Be as Happy as Your Dog: 16 Dog-Tested Ways to Be Happier Using Pawsitive Psychology

By Michelle Waitzman

Dogs find plenty of reasons to be happy every day. Why do we struggle to do the same?

Be as Happy as Your Dog explains how you can learn to enjoy

• Language: English
• Publisher: 5 Foot Communications
• Release date: Apr 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781738787418

Book preview

Be as Happy as Your Dog

Be as Happy as Your Dog

16 Dog-Tested Ways To Be Happier

Using Pawsitive Psychology

Michelle Waitzman

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Copyright © 2023 Michelle Waitzman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

For media or speaking requests, permissions, or bulk purchases, contact the author at

[e-mail]

Published 2023, 1st edition

Cover photo: Samantha Rose Photography Meatball

Back cover photos: Amy Morris Maya; Kim McFadden Abbie; Patricia Simmons Ziggy Lulu; Janice Campbell Princess Lily; Megan Love Rush

Author photo: Margot Daley Photography

Cover design: Michelle Fairbanks for Fresh Design

Interior design: Sophie Hanks

Subjects (BISAC): SELF-HELP–Personal Growth–Happiness; SELF-HELP–Motivational & Inspirational; PETS–Dogs–General

ISBN: 978-1-7387874-0-1 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-7387874-1-8 (e-book)

To Marlowe and Nuka, my happiness role models

Contents

Introduction

1  Learn new tricks

2  Live in the moment

3.  Wag your tail

4  Never stop playing

5  Find your pack

6  Trust the sniff test

7  Bark, don’t bite

8  Shake it off

9  Go for a walk

10  Stop and smell things

11  Enjoy some treats

12  Accept praise

13  Play fetch

14  Chase the uncatchable

15  Curl up and sleep

16  Dig below the surface

Stay pawsitive!

Selected bibliography

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the author

Introduction

Photo credit: Shelley Tremere Ozzy

Introduction

Pawsitive dogma

Dogs instinctively understand that there is much they can learn from humans. Only the wisest humans understand they have just as much to learn from dogs.

Why dogs are great role models for happiness

If you’ve picked up this book, you’re probably a dog lover. And if you’re a dog lover, you’ve noticed how dogs approach life: they take every opportunity to enjoy whatever comes their way—a chance to play, walk, eat, cuddle, or sleep. They are always ready to show you how happy they are and how much they enjoy being with you, and they aren’t busy fretting over things that happened in the past or that might happen in the future. A dog’s default position is to be happy—right here, right now.

If you can adopt a more dog-like attitude in your own life, you could become happy by default too. That’s what I hope this book will teach you. I take a close look at 16 things that most dogs do and explain what we can learn from them with the help of both dog experts and happiness experts. The result is a collection of suggestions for adding more happiness to your life.

What connects us to dogs?

People’s special connection to dogs is not new. We have been living side by side for around 30,000 years, according to most estimates. That’s a long-term relationship of epic proportions. Dogs have evolved to understand our actions and emotions, and to make us care about them so we provide food and shelter, as well as companionship.

These days, dogs are not just working animals or an amusement for children—they are family; they share our homes and, in many cases, our couches and beds. According to surveys of dog and cat owners, 90% of us consider our pets to be members of the family and 83% of us refer to ourselves as our pet’s mom or dad. I actually call myself their mommy, but you get the picture.

Even without this book, living with a dog may help you to be happier, calmer, and healthier, according to research on the effects of dogs on our physical and mental health. Over the past few decades, interacting with dogs has been proven to relieve your anxiety, lower your blood pressure, help you lose weight, and reduce your chances of cardiovascular disease, among other things.

Researchers have also been hard at work trying to understand much more about how dogs think, feel, and learn. Their work has revealed that people and dogs have much more in common than we used to believe. Dogs’ brains have many of the same structures and functions as ours, so the same areas are used to process emotions, memories, information, and so on. They also produce the same hormones and undergo the same chemical changes in their brains that we do when they feel stress, fear, joy, fulfillment, and affection. Knowing this, it becomes easy to see how looking at the world through a dog’s eyes (and nose) can show us pathways to happiness that apply to two-leggers like you and me.

Why are dogs happier than people?

The things that make dogs happy and the things that make people happy are pretty similar: spending quality time with friends and family, eating good food, participating in activities they enjoy, checking out interesting places, getting better at things they like doing, and relaxing in a safe, comfortable place.

On the other hand, the list of things that make dogs unhappy is very short: pain, fear, loneliness, hunger, and boredom pretty much cover it. Our lists can be almost endless. On top of the things dogs get unhappy about, we have career pressures, social anxiety, fear of missing out, unrealistic expectations of how we should look, the desire to impress others, financial problems, envy of other people’s lives, bitterness about people who wronged us in the past, and fear of what might happen in the future—and that’s just for starters.

When a dog is unhappy, it lasts for about as long as the immediate cause. Once they’re no longer in pain, afraid, lonely, hungry, or bored, they generally get right back to being happy and embracing the good things in their life. Dogs are experts at letting go of negative feelings. We’re not so good at this. In fact, we can feel bad about a negative experience for years.

This is because our own brains work against us. People have something called a negativity bias. Throughout our evolution, it was important for us to pay more attention to things that made us unsafe or threatened our position in the community. As a result, we notice those negative things more, remember them better, think about them more, and make our decisions based on them. Just to cancel out your negativity bias, it’s estimated that you need to have nine times as many positive thoughts as negative ones.

Finding new ways to have more of those positive thoughts, and dwell less on the negative ones, is the only way to increase your happiness. That’s what the suggestions in this book will help you do.

How will this book make you happier?

