Dog thoughts.
Hello all who follow.
I've been busy in Louisvile (wow--Freudian typo--I mean Louisville) leading up to the holidays, and I now find myself happily relaxed in the loving arms of my old home place in New Orleans. I've been on walks through all the old neighborhoods I came to know and love so well during our brief tenure in this ancient port city. New Year's Day in New Orleans is sublime. I drank a Bloody Mary at The Bulldog on Magazine Street. I smelled roses bloom today--roses! **sigh**
It was during one of these excursions that I came to a startling understanding of what a walk with your dog can mean.
Here is my brilliant deduction: dogs need walks because the walk to a dog is what television is to us humans. The walk is their very own reality show, their one precious form of rudimentary entertainment that engages all of their super-special senses, like smell, hearing, and just being able to "feel the human"--by that I mean what humans as dog owners do and respond to in their environment.
Dogs need entertainment just as much as people do. I know, I know, it's a radical thought. But witness the dog that gets into trash, chews up shoes and plants, or barks insanely at the window when a car or the UPS guy goes by...this is a dog with little to no outside stimulation, and no real understanding of what a realistic and suitable response would be to stresses in the real world--the environment that going on a walk around the neighborhood can provide. The walk provides the owner with exercise, but it provides the dog with something else much more important: the daily installment of their favorite story about the neighborhood and its smells...being with you in the world and how you respond to it, and how you respond to other people, other animals, and traffic.
See, the dog needs to know how you are, and not just in the "den/house" when no one else is around. This is how a dog builds respect and trust for you--knowing that you are a calm, confident participant in the stuff out there in the real world. And as an added benefit, the dog is usually relaxed enough after exercising that the destructive behavior goes away.
The bottom line is...dogs need entertainment. They don't "get" TV because it doesn't really have a scent. You need to make sure that as a dog owner you provide your dog with the best entertainment available: You. That's really all they want anyway--more of you, unfiltered. And the walk gives them that.
I've been busy in Louisvile (wow--Freudian typo--I mean Louisville) leading up to the holidays, and I now find myself happily relaxed in the loving arms of my old home place in New Orleans. I've been on walks through all the old neighborhoods I came to know and love so well during our brief tenure in this ancient port city. New Year's Day in New Orleans is sublime. I drank a Bloody Mary at The Bulldog on Magazine Street. I smelled roses bloom today--roses! **sigh**
It was during one of these excursions that I came to a startling understanding of what a walk with your dog can mean.
Here is my brilliant deduction: dogs need walks because the walk to a dog is what television is to us humans. The walk is their very own reality show, their one precious form of rudimentary entertainment that engages all of their super-special senses, like smell, hearing, and just being able to "feel the human"--by that I mean what humans as dog owners do and respond to in their environment.
Dogs need entertainment just as much as people do. I know, I know, it's a radical thought. But witness the dog that gets into trash, chews up shoes and plants, or barks insanely at the window when a car or the UPS guy goes by...this is a dog with little to no outside stimulation, and no real understanding of what a realistic and suitable response would be to stresses in the real world--the environment that going on a walk around the neighborhood can provide. The walk provides the owner with exercise, but it provides the dog with something else much more important: the daily installment of their favorite story about the neighborhood and its smells...being with you in the world and how you respond to it, and how you respond to other people, other animals, and traffic.
See, the dog needs to know how you are, and not just in the "den/house" when no one else is around. This is how a dog builds respect and trust for you--knowing that you are a calm, confident participant in the stuff out there in the real world. And as an added benefit, the dog is usually relaxed enough after exercising that the destructive behavior goes away.
The bottom line is...dogs need entertainment. They don't "get" TV because it doesn't really have a scent. You need to make sure that as a dog owner you provide your dog with the best entertainment available: You. That's really all they want anyway--more of you, unfiltered. And the walk gives them that.
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