I recently had the privilege of assisting a family with their aggressive Catahoula Leopard Dog. For those that don’t know the Catahoula is the State dog of Louisiana. If reared from good stock they are a large,powerful, hunting/herding breed.
This article isn’t about the nuances or idiosyncrasies that were used to train this dog. Rather, it’s about the mindset that I used to approach the animal. A friend and mentor of mine recently sent me a podcast hosted by World Sport Dog Champion Ivan Balabanov. In this episode he engaged with David Garcia Suarez another canine extraordinaire for over 3 hours about various topics. If you’re interested in the credentials of either of these gentlemen, I implore you to look them up on your own as their achievements and bios are extensive. What jumped out at me was a segment in which they talked about theory of mind. As it relates to dog training this is a rather complex idea that I will do my best to
summarize. In its simplest terms it means beginning with the end in mind when approaching an animal and subsequent training. It’s a conceptual line of logic that trainers use to plot a training course in which they are targeting a desired state of mind that they want to bring the dog through training in. It can be argued that when a dog or animal performs a task, the frame of mind in which the animal approaches the task is of equal or greater importance than completion of the task itself. They are looking for dogs that want to drive themselves into the task at hand rather than be coerced to perform an arbitrary action. One can understand that conceptually channeling a dog to work in a desired state of mind can have drastic implications on the overall outcome and longevity of the training. Allow me to illustrate with the following example.
Let’s circle back to the aggressive Catahoula. As a preface, I spent much of my canine career handling, training, and supervising working line dogs. The first thing that caught my attention about this particular dog was that oh so familiar working dog disposition. This familiarity connected me to him instantly. I’m almost certain I mumbled something to him on one of our first walks to the tune of “I know who you are”. And a pure working dog he was. I believe I encountered the aforementioned podcast within the first week of training and the theory of mind concept continued to resonate. In total, we spent over six weeks together. Being that he was a working dog we took everything down to bare bones. Structure, structure, and more structure. Of equal importance was the humility and respect that I approached this dog with. Every instinct that I had told me that this was not the type of animal that you create a relational conflict with. I had the opportunity to validate my suspicions multiple times throughout the course of my research. Multiple sources state that Catahoula’s can and will react violently if they feel disrespected. Once again, I needed this dog to at least entertain a different frame of mind or risk getting nowhere with him. If one were to describe his aura in three words, they would be stoic, powerful, and formidable. However, he was also respectful, affectionate, and incredibly capable. My lessons and discussions with the owners centered around disposition, theory of mind, and management. It’s difficult to comprehend the shift from pet owner to serious working dog owner. However, I sincerely believed that his owner’s were committed to the process. It’s certainly an imperfect analogy but in an attempt to relay working dog structure to the owners I referenced a zookeeper. A zookeeper can be highly experienced but when caring for the tigers there is a protocol that must be adhered to without compromise. It is irrelevant how many years of experience the zookeeper has. We can respect the animal without disregarding its nature. Obviously, there’s a stark contrast between a domesticated dog and a tiger (who knew). However, a working line dog or animal must be respected in a parallel fashion. The tiger and the working dog contain genetic integrity which makes their behavior predictable to a large extent. It’s when we as people either by naïve omission or intentional disregard go against nature that we encounter problems.
Towards the end of our training together I came across a Robert Frost Poem that had no particular meaning to me in previous years. I reread the poem and it was as if a small cosmological alignment had occurred. I came away hearing Ecclesiastes 3, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Some things we just can’t comprehend until we live them out.
The Rabbit Hunter
Robert Frost
Careless and still
The hunter lurks
With gun depressed,
Facing alone
The alder swamps
Ghastly snow-white.
And his hound works
In the offing there
Like one possessed,
And yelps delight
And sings and romps,
Bringing him on
The shadowy hare
For him to rend
And deal a death
That he nor it
(Nor I) have wit
To comprehend.