Cars stopping for red lights. A dial tone when you lift the receiver. Fresh produce at the market. All reasonable expectations. It's something we need to have for our dogs as well.

I was just talking to a client who has a dog who is a terrible food thief. He'll go to great lengths to snag a tiny morsel. This is a dog who ended up at the Humane Society after being raised in a kennel which also housed a larger and more aggressive dog. Food was tossed in daily, with the bigger dog getting the lion's share. The smaller dog grew up always on the edge of starvation.

As a kennel dog, he also has a very soft (submissive) personality, and a worried psyche. Everything, to him, is a big deal. We discussed reasonable expectations in regard to food and this dog and came to the conclusion that the most reasonable expectation, given her busy household with young children, was management. That would involve keeping food up and away, expecting that some was going to be stolen when left unattended and that the dog wouldn't be disciplined for these transgressions. After all, he has a lot of other, more important things (like a big dose of self-confidence) to work on first.

When it comes to reasonable expectations, there can be no blanket statement. It varies widely depending on the breed (or mix) of your dog, its age and your lifestyle, among other things. I wouldn't expect a sheltie, who is supposed to be reserved around strangers, to walk into a room full of people she didn't know and feel comfortable, although many terriers would end up being the life of the party.

I wouldn't expect an adult terrier to welcome a kitten into his home with open arms. Open mouth, maybe. After all, they are vermin exterminators, and it's not reasonable to expect them to understand the difference between their perceived vermin and your new cute little kitty. So it's important to research the standard of your breed, or the standards of the breeds your dog is mixed with, as well as your individual dog, to determine what you can expect in terms of behavior. Not every sheltie is reserved. Not every terrier has a high predatory drive, but until you really look at your dog and try to understand him, you don't really know what you can reasonably expect.

Even though I lost track of the number of dogs I've trained a long, long time ago, I still persist with one very bad habit. Not my sole bad habit, unfortunately, but one that's a little ridiculous given what I know about dogs. This bad habit is that instead of giving my dogs a direction (“Whimsy, leave it!”, or “Tug, come!”), I tend to just use their name, giving it a different inflection depending on what I want them to do. I expect that if I say “Tug”, drawing it out a little, making it sound a little serious, that Tug will know that I don't like what he's doing. Not a reasonable expectation, although my dogs “get it” frequently enough that the pattern persists. After writing this, baring my bad habits to everybody, I think I should really start working on that little issue more seriously. Our dogs are not mind readers -- incredibly adept at deciphering inference, maybe, but it's not really reasonable to expect them to know what we want when we just use their names.

So, what are some basic unreasonable expectations that I hear a lot of complaints about? Well, expecting a 3 month old puppy to be housebroken is one I hear surprisingly frequently. I ask you, how long does it take to housebreak (because really, that's what you're doing.) a child? Yet many people expect a little baby puppy to both mentally and physically be up to that task at a very young age.

How about coming when called, when very little time has been invested in teaching the dog that come means come no matter how tasty that squirrel looks or how much fun you're having with your friends. Not pulling on lead is a big one, as is barking and counter surfing. Come to think of it, all the “problem” behaviors are ones that we tend to have unreasonable expectations about. All of these can be changed with some training, but no dog comes to us knowing these things. They are, after all, an entirely different species, that has come out of their world to live with us in ours. It's a quagmire of unnatural situations we've brought to them, and I think, overall, they do a darn good job of fitting in.

Now that Rocket has injured his knee and is on restricted exercise for a couple of weeks, I'm going to use the time to break my worst bad habit. From now on, there will be a direction issued instead of just the dog's name with an inflection. It's time. It's way past time, actually.

Amy Samida was a professional groomer prior to her career in veterinary nursing. She began training dogs as a child and has continued training and working with problem dogs through it all. Amy is now the owner of Naughty Dog Cafe in Ann Arbor. She can be reached at amy@naughtydogcafe.com or 734-276-3522.