Surprising Reasons You Didn’t Think of For Your Dog’s Strange Behaviors

By Shannon Cutts.

“Why does my dog DO that?’

This is one of the questions I hear every single week from frustrated pet parents.

Often by the time I’m hearing it, the pet parent has already repeated some version of the same to their dog trainer, canine veterinarian, pet behaviorist, holistic practitioner ….

You get the idea.

Finally, they come to me, the animal intuitive. Because …. desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

If you have ever found yourself frazzled and frayed by your dog’s strange behaviors, you likely remember feeling like you were at your wit’s end, nearly out of hope, inwardly steeling yourself for a face-to-face meeting with both the rock and the hard place.

Or, in the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, “something’s gotta give.”

So can animal communication sort it all out where other more conventional methods have failed?

That is what this article is going to investigate!

Canine charades: dogs explain to me why they do what they do

One truth animal communication has quite literally steeped into me is this – our animals always have their reasons. If your dog is behaving a certain way, they have a reason for it, just like when we behave a certain way, we have a reason for it.

Your dog’s behavior makes sense to them, just as your behavior makes sense to you. But where things get hairy is when we run into the issue of interspecies translation.

So imagine for a moment that you and your dog have traded places. You are your dog. You are trying SO hard to communicate, but your person doesn’t understand your language. You have to do something to get through to them, and the only thing left to try is ….

Charades.

“Charades” is my term for mystifying companion animal behavior – it is your dog’s attempts to literally act out right in front of you what they want you to know, do, stop doing or change.

This is why treating your dog’s behavior like it means something and is important is the first required step to resolving unwanted canine behavior issues.

Next, let’s take a look at a couple of real-life “canine charades” situations from my case files where animal communication has made an epic difference in restoring interspecies family harmony.

Jill, Rose & Whisky

Pet parent Jill first reached out to me when they added an adorable new puppy, Rose, to their family. But Jill’s trouble wasn’t with Rose, even though she ate pencil sharpeners, stuck her whole face in cactus plants and even bit Mom on accident during crate training.

Nope, the trouble was with Whisky, their senior pup.

The family had been so hopeful Whisky and Rose would become playmates. But Whisky wanted nothing to do with Rose. Facing a seemingly unworkable situation of possible rehoming, Jill finally reached out to me.

When I tuned in with Whisky, the trouble instantly became clear. No one had thought to consult him before the family adopted Rose! Yet Rose’s presence had instantly and completely up-ended his cherished daily routine, including the alone-time with Mom that he so cherished.

All it took was a single conversation to set things to rights between Whisky and Mom. At last report, Whisky and Rose have truly become the best of friends.

Kristen & Orry

When Kristen reached out to me, she was at her wit’s end with her senior dog, Orry. Orry had entered his golden years with a raging case of diabetes. Without twice-daily subcutaneous insulin shots, Orry’s life was tenuous from one day to the next.

Since mom Kristen worked outside of the home, she had a small army of helpers who would arrive on various days to deliver the daytime insulin shots. Sometimes it was Kristen’s sister. Sometimes it was the dog walker or the pet sitter. Sometimes it was the mobile vet.

So what was the problem?

When anyone other than Mom was giving the shots, Orry was a perfect angel. He held still and didn’t move a muscle until the insulin was delivered. But when Mom gave him his shots, Orry went WILD.

He wriggled. He wiggled. He wagged. He barked. He ran around in circles. Even when Kristen would try to sneak up on him, she never could get the jump on her little acrobat. Not only was this behavior frustrating for the already-exhausted working pet mom, but it was scary. If Orry didn’t get his insulin on time, he might die.

Finally, Kristen asked me to talk with Orry. She gave him an ultimatum – either hold still or the next necessary step was euthanasia (before the diabetes got him first).

I am not proud of this, but I will admit I laughed out loud when I heard what Orry had to say about his extreme behavior at “shot time.” He said to me, “Mom is so anxious and upset when she approaches me that I try to make it fun for her by turning it into a game!”

Then we both got teary-eyed. Because if there was one perspective neither of us had expected, it was this one. Even with his difficult medical challenges and all of the lifestyle changes required to manage his diabetes, Orry was still thinking of his mom first and trying to lift her mood.

