Animals

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ANIMALS

1. Dogs - The Crate Debate

Is it right for a baby dog, recently separated from its canine family and freshly introduced to its human one, to be excluded each night and ‘crate trained’ into submission and silence? 

We know dogs are social creatures – they wouldn’t naturally live alone. When dogs are not part of a dog pack, they are fulfilled in the hierarchy of a human family. A well-adjusted dog is self-confident and knows his place in whatever that home may be. Socially, he has a lot of interaction and love to give. That’s why you got the dog in the first place.

So, does it make sense – in the name of socializing and ‘proper’ training – to isolate, confine in a crate, and then ignore your newest family member?

Does this treatment make him a better functioning and integrated part of the family? When crying is all a baby dog can do to express hunger, anxiety or fear, should he be placed out of ear range and left to deal with his very real experience of aloneness and abandonment? When he needs you most - at night when the lights are off and the world is quiet - should your message be: “You are alone, no one will come for you, keep crying until you are exhausted because no one cares?” 

Having been in the world only weeks or months, how can a puppy be expected to have the sense of self and the world around him to effectively deal with sudden solitude and rejection?  

Just as a human baby’s vision corresponds only to the distance to his mother’s breast, his crying announcing his need for human comfort and milk, a baby dog knows only his need for human proximity and food. His needs are simple and basic. Without these met, he experiences distress. 

A baby dog exists seeking food and companionship because those are the basic and first needs of virtually every creature alive. The baby cries to announce, “I’m in need. Here is my voice. Help me.” The shock and confusion of being deprived of basic needs at a most immature stage of his development, disturbs and damages the baby’s psyche. To do this in the hopes of teaching the baby something far beyond his level of development, amounts to a kind of shock treatment.

Crating is a sudden and drastic measure mistakenly applied with damaging effects to the developing psyche and overall wellbeing of the puppy. There are no ‘bad’ puppies. These young dogs are in an important stage of their development. They have already evolved from the early nurture provided by their mother. They have left siblings behind. Now they must bond with their new ‘pack’ and experience the security and safety they need to become the well-adjusted individuals they are destined for, within the family pack.

When children are misbehaving, a common punishment is to send them to stand alone in the corner of the room. They are meant to experience separation from the group and contemplate what ‘badness’ they have done. Just minutes of this shock can have a profound effect.

Solitary confinement is the greatest of the punitive measures employed by jails throughout the world, having resulted in well-documented traumatic stress and suicides. More recently, this practice has been deemed cruel and unusual and is being re-evaluated due to the many cases of lasting psychological damage suffered by its victims. Finally, extensive experimentation with monkeys has shown that after a degree of sustained exclusion from their core social groups, re-integration is severely compromised if not impossible, depending on the length of separation time. In other words, isolation in any form is a powerful, documented, behavior-altering method to control by force, with serious undesirable behavioural consequences.

When well-meaning owners attempt to ignore their new puppy’s cries for help that pierce their ears and pull on their hearts, they are overriding their basic human recognition of fear and panic and a natural pull to help. A baby dog cannot make sense of its pain and turmoil. Its young frame of reference and lack of coping tools, force it to now surrender to deprivation through sustained pain. It is enclosed in a cage and cannot escape. It is counter-intuitive to try to ‘create’ a socially well-balanced animal by depriving it - at a developmentally immature stage - of the very socialization this treatment is meant to achieve.

Make a cozy crate for your dog. Let him enjoy this special enclosed space throughout the day and night with an open door. Prepare the dog’s larger future open bed in a place of your choosing in the house, and take him there often to visit. At night, keep the cozy crate in your room to ensure your dog continues to feel safe in his ‘special room’, and part of the human pack. Pick him up as you would a baby if he cries, gently returning him to the cozy crate or letting him spend some time on your bed until he can handle being back in the crate. Let this short process of socialization happen on its own…

There is no need to artificially ‘push’ a result that your animal’s instinct for independence within his human pack, will in due course naturally take care of. Relax. Your baby dog will mature soon enough. He will become the lively, self-confident socially well-adjusted dog you wanted him to be… without trauma to your dog, or your ears and heart.

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2. Dogs & Cats - Diatomaceous Earth, the Natural Flea Treatment (another great use)

 Diatomaceous earth…

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CREDITS

All text ©2019 Baronesse Productions Inc. (unless otherwise indicated).  All photos and videos ©2019 Baronesse Productions Inc. and ®2019 Philosopher Fox Films from the personal library of Benita von Sass (unless otherwise indicated).  

All rights reserved.  Reproduction or distribution of text, photos or videos in any form only by written permission of Baronesse Productions Inc.

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