Dog People

Currently Reading: The Radioactive Redhead by John Zakour & Lawrence Ganem

We're all dog people regardless of whether or not we actually like dogs. I was reading about this the other night at work. Things were slow so to pass the time I grabbed one of the dog books from the rack and started reading. Sometimes you come across useful tips on how to clean specific breeds. I picked up the pomeranian book because those guys are just SUPER cute and in the intro chapter they had a little history about dogs in general and poms in particular.

The first thing they wanted to emphasize is that all dogs are decendants of the original UBER dog, the gray wolf. Somewhere along the way these wolves started hanging out with us and we taught them things. I know, it's hard to imagine how gray wolves managed to be bred down to the size and shape of a pug, but that's the story.

The other thing they emphasized is the give and take between humans and dogs. We learned how to hunt as a group from them, they learned how get along as a group from us. Thank God we didn't pick up butt sniffing eh? :-) In the end, people sort of took the place of the head-dog and when you bring dogs into your family, they naturally assume you're the head dog unless you teach them otherwise.

This got me thinking, on the way home, about all the other dog-like behaviors that occur in everyday life, especially in social situations. You watch how dogs interact and how people interact and you'll see a LOT of things in common.

Take "marking territory" for example. You've seen male dogs do this I'm sure. They define their territory by peeing; just a little squirt here and there to let everyone know that they're in Fido's domain. I see people do that at work all the time, though not with pee. You wander from your department a little too close to someone ELSE'S department and you'll hear the growling. If you REALLY want to get them barking, go over and help one of THEIR customers without getting permission. And if there's money involved, sales, commissions, etc., territory marking is even MORE important.

You also see all the dominance games. Male or female dogs will sometimes "mount" other dogs as a sign of dominance. So if you see Rex try that with Rover in the park, that doesn't mean they're gay. It just means that Rex wants to be the head dog. People do the same thing, usually with words. I run into this a lot at the store because I'm the new dog in the pack. The less dominant dogs, usually female, generally welcome me with open arms. They're happy to have the extra help and we all work together just fine. There are others though that really want to make sure everyone understands who has control over the territory and so they sometimes interject little remarks to remind everyone just who is in charge. And while this may work for dogs and for some people, it generally doesn't work well on me.

Keep in mind that I don't hear very well. Someone who makes a comment under their breath with the intention of maintaining their status, I'm probably not even going to hear it and will thus ignore it completely. Their little growl or snap backfires. Other dogs see that I'm not so easily brought down, my status goes up. It's even better when people get REALLY growly and raise their voice. See, in that situation, I actually hear them but the whole act of talking louder does nothing to me except enable me to understand what's being said. So if someone barks a question at me I generally just stand there and calmly answer it. It's happened a few times already and the person doing the barking is usually pretty thrown by my response. They just don't understand why I'm not backing down like the other dogs.

This week we had people coming in from the Corporate offices in San Diego. They come through once or twice a year and most of the people in the store go nuts preparing for it. It's the time of year when we have to clean all those spots we almost NEVER clean otherwise because no one is EVER going to see them. There are two groups of people who DON'T freak out though: the kids who just don't care about the job, and the guys like me who were never all that impressed by someone's title. Let's face it, these people that work at the corporate office, they're just normal people with office jobs. My brother-in-law has a job like that. When CC and I go to her office party, there's a whole house full of people like that. Yes, they're corporate, but so what? They're still dogs, just like the rest of us :-)

One of the best places to see dog behavior is at the mall. Talk about your classic dog situations. You've got the whole hunting experience right there in the food court :-) You want to see females being protective of the pups? It's right there by the Disney Store. Males barking and growling for position? Head for the arcade. You get the idea.

Hell as bitchy as people get these days, I sometimes think we learned more from the dogs than they did from us :-)

.