I nearly spit out my coffee when she said it. The new client calling wanted to know why her dog thinks he works for the FBI. Once I choked down my laugh and the sip of coffee, I asked her to give me a few more details so I could determine how best to help her. She shared that she is recently divorced, no kids, just her and her four year old, male, shepherd mix. According to her, the dog was always suspicious of her husband of two years; she indicated he was right to be and she should have listened to the dog sooner. This woman had me hooked. There was no way I wasn't going to work with her: A sense of humor AND an amazing dog? My ideal client for sure. Here's why she was reaching out for help.
No matter who comes to visit, this dog stands in the doorway and gives them a full visual inspection. She can easily call him back from the door, which he will do, and then follow that by promptly sticking his nose in the person's crotch or goose them from behind as they walk past him. As if that wasn't bad enough, she said, he'll position himself in such a way that he appears to be eavesdropping on every conversation, "in a very judgy way." Plus, he follows guests to the bathroom and then walks them back out. She said that while most of her friends and family were used to her dog doing these things and simply refer to him as "quirky," she was worried about new people she'd like to date and how they would perceive him.
As I told her, there's been so much great research on how dogs perceive the people they encounter around their owners. One of my most favorite studies looked at how dogs treat people they perceive as unreliable or not nice. For the study, they had dogs present while their owners struggled with a basic task like opening a jar. There was a second person present who did not engage the dog, nor help the struggling owner in any way. When these same dogs were offered food by the person who had not helped their owner with the task, they didn't take the food. In a second study, test subject dogs observed a person (not their owner) pointing at different containers; some contained food, others did not. While the dogs all followed the pointed finger initially, those dogs who were deceived by the person to approach an empty container, stopped trusting those people and their finger points. The dogs felt betrayed and the people betraying them were not considered trustworthy. The moral of these stories: Your dog knows the people in your life worth trusting. When I shared this research with the client, she started laughing because it turns out her ex-husband used to laugh at her when she struggled to open one of their kitchen drawers that was perennially getting jammed. And you know what else he did? He used to pretend to throw the dog's ball and then laughed when the dog ran off, unable to find it. Her dog had been conducting his own experiments and this man epically failed the trust tests!
For the owners of those dogs conducting the front door sniff test, this isn't a bad thing. Dogs are quickly grabbing (no pun intended) as much information as they can on the person entering their home. They are gaining information on the person from a health perspective, as well as taking notes on where they've been and who they've been with. This is why many dogs more readily trust someone entering their home who smells like other dogs. Clearly if other dogs like this person and remained in close proximity to this person, they must be trustworthy.
We've talked about it before, but it bears repeating. Dogs and humans have been co-evolving for over 30,000 years. They've been at our sides that entire time, keeping our campsites and homes safe, identifying threats, showing us who to trust and who to avoid. All we need to do is listen to them. Maybe the FBI could take a few lessons from dogs. Just sayin'.
As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.
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