Mojo just seemed like a shy guy when we met him.

He trembled a little when he first came to our house. He sat on the couch, next to his foster mom, and shook, just enough to make us aware that he was nervous. Our Pomeranian, Bertha, helped dispel his nerves, as she insisted on sniffing him, eyeball to eyeball, in a display of confidence most dogs would likely have considered an affront to doggie decency.

After a few minutes, though, he got down off the couch, took some treats from us, and rolled around on the floor—a sure sign of greater comfort.

We had heard that he didn’t love visitors in his foster home, but frankly, he had arrived on a long flight from California just days before Christmas, he was thrown into a new home with new doggie siblings and a new human, and we heard that his distaste for visitors was mostly barking.

Cool, we thought, Bertha barks at visitors at first, too. We know how to handle that.

But Mojo didn’t just bark.

Mojo growled. And threatened to lunge. And he expressed his anal glands when our very first visitors, David’s mother and stepfather, came into the house. In fact, if David’s stepfather so much as turned his face toward Mojo, Mojo reacted.

Mojo seemed to dislike men.

And he seemed to dislike a lot of people in general. He barked at neighbors when we walked. He growled at David when he laughed out loud. He barked and growled at David’s stepfather when we attempted to visit their home, thinking perhaps Mojo had just been protecting his turf when he had visitors at our home.

After about a week with Mojo, it was clear he also had some separation anxiety. He pooped whenever we left the house, even if we were only gone for 20 minutes. He took David’s shoes when we were gone, making piles of shoes and toys in the middle of the living room. And he greeted us when we returned home as if he was shocked that we were back, like he had already written us off.

We knew, from the first week, that Mojo’s transition wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to be work, for both him and us.

We could have called the rescue group and said he wasn’t the dog for us. We could have returned him for behavior issues. 

But that kind of moving around, shifting him from temporary home to temporary home, was likely what caused him to distrust humans to begin with. He had been picked up as a stray in Los Angeles last July, had been adopted by someone in California in August, and when she was heading to Buffalo for the holidays last year, she put him into foster care here to be adopted in WNY.

In 6 months, he’d had five homes—the streets, the shelter, and 3 houses.

By the time he got to us, he’d probably had enough.

So David and I did the only thing we could do. We decided to do whatever it took to make him comfortable.

We consulted a trainer. We went to obedience school.

And we did the one thing that many, many pet owners are reluctant to do for their pets.

We put Mojo on anxiety medicine.

We already had a cat on Prozac. That’s not an exaggeration—our oldest cat, Davidson, has anxiety, compulsive behavior issues, and inappropriate marking issues. In other words, he eats things he shouldn’t, pees on things he shouldn’t, and has a perpetual bald spot on his lower back. We tried another anxiety med for him that didn’t work before we tried Prozac. But we knew within a week that the Prozac was the right choice. No more peeing. No more hunting through our cupboards for plastic bags to chew on. And no more bold spot on his butt. 

Behaviors like Mojo’s separation anxiety and fear aggression tend to respond well to Prozac, so we started him on it in March, two months after we got him. We knew the Prozac wouldn’t change him entirely, but it would quiet the anxiety in his head enough to allow him to listen to us and our training commands instead.

We also knew, however, that Mojo needed something no one else had given him in the last year—time. He needed time to settle in one place, time to get to know his humans and his home, time to put his fear behind him.

Now that Mojo has been with us for 7 months, I can affirm that the work we put into him was worth it. He no longer barks at neighbors when we walk. He no longer fears visitors to our home, including men. With the right intros and a few minutes to figure people out, Mojo enjoys visitors. When my brother, a big, deep-voiced bald man, visits, Mojo sits next to him on the couch, looking for treats and attention. Mojo no longer collects David’s shoes, and his separation anxiety has quieted.

He still greets us at the door like we’ve been gone for days, but he never seems nervous when we leave. He seems to understand that we are always coming home.

And while he does still have things to work on—barking at next door neighbors in their yard, feeling scared when a guest leans over him, growling at the cats if they attempt to share a blanket with him—these behaviors are becoming less and less frequent as we give him more and more time.

I thought I knew a few things about dog behavior before Mojo. I trained Bertha from a puppy, after all. She wasn’t house trained, didn’t know what a leash was, and exhibited several fear submissive behaviors as a puppy.

But Mojo showed me I knew nothing about dogs.

And in the process of teaching me about dogs, he also taught me several valuable lessons for understanding humans:

Those who bark the loudest are also the most insecure.

