Dogs Are Always Babies

Dogs are always babies. I don’t mean ‘fur babies’, or stand-ins for children, I mean cognitively, they are always no more than toddlers. And that’s why they love to play. Dogs never grow out of that.

Now, I don’t know what age you are, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say, that play is not as easy for you as it once was. I mean, you don’t take the stairs at a run any more, and certainly not on all fours do you? (To be fair, it would look a bit odd at your work.) You don’t find yourself running into empty corridors - because there’s space to - or give yourself a wee hurlie on a supermarket trolley anymore, do you?

Oddly enough though, there is no logical reason why not to. There’s no harm in running through a space - or going upstairs like a puppy…ok - maybe the trolleys ARE out now - but the rest of it is just a societal agreement that we somehow absorb - through the ether or through our skin: adults don’t kick their way through piles of autumn leaves or climb trees….we just don’t!

But dogs, even when they have ‘grown up’, even when they have ‘settled down’ (should you be lucky enough to have achieved that milestone) will always want to play. They can snap back into puppy-like play without any self-consciousness. In fact, they are almost ‘programmed’ to play. It’s in their DNA.

In 1959, when Dr Dmitri Belyayev, the Russian zoologist and geneticist, embarked on his now famous experiment with farmed silver foxes, he did so in the hope that the foxes would be easier to work with. Tragically, ‘work with’ in this case meant: ‘to raise in cages and skin for clothing’.

Humans can really suck sometimes.

Well, he did make them easier to work with by breeding only the foxes that showed a tendency towards tameness. And it turns out tameness (friendliness, sociability) does not travel alone, genetically speaking.

Rattling down the DNA-double-helix-helter-skelter in the tamer foxes came a host of other traits: the fox cubs soon began to change, showing floppy ears; variety in coat colour; barking and vocalisation; increased interest in interacting with humans; tail wagging and juvenile type PLAY.

Sound familiar?

Within just six generations, these foxes - so ferocious (and who could blame them) that they could not be handled, had generated offspring that were behaving like and looking more like dogs than foxes. Puppy-like play came along with the sociability. It is built into dog DNA.

Literally.

Play is part of what makes dogs, well: dogs. They are not wolves, not any other form of wild canid - they are genetically so far removed from whatever ancestor they came from that it is as pointless comparing them to these as it would be to compare you or me to a chimpanzee.

So play is in their nature: how should we play with them? What should we play with them? If you want to use play to ‘tire the dog out’...good luck to you. It really is very difficult to do that and most of us don’t have the hours in the day spare to even get near it.

Also, dogs (like us) get a huge hormone release from excitement and play which actually prolongs their stamina. Adrenaline feeds the muscles; dopamine numbs pain - which is why after you stop playing fetch of whatever with your dog, you may notice on the walk home that they are limping or have hurt a paw. They just don’t feel it when they are excited.

So what are we looking for? Well, as with a lot of life: we are looking for balance. Keeping our dogs ‘under threshold’ - below the point where they are really lost to their thinking brain and running solely on the old primitive (fight/flight/frenzy/freeze/fawn) one.

Look at their face: is it in a wide liney grin? Then they are definitely heading ‘over threshold’. Can they no longer perform a behaviour: like sit or down - something they can do easily at any other time?? Then they CAN’T hear you any more - they are out of their front/thinking brain and that means they are somewhat out of their (and your) control.

Oh naw….the ball spinner is suddenly looking a wee bit different. What can we use then?

Of course we can play ball - but maybe just not a ball flung so far that the dog has to pelt after it at cheetah speed. Throw the ball a short distance and then send the dog for it. The thinking/control part is built into that play. Have another ball so that the dog can more easily give up the first one.

Break up play with requests for behaviour - SIT…WAIT… then release them to fetch or retrieve or whatever. Try using their nose as part of play: get a nice STAY from your dog while you go and hide a load of treats around a tree stump, or the roots of a big tree…or under bushes - get them searching, rooting, sniffing….

Now you see why we work on all these basic behaviours! If you can STAY you can PLAY!

The internet, too, is awash with ideas for dog play and enrichment. Try to keep the play low-octane, and of a sort which harnesses more than just the chase part of the dog’s natural prey-drive.

Before you know it, you will be starting to LOOK for opportunities to set up games for them - looking for things that look interesting or challenging or just plain fun.

Does that mean that WE will end up thinking more like children too??

Dogs just keep giving and giving…