Dog Pure Awareness blog

This is Shiro in the city, posing calmly next to a snowman in Washington Square Park. He wears a leash, heels, and follows all the city rules.

My son just got 4 baby chicks and he lets them roam around the yard while he’s watching them in the evening. We put Shiro in the house but he found an open door, and with the chicks wandering freely, Shiro came trotting into the yard and came right to me, ignoring the birds. He then lay down and seemed to be pretending not to see them (in psychology it’s called ‘denial’). But the chicks had no experience with predators and were basically without fear, so one of them flew right up to his head, close enough to his large mouth to be disappeared in an instant. Shiro raised his head and went into his ‘high alert’ mode. I froze. This is a dog who preys on wild turkeys, and whose idea of a walk is to go hunting. But he knew that he couldn’t eat the chickens. He didn’t touch the baby chick.
This is really being in two worlds. Can you imagine the restraint it took to leave that chick flying next to his head alone?

I’ve been working on the idea that dogs live in two different worlds, the human world of culture, rules, and human dangers, and the world of nature, with the connections of wild animals and  the dangers of the wilderness.  The amazing thing is that our dogs seem to be able to connect comfortably and easily to both worlds. They feel a sense of belonging in both worlds. They settle into the house, curling up on our bed at night, and then the next morning they race into the woods and are immediately aware and alive to everything. It’s an incredible ability to cross a complex boundary.