Cynological Manifesto

Hinweis:

This pedagogical and cynological document serves as a contribution to the public discourse.
It is not directed against existing prevention efforts. Rather, it invites a critical and constructive review of certain contents — especially where children are taught rigid standing still, looking away, or passive ignoring as a general standard reaction.

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Why We Should Trust Our Children With More Than Rigid Rules of Fear

Note:

This pedagogical and cynological document serves as a contribution to the public discourse.

It is not directed against existing prevention efforts. Rather, it invites a critical and constructive review of certain contents — especially where children are taught rigid standing still, looking away, or passive ignoring as a general standard reaction.

A Plea for Contemporary Prevention in Encounters With Dogs

Author: Sitting Dog – Urs Rayas Zeier
Date: 11 May 2026
Revised: 5 June 2026

Out of Concern for What Matters Most

When we send our children off to kindergarten or school in the morning, we are accompanied by a deeply human wish:

Our children should be safe.

This concern is right. It is an expression of love, responsibility, and protective instinct.

Prevention campaigns such as the one by the Zurich Veterinary Office — available at https://codex-hund.ch — arise from this understandable need:

Children should learn how to behave as safely as possible in encounters with dogs.

These include, among others, the prevention materials of the Veterinary Office of the Canton of Zurich:

“Codex Hund” (for kindergarten)
“Codex Hund” (for middle school)

They give children rules such as:

“Stand completely still.”

“Do not look him in the eyes.”

“Let your arms hang down.”

Such rules can be helpful in certain situations. Especially when a child is surprised, unsure, or when a dog comes too close, calm behaviour can have a de-escalating effect.

But precisely because children are involved, we should look more closely.

Prevention must not only ask:

How do we prevent an immediate or potential danger?

It must also ask:

What do children learn in the long term about themselves, about animals, about responsibility, and about difficult situations that require orientation or action?

When children primarily learn, in unforeseen encounters, to become passive, to look away, and to leave the clarification of the situation entirely to others, we weaken one of their most important natural capacities: their intuition, their inner orientation, and their ability to form genuine connection.

It is therefore time to stop building prevention one-sidedly on fear, freezing, and avoidance, and to place greater emphasis on understanding, communication, relationship, and age-appropriate confidence in action.

True safety does not arise from freezing.

True safety arises from understanding.

1. Taking Children’s Intuition Seriously

Stress Regulation, Freeze Response, and Polyvagal Theory

The Dog Codex teaches children a strongly passive basic reaction when a dog approaches: stand still, avert the gaze, let the arms hang down, and communicate as little as possible.

From the perspective of stress and regulation research, this strategy is too narrow when presented as a general standard solution.

In modern trauma research and stress physiology, freezing or immobilisation is described, alongside fight and flight, as a protective reaction of the nervous system. The Polyvagal Theory developed by Stephen W. Porges places such reactions within a model of autonomic states, particularly in relation to safety, social communication, mobilisation, and immobilisation.

This model is influential in professional discourse, while also being scientifically debated. In this manifesto, it therefore serves as an interpretive framework — not as the sole explanation.

For this very reason, it is essential in prevention work with children not to define one single behaviour as a general solution.

When children are taught that, in contact with dogs or in situations of uncertainty, they should primarily stand still, look away, and wait, the child receives the impression that their own perception, intuition, and capacity to act are less important than passive remaining.

Yet children generally have a fine sense for the other. They perceive moods, movements, tensions, and relational signals. This capacity is not a danger that needs to be suppressed. It is a resource that should be accompanied, trained, and strengthened.

If we teach children, as a matter of principle, to interrupt all communication and to view living beings primarily as a threat, we risk weakening their self-efficacy. We do not necessarily promote safety, but rather withdrawal, mistrust, and inner freezing.

We owe it to our children to strengthen their intuition, their inner orientation, and their ability to communicate calmly and safely — not to suppress them.

Professional Contextualisation

This section refers to basic concepts of stress physiology and trauma research, particularly fight, flight, and freeze responses, as well as models of the autonomic nervous system.

Stephen W. Porges’ Polyvagal Theory is mentioned here as a useful interpretive framework, while some of its physiological assumptions remain scientifically debated.

For the core argument presented here, it is therefore not decisive that any one model be fully confirmed. What matters is the pedagogical and preventive question:

Should motionless, cold freezing truly be taught as a general standard reaction in child prevention — or do children need more differentiated, strengthening, and everyday-practical possibilities for action?

