On Dogs and Intensity

Lessons from the field on how to raise our girl-dog : Champ

Part 1 : This is the land of Confusion

This is Champ.

We’ve had Champ for over a year and six months now. She walked into lives while we were vacationing in Pondicherry India, drove back 8 hours with us to Bangalore, flew 23 hours in a plane with us to California and is now learning what it takes to be a good dog in Mountain View.

While in Bangalore, we had a gifted dog behaviourist or dog cognitivist, Devisri Sarkar who helped us understand what Champ was thinking and how to get her to do what we wanted. She could explain to us, beat by beat what each of Champ’s actions meant. We were amazed.

In the meanwhile my wife read all she could find — Cesar Millan, the Monks of New Skete, The Dog Vinci code. I read and watched Cesar Millan.

And then it became incredibly confusing. The challenge was not that what the cognitivists were doing was not working. It was working exceedingly well — while Champ was with them. And then she would snap back to being a different, more wilful dog the instant her leash was back in our hands.

I saw the same thing happening in Cesar Millan’s videos and again with the dog behaviourist we’re going to in Mountain View — Jimi Dixon. I am in awe of what they are able to achieve in a few seconds but frustrated by the explanation they give for how they achieve it.

The concept connecting all three- Sarkar, Millan and Dixon- was visible- presence. The animals appeared to change in their presence. Even before the behaviourists ‘did’ anything. So what about their presence was making this happen ? This is where it became voodoo to us. The answers we received ranged from logical to odd.

One says — its your energy — specifically — calm assertive energy. True — but how do you become this way. It possibly takes a lifetime of training in the martial arts to convert natural aggressive tendencies to calm assertive tendencies. Many of us, me included, I suspect have a hard time being this way and operate as calm submissive in our everyday lives— the opposite of the energy the animals need in us to feel ok.

So how do you move from this state to one that your dog responds to and respects ? And why does the dog respect this state in the first place ?

Is it an evolutionary advantage or a natural organising principle for dogs ( i.e. wolves ) to respond to calm assertive energy ?

Another says — its the body language or stance — specifically — “alpha”. True — but how do you embody the stance without becoming either stiff or cartoonish. If you are naturally soft and sensitive, as we are — being alpha simply makes you feel stiff and aggressive all over. The refrain that alphas are “calm, never aggressive and expect to have their way” is no help either. It simply made us boorish.

A third says — I make the dog fall in love with me, and then she does whatever I ask. True — but how do you do this ? How do you get the dog to attach to you and not the treats ? What makes the dog pay attention to you, in the first place.

This is a common expert’s dilemma — when you become really good at something, you’re able to ‘show’ but cannot explain how you do what you do. So you try and simplify what you do using frameworks and parables to explain what you are doing. “ No look, no touch, no eye contact” “ Get her to use her nose”, “ If you say it, you have to mean it” , “ Talk to your pet”

The worst don’t do this — they simplify their experience to a series of routines and tricks. Run the routine, get the results. Except, the routine eliminates all empathy, treats your dog like a soul-less beast and in many instances leaves her traumatised and you wracked in guilt.

We’ve tried everything the masters have told us to, but the results are inconsistent and enormously frustrating. We do agree on this though : dogs, like horses are intelligent sentient beings and we haven’t learnt what constitutes a useful language for them. By some means the cognitivists we admired had, but were unable to explain this in terms we understood.

Part 2 : Emerging Language

At the heart of our struggle is the language being used by these masters of dog psychology — and they truly are masters with deep love for animals. Their language is an attempt at guiding you to replicate their outward behaviours with no indication to the ‘inner’ movement they are making.

This is where we decided to start — out of sheer desperation. We had to learn how to get Champ to listen to us and just speaking in firm or pleasing tones was not helping. Worse, acting “alpha” was making us aggressive and she was picking up this energy and demonstrating it herself.

So from first principles :

What makes dog cognitivists effective is their presence. This accounts for 90% or more of their success with the animal. This is what we will need to re-create. The dog will follow your lead quite naturally. Language, command, operant conditioning, all of it is useful, provided you first have the correct ‘presence’. Without it, all these can become tricks or worse, abusive routines.

