Verified by 
Animal Behavior
Finding Hope in Dog Training and Animal Behavior
Lucidity, optimism, and different voices relate to writing about pets.
Posted March 31, 2021 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- Having a pet is widely assumed to be beneficial, but it can be hard work.
- We can feel hopeful about animal welfare, from canine and feline science to helpful organizations.
- The job of a writer who writes about pets is to bring hope to people who might be struggling with their pets.
Sometimes words strike a chord. Today I had the pleasure of listening to the authors Amin Maalouf and Marina Warner in conversation in an online event organized by the Royal Society of Literature and the Zayed Book Award. Both are highly accomplished writers, and they talked of home, displacement, multilingualism, and identity. It was a fascinating conversation that could have ranged far longer than the hour they had to talk. There were a couple of things in particular that resonated with me.
When Amin Maalouf said, “I think the duty of a writer is to have lucidity and hope,” it set me thinking about writing about companion animals, and in particular the role of hope in this kind of writing.
The dominant cultural narratives tell us that pets are creatures who help us through difficult times, who bring much joy and make our life complete. In Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy, I wrote that, “When we get a dog, we imagine a long, beautiful friendship, kind of like a canine equivalent of walking off into the sunset to live happily ever after.”
But as I wrote next, and have also covered on this blog (see: The downsides to consider before get a pet), it isn’t always so. Marc Bekoff and Hal Herzog have also written about the limited evidence on the benefits of having a pet (see: Do pets really unconditionally love and unwind us, by Bekoff, and Why has the "pet effect" meme spread so rapidly, by Herzog).
Yet we get a pet because we want that loving relationship and companionship. It can be a terrible shock to find it is hard and takes work and isn’t necessarily rose-tinted after all. And more broadly, for anyone who works in the pet behavior or training world, there are many stories that can send us towards feelings of despair: the person who has to give up an animal because they can’t find pet-friendly housing; the person who, despite being told of the risks to animal welfare, still purchases and uses an electronic collar; the animal cruelty cases that bring tears to our eyes.
All of this makes a challenging environment in which to write about pets. It’s understandable that veterinarians, dog trainers, shelter staff, and others who work with animals are at risk of burnout when their working day is filled with these issues. Yet I feel that my job as a writer—and the job of everyone who writes about animals, from blogging pet professionals to published authors—is to bring hope.
That hope is in the scientific research that better helps us to understand what our companion animals need and how to improve the human-animal bond. It’s in the many organizations that work tirelessly to help keep pets in homes and improve their treatment. And it’s in the everyday interactions of people who love their pets and want to make them as happy as possible (even if it’s a challenge that day).
Part of the job of writing about companion animals is in sharing that hope.
Something else that Maalouf said relates to the different voices in his novels:
“I enjoy narrative techniques where there is not only one voice. There are many voices, and I can’t express them only in one way…I feel that to get close to any story, one has to look at different points of view, and it is also true in a novel.”
If you’ve ever studied the works of Bakhtin and Volosinov, you’ll recognize this as polyphony, the idea of many voices. It’s an idea I came across long ago, and its presence in Maalouf’s work is one of the things I love about his writing. (And I’m not saying there aren’t any wonderful examples of first-person writing from one viewpoint, just that I tend to find them suffocating.)
It’s also something we need more of in dog training and animal behavior. Along with a commitment to doing the best we can to care for companion animals and for people (because their lives and happiness are intertwined), we need a commitment to recognizing and including different voices. Polyphony is an authorial stance, and it helps to reflect the world as it is and to make more people feel more welcome. Building community is essential if we want to help companion animals.
Those two commitments go hand in hand. We can’t make the world better for people and their pets if only some people are included. Hope can never be spread too thin; the more you spread, the more there is.
To return to the quote at the beginning, it continued like this:
“I think the duty of a writer is to have lucidity and hope. If you spread despair, it’s best not to speak at all.”
I can’t write on the days when I am filled with despair, but on those days, other people’s voices lift me up, and I am grateful for a community of supportive, encouraging, like-minded people.
I write because it brings me hope of a better world, and I believe the act of writing brings that better world one step closer. So I agree with Maalouf; lucidity and hope are what’s needed.
