Tender Paws: How Science-Based Parenting Can Transform Our Relationship with Dogs

introduction

I NEVER EXPECTED to help write an award-winning, best-selling parenting book that’s been translated into multiple languages and continues, more than a decade later, to be recommended by adoption agencies and child protective organizations across the country.

But luck was on my side when then-editor of the Fort Worth Weekly Gayle Reaves, asked me to write an article about child development expert Dr. Karyn Purvis, her mentor Dr. David Cross, and their groundbreaking work at Texas Christian University with struggling adopted children. The professors invited me to attend their Hope Connection camp, where at-risk kids ran sensory obstacle courses, participated in Theraplay sessions, and sat wide-eyed on the floor as Dr. Purvis blew bubbles, lit sparklers, and engaged with them playfully. Parents told me, damp-eyed, about the miraculously positive shifts that occurred as a result of their child’s participation in the camp and through personal interactions with Dr. Purvis. Kids once thrown out of school for aggressive outbursts were now complimented by their teachers. Young children who were once bundles of defiance, unable to focus or learn, could now sit and practice their alphabet and numbers.

The professors yearned to help even more struggling families and asked me to partner on a book. During this process, I became their honorary graduate student. The professors personally tutored me in Dr. John Bowlby’s attachment theory, the Ainsworth Strange Situation, Dr. Bruce Perry’s work on trauma, stages of child development, neurobiology, and concepts of positive reinforcement. Karyn herself administered the Adult Attachment Inventory to me and explained how the findings played out in my own life. She and I spent hours together, me tapping on a laptop while she play-acted scenarios to demonstrate practical application of their approach.

This extraordinary experience gave me a glimpse of their wisdom, but I couldn’t yet appreciate its full dimension and power. I had no experience in real-life parenting challenges—the frustration, the endless responsibility, the guesswork, the fear, the guilt, the power struggles. I remained blissfully unaware of these stresses until right around the time that The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family went to the publisher. And that’s when my husband and I adopted a small, brown puppy.

A puppy of indeterminate lineage.

A puppy born behind a gas station.

A puppy taken from her mother and littermates too soon.

A puppy with worms and anemia.

A special-needs puppy.

My first puppy.

And I was in way over my head.

In short order, puppy training guides failed me. Nothing in their pages explained what to do with a scrambling, out-of-control bundle of teeth and claws. I would have sent the blasted creature back to the shelter so that someone more qualified could raise her, but my husband refused.

Desperate for help and grasping at straws, I got a crazy idea.

Could a book written for struggling parents help me with a fanged, four-legged toddler? Could lessons in raising happy, well-adjusted kids transfer to a puppy?

On my very first try, The Connected Child transformed my relationship with her. From that point forward, I secretly used a parenting book as my compass for puppy-rearing. It helped me see my challenging puppy, not as a demon out to get me, but as an at-risk child struggling with invisible, unmet needs. Those needs were complicated by developmental challenges, neglect, abuse, or trauma, and I would need compassion, patience, and a therapeutic mindset to meet those needs.

Years afterward, when I began collaborating on a different parenting book (Raising the Challenging Child: How to Minimize Meltdowns, Reduce Conflict, and Increase Cooperation, with Karen Doyle Buckwalter and Debbie Reed of Chaddock), my husband and I happened to take home our next rescue dog, who had his own background of trauma. And sure enough, parenting wisdom again offered useful insights for our jittery new arrival.

Was this a lucky fluke, or did the seeming similarities between child-rearing and dog-rearing have a basis in science? To find out, I began reaching out to animal behavior experts—such as Temple Grandin, PhD, who affirmed that attachment mechanisms did indeed work across species—and other researchers, and I scoured scientific literature. I attended Kelley Bollen’s dog behavior workshops at my local shelter and began attending specialized webinars and conferences, reporting and blogging about dogs and people for PsychologyToday.com

, and speaking with experts such as Suzanne Clothier and Denise Fenzi. I found my way to Kim Brophey’s L.E.G.S. Applied Ethology Family Dog Mediation program and became part of the team at Positively, founded by progressive dog trainer Victoria Stilwell. The more I learned, the more I saw that advances in dog handling and research had close parallels in the fields of child development, trauma, and attachment psychology.

