One of the toughest aspects of owning a Shih Tzu or any pet is trying to interpret their thoughts. There may be times in which your Shih Tzu gives you a look that you do not fully understand. Unfortunately, many people will use a human interpretation for a look that comes from a dog. When your Shih Tzu is giving you the impression that they resent you, it may be something else entirely.
Dogs are Different
If there is anything you need to learn from being a pet owner, especially a Shih Tzu, is that animals have a different thought process than humans. What you might interpret as resentment is really something else that you can only understand if you know about the psychology of dogs.
A Shih Tzu, like all dogs, lives in the moment. This means that when your dog is acting a certain way, it will last as long as they are acting that way. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is when you return home and your dog greets you as if they have not seen you in months and not this morning when you left.
Your Shih Tzu may have been moping around all day, but when you come home all those thoughts are gone as they are so happy to see you. The same is true when you stop playtime. They may be disappointed at that moment, but their thoughts will soon change to something else. Holding grudges or resentment is simply not in their nature.
Traumatic Events
There are exceptions of course which usually means if your dog has suffered a traumatic event in the past. They may not remember the specifics, but they will remember the pain and sadness that the event brought to them.
This is why when you adopt a dog that may have suffered from some past trauma, you will need to be careful. This means understanding what happened and avoiding the conditions that will bring that event back to their minds.
Learn to Let It Go
However, most dogs do not suffer from events so traumatic that it affects their very personality. If anything, whatever resentment, disappointment, or even being miffed at something soon fades away. This means if you need to correct your dog, they will not hold any resentment towards it as long as you discipline them the right way. Over the long term with the proper correction, your dog will associate bad behavior with being corrected, but that is a good thing.
Unlike humans, most animals simply do not have the long-term memory capacity that we do. There are exceptions, but they are mostly not of the pet variety such as elephants. Dogs live in the moment. If they were unhappy two minutes ago, that is as gone from their memory as two years ago.
If anything, we can learn a lot from the Shih Tzu and dogs in general about how to let go of grudges, resentments, and similar issues in our lives. Your Shih Tzu will not resent you for being corrected because in a few minutes the dog will not remember that it happened.
