Hierarchy of Needs
Many of you probably learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in a high school physchology class. The concept is that our basic needs have to be met in order for us to strive for an meet our higher level needs. I have found that this concept applies to dogs in the sense that American dog owners seem to be meeting our dogs’ basic needs and a lot of their desires, but are leaving out an important need that we haven’t considered we aren’t meeting - the need for safety as understood and experienced from their perspective. Once we understand why dogs have a need for safety, how it’s undermining their mental health and what we can do to meet it, we can be the owners our dogs deserve.
Your Human Hierarchy
If you are reading this article, it’s unlikely that you have fear around your basic needs being met. People who are worried about access to food, clean water, or shelter aren’t taking the time to learn about dog training. Many of the people reading this are not worrying about their basic physiological needs. We need make constant effort to maintain them, but don’t have fear about whether or not we will be able to.
Many of us are also lucky to not live in constant fear of violence. We are mindful of what streets we walk down, we lock doors, we are careful about the company we keep, but we don’t live in a war zone and generally have an expectation of basic safety day to day.
The epidemic of loneliness and isolation was the subject of a recent report by the Surgeon General and we are learning more about the health effects of these social deficiencies that the pandemic revealed and exacerbated. Still, many of us are connected to our family, as fraught as those relationships can be. We have opportunities to connect with colleagues or are still in touch with friends from school or our childhood. We can find like minded people who share our interests through online communities or local meet ups. With cars, single family housing and lack of the local community that was grounded by attending weekly religious services, we are as a society lonelier than ever before. Many people get pets to help fill these socialization holes and ease our feelings of loneliness.
Only once our basic survival needs are met, our bodies are safe, and we feel connected socially, we can expand to meeting our achievement and esoteric needs. Esteem means respect and admiration, including self respect. Seeking esteem is a growth stage where we focus on becoming a respected and contributing member of the society and social groups we belong to.
At the top of the pyramid comes self actualization. This may be something we aren’t conscious we strive for or something we pointedly dedicate ourselves to. It’s the drive to become everything we are capable of being.
Many of us meet our dog’s basic needs for food, water, shelter, but we don’t adequately meet their physical need for exercise and mental stimulation. We meet their social needs for belongingness by giving them a place in our home, family, and heart. We attempt to meet their canine socialization needs at dog parks and day cares or doing on leash greetings on walks, but often miss the mark. Healthy socializing for dogs is so much more than play and often looks more like peacefully coexisting, an interaction so subtle it’s hard for us humans to grasp the depth of.
While we unconditionally love and include our dogs and that is, on one level, a good thing, we miss the important step of asking them to also powerfully show up for the relationship beyond just being alive and present. Their existence, their company, their antics and way of engaging with and appreciating the world brings us joy. We call the way it makes us feel unconditional love. It’s part of why we get dogs, to experience the flow of that love to and from them, uncomplicated by the nuance and complications of our human connections. Unfortunately this ends up being problematic for them
Because human relationships are complicated, we get dogs to have a loving connection with.
Because we want this relationship to be the loving and pleasant balance we need, we avoid having difficult moments with our dogs.
Because we don’t know what is the appropriate response to behavior we don’t like, having been sold the myth that treats and rewards can solve any issue, we manage or ignore undesirable behaviors instead of resolving them.
Because we have told ourselves that the behavior is acceptable, our dogs are anywhere from unpleasant to dangerous in public and we defiantly defend their right to be as we are and our right to not shield the world from them.
Because our dogs are difficult on walks, leash reactive, anxious or full out aggressive, we take them out less. Because we take them out less, they are under exposed and become fearful or used to being in an environment where they always get what they want when they want it and their frustration tolerance is minimal.
Because we are committed to seeing dogs as friends, children and even partners, we are afraid adding more structure to the relationship will threaten what we code as our dog’s love for us and remove an essential pillar of social and emotional support in our own lives.
Because we don’t have the support systems we need to feel good about and solid within ourselves, we struggle to call our dogs out or ask more of them, leaving them as impulsive, selfish, unhappy and underdeveloped versions of themselves.
Because we are missing a pillar of psychological health, we rob our dogs of it in an attempt to shortcut or bypass the inner work required to become whole humans.
When we tolerate our dogs’ bad behaviors, there is a level of psychological projection at play here. It’s we want to be accepted exactly as we are at the most base level: wild, selfish, and unfiltered. Perhaps this need wasn’t met in an age appropriate window in childhood and part of us unconsciously asks ‘what if.’ If only I could be loved exactly as I was. If only I could really let down around someone and be myself. If only someone would truly accept me. If only I could not try and still be good enough. This is a question I hope everyone can experience first hand so they don’t have to take my word on it, but the answer is disaster. When we are around someone who tolerates our bad behavior, it doesn’t have a healing effect, but a snowball effect. We rise to the bar that is set for us and when that bar is low, we descend to it.
We don’t know some dog behaviors are rude because we code the same action different when a human we care about engages it in. This is the cuddling, leaning, initiating/demanding affectionate exchanges, stepping on, sleeping on the feet of, pushing your body out of a space. I thought this stuff was cute, too, until I was taught otherwise. After almost 10 years of being around groups of dogs and learning what dogs will and won’t tolerate from each other, I can say that dogs need to have a certain relationship to let another dog in their space and the action must be initiated with very calm and tentative energy to be well received. This is often not the case in the ‘loving' interactions I see with dogs and humans.
Other behaviors we code as ‘dogs being dogs.’ This includes barking, pulling on walks or towards smells or other stimuli, jumping on company, getting into scuffles at the dog park or running at top speed in ‘play.’ These are all the marks of a dog whose mind is unshaped by training, an uncivilized and unguided dog. Unfortunately these behaviors have become so common they appear to be the norm even though they aren’t normal. The way I know these behaviors aren’t normal, again, is by watching how other dogs respond to them. These are stress behaviors, behaviors that stem from impulses not being curbed. The same way children interrupt, throw tantrums, yell, hit when they are frustrated, struggle to sit still, our dogs share these impulsive tendencies. The same way we lovingly have to set boundaries with children and educate them on these behaviors being on the antisocial range and therefore unacceptable, we need to do this for our dogs, but fail to. These behaviors that will cause adults, even teens, trouble because of how badly others will respond and the way that will limit their opportunities.
When we know the bar our dogs can reach, that of being a calm, balanced, patient, even considerate companion, we can lovingly hold them to that standard, incentivizing positive behaviors and disincentivizing the undesirable ones. When our dogs settle into a life with limits, they learn to manage their frustration and impulses, padding the breaks on their desires, taking the others around them into consideration. When they do this, their social world blossoms outside of just us and our often enmeshed and codependent love. When they learn to overcome their impulses, they build esteem. Being more mentally, settled they are able to behave in a way that is helpful and supportive to others, becoming a force for good in society.
Self actualization isn’t reached on the path of least resistance. It’s a higher calling, one that we gather ourselves for. It involves dedication, commitment, restraint, frustration, internal navigation. It is the ultimate prize and, like all prizes worth having, like the ones that feel the best to achieve, is hard-won. When we ask our dog to work with us to achieve true partnership, when we ask them to succumb to the limitation of their role as a dog, and thus to flourish in it, when we build a relationship beyond that of projecting on them what we need them to be and using them to fill a hole in our own lives, our dogs have a chance to have something we all want, a life well lived as a force of good, a legacy, we can be proud of.