This book incorporates terminology from a cross section of disciplines and includes a variety of analogies and metaphors. My language choices will at times intentionally veer away from precise academic, medical, psychological, or industry definitions, but I will do my best to show where and how these concepts and practices fit together to benefit dogs of all types.

Whether your puppy or dog was rescued from a background of harm or deprivation or has developed perplexing behaviors, recognizing the hidden needs that drive behavior can make it easier to brainstorm creative solutions. It is my deepest hope that the insights shared here will help you and your dog thrive in your journey together.

CHAPTER 1:

My Puppy Problem

A FEW YEARS into our marriage, my husband decided that what our home needed—beyond the big-screen TV dominating our living room or the second rescue cat he’d convinced me to adopt—was a puppy.

Yes, a puppy.

Others might have greeted this prospect with delight or at least confident understanding of the next steps, but not me.

I had lived with easygoing grown dogs and enjoyed walking and caring for them, but I had never raised a puppy or infant of any kind and frankly was not eager to try. I was busy racing toward a work deadline, and if past experience with my night-owl husband and our distribution of cat box duties was any indication, the less glamorous, more hands-on aspects of puppy care would fall to me.

My protests slammed right up against Norm’s sentimentality for his late beloved hound. The dog was long gone, but his likeness festooned my husband’s office. There were images of Flash as a puppy in Norm’s arms, as a teenager sprawled on a couch, as a mature basset with long ears draped across a field of Texas bluebonnets. I never really stood a chance.

Finally, I agreed to visit a breeder. We were welcomed by a pair of drooling basset hounds with plate-sized paws and yards of ears, eager to greet us. Outside on the back porch, we sidestepped yellow puddles and scattered brown piles to meet the pups. They were friendly and cute enough, but I kept thinking about those massive, drooling adults. So much slobber, and one false turn of a stout creature like that would torpedo my bad knee. We thanked the breeder and went on our way.

My husband took the rejection of his beloved breed in stride. If a puppy was involved, he was flexible. So we browsed possibilities, oohing and aahing at standard poodles and Wheaten terriers. Somehow, each time we took an interest, further research revealed that the breed had a reputation for killing cats, was prohibitively expensive, or both.

Keeping our cats safe added anxiety to the choice. I didn’t intend to put little Sven or Gracie in harm’s way. But we were at a loss for a clear breed winner, so decided to explore local shelters for a small, mixed-breed puppy—preferably something that would grow to less than thirty pounds to give my knee and the cats a fighting chance.

Visiting shelters near Dallas took a strong stomach. Harsh barking echoed the hallways. Antiseptic, musky smells enveloped us. Row after row of sad faces squinted in the dim hallways, many lethargic and indifferent, even earless, hulking survivors of the fighting ring. Some of the animals, penned together, began snarling and snapping at one another when I approached.

These visits were so depressing that Norm didn’t have the heart to join me. It was like looking for a needle in a gloomy haystack. Then one day, I discovered a squirmy, dappled dachshund mix awaiting release for adoption. Let out to meet me, she wriggled and licked my hand and rolled over in friendly greeting. Suddenly I was all in on the puppy adventure.

Norm and I awoke early the next morning and dashed out to be first in line to adopt her. On arrival, we learned someone else had beaten us to her.

Weeks later, Norm and I met a litter of strays. Their mother had fled when animal control came, and her puppies were being housed in a foster home instead of the city shelter to protect them from germs.

We entered a living room dominated by a pen and settled ourselves cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a riot of life.

Puppies—some black and fluffy, others brown and velvety—trotted, chased, and pounced among themselves, just out of reach. Norm and I made kissy noises and wiggled fingers, luring them to us, but they hardly even noticed.

