Don’t Blame an Animal for Being an Animal
I spent July 4 in one of my favorite places in America: Yosemite National Park.
The developed areas of Yosemite have a bit of a bear problem. Human visitors to the park have a tendency to leave food out and unattended. Bears are drawn to the food and eat it. Some bears begin to seek out and harass humans in order to steal food. Park officials are forced to shoot these bears.
The park officials make no effort to conceal how much they hate shooting their beloved bears. Campgrounds, parking lots, and park literature are plastered with warnings about the issue. Trash cans are bear-proof. Dumpsters equipped with bear-proof clips have signs that say “Use clip. Save a bear.” Bear-proof canisters for backcountry camping are stamped with a logo that says “save the bears”.
On the first night of my trip I camped in a developed campground in Yosemite Valley. My neighbors were idiots. They left a can of Pringles unattended on their picnic table.
It was somewhat entertaining to watch a bear eat the Pringles, but I also was heartbroken knowing that the stupidity of my neighbors may ultimately contribute to the death of such a magnificent animal.
The attitude of Yosemite park officials is that when bears become aggressive, it is 100% the fault of humans. The bears are not held to blame–they merely do what it is in their nature. If you leave a can of Pringles unattended on a picnic table, a bear will eat it. That is your fault, not the bear’s. If the bear begins to harass picnickers and campers, that is your fault, not the bear’s.
I like that attitude, and it shouldn’t only apply to bears. Dogs and cats (but especially dogs) also have a tendency to be “naughty” in ways that are entirely predictable, and that aren’t actually naughty.
If I leave delectable garbage in the trash can and forget to protect the trash in the dog-resistant cupboard, my pal Buster will get into the trash. He isn’t being bad. He’s simply being Buster. His love for chocolate and garbage is no secret.
Thank goodness See’s Candies don’t have enough theobromine (the poisonous ingredient in chocolate) to poison Buster. If they did, I would have had to take him into work with me for treatment on several occasions.
But one thing’s for sure: there’s no point in getting mad at the dog for acting like a dog.
You have questions. 
I agree entirely and unwaveringly. Animals are animals, period. As humans we can’t expect animals to understand and obey every rule or guideline we deem appropriate or amusing. I get so frustrated when friends and family harshly reprimand their pets because of such “misbehavior.”
I totally agree, and I must say it’s quite refreshing to see this discussed. I’m proud of the Forest Service for taking the possibly controversial position on bears, even to the point of putting up signs to that effect. Humans are often quite slack in taking responsibility for the repercussions of their actions. Animals will behave like animals. Why would we expect anything else?
I could not agree with you more! We humans create these bad behaviors, and then punish the animal for it. People need to be more responsible! It’s not just about humans, we aren’t the sole proprietors of this planet. It’s time we realized our actions have a domino affect. What we do affects something else, and that then affects another thing, and so on.
Great point and comparison.
Interesting story, in the 30s and 40s there used to be organized bear feedings in Yosemite Valley so people could see park bears in safe conditions. So the bad behavior by humans to create the current ‘misbehavior’ goes back many years of which the bears are just doing what they’ve been taught…
I agree with you 100%. Dog owners need to remember that many of the behaviors they find undesirable in their pooch are just the dog being a dog. It is the up to the humans to take appropriate preventative measures in the first place. Beagles have an almost insatiable desire for food and will go to great lengths to get it. They can be extremely resourceful too! My advice: If you don’t want to deal with garbage strewn all over the house, secure the trash in a dog-proof cabinet. If you don’t want to share what’s on your dinner plate, don’t leave the table unattended–ever–not for even a second. If you find “poop-eating” downright disgusting, make sure the litter box is off limits. When people complain about their dog’s “bad” behavior they really have no one to blame but themselves.
