One of the most difficult canine behavior problems that I faced in veterinary practice was aggression. This was for several reasons. The first, and most obvious, is the risk for injury to people in the home, visitors to the home, other pets and the one that is my biggest concern. The dog biting the vet!! You see, I am allergic to dog’s teeth penetrating my skin.
Other difficulties with aggression are the liability risks for the dog owner and how having an aggressive dog in the home radically changes the social life of the owner since they are restricted as to who can visit, how they can interact with friends and family and whether they can leave the dog alone.
But by far and away, the biggest obstacle in managing aggression in dogs is that it is not a simple problem to manage. There are many reasons why dogs show aggression to people and to other animals and discovering the cause(s) is crucial to managing the behavior successfully. Success is measured in the degree of improvement as opposed to eliminating the behavior all together. Which rarely or ever is the outcome. Canine aggression can be related to fear, to attempts at maintaining control of resources (food, space, toys, people), territorial behavior or some medical abnormality.
Finally, managing aggression often requires a sound grasp on subtlety since treatment often requires slow, gradual exposure to an inciting trigger or stimulus that causes the dog to display aggression then to reward more positive responses. One has to be VERY familiar with canine body posture in order to read the proper signals so as to know when to reward or not reward the dog’s response. This sequence is called Systematic Desensitization and there are books and classes that must be read and attended to in order to implement the process appropriately. There are no short cuts.
I recently became aware of single page summary devices called infographics (for you marketing gurus, I am sure these are as ancient to you as papyrus is to me). Infographics are one page visual summaries of a more complex subject. They are meant to boil down a concept to a few images. Pictured here is an infographic on Systematic Desensitization. As you can see in the image, the technique is boiled down to three steps. Distilled from reams of detailed instruction.
Both readings today are a sort of infographic on following God’s word and on His desires for us. In the first reading from Deuteronomy Moses conveys God’s conditions for His covenant with the Israelites. If they follow all his commands and decrees and statutes they will be His people and He will walk with them always. Now the statutes and commands Moses refers to is God’s Law…all 613 commandments that detail how they are to live with each and how they are to worship God. While this sounds a bit onerous to be compared to an infographic, the comparison to learning the entire 5 books of Moses does make following the Law a bit more manageable when you just have to focus on a To Do list of 613.
Earlier in Deuteronomy, and also in Exodus, God, thru Moses, gave an even more abbreviated Infographic on moral teachings…the Ten Commandments. Boiling down a bit the teachings in the Law to 10 basic tenets. These did not replace the Law in that The Law represented the instructions for daily living, especially during the desert wanderings. The Ten Commandments tell us what God expects us to keep in mind if we are to live a moral life.
In today’s Gospel from Matthew, we hear Jesus telling us to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This section is on the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus gives us His own version of an Infographic. He gives us a list of things we are to do, and attitudes to have, in order to bring God to the world. Blessed are the meek, the humble, the poor in spirit, the merciful, etc. And we are to treat everyone, friend or enemy, the same. As a son or daughter of God. As a brother of Christ.
And the simplest Infographic in all the bible can be found in Matthew 22:37-39 where Jesus tells us to Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and all your being and to also Love Your Neighbor as Yourself. It doesn’t get a whole lot simpler than that. Everything in the Law, in the Torah, in the words of the prophets and in the Ten Commandments is bound up in these two simple commands.
So, in fact, these can all be thought of as Short Cuts to our faith. Check off the boxes. It was easy for fellow Israelites to see when someone was following the Lord. They were sticking to the Law. And the rich, young man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit the Kingdom was following the script by keeping the Ten Commandments. Everyone in Jesus’ time knew that the Pharisees were on the right road because they knew every tradition of their faith that HAD to be followed to show everyone that they were righteous people.
While lists of “Short Cuts” listed on Scriptural Infographics can be very helpful in letting us have God’s will for us right in front of our eyes, there is a danger. The risk is that God’s law, God’s Commandments and God’s traditions can remain on paper. They can become a sort of Service Manual for a Christian. DO these things and all will be well. I have to steal from Mary Ortwein’s reflection from Sunday:
Knowing and understanding everything in the catechism does not save me. Going to mass out of obligation, consuming the Eucharist because it’s what we do, or loving pope or priest do not save me. Even feeding the hungry or reading Scripture do not save me. They are “outward forms” that are meant to point to inner realities that indicate God’s center place in my soul.
We need to change our souls, to rend our hearts, such that the RESULT is the following of God’s decrees, commands and statutes. They should all be a natural outpouring of our love for the Father and each other. It means centering ourselves and our lives on God. Of allowing His Word, the Sacraments, Prayer, Retreats and Service for each other to accomplish a Metanoia (change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion.).
The pastor at St. Martha’s Church in Point Pleasant, NJ, Father Dave Swantek, has a saying when faced with someone that harms you in some way then creating anger for that person. He asks God to Bless Them, Change Me. To ask for a change of heart in the other person through God’s blessing but also to take that moment to cause a conversion in your own heart. To soften the anger towards one of God’s own.
So while infographics on how to treat aggressive dogs can be helpful in keeping some basic principles in mind, they do not replace the preparation that goes into learning how to actually understand dog behavior. And while lists of commandments and traditions can be useful in keeping God’s word before our eyes, it is the change in our hearts that come from living God’s word that truly results in a conversion of spirit. The Pharisees used the Law to wield power over the Jews but Jesus showed us that it is the Spirit that takes over so that these written short cuts, these religious infographics, become written on our hearts and not on stone, or papyrus, or on our digital tablets.