At last, one finally trotted forward but veered away at the last second. Minutes ticked by. We sat, ignored, while the puppies wrestled and scrimmaged together. Finally, out of nowhere, a potato-sized, fuzzy brown lump appeared. It tottered and climbed—unbidden—into my husband’s lap, curled up, and went to sleep.

Norm and I looked at each other. This creature was a deep caramel color with undistinguished features. She had a pleasing earthy odor, like truffles and toast.

We discussed the dozing puppy. She seemed mild mannered and reasonably small. Maybe twenty or thirty pounds full grown? Short- haired, probably wouldn’t shed too much. She was nothing like her rowdy littermates, we decided. Plus, she had chosen us.

Okay, we told the foster parent, we’ll take this one.

The first clue that I was unprepared for what lay ahead arrived the following morning in the shape of Karyn Purvis, PhD, a child development professor from Texas Christian University. She set her laptop on my kitchen table, swung aside her long, gray hair, and knelt to greet the as-yet unnamed puppy.

She turned to me and asked, Has she pooped yet?

The question unnerved me. I mean, who arrives at another person’s home and inquires about bowel habits? I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.

What?

Has she pooped yet? She’s so little, her system can’t work by itself. She needs her mama to lick her belly and help her go.

Oh, goodness. Now that you mention it, I don’t recall seeing—

Get me a warm washcloth and some olive oil, and I’ll show you what to do.

Karyn lifted the puppy onto her lap and demonstrated how to stroke its round underside with a warm, moist cloth, mimicking what the mother would do by tongue. On its nose went a spot of oil, to be licked off and to ease internal machinery.

Lesson complete, Karyn—a newly minted PhD—and I went back to revising our manuscript. We were working on a book for families with at-risk adoptive kids, written in collaboration with Karyn’s mentor, David Cross. I smiled and thought, Well, that’s a stroke of good luck. Not only does this woman have the magic touch with special-needs children from hard places, she’s a puppy expert too!

The next morning, Karyn arrived carrying a giant tote. Out came a pack of swizzle rawhide chews for our puppy. Then two gigantic hand-me-down feeding bowls.

I burst out laughing.

This animal was barely six inches long. If stretched, her muzzle might reach the lip of the bowls. How would we use these bowls? Bathe her in them? I thanked Karyn for the kind gesture, then packed the bowls away in a closet, snickering. What a joke! This animal would never grow big enough to use them.

That night, as the puppy gnawed on a twizzle chew, a thought prickled at the back of my head: Did Karyn know something I didn’t?

During the next couple of days, we focused on giving the puppy a name. I wanted something fresh and special. That put choices like Flash and Missy and Brownie out of the running.

Norm tossed out an exhaustive list of choices that I continued to nix, and finally asked, How about Hazel?

I giggled, visualizing the stout, middle-aged woman who starred as a housekeeper in the eponymous 1960s TV show. Her name was so silly for a puppy. It was irresistible.

So the puppy was pronounced Hazel, and we took commemorative photos. The puppymoon phase, however, was short-lived.

Within weeks, I was ranting to my husband, listing little Hazel’s offenses. Her teeth were too sharp. She was too wild, too nippy, too uncooperative. She rocketed around the house, leaping onto any cat in sight. One of our cats had gone into hiding. The other crouched in ambush, tail twitching, waiting for the chance to—whack!—bring a paw down on the puppy’s head. Our household was in chaos, and we were harboring a future assassin. Visions of Petageddon kept me up at night.

We had to act fast.

Please, I begged my husband, fighting back tears, this puppy is too much for me. She’s going to grow into a cat killer. We should take her back to the shelter—right away.

I had tried to be a good mama to our puppy. I had massaged her round, constipated belly with a warm, wet washcloth and gotten her plumbing flowing. I had fed her and protected her from harm. When Karyn, David, and I squeezed around my kitchen table for our final book editing session, I could barely focus on the screen, completely distracted by David’s massive boots threatening to flatten little Hazel.

