Dog Behavior and Safety Guidelines

If your dog ever growls at an empty doorway,

don't walk through it,

don't pull him away from it, and don't turn on the light in that room.

There are seven rules. Most people break the first one in under a

second, and the seventh is about the night he stops

growling. Rule one: Don't tell him to be quiet.

Your first instinct is to say, "Hey, quiet." Don't.

A dog can hear sounds up to forty-five thousand hertz.

Your ears give up at around twenty thousand.

So when he growls at a doorway with nothing in it, there is something in

it. It's just making sounds above your range.

Telling him to be quiet is like pulling the batteries out of a

smoke alarm because

the beeping was rude. Rule two: Watch his

ears, not the doorway. A dog can move each ear on its

own. Eighteen muscles in every ear.

If both ears point at the doorway, it's standing in the doorway.

If one ear slowly turns and follows something along the wall,

it's moving. And if both ears turn toward you,

don't look behind you. Look at him. He'll tell you when it's gone.

Rule three: Don't turn on the light. You'll wanna see it.

That's the problem. In the dark, he sees better than you.

There's a mirror at the back of his eyes.

That's why they glow when your flashlight hits them.

Right now, he's the only one in the room who can see

it.

Turn on the light, and you're the brightest thing in the

house.

It already knows where you are. The light just tells it you know

too.

Rules one to three keep you safe tonight.

Four to six keep you safe next week.

Rule seven, you only get to use once.

Rule four: Stay behind him. When a dog growls,

he's drawing a line on the floor. Him, then you.

Don't step over it. Don't pick him up. Don't drag him to the bedroom.

Sit down behind him and let him work.

This is the only time in your life when the dog decides where everyone

sits. In 2013, scientists watched seventy

dogs go to the bathroom for two years.

They found that dogs line up their bodies north to south along the Earth's

magnetic field. Your dog can feel the planet.

He doesn't growl at nothing. He just doesn't have a word for what he

feels.

Rule five: Breathe slowly. In 2022,

researchers in Belfast found that dogs can smell stress in our breath

and sweat. They got it right almost ninety-four

percent of the time.

Your dog knows you're scared before you do, and if he can smell it from

where he's standing, so can whatever is standing in front of him.

Slow breaths, hands in your lap. You are a calm

person watching a calm dog staring at a

calm, empty doorway.

Rule six: If he backs away, you back away with

him.

A dog will bark at the mailman, chase a raccoon twice his size,

but if his tail goes down and he takes one step back, he's not

guarding you anymore. He's telling you he can't.

Back away together, slowly. Don't turn your back on the

doorway. Get to the kitchen. Now you turn on every light.

It already knows that you know. Sit with your back to the fridge and your

dog in your lap and wait for the sun.

He'll pretend to be brave for you. Pretend for him too.

Rule seven: The night he stops growling.

It will happen. Weeks of growling at the same doorway

every night, and then one night he doesn't.

He doesn't look at the doorway at all. He looks at you.

His ears go back, his lip lifts, and he growls

at you.

Don't be angry with him. Think. Did you walk through that

doorway even once, half asleep in the dark for a

glass of water?

Then it isn't standing in the doorway anymore.

It walked back out with you, and your dog is still doing his job.

He's still protecting the house from you.

So if your dog ever growls at an empty doorway, don't walk

through it. And if he ever growls at you, stay where you are.

Let him watch you until morning. He hasn't been wrong yet.