For the Love of a Dog (3 page)

The fact is, we don’t know enough yet to be sure exactly what’s going on inside the minds of our dogs. But we know enough to consider the topic thoughtfully, and we know enough to stop and look around at what we do know, what we don’t know, and what we still want to learn. That’s what this book is about. It’s an inquiry into the emotions of dogs and of the people who love them. It is written in the belief that the issue is both gloriously simple and painstakingly complex. On the one hand,
of course
dogs have emotions. It seems so patently obvious to most of us that we feel foolish at having to say it. As much as any animal on earth, dogs express emotions as purely and clearly as a five-year-old child, and surely that’s part of why we love them so much.

And yet, once that’s acknowledged, things quickly get more complicated. Emotions are amazingly complex and, as is often the case, the more we know, the more complicated things get. As our knowledge of the brain deepens, we’re starting to understand that emotions are vital parts of our conscious and unconscious lives, integrally involved in our ability to make good (or bad) decisions. While we’ve historically considered rational thought to be superior to our emotions, it turns out
that “rational” thought uninformed by emotion can cause us no end of trouble.

Trouble, the kind between people and dogs, is one of the reasons I’m interested in this topic. I’m a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist who has worked with dogs with serious behavioral problems for seventeen years. Part of my job is to try to get into the heads of dogs whose behavior is problematic. Most of what motivates people to come to my office involves canine aggression—dogs who snarl when you take them by the collar, who bite the neighbor, or who start fights at the dog park. Other people come because their dogs panic when they leave the house, or leap through the plate-glass window when it thunders.

All these problems, I will argue, are influenced by emotions—by fear, by happiness, or by anger born of frustration. It’s important for me to know what emotions are involved, not just to help the dog and his owner, but to keep myself safe in a small room with a dog who bites people. Contrary to the belief of some, behaviorists, trainers, and veterinarians don’t come with a shield that protects us from being bitten. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “Oh, my, usually he would have bitten you by now!” from an owner whose prediction that their dog was going to bite didn’t result in any preventative steps on their part. But those of us who work with aggressive dogs usually don’t get bitten, because we’ve learned to read dogs and can make guesses about their emotions and motivations. Those guesses help us predict what a dog is about to do next, and how to respond, like a good dance partner, in a way that helps us both.

Of course, observing that a dog looks fearful doesn’t mean we understand how much of her experience of fear is like our own. But professionally, it matters that the outside of a dog can tell me something about the inside of a dog. That allows me to design a treatment plan that takes the personality of the dog into account, rather than provide a cookie-cutter approach straight out of a textbook. And even if it weren’t useful, the fact of the matter is, I simply want to know what it’s like to be a dog. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson said in
Dogs Never Lie About Love
, “I know them as well as I know my closest friend, and yet I have no idea who they are.” What an exquisite paradox. It sends shivers up my spine.

I want to know more about what dogs are feeling, and how those
feelings compare with mine. I want to know because I was trained as a scientist and am driven by the druglike excitement of discovery. I want to know because I think it’s important for our species to understand where we fit in with the rest of life. In addition, so much suffering—in both species—could be prevented if we had a better understanding of the emotional lives of our dogs. But most of all, I want to know because of my own dogs. My dogs are as important to me as my human friends. They are my buddies, my family, my co-workers, my therapists, and, like all good friends, occasionally thorns in my side. I want to know more about who they are, and what they are feeling—partly from a desire to give them the best life I can, and partly from a desire to deepen our friendship.

I have three dogs now. Three dogs and a gravestone in the pasture for my soul-mate dog, Cool Hand Luke, who died recently and still seems as much a part of the farm as I am. His daughter, twelve-year-old Lassie, is always at my side—a hardworking Border Collie who works the sheep, helps with dog-dog aggression cases, and joins me in public appearances. Lassie is buttery soft, as responsive as a race car, and, I think, worried much of the time.

Fifteen-year-old Pip is also a Border Collie, but she’s the one who didn’t read the book about how Border Collies are supposed to behave. Quiet and docile even as a puppy, Pip wags her tail to stubborn sheep and runs in terror if an ewe so much as turns and looks at her. Pip was always the quiet one, the nanny dog, the dog you could count on to stay at home and take care of the kids while the rest of you went out to a play A spirit guide to fearfully aggressive dogs, Pippy loved other dogs and men with equal devotion, and I’ve always wondered whether, if she had the choice of families, she would’ve chosen a home with a quiet, single man. Pip looks like a Border Collie crossed with a Labrador, complete with the sweet, goofy expression typical of retrievers on the outside, and a mind like a steel trap on the inside. Pip can learn a new trick in a session or two, while it takes Lassie days or weeks to figure it out. At fifteen, Pip is old now; she can’t hear very well and she follows me everywhere, breaking my heart when she stands watching out the window as I drive away on business trips.

And then there’s Tulip, my eleven-year-old Great Pyrenees, the poster child for dogs as emotional beings. She radiates joy like the sun
shining on a winter’s day. Tulip is a huge, fluffy, leap-spinning playground unto herself and I love her so much I can feel it in my chest just writing about it.

And that is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Our connection with dogs is based on emotion—on the joy they give us, the love we feel for them and from them. If we’re honest, it also includes the anger and hurt we experience when we feel betrayed by them, and the fear they engender when they flash their teeth or bite our faces. Dogs evoke emotions in us as if wringing water out of a sponge, and so discussions about whether they have emotions themselves seem like arguments about whether there’s a sun in the sky. But for all the love that we have for dogs, for all the joy and the tears, we have a lot to learn about our own emotions around them, and their emotional responses to us.

Love, as any partner or parent can tell you, isn’t the same as understanding. Like the woman who loved her Border Collie as much as she confused her, we all can profit from learning more about emotions in both species. Some people who love their dogs are oblivious to blatant expressions of emotion on the dogs’ faces (just ask any dog trainer). Others, not very good at controlling their own emotions around dogs, cause, at best, confusion; at worst, terrible suffering. Many dog owners don’t know that dogs, like kids, need to learn to control their own emotions. I’ve seen countless dogs who bit someone out of what I think was frustration, lashing out in an emotional outburst that could have been prevented if they’d learned what all individuals who live with others need to learn: that patience is a virtue.

Many emotions support or undermine our relationships with dogs, but fear stands alone as the single most common cause of serious behavior problems in dogs. Dogs destroy the house because they’re afraid of being alone, or tremble in the closet because they’re thunder phobic, or cower when the neighbor kids come over to play—and end up lashing out when the children trap them in the corner. Many people don’t realize how often dog bites are motivated by fear, or how yelling at them only increases their fear, making them more likely to bite again.

My hope is that this book, besides being intellectually interesting, will prevent some of those bites, and decrease some of the suffering that occurs when individuals love each other without the understanding necessary to keep the relationship healthy.
For the Love of a Dog
is a
combination of stories, science, and practical advice about how understanding emotions in both people and dogs can improve your relationship with your dog. It’s not a dog training book, but it’s full of information that can help your dog be better behaved, and help you to be a better handler. It doesn’t begin to discuss everything we know about the biology of emotions—that book would be too heavy to pick up. I’ve focused on the emotions I think are most relevant in dog-human relationships: fear, anger, joy, and joy’s cousin, love. My goal is to be both interesting and helpful to those of us who are, quite simply, crazy in love with our dogs. I wrote this book as much for dogs as I did for us, in the hopes it will, albeit indirectly, help dogs to better understand us—surely the world’s most confusing species.

¹
The abbreviation fMRI stands for “functional magnetic resonance imaging.” This procedure allows you to follow the flow of blood in the brain, and thus determine which areas of it are active at any given time.