I saw a shirt recently that proclaimed - Everything worth learning I learned from my dog. Cute though that is, my dogs lick themselves and sniff one another inappropriately so I won’t take every lesson a pooch has to teach as necessarily the best option (your mileage may vary). I will, however, agree that a great many characteristics inherent in dogs are worth emulating (loyalty, kindness, devotion, love, enthusiasm for life). There is one lesson above all the rest that stands out, though; a single character trait I’ll venture is common to every dog I’ve ever met and that is the absence of malice. I know you’re thinking of the annoying neighbor’s dog who would apparently like nothing better than to dig under the fence and chew your ankles off the next time you walk by, but hear me out.The nice thing about dogs is they don’t come with a lot of baggage. Even an adopted mutt who has led a rough life is likely, at worst, to haul a small carry-on bag full of fear. I’ve had dogs in my life since birth, have worked in veterinary medicine and, as a child, even spent time working (hanging out mostly) at a guard dog training facility in Germany as a child and what I’ve never seen in a dog is malice or hate. If there’s one thing we could stand to learn from our dogs, it’s the inability to hate.Some of you are wondering if I’m off my rocker. Haven’t I read those stories about pit bulls mauling kids? Haven’t I had a dog that barked at me rabidly when I knocked on a door, seemingly wanting nothing more than to get a taste of my insides? I assure you, I’m not being naïve. There are only a few reasons dogs behave that way and none of them have anything to do with hate. A dog will behave aggressively to defend its pack or territory. That isn’t malice, it is instinct. Nature bred that into their ancestors and man hasn’t yet bred it out of them (all of them, at least). In nature, the drive to protect territory and family is what permits survival. Failure to do so means the loss of hunting grounds or hunting team and that can well lead to starvation and death. Barking when a stranger knocks on the door is nothing more than a dog’s confused but well-intentioned instinctive drive to preserve its turf and continued survival.
A dog may also act aggressively out of fear. Again, malice isn’t a factor. It may fear a stranger. In this case, the barking is little more than bluster. Don’t come any closer or I’ll bite! See how frighteningly dangerous I am? Take 3 confident steps towards the pooch and he turns tail and runs. Worst case, fight or flight instinct kicks in and, perceiving himself cornered, Fido opts to bite.
Finally, an aggressive dog may be genetically flawed thanks to human tampering. The neurotic tendencies of the Cocker Spaniel and the aggressiveness in some American Pit Bulls are good examples of dogs who have either been so broken by bad breeding practices or so strongly bred with a bias towards aggressive instinct that they do things often perceived as hateful. Yet even here, the acts are not borne of malice. They are simply hyper inflated versions of normal, instinctive behavior. The aggressive dog attacking a child or mailman running down the street is simply responding to the prey-in-flight drive that prompts him to give chase.
So while there are lessons I think we’re better off not learning from our dogs (no out-of-the-blue mating attempts with people’s legs, please) I think dogs have it right when it comes to their absence of malice. Think how much better we’d do with our larger-than-a-walnut brains, were we able to address even the most loathsome character from a position of logic rather than hate. And if you’re asking, how can we have love without hate, I propose you spend a little time with a dog. They may not know hate, but they do a damn fine job with love.
