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Michael’s Dogs – Celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

Some folks are going to hate me for posting a “political” blog. Stay in your lane. Stick to dog training. I’m okay with that. Politics is only divisive and nasty when we make it that way. The word itself derives from the Greek for “affairs of the city.” The comings and goings of our common spaces. How we all get along. Our common ground.

I’ve long said that your dog has led us to the common ground on which we meet. That’s true for you and me. It has been for nearly 25 years now. Some of you identify as LGBTQ. Most of you do not. I speak freely about my husband, Tim. Some of you give pause. Most don’t. Some of us have spoken openly and respectfully about differences that don’t pertain to dog training (we both remember). That was cool. Most of the time we don’t. One of my clients prayed over me during a consult. That was awkward. Another pulled me aside as I was leaving and said kindly, (paraphrasing) We are conservative and devoutly Christian and we want you to feel comfortable here working with us. We respect you for who you are as a person. I thought about that for a long time and still do.

These are the affairs of our common ground, our idle comings and goings, our politics (Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká). Eventually, and inevitably, your dog reels us back in. He barks or growls or otherwise let’s us know he doesn’t like me nearly as much as you seem to. Back to work we go.

I don’t think I’ve every officially identified Michael’s Dogs as an LGBTQ+ owned business, not in 25 years. It seemed superfluous. Politics isn’t of much merit in our little town square, your home with your family, your dog, and me. And besides, politics can be divisive or nasty when it’s weaponized. Here’s the other thing. I’m gay. But, I’m also a cis white male. Cisgender means I identify with my gender assigned at birth. I’m white. I’m a man. I pass. And in daily life I pretty much get a free pass. No one worries much about the gay florist or the gay hairdresser or me, so long as we do our work and stay in our lane. Stick to the dog training. Let’s not get political.

I’m old enough, though, to remember the teaching of Harvey Milk. He was an out gay politician on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (like the city council). He was assassinated in 1978 (along with the San Francisco Mayor) after passing a law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Again, this was 1978. The assassin was a fellow supervisor who cast the only vote against the measure. Milk’s teaching to LGBTQ people was simple. Be visible. Come out. It’s the teaching I remember today, this first day of LGBTQ Pride Month 2023. Stand up. Be seen.

Why? Because the affairs of the city (or the state, or the nation) are often a big and messy thing. All politics is local. Real politics is up close, one-on-one, in our homes, on this common ground right here with our dog. Milk taught us to be authentic with our family and friends because they already know us. They love us. It’s why I’m authentic with you now and always. I’m that guy who helped you out of a tight spot with your dog. I told you about my husband and our dogs. We had some serious talks because sometimes dog behavior issues are serious. We had some fun chats, too. It wasn’t political but really it was because what I’m talking about is how we got along. That’s what politics is all about.

Politics is only ugly when it’s weaponized, when we are divided so that someone else can wield power. Here was Milk’s strategy. Be who you are, open-hearted, calmly confident, without shame because there is no shame to be had here. Be yourself. Be visible. Be out. Be proud, so that when politicians try to gain power at your expense, your family, your friends (and yes your colleagues and clients) will know better. They will know you.

It’s hard to hate up close. It’s hard to cast a vote for someone’s demise when you know them – to wish someone ill – when you know them – to elect for someone’s suffering and take refuge in indifference – when you know them. So, know this. I cherish the common ground onto which your dog has led us. I see and know you. I take pride, take solace, sitting with you here, confident that you see and know me, too.

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA teaches dog training and behavior. He lives with his husband, Tim, in Houston Texas.

Natural Dog Behavior Around the World

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

Here’s what I’ve learned observing dogs in more than 20 countries around the world. The first is that dogs always live with or near people. This is not a species that lives independently among its own kind. While dogs may kill the occasional vermin, they do not hunt in organized packs. They eat our food, so-called human food. Dogs scavenge and negotiate food from us (i.e beg). They depend on us more than they depend on each other. They are inextricably attached to our world, connected to people. Wherever you find humans (and really, we live everywhere) you will find dogs. No humans, no dogs.

Here’s what else I have learned. Despite the universal similarity of being cohabitants with humans, dogs live very differently in other parts of the world. North American Dogs’ lives are anomalous. They live in our homes, on leashes, vetted, crated, dog park bound, burdened with our emotional baggage, handled and touched at every corner and in every boutique dog shoppe and every daycare franchise on the continent. This is without a doubt unusual. It is not how most dogs on the planet live.

Roaming temple dog in northern Sri Lanka.

I’ve learned a lot about dogs just watching them. Here are some of my field notes in no particular order.