Suffice it to say that after I explained to Orry why his mom was so upset and what she needed from him to calm down, Kristen reported an instant change in his behavior. From that day forward, Orry held perfectly still each evening when she gave him his insulin shot.

People are from Mars, dogs are from Venus

At this point you might understandably be wondering how you – your life choices, your energy, your pet care decisions – could be driving your dog’s strange behavior.

It’s a good question.

After all, we share the same basic biology (so much so, unfortunately, that dogs are increasingly being used as research models to solve human health issues).

But while we truly are more alike than different in our basic biology, there is one important area where we couldn’t be more dissimilar.

That one difference is the brain hemisphere we default to when interacting with our world.

When I was first learning my craft as an animal intuitive, I referred to this phenomenon as “people are from Mars and pets are from Venus.”

What I was actually getting at is how our non-human animal family members live from their connective right brain hemisphere and we human animals live from our individualistic left-brain hemisphere.

This is why it is all too easy for us to forget how (and how much!) we affect those around us. We don’t feel connected and so we often don’t live, choose and act from that perspective.

Our dogs, on the other hand, never fall out of connection with us.

(If you doubt me, ponder for a moment who in your relationship is always the one who needs five more minutes before mealtime or playtime or walk time or cuddle time. It’s pretty much never your dog!)

With our dogs, priorities begin with their relationship with us and end with all the rest. But for us, we mostly live the other way around.

This is why it is so hard for us to accept how often WE are the primary drivers for our dogs’ strange behaviors.

I have had canine clients who have told me their strange behaviors stemmed from their desperate attempts to let their human know it was time to leave their spouse, quit their job, move to a different part of the world, tend to their own failing health, and so many more reasons like these.

At this point, I have been a part of so many of these types of conversations that I have come to believe our dogs actually know us better than we know ourselves.

They see more, feel more, understand more, and often CARE more – so much so that they will alter their own behaviors to get through to us, even when doing so may put them in harm’s way.

How to help your dog help you

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that everything your dog does is about you. Far from it.

Rather, I am highlighting a particular group of often puzzling and persistent behaviors that do not readily respond to other types of more traditional remedies such as pet training, behavior modification, holistic care or even western medication.

It is this class of behaviors that points back to the unavoidable fact that your dog’s life is inextricably bound up with your own. If you are unwell, unhappy, or simply unavailable in some way that negatively impacts you, it negatively impacts your dog as well.

How could this be true?

It all boils down to a principle known as Polyvagal Theory. I wrote about this more extensively in my recent article here on Nervous System Co-Regulation for Dogs and Their Humans.

Essentially, Polyvagal Theory states that social species such as hominids and canids evolved to be able to share two specific types of electrochemical messages back and forth through their nervous systems.

What are these two types of messages? Messages of danger and messages of safety or opportunity.

This is why your dog will often go to such great behavioral lengths to alert you to anything from a medical crisis to a crisis of personality or opportunity.

Yes, absolutely they love you unconditionally and they want to redirect you out of harm’s way.

And yes, they also heartily desire that your nervous system stops broadcasting those “danger, danger” messages and shifts into messages of safety, connection and opportunity.

It is why, as soon as Orry’s mom, Kristen, cleaned up her energy around his daily insulin injections, Orry stopped wriggling and held still for his life-saving shots.

And it is why, as soon as Whisky’s mom, Jill, apologized for not asking him first before adopting Rose (and also agreed to spend some quality alone-time with him more often), Whisky immediately befriended little Rose and took her under his wing.

Are you mystified by your dog’s strange behavior and nothing you’ve tried seems to work? It is amazing what a simple interspecies conversation can do to turn chaos and confusion into calm and clarity.

Shannon Cutts is a professional animal sensitive and intuitive, Reiki Master and animal communication teacher with Animal Love Languages. Shannon’s global client base seeks her out for help with pet trauma, pet anxiety, highly sensitive pets, pet grief, pet reincarnation, interspecies family dynamics and more. Get $25 off your pet session with Shannon here: https://www.animallovelanguages.com/loveletter