Read For the Love of a Dog Online
Authors: Ph.D., Patricia McConnell
For the Love of a Dog (36 page)
Some people imagine “positive” training to mean that we treat dogs with kid gloves and let them do whatever they want. Far from it. Just because I use positive things like treats, play, and petting doesn’t mean I let my dogs act like coyotes in the living room. “Positive” doesn’t mean “permissive;” it just means that dogs learn to mind their manners because it makes them feel good.
As much as I love my dogs, I want and need them to be polite members of society. If dogs are going to live with us, they need to learn manners just like children do. There are lots and lots of wonderful dog trainers who avoid using punishment whenever they can, and their dogs are often more obedient than dogs who have been threatened.
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You can be positive while still setting boundaries, being what I call a “benevolent leader” to your dog, just like a good parent or teacher.
Don’t let people convince you that you have to “get dominance”
over your dog by being forceful and intimidating. “Dominance,” perhaps one of the most misunderstood words in the English language, describes who gets the bone if two individuals want it. It doesn’t say anything about
how
the winner gets the bone, just that she does. Certainly, one can get the bone by using aggression, but that’s only one method, and a risky and expensive one at that. Social hierarchies are believed to function to avoid that kind of aggression, not encourage it. Remember that study of how piglets responded to being restrained on their backs? The ones who were most aggressive in response were
not
more likely to be the dominant members of the group when they matured. They were simply more likely to be aggressive in any kind of conflict, while the more docile pigs were able to be more flexible, and used aggression only when there was no other option available. As members of the most resourceful of species, we always have lots of options. Aggression toward our dogs should be last on the list. After all, they are our best friends.
As important, dominance has nothing to do with whether your dog comes when called or jumps on visitors. The sooner we stop invoking it to solve the problems most of us have with our dogs, the happier we’ll all be. Happiness—now that’s a refreshing change from fear and anger, and happily, it’s the subject of the next chapter.
1
Be clear that this was a result of being in the right place at the right time, and had virtually nothing to do with any athletic ability of mine.
2
The phenomenon is called paedomorphism, and involves a change in the development of an animal such that it retains many of its juvenile characteristics, even as a reproductively viable adult.
3
No, this is not an excuse to yell at me if something I say makes you mad. Everyone can learn to better manage anger, even if it means teaching yourself to go cool off in your crate.
4
The exact cause of Number 40s death is unknown, but all the evidence points to a horrific battle in which her own pack turned on her and injured her so badly she died the next day.
5
Please avoid the mistake made by one of my clients, who said, “I don’t know anything about the temperament of the sire. I couldn’t get anywhere near him, he was barking and snarling so much.” Oh, dear.
6
Perhaps we should develop a “temperament test” for dating services. It would probably not include rolling your date over on his or her back.
7
I say “little” because Solo was so small compared with everyone else in the house, but he was a huge puppy, growing by leaps and bounds, with an endless supply of creamy milk all to himself. I had to restrict his feeding times at one point, because I was concerned about him growing too big too fast.
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Newborn pups are similar in size across breeds, unlike their adult counterparts; Great Dane puppies are only a few ounces larger than Miniature Poodle puppies. What is different is the size of the litter: Labrador Retrievers tend to have litters of ten to thirteen, while tiny dogs, like Chihuahuas, have only one or two.
9
For those of you who are interested, the mother was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and her live-in boyfriend was sentenced to two years.
10
At least for now. Cross your paws for me when I get a new dog.
11
Now you know why it’s so easy for someone else to say “don’t worry about it, it’ll be fine” but so hard to take their advice when you’re the one who’s concerned.
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See the References for a list of some great dog training books.
13
How much anger is expressed in humans is also influenced by culture—with Asian cultures being far less likely to accept visible signs of anger than Western cultures. In the United States I suspect that our technology is making us even less tolerant of frustration, accustomed as we are to instant messaging and fast food.
14
Not only is their physiology more like wild-type canids (most of them only come into estrus once a year, instead of twice a year like domestic dogs), but their behavior is also more similar to their wild cousins’ than to the behavior of the Collie down the block.
