Your dog takes physical cues from you at all times…especially when walking in small or narrow areas such as the hallway or bathroom.

In these tight, restricted areas is the expectation from your dog that you will walk a tightly focused path so neither of you walk into the other.

For an abused dog that’s lived through human abuse…walking that closely within a hallway is very difficult for them to feel calm. They feel the old feelings of concern of being yelled at or ‘accidentally’ being kicked as your paths cross within the hallway…they have only one direction to escape which is backwards. Trying to turn around creates anxiety in the time it takes to make a u-turn to escape.

This alludes to why small dogs such as Chihuahuas are often seen as very aggressive overall. Their very small stature exposes them constantly to people accidentally walking into them. It’s a speed that’s constantly subjecting a 4 pound dog to the very real fear of being injured. Imagine you’re an 85 year old man and a crowd of 12 year old children are running at you…you feel extremely anxious and scared of being knocked over.

To compare that scenario is not empathy as per se. It’s understanding the context of how dogs perceive their vulnerability to larger animals such as humans and other dogs. The dysfunctional dog is overwhelmed because they are making a conscious decision to walk past you or cower and run. You viscerally feel the anxiety of being a senior citizen about to hit the ground. It’s dramatic to us but to a traumatized dog, it’s a moderately complex psychological structure to process. This emotion is raw in your dog’s root psychology but without an ability to feel safe to process this raw emotion, the dog will core back to their basic dysfunctional emotions. Their survival emotions.

To help your rescue dog that’s terrified of crossing a hallway with you…next time, stop immediately. Stay still and calmly and gently say your dog’s name “Go (name) you’re okay”. Almost sing-song. This allows your dog to hear an uninterrupted flow of tone from you…and it trains your vocal cords to have the consistency of that conversational tone.

If your dog looks at you strangely and they may walk past you with a somewhat curious body posture, your dog is trying to process your new behavior while trying to process their own shift in new emotions experienced by your having stopped in place in the hallway with them.

Remember that your dysfunctional dog has always seen you walk past them in a certain pattern (as you hope you don’t accidentally spook them).

I’ve had Great Danes, such as Walter (Tonka) who stands 3 feet 2 inches at his shoulders weighing 183 lbs, where walking past him in the hallway had me propping side doors open in case of an attack and carrying an improvised shield that I occasionally had to use to protect myself. This shifted to walking past each other in the hallway. If I was to purposely touch Walter’s back, he’d flip his giant body around so quickly that he could still catch and nip my hand before I could pull it back. Then we graduated to me stopping in the hallway to let him pass, which was exceedingly frightening as the top of Walter’s head is at my mid-chest level.

I always speak each dog’s name in context and natural, conversational tone to encourage egocentrism. Which in turn builds a healthy codependency with each dog. I’ve written in my blogs about the dilutive scale of processing sentient trait markers aka consciousness in dogs (such as my analogy of the senior citizen). Possession is what every species pursues in the longevity of their existence. Saying their names teaches each dog their inter/intra/co dependent relationships by teaching self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence through familial construct to the foundation of your dog’s egocentrism. In other words…using your dog’s name in normal, familial conversational tones will teach your dog they belong.

Saying your dog’s name as you stand in the hallway will remind your dog you are talking to them. “(Walter) you’re okay” and say it without pausing. Keep the words contiguous. Often, people say their dog’s name, pause, then the “you’re okay” not realizing this is creating a new sentence with each pause.

Standing still requires a lot of trust and courage on both you and your dysfunctional dog. Both are worried of the other attacking them. For dogs, the fact remains that we are physically bigger and taller than them. Even Walter’s size being bigger than that of an adult male cougar,

I am still ‘taller and thus bigger’ than him. This puts an abused dog into concern that the human may suddenly lash out or hurt them as they walk by us.

As you consistently practice this type of interactive pausing with your dog, you’ll begin to recognize that you’re paying more and more attention to their body behavior (nonverbal fluency) as you stop to let them pass you in the hallway. You’ll notice various nuances in your dog’s physicality as they adjust to your pauses of your ‘new’ predictable behavior from ‘a human’. You’ll notice a slight improvement in your dog’s gait reflective of trust and confidence.

Just like an abusive relationship makes it a challenge for the victim to find a healthy, loving relationship…your rescue dog has been dealing with psychological traumas without being able to cogently process safely. Your rescue dog isn’t used to walking past someone in a hallway without being afraid of being kicked. This is a significant level of trust for any dysfunctional dog to risk their personal safety walking past us, especially if all they’ve ever known is verbal or physical abuse.

How Walter dealt with being walked past in a hallway is far more extreme. His dysfunctions presented as predatorial from having dragged a shelter worker into his kennel as well as a significant attack history. Walter’s behavior can be upstreamed to lesser and lesser issues that can be quantified through the entire dysfunction spectrum. His dangerous behavior started as humorous and tolerable but gradually (or quickly) became worse and worse.

In each case, every dog psychologically behaves similarly though they may manifest it differently relative to their personality. Your rescue dog may seem tame compared to Walter’s behavior yet Walter’s behavior relates to how your dog’s behavior is…because behavior is psychological. This means each species has a core structure of consciousness each with their own individual global personalities (societies aka village/cities). These natural variants are the psychological differences exclusively taxonomic in creating separations (aka stereotypes/language/dialects/slang).

Walter and your dog are two entirely different breeds and from vastly different histories yet they share similar ways of processing highly complex emotional and psychological circumstances. Neither of them has experienced the opportunity to feel safe when being passed by a human in a tight space.

Mingki The Extremely Skittish Jindo