For the Love of a Dog (33 page)

If you can, take along an experienced dog trainer; or at least read up on the topic. I can’t stress enough the importance of relying on an expert evaluator if you can round one up. Although, ideally, all of these assessments would be completely objective, there’s a subjective quality to them that can be valuable,
if
it’s generated by someone with years of experience. Just as an art expert can take one look at a forgery and somehow know it’s not “right,” people who are great at reading dogs can get a sense about a dog that they find hard to describe, but that feels overwhelmingly important. I’ve seen dogs who made me nervous for no reason that I could discern, and dogs who growled and snarled at me who I was sure were bluffing. Often those intuitions have turned out to be good predictors of a dog’s subsequent behavior. It’s true that hunches aren’t always right, no matter how skilled or experienced a person might be. However, given how much we’re learning about the importance of intuitive knowledge, I don’t think they should be ignored.

It’s hard to imagine an emotion as important as anger not being affected by a dog’s environment during early development. We know that early development affects how an animal experiences fear, and we know that anger and fear are both driven by that ever-so-important structure the amygdala. It seems impossible to imagine that an individual’s
experience of anger would be unaffected by his early experiences in life. I know of no research on early development and anger in dogs, but my experience with a particular type of puppy suggests that early development can have a profound effect on the emotion of anger.