2. The Paradox of the “Statue”

Biochemical Asynchrony, Microgestures, and Resonance Gaps

The instruction to behave calmly while a child internally experiences fear, uncertainty, or strong tension creates a significant discrepancy between outward behaviour and inner state.

A study by Queen’s University Belfast — published in PLOS ONE in 2022 — indicates that dogs can perceive human stress through volatile organic compounds in sweat and breath.

However, dogs do not respond only to smell. They read the entire field of encounter: bodily tension, breathing rhythm, gaze direction, movement intention, microgestures, distance, posture, and social orientation.

When a child stands “like a statue” while internally highly tense, no clear signal of relaxation is created.

Outwardly, the child remains motionless.

Inwardly, alertness rises: breathing, muscle tension, gaze, posture, scent signals, and the smallest impulses of movement tell a different story.

Exactly between the two, the resonance gap emerges.

This gap is the decisive point. A dog does not only perceive that a child is standing still. It also perceives how this stillness appears: relaxed, blocked, frozen, uncertain, tense, or contradictory.

An outwardly motionless but inwardly alarmed child does not send a clearly calm signal. The child sends a contradictory signal.

And contradiction creates uncertainty.

The result is not genuine safety, but a deceptive form of control:

Outwardly still, inwardly tense, socially ambiguous.

The actual goal of contemporary prevention must therefore not be to make children outwardly motionless. The goal must be to make them inwardly and outwardly safer, more readable, and more capable of acting.

Modern prevention must teach children, in an age-appropriate way:

to breathe calmly, rhythmically, and with confidence,
to perceive distance and possible ways out,
not to react hectically in tense situations,
to approach a dog with respect and never crowd it,
not to approach a leashed or confined dog frontally,
to perceive the microgestures of their own body,
to correctly interpret the dog’s body language and appeasement signals,
to take their own fear or unrest seriously without being overwhelmed by it,
to act in serious situations and ask for help without giving up their own perception,
and to defuse a difficult situation not through rigid passivity, but through calm orientation.

This connection can be condensed into a symbolic model.

In a simplified model formula, this emotional dissonance — or allostatic load ( $A$ ) — can be expressed symbolically as follows:

$A = \sum_{i=1^n} (S_i \cdot C_i \cdot M_i \cdot \Delta R_i)$

Where:

$A$ stands for the emerging emotional dissonance or allostatic load within the encounter.
$S_i$ stands for the inner stressor, meaning the child’s inner unrest, fear, or tension.
$C_i$ stands for chemo-signaling, meaning stress-related scent signals such as volatile organic compounds in sweat or breath.
$M_i$ stands for microgestures and fine bodily signals: muscle tone, breathing, gaze behaviour, head position, movement impulses, freezing, withdrawal tendencies, or minimal defensive signals.
$\Delta R$ stands for the resonance gap, meaning the lack of coherent emotional feedback between inner state, outward behaviour, body language, and social orientation.

This formula is not a clinical measurement instrument, but a thinking aid: it shows how inner tension, scent signals, microgestures, and the resonance gap together influence the readability of an encounter.

The stronger the inner tension( $S_i$ ), the more clearly stress signals through scent ( $C_i$ ) and microgestures ( $M_i$ ) become perceptible, and the greater the resonance gap $(\Delta R_i)$ created by forced freezing, looking away, or interrupted communication, the higher the emotional load ( $A$ ) in the encounter becomes.

This dynamic does not automatically mean danger. But it makes encounters harder to read and leaves open who is actually guiding the situation: the child, the accompanying adult, the rigid rule — or the dog.

This leads to the central consequence:

Prevention must not reduce children to removing themselves from an encounter. It must teach them to remain calm, respectful, and readable within an encounter.

Cold freezing is not a sufficient prevention strategy.

Children need perception, a sense of distance, body language, self-regulation, and social orientation — just as dogs do.

True safety does not arise from making children or dogs invisible.

True safety arises when children learn to better understand themselves, their counterpart, and the situation.

3. Interspecies Resonance: Emotional Contagion Between Human and Dog

Humans and dogs have lived in close relationship for thousands of years. This shared history has shaped both sides. Dogs read humans. Humans read dogs. Between them emerges a subtle field of voice, posture, movement, expectation, experience, and trust.

