The Lowdown with Ira Wood on WOMR-FM
Oct 20, 2026 · 30 min · 12 segments
Roughly half of American households have at least one dog. And the bond goes back a long way, evidence suggesting that dogs were viewed as family members even before the dawn of agriculture. And why…
Jen GoldbeckGuestIra WoodHostSo for listeners who don't know the term, what is positive psychology and why does it fit dogs so well?
so positive psychology was sort of the counterpoint movement to the way most of us think about and encounter psychology if you end up going to a therapist you will get a diagnosis code which is from a book called the dsm uh and the dsm is basically a catalog of all the things that can go wrong with us anxiety depression ptsd personality disorders all that stuff is in there and At some point, especially, and this really came to prominence in the 1990s, psychologists started saying, well, you know, there's also all kinds of things that make us happy and shouldn't we at least spend some time thinking about those? and so this field of positive psychology um really caught on and they also have their own manual called character strengths and virtues and it's the things that let us live happy fulfilling lives things like um having curiosity and a sense of learn a desire to learn a sense of awe and wonder or spirituality mindfulness good social relationships it's all kind of obvious when you think about it but they kind of wrote it down and explained how this helps us live well and as i was working on a previous book about dogs i had collected all of this research about how they think and i didn't really know what to do with it it was just like this big pile and when i was thinking about this book i looked at all of that and kind of realized oh a lot of those things fit into these concepts that positive psychology has identified it's the same things that let us live happy fulfilling lives turns out our dogs have a lot of those strengths and virtues also and it helps them live happy lives so it's not a perfect mapping like we don't know if dogs have a sense of spirituality at least scientifically we can't prove it But they have a lot of the other stuff.
And so this book kind of uses that lens to look at how the things that we know make us happy also are present in our dogs and how it makes them happy and maybe how we can lean into that a little bit.
You make it very clear that this is not a training book because so much dog training is just getting them to stop doing bad things.
Yeah, I mean, look, there's a base level where you do need to get them to stop doing bad things, right? You can't have them eating your shoes or chewing holes in the wall.
You need a base level of obedience, and it's good for dogs, right? If they don't have any structure, they get kind of anxious.
They walk perfectly next to their human and they don't pay any attention to anything else.
and that is a way that a dog can be but it you know reminds me a lot of how people used to talk about kids right like children should be seen and not heard and we kind of figured out at some point that that's not a great way to have a loving relationship with your kids or to let them explore and find joy in the world And I think the same is true for dogs.
It doesn't mean don't train your dog well, but it means, you know what, if they want to stop on a walk and sniff that very interesting patch of grass that intrigues them every day, they're getting a huge amount of enrichment and actually social connection through that.
And so I want people to think about really paying attention to like what makes their dogs happy? When did their dogs seem like joyful and fulfilled and excited? And are those things that they can give their dogs more of even if it means the dogs are kind of less obedient in that very structured traditional sense?
So for listeners who don't know the term, what is positive psychology and why does it fit dogs so well?
so positive psychology was sort of the counterpoint movement to the way most of us think about and encounter psychology if you end up going to a therapist you will get a diagnosis code which is from a book called the dsm uh and the dsm is basically a catalog of all the things that can go wrong with us anxiety depression ptsd personality disorders all that stuff is in there and At some point, especially, and this really came to prominence in the 1990s, psychologists started saying, well, you know, there's also all kinds of things that make us happy and shouldn't we at least spend some time thinking about those? and so this field of positive psychology um really caught on and they also have their own manual called character strengths and virtues and it's the things that let us live happy fulfilling lives things like um having curiosity and a sense of learn a desire to learn a sense of awe and wonder or spirituality mindfulness good social relationships it's all kind of obvious when you think about it but they kind of wrote it down and explained how this helps us live well and as i was working on a previous book about dogs i had collected all of this research about how they think and i didn't really know what to do with it it was just like this big pile and when i was thinking about this book i looked at all of that and kind of realized oh a lot of those things fit into these concepts that positive psychology has identified it's the same things that let us live happy fulfilling lives turns out our dogs have a lot of those strengths and virtues also and it helps them live happy lives so it's not a perfect mapping like we don't know if dogs have a sense of spirituality at least scientifically we can't prove it But they have a lot of the other stuff.
And so this book kind of uses that lens to look at how the things that we know make us happy also are present in our dogs and how it makes them happy and maybe how we can lean into that a little bit.
You make it very clear that this is not a training book because so much dog training is just getting them to stop doing bad things.
Yeah, I mean, look, there's a base level where you do need to get them to stop doing bad things, right? You can't have them eating your shoes or chewing holes in the wall.
You need a base level of obedience, and it's good for dogs, right? If they don't have any structure, they get kind of anxious.
They walk perfectly next to their human and they don't pay any attention to anything else.
and that is a way that a dog can be but it you know reminds me a lot of how people used to talk about kids right like children should be seen and not heard and we kind of figured out at some point that that's not a great way to have a loving relationship with your kids or to let them explore and find joy in the world And I think the same is true for dogs.
It doesn't mean don't train your dog well, but it means, you know what, if they want to stop on a walk and sniff that very interesting patch of grass that intrigues them every day, they're getting a huge amount of enrichment and actually social connection through that.
And so I want people to think about really paying attention to like what makes their dogs happy? When did their dogs seem like joyful and fulfilled and excited? And are those things that they can give their dogs more of even if it means the dogs are kind of less obedient in that very structured traditional sense?
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