Good advice from @drbarchas: “there’s no point in getting mad at the dog for acting like a dog.” http://tinyurl.com/mu3cff
Love this topic. I worked for years in the Alaska bush. Long ago, I worked on survey crews in SE Alaska around one of the biggest concentration of brown bears – 50% carniverous animals who can out run a quarter horse in the quarter mile. During the 80’s, my former husband worked on the first survey of Admiralty Island – the largest concentration of brown bears any where. We all had stories about the fearlessness of these bears. THEY are the top of the food chain. One survey crew had a story about a bear hooking an arm over the float on a helicopter with rotors going full speed trying to get the heck out of there. I caught my share of beautiful salmon out of helicopters on the way out of a job, too, but never very comfortably. We worked in a lot of thick brush and it was always possible to step between a sow and a cub without knowing it. One one transmission line clearing project, the bears bit holes in all the big, oval saw fuel containers. Very huge jaws. One crew was on the back of a jeep with machetes fending off creatures standing 10 feet tall. Yikes. I’m a chicken and never got used to this. Never slept when having to camp while working, etc. It did not help that all state employees had to watch training films about a forest service employee who disappeared around Juneau – only part of his boots and the elastic from his underwear was found. I still have nightmares about this.
We always carried long barrel 350 mags in shoulder holsters, but the fact is that a big bear under an adrenaline rush has a 3″ skull. Even if you manage to get a shot off behind the shoulder or in the eye, he/she can still get you after being technically dead. Once on a SE project, the forest service boys showed up with 308 rhinoceros rifles. I asked my boss why we didn’t have any guns. He had been one of the first engineers on the old Alaska Highway Project – they worked around polar bears on that one. He laughed and told me those brown bears were nothing – polar bears will stalk humans 100% of the time and the only thing effective was big marine flare guns. That info did not help me.
In 2003, I forgot I didn’t want to work 20 hours a day (it’s light all the time), and I went up to run a mobile materials lab on Bristol Bay aviation projects. That summer some nitwit from the lower 48 took his girlfriend out into the bush. Apparently, he was a self proclaimed “friend of the bears” and camped right on a bear trail in the middle of no where. He became bear lunch and a bunch of video tapes were found actually documenting the self involved, insane behavior that led to his girl friend watching him become bear food.
Best field joke that summer: Do you know how they found out that guy had dandruff? They found his head and shoulders.
Humans are NOT at the top of the food chain like they love to claim. Humans are less capable than any other animal. I often have to watch my horses standing patiently while I try to figure out what is going on – I beg their forgiveness! I am a mere human being with five senses that are barely functioning. The horses guard me, the dog guards me, I am grateful.
Once I got a job stream walking for Fish and Game before I went back to college. I was on the first two woman crew sent out in the field to study tagged salmon in Georgia Inlet. I was 27 yrs old with a young woman who had a graduate degree in Biology from an Ivy League university. We attached a fishing bell to a 18″ piece of flagging hanging from our belt and a tin cup to our back pack frame to let the bears know we were coming. Our job was to walk the streams and find tagged salmon before the bears ate them up. Biggest worry? The remote logging camps and the free for all that occurred when two women were spotted “alone” in a boat. During those young and pretty years, I had it figured out that Alaska, like Northern New Mexico, is a self policing kind of place – if you mess with anybody, you will be shot dead. I always carried a pretty little .38 Mauser on the belt in plain site – too small to be effective for anything other than the two legged threat and they all new I knew it. No Bear problems, no Human problems, made lots of money, everybody happy.
Just one dog related thing – the worst possible circumstance is people out in the bush with their dogs. A dog from town will run off, find a bear, harass it, then run straight back to their human with bear close behind when the dog gets scared. This is dog behavior and bear behavior that becomes life threatening for everybody because of stupid human behavior. Humans are supposed to have more intelligence than the other animals, yet peace is always in peril due to human decisions.
Humans will also turn their city dogs lose in ranch country where the dogs will run stock through fences, over cliffs and pull out their tails. These people think they are back to nature and can’t understand why their beloved animals are shot dead. Thankfully, I don’t have to shoot at dogs. I would have a hard time doing that. My horses will take care of themselves by chasing dogs out of their meadow.
Please take care of your dogs.