15
See the References for the names and books of some of the country’s top trainers who use positive reinforcement. There are more and more of them, and their ability to create happy, well-behaved dogs can knock your socks off.
HAPPINESS
How and why dogs make us happy,
and how we can return the favor
It’d been a hard day. Too many difficult cases with heartbroken owners and dangerous dogs. Too many computer glitches and pens that ran out of ink. We all have our own versions of it, but everyone knows what it feels like to have a tough day. I remember walking into the farmhouse exhausted and depressed, burdened by the day behind me, tired from thinking about the chores that lay ahead. There were dogs to feed and walk, sheep to grain and water, baby lambs who needed bottle-feeding and a fence crushed by a fallen tree that needed repair before the ram ended up on the highway and I ended up in a whole lot of trouble
.
That wasn’t all. Pip had a litter of puppies, five weeks old now, and big enough to have overwhelmed their mom’s efforts to clean up after them. After I fed the adult dogs I turned with a weary sigh to sprucing up the puppy pen. As I tried to move the dirty towels out from underneath the pups, they began to try to grab them and play tug-of-war. Too tired to be charmed at first, I gently pushed them aside. Everyone who’s raised a young puppy knows how long that lasted. One of the pups, Rosie, continued the game with particular exuberance. Shiny-eyed and sparkling with glee, she’d leap onto the towel as I tried to pull it away, like a coyote stabbing her forelegs onto a mouse in the grass. Rosie’s efforts were so endearing that I couldn’t help but laugh. I forgot about the chores for a while, and began to play with her intentionally
.
As we played, Rosie seemed not just overcome with happiness; she seemed to be happiness itself. Her little face radiated so much joy that
within minutes I wasn’t just playing with Rosie, I was playing with the same cheerful abandon as she was. All my worries about clients and chores were forgotten. I laughed so hard I almost cried, while Rosie tried out her newfound athletic abilities, leaping and spinning—sort of—-on my lap. Her efforts often ended in abject failure—she’d fall over sideways or topple backward in midspin—but her face never lost its look of pure, unmitigated joy. It makes me happy just writing about it. It made me happy all the rest of that night, when carrying water and dragging trees off fences became a pleasure, rather than a chore
.
I can’t count the number of times that the happiness of a dog has flowed in my direction, but it’s one of the reasons I have dogs. Surely, it’s one of the reasons we all have dogs. We don’t spend nine billion dollars a year on dog food just to have dog hair all over our couches. Dogs may guard our houses and herd our sheep, but that’s not the primary reason we have them. Dogs make us happy, because if dogs do anything well, it’s being happy themselves, and happiness—bless it—is catching
.
Of all the animals on earth, few seem to express happiness and joy as well as a dog. A happy dog can’t seem to contain his emotions within his own body; exuberance radiates off dogs like light from a sparkler. Of course, that’s not true of all dogs, or of any dog all the time, but the vast majority of dogs seem to be overwhelmingly happy for much of their lives. Certainly, if they have food and water and companionship, most dogs seem to be happier than most people. You might argue they have every reason to be happy—a life without automobile repair bills and quarreling children sounds pretty good—but there’s more to it than a lack of daily problems.
Earlier, we talked about how adult dogs retain many of the characteristics of youth. The youthfulness we see in middle-aged dogs is expressed not only as playfulness and docility, but also in their expression of happiness. Pure, unrestrained happiness is an emotion we associate with youth, not with maturity. The comedian Jon Stewart was talking about that phenomenon recently on a late-night television show, describing the giddy intensity of his young child’s happiness. “When do we lose that?” he asked. “What happens to that pure sense of joy we had when we were young?”
The unmitigated joy of youth may fade as we mature, but it doesn’t disappear in adult dogs, who play with the exuberance and abandon of children. Of course, most people also remain playful long into their adulthood—just check out the number of middle-aged men and women on tennis courts. But dogs play more like children play, totally in the moment, barely able to contain their happiness. “A ball?! You have a
ball?!