Mojo puts on a good show, barking and growling. It’s enough to make most people back away. And he has clearly learned from prior experience that the big vocal show gets the job done—people will leave him alone.

But his vocals don’t stem from a place of confidence. He distrusts humans, and he is insecure about his position among them.

I think of this whenever I encounter a person who talks loudly, whether that be physically  or metaphorically loud .

We talk loudly to hide our weaknesses. Big voices give the illusion of big strength.

Most of your problems stem from fear.

Mojo looks aggressive. Barking, growling, and threatening to lunge are hints that a dog could potentially take the offensive and hurt you.

But these things are also defense mechanisms. By acting aggressive, a dog can avoid the things that threaten him most. People will back off, other animals will leave him alone, and he will not have to face his actual problem:

Fear.

Don’t get me wrong—dogs that act aggressive might actually be aggressive. But many dogs give warning signs of aggression to actually avoid a confrontation they fear in the future.

And humans do the same.

We might act aloof. We might not tell the truth. We might do anything we can to avoid looking vulnerable, letting others think we’re just tougher or more independent. And when people try to get close to us, we might sabotage their chances; we might put up a wall, we might lash out in unhealthy ways, or we might say hurtful things to push people away.

We do those things out of fear—fear that we aren’t good enough, fear that someone will discover we are weak, fear that others will think we are imposters unworthy of whatever we’ve achieved.

Aggression helps hide fear. Irony at its best.

Structure matters.

Aside from time, the best thing we gave Mojo was a routine.

He gets up at the same time every day, does the same things every morning, follows the same schedule every day, and goes to bed in the same way and at the same time every night.

Predictable?

Of course.

But if your primary problem is fear—fear of abandonment, fear of new things, fear of strangers—then knowing exactly how to act and when to act that way is a relief.

It removes the burden of uncertainty.

And I have seen that kind of routine work for more than one human in more than one behavior pattern. Routine helps people lose weight. Routine helps students learn new lessons. Routine helps alleviate behavior problems in the classroom. And routine helps ensure productivity and accomplishment rule out over procrastination and self-sabotage.

Dogs need routines. But so do we.

Behavior problems aren’t just about the perpetrator.

There are plenty of people who think that animal behavior is a cut and dry subject—train the animal, and if he doesn’t respond appropriately, he’s an aberration, unfit for human companionship.

But this way of thinking ignores one half of the behavior issue with animals:

Us.

See, that problem dog or urinating cat isn’t acting this way in a vacuum. He’s acting this way in the context of human expectations, and sometimes, we humans are the ones to blame for the ways an animal behaves.

Mojo was probably poorly socialized as a puppy, and my guess is that living as a stray and shuffling from home to home compounded his trust issues.

When he arrived at our house, we didn’t know how to handle him. So for his first month with us, his inappropriate behavior continued because we didn’t provide an environment that suggested he should act otherwise.

Once we gave him the tools to behave differently—a routine, some training, some socialization practice, and some helpful medication—Mojo could live up to our expectations.

The same applies to humans. I cannot watch a student misbehave in my class without looking at my own behavior to see what I may be doing to promote it. And the same goes for adults—an adult who treats you poorly may be an ass, but you just may have given that person a perfect chance to be the perfect ass.

Don’t blame others; instead, ask what more you can do.

If humans are partly to blame in the problematic behaviors of animals, we cannot simply blame the misbehaving animal and turn the other way.

We couldn’t just say Mojo was a bad dog. 

We had to ask what we could do for him instead. And then we had to commit to doing those things, waiting patiently for those supports to help change his behavior over time.

In short, we had to invest. We invested our time, our money, our love, and our patience.

When faced with tough people and tough relationships, blame is never a good solution. Even when we are not at fault, if we wish to survive alongside other humans—at work, at home, wherever—we have to be willing to set aside blame and ask what we can do. We have to invest of ourselves.

That’s the only way to be sure that things can change.

You don’t have to smile all the time.

Mojo doesn’t smile often. He isn’t one of those dogs whose eyes always seem to sparkle, whose mouth always seems to be turned just slightly upward.

His under bite is something fierce, and any time his mouth is closed, he seems to be very serious, like life is just a bit too real for him. He’s earned the nickname Eeyore around our house, and it suits him.

But Mojo isn’t obligated to smile for our benefit. And when something makes him happy, he smiles a smile as big as can be.

He just reserves that smile for appropriate occasions.

As a woman who has been admonished to “smile more” in the past, as the proud owner of my own resting bitch face, I can appreciate Mojo’s version of that.

His face is honest.

He doesn’t hide what he’s thinking.

And that honesty is something we humans should envy.