First thing in the morning, hours before my night-owl husband awoke, I would race downstairs to attend Hazel. I’d hold her gingerly with my fingertips, arms stiff and outstretched like I was holding a lobster to drop into the cooking pot, and rush her outside to relieve herself. She would blink, sniff the air, and inspect blades of grass that brushed her face. Then she would lumber toward a patch of green ground cover, climb into the thick of it, battling leaves that tickled her round belly, and search for the perfect spot.

When she finally squatted to do her business, I sang out, Go potty, Hazel! Go potty, as one of the training books advised. Business complete, she would nose around for a twig and, finding one, meticulously chew it to sawdust.

Even after Karyn, David, and I hit send on our manuscript and they returned to their teaching and research, I continued working in the kitchen so I could monitor the puppy. The afternoon when Hazel tumbled through the wrought-iron railing from our kitchen into the sunken den a few feet down—fortunately onto a couch and not the hard floor below—I realized my error and sprang into action. I dashed around the house dismantling picture frames to repurpose their plexiglass panels, clipping them as a barrier across the problem railing. Then I remembered the backyard and spent hours lashing yards of nylon netting to the wrought-iron fence with twist ties. At night, I would fall asleep exhausted while Norm and the puppy snuggled in front of the TV together until the wee hours.

On the first day it seemed safe to leave Hazel alone for a little while, Norm and I set her outside in the yard where she could pee and chew to her heart’s delight. But when we returned, the yard was empty. I went into shock. Oh my god, how did she get out? Did somebody snatch her? Could it have been a hawk? Why didn’t we think of that? What if she got to the road?

Paralyzed with fear and self-recrimination, I stood in the yard and shouted, Hazel, Hazel, Hazel! over and over. There was no sign of her, and I had no idea where to start looking. I stood frozen, shouting. A few minutes later, a rustling in the far corner of the yard caught my attention. I went to investigate. There, at ground level, amid some leaves, did I see a tiny nose poking in my direction? Hazel? More rustling, and our puppy wriggled back into full view to rejoin us in the yard. I was beyond relieved.

Good girl, Hazel, I cried. Good girl!

Norm and I bragged to each other about picking such a great dog. Who else came back after she escaped? Who else learned to go potty on command? I was as proud as if she earned an A in class or her first trophy. Plus, her medical test results were improving, and she would soon be cured of intestinal parasites and anemia.

But once the medical problems disappeared, so did our small, docile puppy.

Gone was the malleable muffinhead we had adopted. Gone, for that matter, was any resemblance to any of the easygoing adult dogs I had ever lived with in the past.

This creature was mushrooming in size and greeted each new day like the crack from a starter’s gun. She ricocheted around the house, skidding into furniture and doors, pawing at all in her path. If I bent to pet her short velour coat, she sprang and snapped like an angry jack-in-the-box. Attempts to leash her for a walk were met with lashing teeth and sharp nails. Red welts laced my arms. Little Hazel had transformed from a fuzzy lump of putty into a demon out to get me.

I thumbed through puppy-training manuals, searching for clues on how to handle an animal that behaves like a downed electrical wire. I found nothing.

I was sapped, frustrated, and drowning in a river of chaos. Didn’t this puppy understand that we rescued her from foster care, took her to the vet, cured her of worms, gave her food, shelter, chew toys? She had been born behind a gas station, for God’s sake. What an ingrate!

Before long, I snapped.

No! I shouted in pain after the latest nip. I rolled up a newspaper into a baton and whacked the puppy square on the nose. She yelped and backed away, whirling in circles, biting at her tail.

Oh, my god, I thought, what have I done? I don’t believe in beating animals.

That was the last straw. Effective immediately, I decided, I was finished. No more nipping teeth or scrabbling paws for me. No more arms checkered in red welts and scrapes. No more sleepless nights worrying about the cats’ welfare.

We needed to bring her back to the shelter and get an adult dog instead: a calm, mature, appreciative creature. Not some scary clown shot from a cannon.

