08/27/2026
📣
Stop humanizing your dog. 👀
Says the woman posting a dog wearing a necktie. 😂
Hear me out.
Humanizing your dog for fun? Go for it.
Call yourself Mom or Dad. Celebrate their birthday. Buy them Christmas presents. Put them in ridiculous outfits. Let them sleep in your bed. Talk to them like they understand every detail of your workplace drama.
I certainly do. 😂
The problem starts when we humanize our dogs while trying to understand their behavior.
“He knows he was bad.”
“He’s jealous.”
“He’s being spiteful.”
“He’s just stubborn.”
“He’s protecting me.”
“He thinks the kids are his siblings.”
“He stole that because he wants us to chase him.”
“He growled because he was mad.”
We LOVE creating little human explanations for what our dogs do.
And sometimes? We might even be partially right.
But when we become attached to those explanations, we can completely miss what the dog in front of us is actually communicating.
Resource guarding isn’t cute because “he just really loves his bone.”
Separation anxiety isn’t romantic because “he loves his mom too much.”
A dog repeatedly ignoring boundaries isn’t automatically “just his personality.”
And growling, snapping, biting, stealing, controlling resources, or becoming wildly overstimulated shouldn’t be brushed off because “he means well.”
A dog can be incredibly sweet AND have behavioral issues.
Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
In fact, I think sometimes humanizing our dogs actually makes it harder to empathize with them.
Because instead of asking what the dog is experiencing, we respond to the human story we’ve created around the behavior.
Try asking different questions:
🐾 What is my dog actually communicating?
🐾 What happened immediately before this behavior?
🐾 What is reinforcing it?
🐾 What need or function is this behavior serving?
🐾 What structure, boundaries, outlets, or guidance does this individual dog need?
You can absolutely love your dog like they’re your child.
Just don’t forget that they’re a dog.
Because understanding them as a dog isn’t disrespectful or cold.
Quite the opposite.
I think respecting the animal in front of you enough to learn their language instead of expecting them to operate according to ours is one of the deepest forms of love we can give them. 🖤🐾
Now please excuse the dog in the photo.
He has an important business meeting at 9. 👔😂
