheim fellow. His coauthor, Jessica Pierce, PHD, is the faculty affiliate at the University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities.
To say they know their stuff about animals is an understatement. They turn their knowledge of animals in general and dogs in particular to benefit our pets in this powerful book.
Although it is referred to as a guide, you won’t find a lot of, “Do this and your dog will be happy.” Rather, the book explains that since dogs have little to no choice in their lives, and are essentially our captives, giving them as much freedom as possible to express their dog-nature is important.
This is different for every dog. The authors recognize this, so rather than telling you what to do, they walk you through how dogs perceive the world, and suggest opportunities to help them get the most of it.
Freedom
The biggest theme throughout is giving your dog freedom to be a dog. When taking your dog walking, stop and let them sniff. Let them follow the scent trail if it safe to do so. Let them stop and linger over a scent for several minutes, even if it is ruining your exercise routine.
The author is a big fan of off-leash time, but recognizes this isn’t always possible or safe to do. You know your pet best, so simply looking for more ways to give your dog freedom within the realm of what is possible and safe will benefit your pet.
Freedom From
While giving your pet more freedom is important, freeing them from things that stress them is also important. This might be as small as a food bowl that doesn’t suit their body type well, to making sure their water bowl is rinsed of all dog goobers and kibble bits before being refilled.
Even small details like finding things that bother your pet and alleviating them wherever possible can make a huge difference in your pet’s life.
What I Learned
I was very impressed with this book. The first chapter sets up the problem nicely and doesn’t beat around the bush. Our dogs are our captives, however benevolent we may be. Because they depend on us so much for everything, it’s our duty to make their lives great.
I do wish they’d been a bit more concrete with suggestions on how we can benefit pets in each area, apart from off-leash time, which they mentioned quite a bit.
While the book spent more time explaining how dogs perceive the world rather than how we can make their lives better, I understand why they couldn’t give us specific enrichment activities.
If your dog won’t come back when you unsnap the leash, you really can’t unsnap it until he’s had training. If your dog is a border collie, taking them for herding lessons might be a form of enrichment. If you took a pekingese to the same lessons, they might wonder why you’re punishing them.
Luckily, the book arms you with the tools you need to determine what your dog might find enriching, or need relief from. They ask you to essentially follow your dog around for a day, watch what they try to do, what their interests are, and use those interests to base their enrichment on.
Creating an Ethogram
An Ethogram is a description of your dog’s behavior, cataloging all the different behaviors they do. The author recommends creating one to get an idea of what doggy behaviors your dog might want to engage in.
I found that while most of the time my dogs were posed ridiculously in their beds, napping, they loved to sniff. In fact, when on leash walks I’m often tugging them away from this smell or that because it’s a walk, not a sniff.
My dogs are all super seniors though, and it’s not like they have excess energy to burn, so I changed that. When I went on walks, I let them sniff to their hearts content.
Dog-joy shot through the roof when I let them page through the doggie newspaper as much as they wanted, and it actually didn’t add all that much more time to their daily outdoor routine.
Based on the abundant popularity of going for Sniffs, I’ve also started taking them out 3x a day. I’ve also started being much more careful about water bowls, as that’s a key point in the book too.
All in all, making these changes brought a lot of joy to my dogs. I’m very glad to do it, and excited to find new ways I can add to their enjoyment of being my dog.
Final Thoughts
I highly recommend picking up this book. This is probably one of my top favorite reads out of the 20 I read. It’s also one out of only 2 I probably would have picked up on my own if it wasn’t for my reading challenge. If you love your dog and want to make them happier, do give this a read.
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