But what about their presence makes the dogs sit up and take notice ? From my observation of the behaviourists it is one thing and one thing only : intensity.

Each cognitivist uses it in a different way, but you can feel it in their presence. There is a continuous feeling of intensity around them. Everything seems to come into sharp focus. They are able to direct this intensity like an instrument — a gesture, a look, a word and the dog responds. Everything done from a place of intensity has a certain look, sound and stance — the purposeful look, saying things and meaning it, and an open, confident stance. Watch any actor.

So its the intensity the dog is responding to, not the posture, gesture or look. But why ?

The closest I’ve come to understanding it is this : dogs must simply be responding to a universal organising principle that has held them in good stead as wolves. This is not unique — horses have an organising principle too — emotional congruence.

If emotional congruence is the Tao of Equus, intensity must be the Tao of Lupus.

By extension, Intensity must be an organising principle in humans too. We must be gravitating towards people who live more intensely. We pay them more attention, we find them charismatic, we expect them to be lead. And so it is with actors, rock stars, chefs, star CEO’s. Osho speaks eloquently on this, as he does on everything else.

Intensity means creating a centre within yourself — Osho

So all we need to become is more intense and the dog will respond to us. Then, why is it so hard ?

Because, culture and its twin, sophistication, encourage us to become exactly the opposite. Soft, meek, “don’t bash into the wall too much”. We couldn’t find any real, pragmatic guide post on how to become intense without confusing it with rage or other perverted forms.

So how to be intense ?

If intensity is simply energy, what if we simply approached it that way ? This is what we’ve been experimenting with and find that our dog is responsive within seconds, to the quality of the intensity we carry.

So its not that the dog is reflecting our energy back to us. If she did, she would become more intense. Horses do reflect your emotional states back, but dogs simply respond to your intensity — how loose or tight it is.

This is an actual feeling we have all had — somedays you feel you’re all “spread out thin” and other days all “together”. What exactly is spread out thin or together ? Energetically, I’ve found it helps to think of yourself as a string. And you can begin tightening your energy up simply by choosing to.

Doing so, make the body feel warmer, you can sense yourself heating up. Certain parts of the body feel “stronger” . For me its the bottom of my belly that seems to emanate strength. For my wife its her solar plexus. But after the initial few seconds of effort, the strength seems to stay. But it also makes us feel refreshed — a side effect we didn’t expect, though it makes sense.

We also realised how strong the pull to submissiveness was for us, when we felt uncomfortable holding intensity for too long. We can be afraid of our own power, as Linda Kohanov says. The effect on Champ was immediate. She became submissive in front of our eyes. The goal for us now is simply to hold our intensity for longer periods of time.

Not alpha, not stance, not body language — intensity.

In doing so, I realised that intention and intensity have the same root : in-tend, which in its original form means literally to stretch towards. Or in simpler language to stretch towards the other from the inside. That’s why tendons have the name they do. And this is what it feels like as well when doing it.

It’s not effortless or a “switch” in “state” — illusions our mind made up. It is like slowly stretching inner strings and tightening them up until you feel more present and powerful, even if its a shade more. And in the beginning the feeling is not one of power, but of discomfort. Like a gym stretch.

In this, your dog is your best friend. She will tell you the second you’ve got it right. She will submit.

My wife also brought up something bothersome about this state. It feels “serious” and “all grown up” and not playful. The dog needs as much play as leadership. How do you blend these ? I haven’t arrived there yet, but my hunch is that Play is an even more universal principle amongst all animals than intensity is.

If so, within intensity, we should find play. We will report on this once we get there.

For now we don’t hold this intensity very well when we’re outdoors with our dog. We’re simply too aware of what else is going on — and Champ responds by not listening to us. I’ll write about this in the next post, once we understand what it is we need to do, to stay with our intensity while outside.

( with thanks to @kusumpunjabi for editing this )