Modern studies on what is known as “emotional contagion” — emotional transmission between human and dog — show that emotional states can be transferred between the two species. Research such as that by Maki Katayama et al. (Frontiers in Psychology, 2019) or Yong & Ruffman (2014) describes how dogs respond to human moods, facial expressions, voice, body language, and stress signals. Autonomic alignment between human and dog has also been investigated and described through heart rate variability and cortisol values.

This means that encounters between children and dogs are not purely mechanical risk situations. They are relational situations.

Precisely for this reason, prevention falls short when it treats dogs almost exclusively as potential sources of danger and prepares children mainly for avoidance, freezing, and the interruption of communication.

Of course protection is needed.

Of course clear rules are needed.

Of course responsible dog guardians are needed.

Of course children must learn not to crowd dogs.

But a dog is not merely a risk object.

It is a social being.

And children are not merely bodies to be protected.

They are feeling, perceiving, and learning human beings.

There is a risk that certain prevention strategies unintentionally create a new divide between children and dogs — precisely where the 2025 Dog Ordinance attempted to close an old one:

less communication,
less respect,
less trust,
more fear,
more distance,
more rules.

Dogs that have to cope in tense social situations without calm human guidance react more often with increased arousal or avoidance behaviour.

Something similar can be observed in children who lack reliable orientation in difficult moments.

A healthy, trust-based dog group does not automatically react with aggression to running children when the foundation of trust is present and the situation is guided by humans in a calm, clear, and understandable way.

Reactivity that arises from forced distance, blockage, spatial confinement, or interrupted communication should therefore not be interpreted too quickly as the dog’s “dangerous nature”.

It is worth looking more closely:

Does the problem originate in the dog itself?

Or does it arise from a situation in which natural de-escalation, increased distance, and communication have been interrupted?

This is precisely where prevention should begin: not through freezing, but through age-appropriate understanding, calm presence, respectful distance, clear body language, and ordered communication.

Safety does not arise when relationship is interrupted. Safety arises when relationship is guided in an understandable, calm, and responsible way.

4. Social Dimension: Learned Passivity and Moral Disengagement

The question reaches beyond individual encounters between children and dogs.

What attitude do we transmit to children when, in difficult situations, we primarily teach them:

“Stand still.”

“Look away.”

“Do nothing.”

“Wait for adults.”

Of course children should not have to solve every situation on their own. Children need protection, guidance, and adults who assume responsibility. That is not the issue here.

The issue is something more subtle: what does a child learn about themselves in the long term when they repeatedly experience that their own perception, intuition, and reaction count less than passive remaining?

When children systematically learn, in uncertainty, to step back inwardly, avert their gaze, and leave the clarification entirely to others, a problematic basic attitude can develop: safety is then no longer understood as something that arises through perception, relationship, and responsible action — but as something produced solely through withdrawal, control, and authority.

This weakens self-efficacy.

It weakens civic courage.

And it weakens the ability to clarify difficult situations together.

At the societal level, this touches on the well-known psychological phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility: responsibility becomes so widely distributed among jurisdictions, rules, and procedures that, in the end, hardly anyone feels truly responsible — even though all involved may genuinely want to do the right thing.

Especially in helping, educational, medical, and administrative professions, this inner contradiction can weigh heavily. People who want to protect, accompany, teach, or heal sometimes find themselves in structures where they must implement rules that do not always align with their own perception and professional knowledge. From this emerges moral disengagement — not out of bad intent, but as a consequence of systems that leave too little room for professional differentiation.

Prevention that relies on passivity and delegation weakens intuition and self-efficacy. Prevention that relies on understanding, relationship, and clear communication strengthens a collective that is capable of action and responsibility.

Prevention must not make people smaller.

Prevention must make people more capable.

5. Prevention Begins With Education — on Both Sides

Prevention that truly works does not begin with the containment of danger. It begins with understanding connections.

This applies to children: they do not learn through prohibitions, but through insight. A child who understands why a dog needs distance, why body language matters, and why calm presence is more effective than freezing does not act out of fear, but out of competence.

And competent action is more reliable than rule-obedient standing still.

This applies just as much to dogs: basic training that relies too heavily on reward mechanics, commands, and external control produces dogs that may function well under familiar guidance and in familiar environments — but in unpredictable moments they do not find sufficient inner support and may even produce the opposite effect.

