Book Review: Meet Your Dog by Kim Brophey
By: Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D. Behavior Analysis
Kim Brophey has a Bachelor’s degree in ethology and is a certified dog behavior consultant. In her book, Meet Your Dog, she describes an approach to looking at dog behavior and training through the L.E.G.S. behavior model. The L.E.G.S. model is an acronym for all the things we should consider when evaluating a dog’s behavior and include:
L - learning; what does the dog know how to do?
E - environment; what is the dog’s environment like? How does it facilitate either appropriate or inappropriate behaviors? How can we change the environment to change our dog’s behavior?
G - genetics; how does what the dog has been bred to do impact its behavior?
S - self; how does our dog’s unique combination of learning, environment, and genetics, manifest in the dog we know and love right in front of us?
Brophey begins Meet Your Dog by dispelling the myth of the Fairy Tale Dog, an incredibly important reminder and frame of reference. When we picture our “perfect” dog, our expectations are often far beyond what is reasonable for our furry companions, or our human companions for that matter. Brophey’s message that it is unreasonable to expect our dogs to love all people, all dogs, all other animals, and to not only tolerate but excel in all environments, is long overdue. Brophey reminds us to consider our dogs’ L.E.G.S. and to modify our expectations accordingly such that we can see our dogs for who they are and better meet their needs. When choosing a dog to join our family, Brophey asks us to consider:
“Are we pursuing the right type of dog for our lifestyle and personality, no matter how amazingly cute his little face is? We could be disastrously incompatible. We might want a social butterfly and end up with a suspicious and protective introvert. We might want a quiet companion for our children and end up with a total circus in our living room… We have to remember that most breeds of dogs were designed to be a specific tool for a specific job -- not to be our pet.”
Dog Types
A bulk of Meet Your Dog involves the review of ten specific dog types including: the Natural Dog, Sight Hound, Guardian, Toy Dog, Scent Hound, Gun Dog, Terrier, Bull Dog, Herding Dog, and World Dog (aka the mutt). For each dog type, Brophey details why you might love the dog or find him hard to live with, why you might seek professional help for his behavior, his family history, important elements of this dog’s upbringing, interests and hobbies he might have, how to best educate him, the best lifestyle for him (i.e., home life, public life, and personal life), and a key concept related to the dog type.
I found the information about specific interests and hobbies as well as lifestyle advice to be interesting and helpful when determining how to best support dogs in their homes. This may help guide families in selecting a dog that will be most suited to their specific lifestyles. However, for me, Meet Your Dog fell short when describing why you might need professional help for your dog and how to best educate him. Broad stroke advice based on genetics alone fails to take into account the dog’s unique behavioral presentation and environment. Some of the recommendations for training solutions involve procedures that involve aversive control and punishment which may have unintended side effects that exacerbate the original problem and potentially create dangerous situations for the dog and family.
The emphasis on genetics in the book as it is laid out in each chapter about specific dog types suggests that the reader should primarily focus on the dog’s breed and purpose as opposed to the more comprehensive L.E.G.S. approach initially described in the book’s early chapters. My fear is that a dog guardian, reading this book, may place primary importance on breed to the detriment of the dog’s current home and family life which may play a more immediate role in behavioral challenges that come up.
For each breed, Brophey describes the development of the breed and its historical context. These sections provide foundational information about how each breed type was designed to fulfill a specific role in our society. Guardian dogs were bred to guard things, terriers were bred to find and destroy small mammals, etc. In the chapter on herding breeds, Brophey dedicates a paragraph to the role that these breeds have played in the military and police force stating that, “from border patrol to crowd control, dogs such as the German and Belgian Shepherds have become world renowned for their astonishing aptitude at these modern specialities.” Though some might protest that a book of this nature is not meant to be a social commentary, I would argue the entire premise of the book is a social commentary, as Brophey makes the case for us to carefully examine how dogs fit into our lives and what our expectations are of them as a society. The attention that Brophey dedicated to the use of dogs as “proficient human herders” completely overlooks the racist history of police K9s and the continued perpetuation of racism through their use in this role. This concern is detailed in a number of publications, most recently in a Pulitzer Prize-winning article by reporters for IndyStar entitled: “Mauled: When Police Dogs are Weapons” (linked here.)
Anthropomorphism: The Good and the Bad
I also found the dog-type chapters to be heavily anthropomorphized (i.e., attributing human characteristics and behaviors to an animal). I am not of the mind that anthropomorphism applied to dogs is inherently bad. In many cases it helps us empathize with our dogs’ struggle to adapt to modern life. However, in the case of Meet Your Dog, though the use of anthropomorphism may make the content more palatable to a canine guardian, it does so at the expense of a clear understanding of the variables that impact behavior. This may lead to assumptions about dog behavior and training techniques that could be a detriment to the dog and his family.
Conclusion
At the end of Meet Your Dog, Brophey ties together the L.E.G.S. concept in her conclusion. She reminds us that it’s inevitable to have expectations around our relationship with our dog but that we should base our expectations on the full picture of our dog and not any one element. Brophey states that “There are no fixed rules, only guiding insights and information from which we can piece together a more logical and complete framework of ideas. The point here is to simply develop more realistic expectations of your canine friend.” This is a crucial message for dog guardians to hear and a critical lens through which to view our relationships with our dogs.
For me, the book would have been much more powerful had Brophey devoted more time on how the L.E.G.S. model synthesizes each element in a comprehensive view of dog behavior. The use of case studies could serve this purpose and show the reader how the dog’s learning, environment, individual self, and genetics, results in specific behavioral presentations. Instead, Brophey placed emphasis and a substantial part of the book on genetics. This paired with the use of such heavy anthropomorphic descriptions may end up clouding the comprehensive and realistic approach she advocates for.