Gender fluid dogs
Woke dogs! Gaslighting dog-havers! DEI for the canine set!
Comment sections filled with discussions on “woke idiots” in dog training. “Radicals are Hijacking Dog Training” posted one trainer, calling force-free training, the anti-aversive movement of which Mr. George is arguably the most prominent face, an “ideology” and a “cult” with a “radicalized agenda” — language that sounded awfully familiar.
Even before this, I’d seen the occasional Instagram post by a trainer using terminology that seemed drawn from another context: I’d paused on several posts that applied the term “consent” to dogs — as in, we should get their consent before we pet them. In some cases, the trainer’s vocabulary seemed drawn from even more distant shores: “I will not project colonial, capitalist, or patriarchal concepts on my dog,” one post read, in between tips on leash reactivity and separation anxiety; “don’t gaslight your dog,” another urged.
We should get their consent before we pet them…hmmmmmmm…how can we ever be sure of a dog’s consent? Maybe that tail is wagging to be polite; how can we know?
But Mr. George’s series of videos seemed to send whatever process had generated those posts into overdrive.“It sounds like dog training has become just one more target for the woke community to prey upon!” a YouTube user wrote. “These are the same people with ‘gender fluid’ dogs,” another wrote, a statement that I found funny, then spent too long trying to parse. (What is standard gender expression in dogs?) I watched a video in which a trainer referred to the “dog training far left,” which should have made no sense, except that at this point, I knew what he meant.
It’s not so much far left as far something else – far incloosive, far validationing, far emotional support dogging…thus bringing us around in a circle.
Far left would be communal ownership of the means of production. The soppy touchy-feely validationy wing of the left isn’t really lefty at all, it’s its own weird thing. It’s dripping wet emotionalism run riot.
Everyone I spoke to for this story was deeply sincere (these are, after all, dog people): “The world of dogs does not exist in a vacuum of pet guardian and pet but is interconnected with systemic oppression,” Rachel Forday, a positive trainer, told me when I asked about her use of political language. “Systemic oppression dictates who is allowed to own a dog and what kind of dog they own.” Robert Cabral, a balanced trainer, worried in one of his videos that the rise of science citations in dog training was turning the profession into an “elitist realm.” “I have an issue with that,” he said. “I’m a simple guy. I didn’t go to college.” He continued, “I think when you make things complicated, you cut out a lot of good people.” The vibes these people are projecting are simply who they are.
Meanwhile their dogs are sniffing other dogs’ butts.
In many places dogs are put in cages while prospective owners look them over to see if they’d be a good fit for household chores like fetching and carrying while exhibiting obsequious, “nonjudgmental” devotion. They are actually owned, and given collars, and returned for rewards when they escape. How does this differ from slavery?
Species equity now.
Sastra, I am reminded of a great early stand-up bit by Norm Macdonald in which he explains that the reason for getting a dog is so you can order it around, which is why he opted for a weiner dog instead of a pit bull. “You can’t say to a pit bull, ‘Hey, Pit Bull, go fetch my slippers!’ Pit bull will look at you and say ‘I could kill you, buddy. Don’t you read the papers?'”
(I’m hoping I can trust the B&W community not to give me the whole lecture on how pits are just a misunderstood breed, etc. etc. It’s a joke from 30+ years ago, not a manifesto.)
Did anyone ever worry about their dogs’ biorhythms, horoscopes, or chakras?
(Probably some people did.)
My spouse is a dog trainer and uses positive reinforcement that rewards dogs for a desired behavior. Part of that is knowing that if a dog doesn’t want to do something you don’t force it to do it. So “consent” is a concept that does matter in training. If a dog is avoiding someone trying to pet it, then the dog is telling you something about how it feels and that should be listened to. For example, we have a dog who does not like being petted on the top of her head, so we tell people who want to pet her to scratch her muzzle or chest, then stroke her back. Then she relaxes and does her cute little dance.
As for systematic oppression of dogs, they’ve been domesticated and from their point of view they’re getting fed, sheltered, and have a social life that satisfies their need to be part of a group, aka pack, and dogs actually like people too. So it makes little sense to apply the paradigm of social justice to dogs, let alone project things like gender identity on them like we used to project the human concept of dominance, aka “alpha” on them like Cesar Milan did. Milan isn’t a bad trainer, but he definitely had some outdated and mistaken ideas about dog behavior.
Regarding the charge of “elitism” when it comes to training, you don’t need a degree to train a dog. Far from it. But you do need to be willing to learn what works and what doesn’t, and people who have studied animal behavior and pursued it professionally do have important things to tell us. One pro I recommend is Patricia McConnell, who lives in Wisconsin and not only trains dogs but writes wonderfully about them too.
I think somebody got some of that dripping wet emotionalism on my carpet!
Another issue I used to argue with people about is feeding dogs and cats a vegan diet. They are carnivores. They eat meat. That is a natural thing, and if you want to own an animal, you need to know what to feed it. Sure, my dog eats peanut butter (he does like gross things). But he actually doesn’t like the veggie based dog treats someone gave us when we adopted him. He is a meat eater, because that is what dogs are.
