Should you trust your dog?

Telling someone to trust their dog may as easily be the best and the worst advice we could possibly give. It depends on many factors.

Just like us, dogs need agency to live happy, fulfilled lives, and to maintain or build their mental health. A dog that has little or no choices in her everyday life will likely either exhibit stress-related behaviours like barking, lunging, destructive behaviours and so on, or she will shut down and fall into a state of learned helplessness. This may sometimes look like the dog is very well behaved and easy-going, but it is a deeply unhealthy way of being. In both cases, the dog needs our help and needs to have some choices in everyday life.

The choices we offer need to be good - a choice is only beneficial if all outcomes are beneficial. A choice between pain or fear and the absence of pain and fear does not qualify. Choices should also be offered in a way that the dog can understand and cope with.

Many of the things dogs experience in today's fast-paced human world are difficult or even impossible for them to comprehend and deal with. It would be unfair to expect this of them. We cannot "trust our dog" to deal with large crowds, busy traffic and similar situations.

There are situations some dogs can handle and be trusted with while others cannot, based on their age, experience, health, stress level and other factors. We need to consider each dog individually.

We sometimes need to trust our dog to take the next step in our behaviour change journey, though, even if it is scary for us. For example, if our dog used to have trouble coping with the proximity of other dogs, but we have been working on exposing her to other dogs at a distance in a healthy, natural and appropriate way, it might be time to reduce this distance, have an off-leash walk with another dog and so on. It can be daunting for a caretaker that has spent hours, weeks and months managing to prevent such meetings to finally trust their dog enough to organize something like this. But if we have done all that needs to be done beforehand, we also need to trust our dog to take the next step. Make it as easy as we can, but the step should be taken for progress to continue.

This last example is a choice that a dog that has been properly prepared can make, as dogs are social animals and the ability to communicate and coexist peacefully with other dogs is something they were born into, even if they didn't have the chance to develop it sooner or it has temporarily been taken away by circumstances.

Trusting our dog to make good choices in a situation does not mean abandoning her in that situation. It means supporting her in a way that does not take agency away from her. We are there to provide a safety net, but we are not preventing our dog from jumping, figuratively, if she so chooses.

When asking ourselves whether we should trust our dog, we can think about how natural the situation is for our dog and how evolution has prepared her for it. Which means learning about dogs' natural behaviours and needs. Knowledge will empower us and make things clearer.

Ultimately, we need to trust ourselves to know when to trust our dogs.