ARE YOU A DOGOHOLIC?

by Lexiann Grant
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Copyright© 1995
The following article has been provided by the above author. All copy rights are held by the author and any reproduction of this material in whole or in part must have the authors approval.

"Hi, my name is Lexi and I'm a dogoholic. It has been 30 minutes since I last petted a dog and I badly need another fix. Yesterday I had a relapse and felt guilty about spending my entire paycheck on dog books and videos, then I let Shadow eat dog crackers in my bed. I want to stop obsessing about my dog obsession, but I can't." I imagine myself standing in a front of a room full of people, telling my story. Some of them appear despondent, their only contact with a dog at the moment is to pick at the clumps of fur stuck to their clothing. Those who have quit fighting their dog addiction, smile, and proudly display on their shirts, dozens of pins, shaped like their favorite breed of dog, awarded for months of time passed relying on the power of their dogs' will for them...

My fantasy ends as I remove a dog from my lap and return to work -- which I do at home so I can be with my dogs. Are there others like me, people whose love of dogs borders on the obsessive? I've seen them, I think, in pet supermarts or at dog shows, people who find it impossible to live without at least one or more dogs preoccupying their lives, consuming their income, and monopolizing their time and conversations. Are we obsessed with our dogs?


Illustration by Cindy Bundy.

AND WEBSTER SAYS...
An obsession is defined as a complete absorption of the interests or the mind, excessive to an abnormal degree, dependence, addiction; addiction meaning to surrender to something obsessively. Do you wonder if you are simply devoted to your dog or are you a self-enslaved canine caretaker catering to Doggy's every whim?. To help you determine if you are merely enthusiastic or positively obsessive about your dog, answer the following questions.

  • Does your dog wear Calvin Kanine sweaters and Poochi boots while you buy your clothes from the Salvation Army budget shop?
  • Does your mother refer to your four-legged dependents as her grandchildren even though you have no human children?
  • Is your monthly dog supplies bill higher than your house payment?
  • While eating dinner, can you discuss pooper scooper tools and worm medicines without loosing your appetite?
  • Is your house equipped with a doggy doorbell, installed at paw-height, so that your dog can let you know when he wants inside?
  • Do you receive a "preferred customer" discount at your veterinarian's office?
  • Is the interior design of your home color coordinated with your dog's fur?
  • Do you fix your dog's breakfast before your own? Does he have his own table or placemat?
  • Do you know exactly what your dogs say when they bark?
  • Do you own a motor home for the exclusive purpose of being able to take your dogs on vacation with you (the size of the vehicle being relevant to the amount of dogs it can contain)?
  • Does your dog go into the bathroom with you?
  • Did you pay to have your dog's bed monogrammed instead of replacing the hole-riddled sheets on your bed which bear puppy's "this-was-fun-to-chew" signature?
  • At night, when your dogs push you off your king-sized mattress, do you go sleep on the couch so you don't disturb their rest by making them move?
  • Do your neighbors think of you as that "dog person?" Do your best friends live 300 miles away and the only thing you have in common is your interest in dogs? ...but your phone bill for calls to their number is slightly higher than the national debt?
  • Have you ever run out of bread and toilet paper but had enough dog food and biscuits to last through a seven-year famine?
  • When you buy your annual dog license, do you start a Christmas Club account for your dog?
  • Is your favorite pastime browsing through travel books and planning trips to scenic parks where you are allowed to walk your dog?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be a dogoholic, in some people's opinion, going slightly overboard when you pay attention to or care for your dog. Do you spend much of your time and money shopping for and buying fun toys, gourmet goodies and cute collars for your canine kid? Do many of your leisure activities or hobbies focus around your dog? Do you think that you're obsessed with your dog? Or does devotion to a canine companion bring you pleasure and add happiness to your life? Obsession is not always all bad. It can also mean fascination or passion, and, to be obsessed can mean to be consumed with belief.


Illustration by Cindy Bundy.

THE BENEFITS OF DOGOHOLISM
According to Carol Loadman-Copeland, Ph.D., a Pittsburgh based developmental psychologist and counselor whose undergraduate research was conducted in animal learning, "A 'dogoholic' is probably pretty harmless, maybe they're a little eccentric, but at least they're trying to take care of something. Studies show that when people reach out and take care of something else, such as a dog, it is good for their health. It focuses their attention on something besides themselves and they feel good because their dog benefits."

Dr. Loadman-Copeland said when she first became involved with dogs, she was impressed with the positive social values that the people and children involved in the sport were learning, like, "exemplifying humane values and how to treat other living things. There's a big concern in counseling clients today that few of us do community service. In caring for an animal, dog families do some of that [service]. "If you show dogs, that's a constructive channel for competitive energies. Dog people genuinely love animals and believe what they are doing contributes to the quality of a breed and the obedience of dogs. And it teaches dogs to be good companion animals," she commented.

WHY DO WE NEED OUR DOGS AS COMPANIONS?
"Dogs are affectionate. We need animals more now than people did in the past, because, with our broken communities, and generations spread across the country, they are a comfort to touch. They are sentient beings and have emotions and reactions. We imagine they think all kinds of things, and we project our feelings onto them, but they certainly do come close and that's comforting. It's a feeling of being connected to another living being," Dr. Loadman-Copeland said, "Dogs don't argue with you; you talk to them and they listen. They are company."

LaVaughn Kellow, an avowed dogoholic and retired teacher, said that her dog Cleo, "is always there. She meets me at the door when I come home and it's nice to have someone do that. Cleo is mischievous -- she likes to untie the strings on our shoes -- she adds life and fun to our home. She is my best friend. It is a mutual love." Judy Ancona, who lives with nine rescued dogs as part of her family, said, "I can't imagine myself without a dog. I don't know what I'd do without them. I have had dogs for over 20 years, at least five or six of them around all the time. They are my buddies. I can understand dogs better than people. I relate to them and they relate to me. It would be a lonely world without dogs. They love us unconditionally." Ancona confessed that she thinks she "must have been a dog in a former life."