There are thousands of self-help books out there. How will this one make you happier? I’ve presented the advice in this book in a way that makes sense to dog lovers. You may have read other books and found that the suggestions didn’t work for you or didn’t align with your beliefs and values—you just couldn’t connect with them. Self-help only works when you read it and think, Of course! That makes so much sense.

Even within this book, some chapters may light up your mind more than others. Feel free to ignore what doesn’t work for you and try the parts you’re excited about. My goal is for some of the suggestions to inspire you to make changes and motivate you to live a happier life. The great thing is this isn’t an all-or-nothing program you have to follow. You can’t get it wrong. If something isn’t working for you, just move on to a different suggestion.

What is positive psychology?

I’ve based my advice in this book on a field of research called positive psychology (but I call it pawsitive psychology—because dogs!). The field was popularized in the 1990s by a psychologist and professor named Martin Seligman. The idea behind positive psychology is that researchers should not limit themselves to studying psychological problems and how to treat them. They should work equally hard to find out how all people can thrive and reach their full potential, including maximizing their happiness.

Although it’s a relatively new field, the research in positive psychology has consistently found that everyday people can use a variety of techniques and approaches to have happier, more fulfilling lives.

Is your happiness within your control?

Not everyone is starting this journey from the same place. You might have some friends who seem to be happy most of the time, while others are constantly grumpy and pessimistic. It turns out that each of us has a baseline happiness level. You can become happier than your baseline, but generally that doesn’t last long before you return to normal. The same thing happens when something makes you more unhappy than usual. Once it passes, you usually go back to your baseline happiness level quite quickly.

So why even bother trying to become happier? Because there are things you can do to move your baseline. About 50% of your baseline happiness level is determined by your genes, and another 10% is determined by your environment and circumstances—things you can’t easily control. But that leaves 40% of your baseline happiness level to be determined by your actions and the choices you make. That means you can improve your baseline happiness by choosing to do the things that make you happier more often.

Meet my dogs

You’ll be reading a lot about (and from) my two dogs throughout this book. I thought you might like to meet them before we get started.

Marlowe

Marlowe

Marlowe was the first dog we adopted, at around five months old, early in 2014. He was born on a First Nations reserve in Ontario, Canada. When he and his littermates were just five weeks old, their mother was hit by a car and didn’t survive. The litter was rescued by an organization that placed them in foster homes until they were old enough to be adopted. Marlowe was the last to be adopted because he was shy and a bit anxious. He’s a very fluffy, large, white mixed breed (likely with husky or malamute as the dominant breed) with a bushy, curled tail and small, floppy, tan ears.

Marlowe has always been a bit of an old soul. He doesn’t play as much as most dogs, but he loves getting attention from people. He’s very smart and recognizes a pretty impressive number of words and names. Marlowe is the thoughtful one, the cautious one.

Nuka

Nuka

Nuka has gone through pretty much everything life can throw at a dog, and decided to be happy anyway. She’s a fairly large, tan mixed breed who looks like a more delicate version of a yellow lab. She has a straight, thick tail and big, droopy ears. Nuka has the world’s softest fur.

We don’t know how Nuka’s life began, but she was rescued at three or four months old with three littermates, all found in a dumpster. They were underweight and likely mistreated and abandoned. We adopted her about six months after we got Marlowe, since we wanted both our dogs to be at around the same stage in their lives. Nuka was a happy, playful puppy who loved having a big brother in Marlowe. When she was around 10 months old, we discovered that a rare parasite had destroyed one of her kidneys. The kidney had to be removed. Around age two she developed pain in both her knees and underwent knee surgeries one year apart, but her knees still get sore after a long walk. A year after that, a mysterious autoimmune reaction dropped the platelet level in her blood so low that any small wound would have caused her to bleed to death.

Throughout all of this, and most recently skin cancer, Nuka’s default state has been to be happy and love her life. Every walk, every meal, every game, and every visitor is a cause for celebration. She is a wonderful role model for how to be happy, no matter what. Without a doubt, Nuka is my main inspiration for this book.

Meet the experts

I’m a lifelong dog lover, and I have always marveled at their embodiment of pure joy. I’ve learned a lot from my dogs over the past nine years (and from my previous dogs during my childhood). I’ve also sought out a lot of information about dog behavior, social structures, emotional expressions, and other secrets to their happiness in an effort to be a better dog mom. Writing this book has given me a great excuse to dive even deeper into the canine mind and learn important lessons to apply to my own life and make me happier—and to share those lessons with you, of course.

Although my dogs provide the inspiration for this book, they’re better at leading by example than providing their detailed points of view or explaining the latest research. For that, we’ll need to rely on human expertise. So, all the suggestions in the next 16 chapters are based on research and advice from experts in the fields of dog behavior and positive psychology. I interviewed several of them and studied books and articles by others. Check out the selected bibliography at the end of this book if you want to do some further reading yourself. In the meantime, meet the smarty-pants experts you’ll be hearing from throughout the book.

The dog experts

Nicole Barnett is a force-free, positive reinforcement dog trainer who runs a training and consulting business called We Work for Treats. She spoke to me from her home in Ontario, Canada.

Dr. John Bradshaw is an anthrozoologist who spent his academic career studying the interactions between animals and humans. He wrote the bestselling books Dog Sense and Cat Sense.

Dr. Stanley Coren is a psychology professor and leading dog behavior expert. His books include Do Dogs Dream?, Why Does My Dog Act That Way?, and How to Speak Dog. He spoke to me from his home in British Columbia, Canada.

Dr. Ian Dunbar is a veterinarian who popularized lure and reward training, which helped launch the positive reinforcement training movement. He founded his own dog training academy and has authored many books including Before and After Getting Your Puppy and Dog Behavior.

Dr. Alexandra Horowitz is a professor of psychology and a dog behavior expert. Her books include the bestselling Inside of a Dog about dog