Dogs Roam. In Asia, Central America, and South America especially, dogs work the streets. Even dogs who have homes and wear collars with tags spend their days wandering off-leash.

Dogs seek food from us. This is true on each of the five continents I’ve visited so far. Dogs are food-seekers. They are not after ribbons or praise or attention or even our touch. They spend their waking hours working for food. Mostly they scavenge our garbage. Often they experiment with behavior so that humans give them food from their pockets, or their backpacks, or their plates – human food (no one in Sri Lanka is carrying a bag of Zukes dog treats).

Pulling at the heart strings of a hotel guest in central Sri Lanka

They’ve evolved to affect our emotions. This was one of the coolest realizations for me. Even the scrappiest dogs on the dustiest streets have “the look.” Dogs retain a juvenile looking face into adulthood, more-so than other species. And, everywhere I’ve encountered dogs they’d all adopted facial expressions that accentuate their puppy features, endearing, cute. When we see it many of us will get a rush of hormones, the same warm feeling that bonds us to our own dogs. I don’t want to ruin this romantic notion. But, at the same time, I will tell you this face most often shows up when dogs are seeking food from us. I once ate at an outdoor restaurant in rural Costa Rica and four dogs where sitting politely about six feet from our table, each of them giving us “the look.” When we broke eye contact and continued our meal, they moved on to the next table, a respectable distance away, to try their elegantly evolved behavior on some other patrons. I will add, these dogs looked very well-fed.

They play with each other. This is less common in mature dogs. I saw it frequently with puppies and young adults.

They rarely fight. It’s usually over food and it is infrequent and usually non injurious.

Dogs use a lot of space when communicating. It’s quite rare to see dogs end up in tight spots together. They social distance. Very often I’ve seen dogs communicating with body language and facial expressions at 30 feet or more. It often appears to be about one dog asking the other may I pass or are you safe. Very frequently it looks like I see you, dude, come on through. Occasionally it’s about one dog denying access to a particular area. I remember a food court on a bluff outside a tourist spot in Colombia. Four dogs lived there. A brown short-haired female dog about 50 pounds started to wander up the path to the parking lot and food stalls. One of the four dogs in residence, a large male, stood tall and stiff and gave her a hard look. She stopped and then hedged her bet, taking a step forward. That’s when big male bolted down the path towards her full speed. The once optimistic female tucked her tail and ran. They never got closer than 15 feet from each other. No one got hurt.

Dogs walk faster than us. We really need to pick up the pace to match their stride. Also, I’ve never seen a dog on the streets anywhere in the world run for any significant amount of time.

Sunning herself on the sidewalk in Lima, Peru.

Dogs are not naturally inclined to accept our approach and touch. Many will approach humans. Those individual dogs will often hang out for a little petting. A puppy outside a temple in Thailand stayed long enough to play with me (I had the sharp little tooth marks to show for it). But, generally speaking, dogs don’t want us reaching for them and folks elsewhere in the world don’t assume the right to touch every dog they see. Most dogs will keep a few feet between themselves and passing humans. As a result, I’ve never seen a dog behave aggressively towards a human in any other country. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. But, I suspect it is not as common as it is here.

They stop at intersections without assistance from people. I’ve seen some stop when the cross walk signal is red and then go when it turns green, though this probably has more to do with learning to follow the mass of people than the signal itself.

Dogs sleep a lot. Some sleep as much as 14 hours a day.

There aren’t many old street dogs. I don’t want to sugar coat the experience of dogs in other parts of the world. Do they seem happy? Yeah, I think so. And I also think dogs on the streets have hard lives. It’s a young dog’s game, street life. I have only seen one that looked older than maybe 5 or 6-years old. There was a 10 year old dog at the food court I mentioned above, but he belonged to a family there.

People love dogs. Just like you and me, people around the world love dogs. Many dogs have homes and warm beds, even ones who roam the streets all day. Letting the dogs wander freely appears to be how their humans express love (I do not recommend we do that here). People have small dogs they carry in backpacks or in the baskets of their scooters. Others have large dogs. Most dogs are a natural mix of genes, some are specific breeds. The range is similar to what we see here. People around the world laugh at their dogs’ silly antics. Also like you and me, they sometimes get frustrated calling their dog in at the end of the day (I saw a puppy in Peru who seemed to insist he needed just a bit more time romping with a friend on the cobble stone streets of Cuzco.) People worry after their dogs, keep photos of them, and mourn them when they are gone.

People and dogs. We’ve been together for as long as there has been history and probably longer. We’ve co-evolved. We are interconnected. Dogs as a species, most certainly, would not go on without us. They’d evolve into something else or disappear. Humans as a species would likely survive without dogs. But, it wouldn’t be the same. People around the world know that, too. It wouldn’t be the same at all.

