Book Review: Dogs Never Lie About Love by Jeffrey Moussiaeff Masson

Although I enjoyed reading this book and it had many interesting points, the one issue that kept coming up for me was in Masson’s explanation of dog behavior as relates to training situations. Frequently he used his dogs as examples of  how “dogs” behave and never seems to take into account that his dogs might react differently than other dogs in the same situation.

For instance he believes that dogs should be shown how happy you are to see them when you come home  and told “its ok, I’ll be right back” just before you leave. In my experience (I believe a lot of other dog people with back me up on this) many dogs will not understand the human explanations for why they are leaving, all they seem to hear is  the tone, which is usually full of guilt and regret for leaving the dog alone. Or the dog has come to hear the words “Be good, I’ll be back later” and associated them with the horrible feeling of being abandoned. 

In these cases telling the dog you are leaving, instead of matter-of-factly sending the dog to her crate with a chew and walking out the door, can cause the dog to become hyper sensitive about being abandoned and/or feeling helpless to protect the owner from the big bad world they are about to set out in.

Alternatively, greeting your dog happily when you walk through the door only seems to highlight the moment where loneliness suddenly changes to exaltation for your dog. This extreme change of emotions can lead to out of control behavior such as jumping, nipping and general bad manners. 

Masson doesn’t seem to have these issues with his dogs, but unfortunately many of the dogs I visit do. 

Masson isn’t the only person in the world to use his own experiences with dogs as examples for general dog behavior, I have noticed a lot of trainers do this. I try very hard to avoid this by using my dog experiences as examples, when they fit, but to stay very aware of the fact that other people have had very different dogs with very different reactions and to the exact same situations. I believe it is extremely important to realize when your experiences are just that, not proof .