I don’t want to work with human aggressive dogs anymore. There, I said it.
Angie and I met at a dog training seminar about five years ago. Some of us arrived early, excited to start the week, and we nervously huddled together by the front gate. I almost instantly felt drawn to Angie in a group of 10 other trainers. She has a kindness about her that you can sense before she ever says a word. It's years later, and I'm so grateful to call her a friend.
This blog is a peek into Angie's life as a trainer. I've always loved how she wraps a story in words, and I find myself lost in her translation. I'm grateful she is sharing this part of herself and her journey with us here.
Angie - I didn’t realize how much of my identity as a person and as a dog trainer has been wrapped up in this ability to not only handle human aggressive dogs without inhibition, but move them to a totally different headspace - one that is more predictable, more safe, and more enjoyable for both dog and owner. I take these cases on because it feels good to help people who have all but given up hope on their lives. Not their dogs. Their lives.
Dogs that have no reservations about harming people have a hugely negative impact on their owner’s quality of life. I know this because I lived with it for 11 years, and for the first 8 of them I booked and cancelled more euthanasia appointments than anyone should feel the need to. But at the end of it all, my decade long journey with my human aggressive Rottweiler Oakley, is one that I will look back on with nothing but fondness and gratitude.
Learning to live with a liability like that taught me many things, but one of the gifts I’ve been happy to pay forward is coaching others on their own journey, and alleviating some of the pressure by offering safe and structured boarding once they’ve finished training. We all know how challenging it can be to find care for our dogs that meets enough of our criteria that we can actually relax and enjoy whatever event is taking us away in the first place. Well, add about a thousand times more challenge and anxiety to that scenario, and you might scratch the surface of what it’s like to hand off your bitey bestie to a *hashtag* doglover.
“We’re so grateful for you Angie, we never imagined we could ever travel again! We can finally stop worrying and truly enjoy our time away knowing he’s with you.”
I took so much pride in comments like this from my clients. I don’t think it was as much an ego boost as it was validation that what I had endured with Oakley was worth something bigger than the confines of the bubble I so carefully created for us. My work, my life, felt deeply purposeful.
That, and, befriending dogs who on first contact legitimately wanted to harm me, turned out to be a portal to the earthy, intuitive, deeply grounded parts of myself that so many of us lose and long for in the work-eat-sleep-repeat urban lifestyle.
As we’ve abducted ourselves from the natural world, we’ve in turn lost touch with our own true essence, at least to some extent. Many of us have found ways to reconnect with it, even if just for a fleeting moment, through hobbies that by default have us directly interfacing with an aspect of nature. Hiking, skydiving, hunting, surfing: we choose to come into contact with the wilderness not to conquer it, but attune to it. To dance with it, and to be reminded of our own wilderness hiding under all the many costumes we wear in society. This was my version of that dance. This was my flow state.
Was.
I don’t feel any of this poetry anymore with aggressive dogs. I just feel sad and defeated. Here’s a very vulnerable truth: lately waking up in the morning to go greet the kennel room dogs has felt dreadful. Dreadful!? I never imagined dreading doing a job I’ve so loved for decades.
I feel the same familiar excitement when an inquiry appears in my inbox. “Ooo”, I remark, “I can’t wait to show them what’s possible!” But then the reality of having what feels like a psychiatric care unit in my home, erases all that optimism.
It wasn’t always like this. I’m rarely dealing with the clear headed primal aggression of my early years anymore. The modern dog is confused, chaotic, and doesn’t respond to nature’s laws. There’s less reward in the work now because there’s less wilderness in our dogs to attune to. We’ve bred and conditioned it out of them, and what we’re left with is a neurotic mess I don’t recognize or know how to dance with. There is no flow state - things are rigid and awkward and unpredictable now.
But I haven’t lost all hope. I do think that you as owners can collaborate with your trainers to help mitigate some of this. This is not to say you alone are the cause of your dog’s issues - but you do have the capacity to help their overstimulated minds and nervous systems come a bit closer to a neutral baseline.
I believe that when we as humans reject or forget about natural living, and then attempt to impose our urban lifestyles onto our dogs by over socializing, spending too much time in artificial environments, overly relying on “enrichment” games and activities, dogfluencing on social media, and just existing in general excess of stimulation, we sentence both ourselves and our dogs to some degree of neurosis that just becomes our normal.
What I believe is the antidote to this issue in our current dog culture (and culture in general) is slowing down and taking the time to create quiet, genuine, simple, heart to heart connections with ourselves, each other, our dogs, and the natural world.
Here’s an adaptation from one of my favourite teachers, Ramana Maharshi:
If you were to observe your daily life with your dog from an outside perspective, it might look something like acrobats in a circus. Darting back and forth, bending, jumping, performing some amazing tricks and skills…lights, cameras, wildly entertaining! But you’d see it’s a circus, a distraction from reality. Reality is actually the quiet meadow that you’re observing from, which surrounds the circus tent for miles and miles. The meadow is the absolute state of peace that is available to everyone and their dog, but that everyone ignores.
I urge you to turn your attention away from the circus of dog parks, enrichment games, the perfect pose for IG, the 100 word vocabulary of tricks and commands - and turn toward the everlasting tranquility of the meadow. In my dream world this is where we’d all live 100% of the time, but I know as a society we are too attached to the circus. Maybe even addicted to it. But if each of us could spend even 15% of our time in what I believe is reality - in the meadow, without a device or even a book, and learn to enjoy the subtle activity there: the gentle sway of the grass in the wind, the quiet flutter of a butterfly, the sensation of sunshine on our bare skin, and the clouds that slowly drift by. This is the type of stimulus we and our dogs are designed for. This is what will regulate our nervous systems and help us cope with the circus we all inevitably have to return to.
Just a little wander in a park.
Just your morning coffee on your doorstep.
Just your bare feet on the ground for a minute.
Just a glance up at the sky.
Just a slower pace on your leash walk.
Just one activity without your phone.
Just a pause.
Just you and your dog
In the meadow.
To learn more about Angie, you can find her at @mightyoaksinc on Instagram and find her resources for owners on her website. She also has a podcast (Mighty Oaks Podcast) where she talks with her friend and fellow trainer, Robyn about business, dog training and how owners can live their best life with their dogs.
