Daisy was 8 weeks old when we adopted her from a shelter in Texas. Her first veterinarian gave me a life changing piece of advice. At the time we all believed Daisy was mostly Australian Shepherd. Maybe she is and maybe she isn't. Its of no consequence in any way. And looking back, I wonder if it was just a line the vet used to get my attention.

She said, "I raise these kinds of dogs and I'm going to tell you something very important. You can not yell at these dogs, not one cross word, until they are 6 months old. They are very smart and their psyches can't handle it. Listen to me now, because I'm serious, no yelling until she is fully 6 months old. If she makes a mistake, simply ignore it."

The idea that anyone would yell at a baby is now shocking to me. The truth that I have yelled at a baby is deeply shameful. In fact, I yelled at the puppy we got a year before Daisy, plenty and often. I wanted to train her well. Her name was Hazel and she was trained fairly well. And she was a basket case who later became unmanageable. She was profoundly confused about the need for aggression.

Few of us think of ourselves as cruel. We can all admit to anger and fear, if we are honest. But few will admit to cruelty. And I believe most of us never intend cruelty. True experienced psychopaths do intend cruelty. Cruelty gives them pleasure--or allows them to feel something, in any case. 99% of us are not true psychopaths.

But anger and fear are the handmaidens of cruelty. And most bad parenting is born of unchecked anger, fear,  and an ego-need for dominance. Genuine cruelty is perpetrated over and over and over in our society from these three simple universal feelings: fear of death, fear of looking like a bad parent, and a desperate need for control through dominance. Fear is most often expressed as rage, if not anxiety.

I'm not a follower and I rarely heed direction the first time I hear it. Usually, directions must be repeated a few times before I can hear them, much less follow them. I'm accustomed to figuring everything out for myself. Perhaps because I was raised with a deep conviction that adults are stupid and untrustworthy. Which...yeah, is basically true. So I don't know why I listed to that vet. I didn't even like her very much. She even dropped one of my dogs once. But I listened to her advice that day as if the very voice of God had descended into that dark ugly little room.

I never yelled at Daisy. Not once. By the time she was 6 months old she was so well behaved and solid, she no longer required any discipline. Mammals need love, an understanding of boundaries, and a good example. That's it. The rest of parenting is learning to control yourself, not the baby.