Humans can idealize nature and place a high value on happiness as a reality, more than just an emotion, and we believe that man, planet, and its creatures deserve to lead a free and natural life outside of the claustrophobia of captivity.
As a dog Labrador Retriever owner, you need to ask yourself how I might want my canine to experience a return to less domesticated life. Here are 6 ways that you can improve the quality of your dog’s life by making it more natural and happy.
1. Give Them A Purpose
A purpose can also give your dog a fixed identity, such as Rooster in The Secret Life of Pets 2 is a sheepherder and a free, independent dog on his farm. If you have children, your dog can be The Caregiver or Older Brother. If you live in a bad neighborhood, your dog can be The Protector. If you are quarantined in your studio apartment, your dog can be Your Best Friend.
If you live on a farm, your dog can be The Herder, The Alarm Clock, or anything else, depending on their breed. Identity is so natural to human beings and their dogs and can make them so much more natural.
2. Make Their Exercise An Adventure
Their walks should be adventures, even around the neighborhood. Your dog should experience different sights and smells. You can make their daily walks a special outing, experimenting with various environments and new activities. Your (and their) backyard can be special during the four seasons.
3. Take Off the Collar
During this quarantine and ‘isolation era’, as I’ve coined it, taking off their collar can bring them new openness and independence that they have not experienced for so many years that they have been your dog. Wearing the collar is necessary when you go for walks or take them to a dog park, but at least, take off the collar when they are indoors or in their backyard. They are still yours, but now they are theirs too.
4. Give Them A Natural Diet
Canines ate before they became domesticated and lived on raw, meaty bones and vegetable scraps, but with an evolutionary diet, can our current domesticated dogs eat like that?
Darren McGrady, a former 11-year royal chef for Queen Elizabeth, shared in 2016 Hello! Magazine article about the “posh” daily diet of the Queen’s multiple Corgis which would consist of beef, chicken, lamb, or rabbit that would be freshly-hunted by her grandsons William and Harry on the Windsor Estate.
Every day, the choice protein would alternate, de-boned, and chopped into small bite-size portions. The chefs would be told to add cabbage or rice to the Corgis’ menu. Natural pet diets, such as vegetarian, vegan, and raw food, have their pros and cons, and your research is very important to choose which food they should indulge.
However, dog food brands can offer fully healthy, natural, and complete nutrition, such as Whole Earth Farms Adult Dry Dog Food. Even age-specific formulas for adults and seniors can instill a natural lifestyle.
5. Make Play Most Important
Playtime is arguably the best time in a dog’s life, whether socializing, fun with toys, and games, play is not only natural to them but gives them exercise and leads to happiness.
6. Give Them Freedom To Make Their Own Choices
As a dog owner, you must offer them a free and open life, one that is real for them. Their choices will be natural whether they decide who they are, what they eat, where they sleep, and how they spend their time.
However, we might peer into Jack London’s The Call of the Wild’s protagonist Buck and his evolution from anthropomorphism to primordial instinctual survival. A fictional dog preferred to be a domesticated dog, as well as Chance in Homeward Bound when he saw that family equaled happiness.
What does your dog want? What do their actions tell you about their desires and what they would prefer: domestication or their wild counterparts? The fact is that man forever changed an animal’s idea of being their wild relatives when they domesticated them.
Domesticated household pets undergo evolutionary changes to their bodies and behaviours to normalise their interaction with us. Freeing a domesticated animal into the wild would be putting a defenseless creature into an uninviting habitat.
So in conclusion, we can make our Labrador Retriever or Golden Retriever dog’s life more ‘natural’, but just make sure that they have the resources (food, water, shelter, and comfort) that they are used to.