but it’s always worth repeating. We need to consider a dog in this order: animal, species, breed, and then name. The first two are a part of what a dog is naturally, while humans created the last two. Animals live in and deal with nature every day. To be successful and survive, all animals—from rats to eagles—need to follow the laws of nature. We humans have forgotten nature’s laws because we have protected ourselves from the consequences of breaking them, but that doesn’t mean we are exempt.
If you live in a modern, First or Second World country, it can be very easy to lose touch with nature. Your home protects you from the elements. You probably travel from home to your job in a car or on some form of public transportation. Your next meal is as close as the refrigerator, the grocery store, or the restaurant down the street. The only times you probably really notice nature are when the weather is unpleasant, or when you’re picking up after your dog on the walk.
None of this is natural for a dog, and yet we have transplanted these wild pack animals into our homes. In nature, a dog’s life is very simple. Because dogs’ realities are formed primarily by the senses, they live moment by moment, and everything is focused on what they need to survive—shelter, food, water, and, in season, mating. They roam their territory with their pack in search of fulfilling those needs. Dogs do not worry about the future or dwell on the past.
They exist in the moment, which can be something very difficult for humans to understand, especially with the stresses of modern life. Remember, we form our reality through beliefs, knowledge, and memory.
If you really want to learn what it’s like to live in the moment, try being homeless for a few months. I was when I first came to the United States, and it’s interesting how quickly you stop living in the past or dreaming of the future when your biggest concerns are where your next meal will come from and where you will sleep that night. When I describe it that way, it sounds like every dog would appreciate living in a home with a constant supply of food, but dogs cannot rationalize their instincts like humans can. You can take a dog out of nature, but you cannot take nature out of a dog.
As a species, dogs are a specific kind of animal that deals with nature in particular ways, having inherited their pack nature from wolves. On the species level, dogs are different than deer, tigers, llamas—and humans. Their needs revolve around the pack’s needs, and the pack will follow only a calm, balanced leader. Any members of the pack that become unstable are quickly dealt with, corrected if possible, and killed or banished if not.
This is why stable leadership is so important to a dog, in addition to physical needs being met. The need for leadership is programmed in a dog’s genes, and exists at a primal, instinctual level. When species or animals are cut off from nature by being domesticated, it is especially important that their needs, physical and psychological, are being fulfilled. If you don’t feed a dog, it will starve to death. If you don’t fulfill a
dog’s need for leadership and direction, it will experience the canine equivalent of human neurosis, and possibly even insanity.
Dogs need to maintain their connection with nature, and we can help them do that by remaining aware of the Natural Dog Laws from Chapter 2. The wonderful part of this, though, is that we can also connect, through our dogs, to the instinctual part of ourselves with which we have lost touch. Find some place away from the modern world, even if it’s just a large city park, and then go for a walk with your pack and experience the world as your dog does, forming his reality through his senses. Reconnecting with Mother Nature will bring balance to your pack, as you and your dog learn from each other.