Michael Baugh teaches dog behavior in Houston TX. He specializes in aggressive dog training.

Postcard from the Pandemic – Lessons from Life with Dogs

Michael Baugh CDBC CPDT-KSA

Training our dog can sometimes feel overwhelming. Where do we start? What’s next? When can I stop worrying? (Aggressive dog behavior is, after all, potentially dangerous). How will I be able to relax and have fun with my dog again? The questions and the thoughts can get all mixed up in our heads. It can feel like too much.

And then there’s the comparing of our dogs against the other dogs we know. My dog’s not as good as theirs. Or that person’s dog behaves so much better. Or he just did this or that and his dog was fine. There’s so much self doubt and judging.

A dog business colleague posted some raw and vulnerable truth online today. It was a mix of I love my job and my job is hard and I put everything into my work and sometimes I suffer and sometimes it’s really really hard and I am strong. She posted a photo of herself. It was simple. Beautiful. Black and white. Somehow, all of those thoughts and feelings ended up right there in the picture. So too, did the elephant in the room. The world feels upside down right now. Life is crazy and sometimes scary (Covid is, after all, potentially dangerous). I read her post and looked at the photo and thought, “Yeah, I feel ya. I feel all of that.”

It’s been in my head for a while that dog training is sort of a metaphor for life in general. Our relationships with our dogs are like microcosms – simpler, easier, test runs for our relationship with one another and the world at large. That is the gift of Dogs. Are our relationships with them sometimes messy, difficult, and exhausting? Yes. All that. Is it also messy, difficult, and exhausting living with each other in the world right now? Be honest. It is. Right?

When my clients get overwhelmed (I cherish you all, by the way), my advice is almost always to take a short break. Then, focus on the small goals we’ve set. Where do we start? Here, with the dog in front of us. What’s next? The attainable tasks at hand. We set ourselves up to succeed so we can get that first sweet taste of success. And, then we keep going. When can I stop worrying? Anytime. Right now. We are doing the work. How will I be able to relax and have fun? Ah, now there’s the question. For me it’s about sitting and noticing – noticing my dogs, noticing you, noticing the here and the now. So often we get caught up in our heads. We take in a small bit of information and we build an entire epic around it. We project ourselves into a future we don’t yet know. Or we cast ourselves back to rewrite the past. Forward and back, we end up running circles. “Relaxing” and “fun” spin off to the sides because our thoughts are moving too fast. And, I feel ya. I feel all of that.

I’m still talking about dog training here but really I’m talking about everything else, too. We’re under pressure. There’s the virus and the uncertainty and the friends and family whose fuses seem so much shorter now. And there’s the isolation – figurative and literal. And there’s the comparing. Are they handling all this better than I am? Do they have answers I don’t? Self doubt. Judging.

Stay in the metaphor if you like. Or, we can still call this “dog training advice.” Either way.

Set yourself up to succeed today with clear, easy, and measurable goals.
Small wins add up.
Take stock in the progress you’ve already made.
Look for the joy in the process.
Connect (with your dog – but also other people)
Avoid nonsense advice (especially online)
Be here right now.
Observe without judging.
Reinforce generously.

We are not alone. Clichés are so annoying because they are true. My clients know this: When they suffer and struggle with their dogs, they are in good company. Many others are on the path with them. And, the path is well worn with foot prints and paw prints from those who have gone before. And, here is where this microcosm of life with dogs shines a clear light on the bigger picture. We really are in this together. At some level on any given day we are all dealing with our own private shit storms – with our dogs, with family, with friends, with an invisible virus, and with a political landscape we can’t stop looking at. This isn’t a misery-loves-company essay. And, at the same time, even that cliché carries a bit of truth. If we can feel the angst, or suffering, or pain, or whatever you want to call it – then we can relate to it in others. This is how we access compassion. This is how we connect (even when we are physically distant) to others. This is how we care for others and for ourselves at the same time, by remembering we are not alone. These very personal feelings we are feeling are actually universal.

This is what I was reminded of today, looking at a stark monochrome photo of a woman under the heavy weight of her own thoughts and feelings. It’s not just you. It’s not just me. We’re feeling it together. That crushing weakness. That badass strength. All of it at the same time, right here in this moment. Pull compassion from these feelings. Set goals, add them up, and take stock. There’s joy in the process. Be kind and generous with yourself because Reinforcement Drives Behavior.

Michael Baugh is a dog trainer in Houston TX. He specializes in aggressive dog behavior.