Laws of Human Behavior

Hugo Martin wrote about dogs off leash in the LA Times and, like many such articles, painted a sensible, well-written, wrong-headed picture that completely missed the point about people and dogs in public spaces. Nowadays, people do not love their dogs as they love their cars or even homes. The behavior of humans with their possessions is receptive to collective rule making and responsive to group pressure on behavior.

Nowadays, people love their dogs as they love their children. A dog becomes an ally who can be depended on in a very messy and confusing world. Dog people break the law because they experience a bond being in nature with their dog that their moral center tells them must be good and all the park rangers and dog experts in the world will not convince them otherwise. Seemingly wise pronouncements on rules for training to some sound like so much "spare the rod and spoil the child" dogmatism to such people and they will ignore it. Laws that groups of people agree are unjust simply will not be followed, and strict enforcement only will raise anger on both sides.

Thirty-nine percent of homes in America have dogs People need activities where they can enjoy the company of their dogs as equal companions, and that means no leash. A dog off-leash is a different creature than a dog on a leash. Fenced off-leash parks are okay, but only the dogs get exercise. For the humans, it feels like a daily visit to the prison yard. Runyon Canyon is the only local off-leash hiking area where both and it is overburdened in the extreme. Huntington Beach is another, but it is a long haul. Not something that can be done every day. The only solution is to have many, many more places such as these. Enough areas for people to hike and play alongside their dogs in the mountains and beaches, so that the scofflaws can both serve the demands of their hearts and obey the law.

Room needs to be made for everyone at the table, yet more room is made for people and their off-road bikes and dune buggies than is made for people and their dogs. Does this seem right or fair. Do dogs do more damage than dirt bikes?

We need to figure out how to integrate dogs more safely rather than figure out how the scofflaws are wrong. When such a large segment of the otherwise law-abiding population tosses all respect for a law aside, that usually indicates an obsolescent worldview that requires revisting by the community as a whole if the community truly wishes to solve the issue.

Aromatherapy

You have just given your dog a bath and she smells like sweet flowers. You take her to the park where she promptly flops over and rolls in the grass with glee. She twists her neck back and forth in a kind of ecstasy and you know immediately that you are not going to enjoy the drive home.

You call her off sharply, and she trots over happily. After all, she has corrected a grievous wrong and made it right. She has covered herself in eau de dead meat and she is not only a dog again, but, like all those women who got Farah Fawcett haircuts in the 70's or the guys who wear their favorite basketball star's number on their t-shirt, she is one of the giants. A predator reeking of the kill. You will have to be impressed.

You, you are not impressed, not pleased, not admiring. Far from being the toast of the pack, your four-footed companion is in deep doo-doo, and this is not a good thing.

There has been an olfactory communications breakdown. This is the worst kind because smell reaches so deep. Studies have shown that divorce is much less common among couples who like each other's smell. It recalls to me Napoleon's famous letter to Josephine announcing that he would return from a campaign in a couple of weeks and that she should not bathe again until then.

The power of smell is often unconscious and so it is often underestimated. The nose is hard-wired right into the deepest part of the brain. Its effects are swift and unmediated by reason. There is wisdom in the nose that modern society tries to erase because it challenges the rational order. In an experiment, college girls were given a series of t-shirts worn by different men and told to smell them and rate their appeal. The women all had different answers depending, of all things, on their own immune system. Apparently they rated as sexy-smelling the t-shirts worn by guys whose immune systems were the most complementary to their own. And they rated as not-sexy-at-all the t-shirts worn by guys whose immune systems were similar to theirs. Their noses knew who would make good babies with them and gave them a shove in the right direction.

Well, in a world whose history includes arranged marriages or at least class-limited choices of spouses from among a restricted genetic group of people, women's sense of smell might lead them out of their class, out of their race even, to seek better genetic diversity for their offspring. Not a happy idea for most societies, hence the denial of smell.

The dogs, they seek odors as a source of identity and information and take the good with the bad. And while a more scent-friendly society might never accept the offal roll as a kennel club skill, we might not tempt transgression so much by sanitizing our animals and ourselves, by denying with sweetness the darker, muskier part of nature by trying to wash and perfume the dogs or our psyches into something unrecognizeable.

The Brentwood Dogs

I used to go to the Brentwood dog park every day. I tried different times, looking for a pleasant community of like-minded dog lovers to pass the time with as my puppy played. What I found were packs in place, not of dogs, but of humans, with rigid hierarchies and exclusive membership requirements.

7:30 am. The Doyenne directs the conversation as she walks slowly round the park. She speaks in the rounded tones of Edith Skinner trained movie stars. The Enforcer follows the Doyenne, making sure other lesser human keep their dogs in line. The Doyenne's standard poodle may misbehave, may rub his aging, rheumy eyes on your jeans to clear the mucus, may break up a happy game between two young dogs and try to hump them. He receives a gentle chiding, but, lese majeste, is allowed to continue, an alpha male owned by the alpha female of the hour. Others' transgressions are not treated so lightly. The Enforcer is an expert on all dogs and dire pronouncements are directed at those whose canine or whose conversation upsets the placid contentment of the pack.

10:00 The dog walker people show with their packs. They are younger and more aggressive in their knowledge of dominance. Anyone who wants to join must perform the appropriate submissive or dominant behavior. If you are foolish enough to imagine yourself the equal of the giants, then you had better know the secret handshakes and codes of conduct. If you enter the group mildly, careful not to offend anyone, you had better be willing to keep your place. Once you've been assigned non-status, only a bloody battle against the pack will change it. And no one exercising their dog wants to do battle. Instead, you change the time of your trip, or go off on your own. The lone wolf.

Some never notice the packs that form around them. They don't really try to engage, are not so much above the fray as oblivious to it. Sometimes the dog will play with others and sometimes the dog simply sniffs the perimeter and lays down. They say humans come to resemble their dogs, but the reverse is also true.

Although I'm a fan of dog parks, I don't go there much any more. My dog is always unsettled when we arrive. Blanche, who loves to go to all the other parks, stands outside the fence with her hackles raised and barks fiercely. Inside, she will bark a bit, but if another dog approaches, she tucks her tail and runs away cringing.

I used to think that it was memory causing her to act so strangely. This was her first dog park, and she was petrified in the beginning. Even after she started going to other parks and entering them confidently and joyfully, she continued to approach this one with trepidation. Only this minute, as I think about all the times I have met with inappropriate dominant behavior from the other humans ,there do I wonder if it is the park and neither Blanche nor me. The vibe is protective, aggressive and negative.

My dog has been picking up on it for a year. Only now, after my visits there have dwindled to an occasional pass that most often includes some self-annointed 'authority' telling me something unpleasant about my dog's behavior, my manner of treating her, or the dire future in store for her based on signals they interpret, do I see that Blanche may have been reacting appropriately all along. That the park is possessed of a darkness despite the play of dogs. How sad.