I agree ikn @5, imposing a restrictive human diet on a dog is ridiculous. People do tend to anthropomorphize domesticated animals way too much. Dogs are carnivores primarily, and to a lesser extent opportunistic scavengers, but just because they are able to digest vegetation doesn’t mean it’s a healthy diet for them.
I am not sure what gender identity Rocco applies to himself. Since he has been neutered, I assume he’s neutral about it, but he’s never really spelled out any pronouns. If I accidentally call him good girl, he doesn’t bite me. As far as diet goes, I am fairly liberal about what he eats, but discourage the consumption of shoes, table legs, and linoleum. Not that he doesn’t test me on those items, of course.
As for vegetation I recall that if a dog was eating grass that meant that they had worms. Science now says it’s quite alright not to worry about it.
Dogs are not philosophical enough to worry about being colonized. They just want to know (and test) their limits, to be warm, to be dry, to be cared for, and fed. They also want to catch that god-damned squirrel.
Mike, I had a dog once who chased critters and occasionally caught them. One time she caught a blue jay and devoured it whole, feathers, feet and all, and another time a squirrel, same thing. I’d like to see a human try that without at least a trip to the hospital.
I always wondered what RoZie would do if she caught one, they certainly raised her hackles if they entered her territory.
I think of that as part of the doggy process of working out where the sniffer stands in the doggy social hierarchy in relation to the sniffee. The sniffing is of course generally mutual, and is arguably the equivalent of a human ’69er.’ Sniffee and Sniffer thus become interchangeable roles.
There are possibly also clues in the aroma of each sniffer/sniffee’s anal glands. ‘in relation to what did I hear someone ask? Place in the pecking order, just as with humans. Is this hound from a decent home, and well-fed? Or is he/she/it given to tipping over trash cans and going nose-first through their contents, desperate for a feed before the town dog catcher turns up? Stuff like that.
To find out where you stand in the rank order in your (?) dog’s mind, just get down on your knees and crawl up towards him/her/it when he/she/it is feeding. The doggy response will either be to growl like the nastiest mongrel from the back streets of Ironbark, NSW, or to yield a place to you at the dog dish, and see which of you can wolf its contents down fastest. Survival of the fittest and all that stuff.
Mike Haubrich@5:
I’m pretty sure my eldest cat, Scottie, still considers himself male despite neutering, given how often he tries to hump the younger one. Neil, OTOH, is apparently agender, or at least asexual, given that he neither attempts to hump, nor takes any action to accommodate said humping (not that even accommodating would help Scottie).
Yes, nothing intrinsically ‘left’ about it. It used to be that it was the right that was sanctimonious and the left angry. But things change.
It seems to me that we got sociopaths becoming powerful on both sides of the divide, after both wings of political thought started concentrating on looking after the interests of the party; going after votes to beat the other wing, instead of concentrating on what the parties had originally formed to do, which was to look after the interests of the country by supporting the class of people each thought most likely to represent those interests (upper class for the right wing, upper-middle and professional classes for the centrists, working- and lower-middle classes for the left wing). With both right-wing and left-wing courting the centre, the centrist party or parties collapsed, leaving the stage bare of moderating influence.
Thus the right wing is now full of sociopaths chasing wealth for their own pockets, oblivious to the pain they are inflicting on the middle- and working-class people in the country (or even delighted about it); and the left wing is full of sociopaths chasing an impossible utopia where they are in charge of a country where people have specific positions in a pretty rainbow according to immutable characteristics, but are otherwise identical zombies with no diversity of thought allowed, like a collection of dolls.
The coming election will see the people of the UK forced to choose between a rock and a hard place; between a bunch of Scrooges and a bunch of toddlers.
If I were still living there, I would have to go for the Scrooges, despite being a lifelong socialist of the moderate variety (equality of opportunity for all; not equity of outcome. We aren’t identical, and can’t be forced to be) much as it would pain me to do so. At least the Scrooges are only trying to steal much of the country’s wealth for themselves. They aren’t trying to remove people’s freedom to think for themselves. They aren’t trying to force people to accede to nonsense. They still permit freedom of speech, and they still have principled members of their party who are doing their damnedest to protect women and children from the baying mob and are amenable to reason in other areas of political life.
Other things being equal, I’m happy to avoid all dogs, and even more, their owners – unless these happen to be friends.
You should probably know that “dogging” has a particular meaning in the UK. I’m not sure what “emotional support dogging” would look like.
I just recently read about a of a North American dog breed that disappeared because of the introduction of dogs by European settlers, the Coast Salish Wooly Dog.
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-dogs-that-grew-wool-and-the-people-who-love-them/
https://hakaimagazine.com/news/the-story-of-the-indigenous-wool-dog-told-through-oral-histories-and-dna/
twiliter@8,
On the other hand, feed a dog some chocolate and you’ll likely end up with an emergency trip to the pet hospital.
I’d call that an even trade.
I’m an advocate and practitioner of force-free training. Am I a woke Leftist now?
I’d argue that the validationy set is a result of applying far Left rationale to psychology, but that’s neither here nor there.
Yeah, I agree Nullius. But a lot of trainers are able to handle doing force-free training without all the added nonsense. So, yeah, you don’ t have to be woke left if that’s all you advocate. That’s just humane.