Oh oh oh, that’s wonderful, miraculous, exquisite! Will you throw it? Oh please, please, please throw it.
Oh boy!
You threw it! I get to run after it, pick it up, and bring it back!” Of course, we all know I’m just making those words up and anthropomorphically putting them into the mouth of a dog. But if a ball-loving Labrador could talk, isn’t that the gist of what he’d say?
The happiness of dogs may be more childlike and exuberant than that of adult humans, but surely the experience of happiness is something that we share. There’s no question that one aspect of happiness—its physical expression—is similar in dogs and people. Who could miss the expression of joy on the face of a happy dog? Without reading the accompanying text, look at the photos in the middle of the book. It’s as easy to pick out the happy dogs as it is the happy people, isn’t it?
Happy dogs have the same relaxed, open faces as happy people. In both species, our mouths relax and our lower jaws loosen. Remember “open mouth/closed mouth” from the chapter on expressions: the “open mouth” of a relaxed dog is unmistakable, and can be a good indication that a dog is comfortable in your presence. It’s an expression that’s not only easy to see but also highly relevant to us as a species. We are hardwired to recognize the loose, relaxed jaw that goes along with a smile; people of every culture find open-mouthed smiles the easiest expressions to recognize. Newborn children even respond to an upward-curved line “smiling” under two dots. It seems we are genetically programmed to associate these patterns with something safe and good. No surprise, then, that we love seeing the curve of an open mouth on a dog’s face, or that we respond by feeling happy ourselves.
The face of a happy dog or a happy person has a full, smooth look, as if the muscles underneath were plumped up like pillows at a bed-and-breakfast. In contrast, tired, angry, or fearful dogs have tight, drawn
looks, just like the faces of unhappy people. Look at the three photos of the dog Gus in the middle of the book, and focus on the fullness, or lack of it, in his face. Once you notice it, it’s hard to miss, and it’s just as clear on a dog’s face as on the face of a person.
Along with the expression of the mouth and the fullness of the skin, the eyes of a dog are a wonderful source of information about whether she’s happy or not. Happy dogs, like happy people, have soft, dewy-looking eyes. This is a perfect example of the “principle of antithesis” described by Darwin, in which opposite emotions are expressed with opposite body postures. The soft eyes of a happy dog are the opposite of the hard eyes of a dog who is overaroused or threatening to bite. In our species, soft eyes are associated with happiness and love; never with anger or anxiety
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Old-time movie producers were so aware of this, they actually put Vaseline on the lens when filming the romantic female lead, all to make her look as soft and dewy as possible. Think of the liquid eyes of Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca
.
Dogs also tend to crinkle the muscles around their eyes when they’re happy to greet someone, be it a human or a dog. Watch your dog’s face when you greet her after an absence—friendly, affiliative dogs will greet you with sloppy, relaxed faces and the squinty eyes of a smiling person. As mentioned in Chapter 2, wrinkled eyes may be most common in relatively submissive dogs, but in any case they are the exact opposite of the rounded, fixed eye of a dog who’s warning you to stay away. You’re most likely to see this expression when you’re greeting a friendly, well-socialized dog, who drops his head, lowers his ears and tail, opens his mouth and wrinkles the muscles around his eyes. When I approach a dog who’s voluntarily coming up to greet me, whose mouth is open, and whose eyes are crinkled, I think “Friendly dog,” and I’m happy to crinkle my eyes right back.
There’s one important difference between eye expressions and emotion in people and dogs, and that’s the effect of direct eye contact. As I mentioned earlier, extended eye contact between familiar people is often an expression of love and attachment. Any of us can identify a couple in love by their long, languorous looks at each other, and anyone
who’s been in love can remember the warm happiness they felt when they gazed deeply into the eyes of their lover. It’s always been assumed that people looked into each other’s eyes because of their mutual love, but the process can go in both directions. As I mentioned earlier, if you take two willing strangers off the street and ask them to gaze into each other’s eyes, they’ll report strong feelings of warmth and attachment after just a few minutes.