What a dog needs is not only a repertoire of learned behaviours. A dog needs understanding of the situation, trust in its human, a clear communication system, and the experience that guidance is reliable, calm, and understandable.

Here an important asymmetry appears, and it must urgently be questioned.

With children, prevention fundamentally begins from the best assumption:

Children are capable of learning, development, and trustworthiness. We trust them to understand, to grow, and to assume responsibility — even while we protect them.

With dogs, by contrast, the dominant logic of prevention often begins with the opposite assumption:

The animal is a potential danger that must be restrained, controlled, and directed into safe channels through training.

This asymmetry has consequences — not only regulatory ones, but also neurobiological and relational ones.

Dogs do not think in abstract safety concepts. Negation is foreign to them as a linguistic-abstract concept. A dog does not understand a prohibition as a moral or legal category. It reads states, images, tensions, movements, scents, expectations, and relational signals.

Dogs do not primarily process abstract semantics, but the immediate biochemical and microgestural feedback of their counterpart. When training or prevention focuses tensely on what must not happen, an inner image of danger, control, and correction easily forms in the human being. The dog reads this state of alertness at a distance. It does not understand the intellectual concept behind it, but registers: “My human is tense. So this situation is significant — perhaps threatening.”

In systems theory, this is known as the cobra effect:

the attempt to prevent a risk through pure control and avoidance produces precisely those neurobiological and relational conditions under which the risk takes shape in the first place.

The danger is not dispelled. It is co-shaped as an expectation image — in the human, in the dog, and increasingly also in the child.

When the entire training process essentially revolves around avoiding dangers, when every exercise situation and every reward is charged with the inner image of threat, control, and correction, then this is precisely the image that becomes anchored in the animal.

Not safety.

Not trust.

But the underlying expectation that danger is the normal state.

Then the dog encounters the world not from inner security, but from outward adaptation: it obeys, appeases, avoids, and submits as long as reward, command, and familiar structure carry the situation.

Yet precisely this submission shows something essential: as a rule, the dog first seeks the peaceful way out. It wants to avoid conflict. It offers appeasement. It seeks social relief.

However, when this willingness is permanently overloaded with pressure, frustration, confinement, or unclear guidance, appeasement tips into inner tension. Adaptation becomes blockage. Submission becomes overload. And from a peaceful attempt to avoid conflict can emerge the very reactivity that is later too easily attributed, falsely, to the dog’s “nature”.

A stable human-dog relationship is not based on rigid dominance. It is based on situational responsibility.

In the forest, it may be the dog that is more alert, reads paths, assesses terrain, and watches over its human. In the city, it is the human who orders traffic, density, stimuli, and social rules, and watches over the dog.

This is not arbitrariness. It is a living, dynamic order.

Guidance, then, does not mean submission. Ordered guidance means assuming responsibility at the right moment — in a way that is understandable, calm, and reliable.

A dog that remains calm out of understanding, trust, and connection is a different counterpart than a dog that has learned to suppress impulses as long as the reward is in sight.

A dog that truly learns to read its human, its environment, and the social situation is more stable in unforeseen situations than a dog that primarily waits for its reward and receives the world only through its reference person.

Prevention must therefore build on understanding on both sides — in the child as well as in the dog. On connections instead of checklists. On relationship instead of control. On orientation instead of mere conditioning.

Conclusion: True Safety Arises Through Empowerment

From the understandable wish for safety, new divides sometimes emerge unintentionally: between children and animals, between dog guardians and authorities, between prevention and relationship.

But safety and trust are not opposites. They depend on one another.

Modern prevention must not educate children into fear and freezing. It must strengthen them in standing in the world awake, calm, empathetic, oriented, and capable of action.

This is not a contradiction of existing protective efforts — it is their consistent development.

Children should learn to recognise dangers without losing themselves inwardly. They should respect boundaries without fearing living beings as a whole. They should be able to ask for help without having to give up their own perception. And they should meet dogs with respect — not naively, but with an open gaze and a clear posture.

A contemporary, scientifically informed prevention approach does not protect children by making them invisible.

It protects children by empowering them to perceive, to remain calm, to be respectful, to communicate, to orient themselves and remain in connection — and to understand living beings not only as risks, but as counterparts.

True safety does not arise from freezing.

True safety arises from understanding, relationship, and lived responsibility — the very roots of sovereignty and self-confidence.