I can’t manage her, I told Norm tearfully. I don’t want to hit her again. The shelter is her best choice. Privately, though, I understood returning her to the shelter was a gamble. A puppy’s chances of getting adopted shrink with every passing day. Hazel was closing in on three months old and was not a purebred, flashy animal who would attract a lot of takers. Adopters want the youngest, cutest puppies. Even our kind vet described her as a generic brown dog. We couldn’t be certain that another family would choose her. She might easily be left to languish at the shelter—or worse, be euthanized.

Brushing aside a guilty twinge, I clung to the hope that someone more qualified would rescue her. I refused to remember how Hazel had learned the potty command or found her way back into our yard. Of course I didn’t remind Norm that she was the only pup who approached us while her littermates scrimmaged on the foster parent’s floor or how she snored in his armpit while he watched TV every evening. Instead, I said that if we brought her back to the shelter right now, while she was still young, she had a good chance of being adopted again.

On and on I pleaded. I reasoned. I implored. I cried.

It was futile.

My husband listened sympathetically and heard me out, but he couldn’t be swayed. When all the talking was done, he still believed in Hazel’s goodness. The puppy stayed.

Seriously.

I was screwed.

How preposterous to be a grown-ass woman at the mercy of a creature hardly one-tenth my size. How humbling to feel so helpless.

What was I going to do?

After I finished hyperventilating, the irony washed over me. Here I was, a forty-something woman who had never raised a child, being held hostage by a fanged, juvenile delinquent. I’d become a struggling parent.

And I had just helped write a book for struggling parents.

On a whim, I went to my computer and brought up the file for The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family. I had worked on the manuscript for a year and its pages were familiar, but that evening I read with fresh eyes.

Faint as a wisp of smoke from a genie’s lamp, Karyn and David’s compassion and calm and confidence wound around me.

parenting pearl

The beauty of a re-do is that it catches an inappropriate action in progress and says, Whoa! Let’s go back and do this again differently. Immediate practice is an aid to developing mastery, just like in any skill—whether it’s riding a bicycle, learning to read, or playing a game. By actively replacing misbehavior with correct behavior in your child’s memory banks, you can help the child encode competency. A re-do erases the muscle memory of the failed behavior and gives the child the physical and emotional experience of substituting a successful one in its place.

—The Connected Child¹

The next morning when I bent over and tried to pet the puppy, she sprang and snapped like I had electrocuted her. Sharp teeth caught my fingers.

Ow! I cried. But this time, Karyn’s words whispered in my ear and I curbed my anger. I stepped back. Took a centering breath. Collected myself and gently knelt. The puppy took a break from snapping at her tail to eye me.

I reached out an arm and extended relaxed fingers in her direction. In a calm voice, I said, Do-over.

Hazel cocked her head and studied my fingers. I stayed crouched on the floor and kept my hand steady. I repeated in a mild, warm tone, Do-over.

The puppy stepped nearer, sniffed, and then—for the first time ever—licked my hand. No nips, no scratches, no snapping at her tail. One lick. Then she waited and watched.

I nearly swooned.

Good girl! I cooed. Good girl!

In my ignorance, I had assumed life with a puppy would be a straight trajectory, an easy transition to maturity. After some rambunctious chewing and piddling, the animal would transform directly into a docile family pet. Neat. Simple. Straight line. No zigs or zags.

It never dawned on me that a rescue puppy who had introduced herself by climbing into my husband’s lap and going to sleep might be waving a red flag of malnutrition or illness, that her early inability to move bowels might signal developmental or sensory needs, that being taken too soon from her biological family would deprive her of basic social skills, or that her small size could signal an early stage of life or trauma and medical problems rather than her final, mature stature—which eventually peaked at sixty-five pounds, more than double what we had hoped.

No, it hadn’t even crystalized yet that we had a special-needs puppy on our hands when I revisited The Connected Child and was inspired to offer the puppy a redo, a mulligan, a do-over.

But little Hazel’s lick arrived like a miracle, a clear sign of goodwill. This was not an act of violence or aggression. There were no teeth involved. Her tongue touch was measured and deliberate and gentle.