TRUE CONFESSIONS
Ancona takes her dogs to town once a week, "to get them out of the house so they don't get cabin fever. I leave the car running with the air conditioning or heat on, while I go into the store and buy them a special treat. If I didn't have dogs, I wouldn't be able to get them treats and I'd miss doing that. I'd also miss cleaning up after them and I'd miss all the noise my dogs make. There would be total silence and that would drive me crazy. I have a few friends that look at me like I've completely lost my mind."

Kellow admitted, "I have a friend who doesn't come and visit me because she doesn't like dogs. That's sad, but that's the way it is -- this is a dog house. If you're going to have a dog, you might as well be obsessed with it. Cleo comes first when I'm thinking of things that will make her comfortable or what she will like to eat, like when we have a roast for dinner. People who don't have dogs, don't understand. They just don't understand what they're missing."

Jon Six, of Trubo Chinese Cresteds in Parkersburg, West Virginia, acknowledges that he is a "dogoholic to a degree. I've had dogs all my life. When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to have 20 dogs, so I told myself that someday, when I grew up, I would and that's what happened. I didn't realize how addictive showing a dog could be. "My dogs control my life. I have gone to the bank and borrowed money for dogs. I have gotten up at 3:00a.m., when it's been too hot to cook for myself, and cooked for my dogs; my Mom cooks for my dogs. I cancel plans to stay home with my dogs. I sleep with six dogs. It's in a dog's making to do whatever it takes to please us. They go out of their way to satisfy us, why can't we do a few extra things to satisfy them?" said Six.

John Canary, a basic obedience instructor with Parkersburg Obedience Training Club in West Virginia said, "I like dogs and enjoy working with them." Canary and wife Sandy own eight dogs that they train and show in obedience and agility. The Canarys designed and built a custom home to fit them and their canine family's needs. "When you have that many dogs you have to have a room for bathing them and feeding them and a place where you keep their supplies. And its nice to have a room where you can work on training too," said Canary who does not consider himself a dogoholic. To the dogholic, Canary said, "People shouldn't have tons of dogs around just to have dogs. They are a big responsibility. I wouldn't recommend having several dogs unless they can do justice by all their dogs, by spending time with and training them all." Is there a down side to dogoholism? Can someone be excessively obsessed with their dog? And if so, will it have a negative effect on their pet's behavior?

Animal behaviorist and owner of Dog's Best Friend, and assistant professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Patricia McConnell, Ph.D., said, "Every once and a while we see someone who has become so obsessed with their dog that the dog begins to act like royalty -- they are alpha to the extreme."

She cited one example of a client who sought help after her dog had bitten her arm. Dr. McConnell said that in her office, "The dog went to the toy box, then looked at his owner, waiting for her to get a toy out for him. When the owner did not respond, the dog began to growl, snarl and display his teeth." McConnell noted that, "The woman lived for the dog. She didn't see her friends, she had no social life and she had no visitors because of her dog's behavior." Professional intervention was necessary to restore balance and order to this obsessive relationship, which was detrimental to both the dog and its owner.

McConnell noted that few of her cases were like this and that most of her clients were, "not weird, silly people who spoil their dogs. They are very normal, intelligent people."

SO LET ME BE OBSESSED
For the most part, the relationships we have and the lives that we share with our dogs, are balanced. We give them food, shelter and medical care, and hopefully a happy home. In exchange, they watch over us, help us with our work, protect us, comfort us, amuse and entertain us. They accept us as we are, they restore our sagging spirits with a wag of their tail and they grace our lives with their presence. They give us the very best that they have to offer, their loving hearts and noble souls. They give us all, they give us themselves.

"People didn't capture the ancestor of the dog. It was the reverse. It was the wolf who came close to the fire and endeared itself to people. It was a symbiotic relationship. Man is really the one who got domesticated. These little creatures got people to pay attention to them and it helped out mankind in the long run," Dr. Loadman-Copeland believes.

So if obsessing about dogs be the stuff of addiction, then let us be intoxicated, let us depend upon dogs to fill our lives with goodness. I am blessed and content to be a dogoholic. How about you, are you a dogoholic?

The 12 Steps of Dogoholics Non-anonymous

  1. We admitted we were powerless over dogs -- that our homes, yards and dog-toy bills had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that no power greater than ourselves, not even the Humane Society or the American Kennel Club, could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the minds of our dogs as we try to understand them.
  4. Made a searching and fearful financial inventory of all the damage our material goods had sustained.
  5. Admitted to ourselves, our neighbors and our veterinarian the exact nature of our training failures.
  6. Were entirely ready to have an obedience instructor remove all these defects of behavior.
  7. Humbly paid a trainer to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all dogs we loved and became willing to pet, feed and play with them all.
  9. Petted, fed and played with such dogs, and allowed them to sleep in our beds whenever possible, except when to do so would keep them awake or hungry at the wrong times.
  10. Continued to take inventory and when our dogs were doing without something, promptly provided it for them.
  11. Sought through pleading and yelling to improve our conscious contact with our dogs as we try to understand them, hoping only for knowledge of their will for us and the ability to carry that out.
  12. Having had a nervous breakdown as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this warning to other dogoholics and to practice our obedience in all distracting situations.

Remember that we deal with dogs -- cunning, baffling, charming, powerful! Without help they are too much for us. But there are others who are like us -- those ones are Dogoholics Non-anonymous. May you find them now!

Borrowed from the 12 Steps of various 12-step programs and liberally adapted by Lexiann Grant

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