The first puppy was born early in the morning, after Pip and I had napped intermittently throughout the night. Pip was an experienced brood bitch who had easy deliveries, so I wasn’t terribly worried about the birthing process. Pip was also a wonderful mother who loved her puppies devotedly. She loved puppies so much she’d whine and cry when Lassie had her own litter, impatiently waiting for the day when she’d be allowed to play auntie to them. That morning her own first puppy came slowly, the black, shiny dome of his head appearing and disappearing as she alternated between straining and resting. When he finally came, he was huge—huge and beautiful, a large tricolored male who looked healthy and hearty once he slid out of Pip and into the morning sunlight. Pip and I cleaned him off together, and I nestled him in warm towels while we waited for the next puppy. And waited. And waited some more. Usually puppies come every thirty to sixty minutes, but baby dogs don’t read the books any more than baby humans do, and sometimes there’ll be a gap of several hours between puppies. I went back to my mystery novel. Pip napped. I paced. Pip slept
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After several hours passed, it began to dawn on me that this might be the only puppy. You mightn’t think that would be a crisis, but it felt like one to me. Over the years, I have seen what appeared to be a disproportionately large number of singleton puppies with serious behavior problems. Many of them seemed to have no frustration tolerance, and would spiral into a fury whenever they were pulled away from something they wanted. They often seemed grumpy when touched, and would growl and snap when petted, especially if disturbed when they were asleep. Many of these dogs became seriously aggressive, and their families came to me in despair, desperate to know whether their dogs could be saved. Some could, some couldn’t, and I was appalled that I might be responsible for creating a dog who caused the kind of emotional suffering I see in my office every week
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I’m supposed to help people, not cause the very problems I’m trained to alleviate, so when the vet confirmed that the litter contained a total of one puppy I was beside myself. I thought about keeping him, so no one else
would have to deal with him. Not a good idea at the time—I had too many dogs already, and getting another wouldn’t have been fair to them. I thought about putting him down. Fat chance of that. Holding him, all warm and snuggly against my chest, flooded with the hormones of nurturance, I would have fought off a pride of lions to protect the pup. I decided then and there to do everything I could to prevent the problems I’d seen in my office. I justified it as research, telling myself I could learn something important in the process. I did learn something, and I hope it has been of value to others, but the truth is I kept him because he was a tiny mewling baby mammal and I could no more have him put down that sunny winter morning than I could have stopped eating and drinking. I called him Solo
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I spent days asking myself why singleton pups might have less frustration tolerance than pups in litters, and whether there was anything I could do to prevent it. It seemed reasonable that the problem might relate to a lack of frustration during early development. Feeding time is great fun to watch, but it’s not always peaches and cream for the puppies. They don’t exactly wait in line at the cafeteria. Tiny paws and razor-sharp nails flailing they push and claw and barge their way to the milk bar, wreaking havoc among others who were just about to settle down to a square meal. Talk about frustration—puppies spend much of their day trying to get what they want, only to lose it to another. It seemed reasonable that a single puppy would never experience this kind of irritation, and so never develop a mechanism for handling it. I tried to find someone with a litter he could join, but wasn’t successful. Instead, I tried to replicate the actions of his littermates, in hopes the pup would somehow be better prepared for frustration at an older age
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And so began my daily routine of frustrating little Solo
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Three times a day I’d come into the nursery with his mom, and just as he connected with the milk bar, I’d use a puppy-sized stuffed animal to push him off. “Waaaaaw,” he’d squeal; I’d silently apologize, and then do it again. I kept the stuffed toy (an owl, actually) in the puppy pen so it would smell like him and his mom, and I carefully kept these sessions separate from the handling and stroking from people. The last thing I wanted him to learn was “Oh no! Here comes a human!” That was hardly the emotional response that would lead to a friendly, sociable pup, so I spent lots of time touching and stroking him in pleasurable ways, and let the owl do the dirty work as much as I could
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He growled at me when he was five weeks old. All I had done was touch him. I remember staying calm, keeping my hand on him until he settled, stroking him in the way he most seemed to enjoy, and then walking into another room and bursting into tears. A five-week-old puppy growling at a person is like a five-year-old child stabbing his mother with the scissors. On purpose. Even though I had done all I could to touch him pleasurably, here he was growling at me. My guess, and I want to be clear that it is only a guess, is no amount of handling on my part could make up for the constant physical contact that is part of a litter’s normal development
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I turned to the conditioning we talked about in the last chapter, and linked a brief touch with a tasty treat. Touch, treat. Touch, treat. Touch, treat. Over and over. Solo learned that a touch from me, anywhere on his body, led to something yummy in his tummy. In a few weeks he began to anticipate my touch and seek it out. I kept him longer than usual, until I was confident he was behaving like a sociable, normal puppy—happy to interact with people, able to handle life’s little frustrations without flying into a rage. I placed him with a single woman who had no plans for children. She came to visit when Solo was an adult, and it was clear the minute they jumped out of the car together that he was the light of her life. Whew
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Solo’s story is just that, a story. Science calls stories “anecdotes,” and reminds us that we have no idea whether a given anecdote is representative of the big picture, or an exception to the rule. It’s not clear from this story how much of an individual’s ability to tolerate frustration is influenced by what happens in the first few weeks of life. It does seem reasonable that dogs need to learn to handle frustration, just as children do. Unless you’re a breeder, you probably won’t have much of a chance to affect a pup’s early development, but you can pay attention to what your pup experienced when he was growing up at the milk bar. I don’t want you to worry that every singleton puppy will grow up to be a monster; far from it. I have met scores of lovely little dogs who
grew up without any siblings. Single “litters” are quite common in some of the tiny breeds—so they can’t always be avoided.
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But I do advise breeders and potential owners to be on the lookout for frustration intolerance, and, just as I did with Solo, take steps to ameliorate it while the pup is still young.

We’ll talk more later in the chapter about how to handle adult dogs who have little tolerance for frustration, but first I want to talk about another common component of anger, and that’s emotional arousal. Even an emotion as strong as anger can be controlled, redirected, or allowed to disperse if the angry individual stays contained. However, anger mixed with generalized arousal is a recipe for trouble, and it doesn’t matter if you have two legs or four. The following story is a chilling example of how the combination of anger and arousal can have tragic results.

