Conflict resolution — Learnings from Dog sitting: Earn Trust & Authority
Conflict management comes in many flavors and many stages. It is basically classified as — Accommodating, Competing, Collaborating, and Avoiding. Let’s start looking at this screenshot below — those marked in red. These are the responses to ‘how to deal with two kids fighting in a class’
(Context: YEP is a no-student-left-behind program that expects classroom leaders to uplift & hone young kids as the civilized and educated individuals)
The lines that hit are -
- Sitting beside and not face to face (Accommodating)
- Firm voice (Demonstrating authority)
- Asking to stand in a line (Avoiding conflict)
Let’s talk about each in detail…..
Sitting beside and not face to face (Accommodating):
When I started fostering stray dogs, with no experience in petting, I started to read about dogs’ behavior and their psychology. It had many elements such as female vs male behavior, baby vs adult dogs, recovering trauma dogs, etc
As someone who started with immense fear to get near a dog, I was excited to pamper and coddle a puppy but terrified to extend my arm to an adult dog. They are fully-formed personalities who have had a variety of experiences (hard to guess) and have certain behaviors established along with territories.
Some dogs like to observe you — So they prefer your presence around but not too close to pop their bubble.
Sit at eye-sight: You communicate that you are equal and establish ground empathy
Sit side-to-side: Sitting face-to-face is usually a challenging body language. When you sit beside a dog, you communicate that you have no intentions of directly doing something to them. You establish energy that you are their buddy. (Ofc, It differs from dog to dog at what distance you sit). This passes the energy that you have nothing to do with them but you might just want to talk about their actions. This brings out a satisfaction that they don’t need a fight action and just a listener action.
The dogs I fostered had different trust areas - Food, gender, shoes I wore, tempo I spoke, the distance I sat, time spent, etc. Sometimes, even how close or far I moved with their owner :P
It’s just thought-provoking how in a social setup we need to be mindful not to please someone but to have a better and a happier room.
Firm voice (Demonstrating authority) :
So, we all know there are two types of aggressive reactions — those to protect us and those to harm us.
Whether it’s a dog or a kid, they need to believe it is a safe space that does not trigger their fight/flight response. It can take different amounts of time for each depending on how much trust they demand.
Once you are confident you have their trust, you can be authoritative to communicate that he/she is doing something wrong.
Risk to note: If this is done without earning trust, either there is an immediate reaction or there will be built-up revenge energy that’s accumulated which affects the trust earned.
Authoritative power is such a sensitive thing that can turn things around in a snap and has to be carried with such poignance and care. At the end of the day, the real power is trust earned.
Asking to stand in a line (Avoiding conflict) :
Actively identifying trigger points, and trigger situations and avoiding them is the key.
When I used to visit my friends, a couple of them who had not-so-social and rescue dogs, I was given many instructions on how to behave around them — especially what not to encourage around them. Authority again plays value here.
My experience: The first trauma dog I dealt with was a female dog who was malnutrition and severely injured. With my care, my health improved thankfully. Something that was more concerning for me was how she was afraid of anything that was in black. Whether it’s a crow flying over a 5-storey building or a buffalo crossing by or other dogs. This one is specific because (she used to run 200mts just to avoid something from 300mts). She used to try to bite the buffalos and the owner was quite concerned to take them grazing around. So, I used to visit during that time and control her without touching. I used to stand close to the buffalos and distance it with a stick or so. She would be so agitated, she would growl, sneak under my legs (OMG!), and what not, to just reach the buffalo legs. It took quite many attempts like these to show her that, the buffalos are here for you or your babies. After a week, she would just strictly monitor and finally just stay. The moment any stupid buffalo comes grazing around her babies, her trust would disappear and starts from zero again. So, the solution was to make a different walk-way for the buffalos. Finally, it worked. She still stands erect and calms down only once they leave but I think the situation is quite under control. (NGL how scared I was during this process that I was going to burn my hands. But to see my dog get so agitated for protection was heart wrenching for me. I’m glad she is getting better at finding her comfort zone.
I would have probably learned the same from humans also. But with clear communication such as barking, the learnings were simpler :)
Nurturing people is key to happiness wherever we are, whatever we do. As an animal and plant lover, I’d say nurturing everything around us is key to a happy self and a happy world. It may be propagated in the name of love, friendship, or leadership.
~is what I think
Feel free to share your experience on the subject of your thoughts on this article. Thank you for reading :)
