Loving to Distraction

"He's been so abused"

Part of the new style of relating to dogs is a seeming hesitancy to train our pets.

While researching his book, Katz encountered scores of animals whose people refused to enforce even the most basic training. Take Sandra, a disenfranchised woman who couldn't bear to let her little dachshund out into the cold at toilet time. Instead, she solved the problem with copious amounts of Lysol and tiny disposable diapers. The example may seem extreme, but increasingly it's not.

Even those who rescue animals often turn away from training them, declaring that they can't bear to discipline a dog who has been abused at the hands of humans. Their job, they insist, is to give unconditional love, which, apparently, doesn't include discipline. But it's also a fundamental reason so many animals end up in shelters.

"It's become a great problem for dogs," Katz says. "'I'm sorry he bit you, but he was abused, so you see I can't really leash him because he's been through so much.' Or, 'I can't do anything about her not being housebroken; she's had such a terrible life that I just can't crate her.'

"People have all kinds of reasons not to train their dogs. It's part of the emotionalism of seeing the dog as a pitiful creature that's too fragile to be trained properly. Only about 3.5 percent of people actually train their dogs at all. But this can be a hostile world for dogs. There are leash laws and fewer places for them to go. More and more, they're being denied the opportunity of just being dogs. And that's trouble for them.

"One of the things that trainers did for me with my own dogs was to become the filters that I didn't have. I realized that I was projecting myself onto my dog by viewing him as willful and rebellious. And they explained, 'He's not rebellious, he just doesn't know what you're doing. He doesn't have to chase cars and buses, and if you love and care about him you'll stop seeing him as a rebellious teenager and see him as a dog that needs leadership. And you'll take responsibility for him.'

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