I almost didn’t take the case. I thought about it for days, agonizing over the decision. A ten-year-old girl had been killed by six Rottweilers, in a long and horrific attack that took place in front of the girl’s best friend. From reading the newspapers, I knew that the details would be gruesome. Worse, the surviving girl, who had tried to save her friend, knew that anything she said might be held against her own mother, one of the owners of the dogs. The District Attorney was charging the surviving girl’s mother and her live-in boyfriend with being parties to homicide resulting from a vicious animal and related felony and misdemeanor counts
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The DA visited my office to ask me to be an expert witness for the prosecution. Usually it’s the owners who come to me, loving their dogs yet concerned about the safety of others. Sometimes they’ve been given a “dangerous dog” citation, and they need help designing a plan that keeps the public safe but prevents the family from having to euthanize their dog. Most come voluntarily, devastated over a bite to a neighbor, or concerned about a future bite they think is inevitable. I can’t recall another case in which I’ve been asked to help send someone to jail, and the decision to do so didn’t come easily
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I said yes. I said yes, because it became clear that the owners were indeed responsible for the needless and horrible death of a young girl. In my opinion, the dogs killed the child because no one had ever taught them emotional control, something every individual who lives in a social group needs to learn. Because they hadn’t learned to control their own emotions, what should have been a minor incident turned into a bloody riot
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No one knows what precipitated the attack. The two girls were alone in the house, except for a total of six Rottweilers, an adult male, an adult female, and four adolescents. None of the dogs had been spayed or neutered. All were underweight and in poor condition. None of the dogs had received any training, nor had they been outside the house beyond being tied up to a chain in the yard. Neighbors reported several incidents in which the dogs had been screamed at, struck, and kicked. Social services reported that most of the surfaces in the home, including the beds, were covered in the dogs’ urine and feces
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The surviving girl said her friend, Alissa, was petting one of the dogs in another room. She heard one low growl, and, in an apparent response to that, all the other dogs ran into the room toward the victim. Hearing Alissa begin to scream, she rushed into the room to find her underneath six frenzied dogs. She spent the next twenty minutes trying to save Alissa, at one point managing to drag her halfway out the door. The dogs pulled her back in. When her mother got home half an hour later, the girl was sitting beside her friend’s body, the dogs lying calmly around her
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None of us will ever know why the dogs killed a helpless ten-year-old girl, or what was in their minds when they did. We do know that the history and behavior of the dogs are consistent with those of dogs who have never learned to control their own emotions. We know that in the right circumstances, groups of dogs can leap from emotional excitement to emotional hysteria in a heartbeat. I think that’s what happened on the horrible night when Alissa died. It is highly unlikely that the dogs consciously began an attack with the intent to kill. It’s far more likely that, because of the way they’d been raised, a spark of irritation escalated into full-blown rage. Emotional arousal can be contagious, and a group of highly aroused, powerful animals, none of whom has ever learned emotional control, can
be as dangerous as a wildfire. We know this is true in our own species: it’s why anger and excitement at a sporting event can morph into aggression in a few seconds. Tragically for little Alissa, the same thing can happen in dogs
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Thankfully, that’s the most dramatic case I’ve ever had, but the link between anger, arousal, and aggression is a common one. Clients often tell me that their dogs are “out of control.” Usually what they mean is that they, the owners, are unable to control their dogs, but often the dogs are so aroused they can’t control themselves. You’ll find the abbreviation “OOC,” for “out of control,” in hundreds of my office’s case notes. It’s written in the files of dogs who erupted in rage when another dog ran into them while they scrambled out the door, and in the files of dogs who barked themselves into hysteria as another dog walked by the window. It describes dogs who spiral into a state of emotional overload and bite whatever is nearest, whether it be a table leg, another dog, or the person standing next to them.

Emotional arousal is an important factor in aggression cases, because it can make a big difference in the level of injury caused. A veterinary student once said to me that “a bite is a bite is a bite,” suggesting that it didn’t matter how hard a dog bit someone. He felt that every bite, no matter how minor, should be considered an equal violation of the human-dog bond. I don’t agree. Of course, no bite is acceptable, but there’s a profound difference between bites; just ask a bite victim. Which would you rather receive: a carefully measured, single nip in which the dog uses just enough pressure to get his point across, or the repeated bites of a glazed-eyed dog who sinks his teeth up to his gums into your arm in a frenzy of anger and arousal? I was bitten once by a wolf-dog hybrid disciplining me for picking up his bone. He looked straight into my eyes, and, faster than seemed physically possible, sank his teeth into the fat of my hand. It was a hard bite, made by what I think was an angry individual, but one in full control over his own level of arousal. If he had become aroused and gone into an emotional frenzy, I think he might have killed me.