For the Love of a Dog (31 page)

However, it makes no sense to avoid inaccurate projections by pretending that our dogs can’t ever be angry. Anger is too primal and too universal an emotion to be ignored, and it’s absurd to imagine that we’re the only species to experience it. Of course, having our big, impressive brains means that many of our inner experiences are very different from those of animals, and it may well be that humans and dogs experience anger in different ways. But the similarities are impressive, and we ignore them at our peril.

One of the many similarities between anger in humans and anger in dogs is in its expression. As you can see in the photos, the face of an angry dog resembles the face of an angry human. Imagine being five years old again, and make an angry face right now, letting your face do whatever it wants. You’ll find that your mouth is closed, your lips are pushed forward, and your eyebrows move together and downward. You can see a similar expression on the face of a confident dog warning that she’s about to bite. As in a human’s expression of anger, the mouth moves in the opposite direction from a fear grimace. As we saw in Chapter 2, the corners of the mouth retract when we’re frightened, but when we’re angry, the corners of the mouth are pushed forward. In dogs this is called an offensive pucker; it can tell
you a lot about the internal state of a dog, as well as what he’s likely to do next. This expression is never seen on a defensive dog, but is seen on the faces of confident dogs who are on offense and are sending a clear threat that unless you change your behavior, you’re at risk of being bitten.

We talked about offensive puckers relating to dogs who are on offense in Chapter 2, but I’m not sure that always means the dogs are angry. Surely both people and dogs can be threatening aggression without feeling angry. There are dogs out there that I call hit men, because their aggression seems devoid of emotional arousal and yet is chillingly serious. However, luckily for all of us, professional killers are relatively rare in both species, and when I see an offensive pucker, especially one combined with a wrinkled forehead and hard eyes, I’m inclined to believe that the dog is experiencing something akin to anger in humans.

As mentioned in Chapter 2, hard eyes are more difficult to describe than changes in the mouth or eyebrows. They’re a bit like great art— you’ll know it when you see it, but you can’t quite articulate what it is. (I suspect this is a great example of the kind of unconscious knowledge described by Malcolm Gladwell in
Blink.)
Hard or angry eyes have a focused and rigid quality, but the best most of us can do is to describe them as “hard” or “cold.” If you see a dog with hard eyes, an offensive pucker, and a stiffened body, stop doing whatever you were doing and reevaluate your options. Getting the heck out of there might be a good choice.

As you get better at reading expressions of anger, you’ll see flickers of it that are so fleeting they may have escaped your attention in the past. These “micro-expressions” can occur so quickly they actually precede the feeling of anger in the person making them. The nationally known handler and trainer Sue Sternberg has a great series of videotapes of dogs looking “friendly.” The dogs’ mouths are open, their tails are wagging, and they leap up onto the handlers as if excited to see them. But if you look closely, the dogs’ bodies aren’t wagging, they’re stiff. The dogs’ mouths may be open, but it’s because they’re aroused and overheated, not because they’re relaxed. If someone touches them, they turn and glare, ever so briefly, at the person’s face right before they leap up toward it. These dogs are excited, all right, but not in a good
way. Their eyes are rounded, cold, and hard, with none of the crinkles on the faces of friendly dogs. Sometimes the warnings they give are the briefest of looks, usually accompanied by the mouth closing and the commissure moving forward for just an instant. The message here is best read as “Stop touching me, or I’ll take matters into my own teeth.” Such micro-expressions occur in both people and dogs—indeed, everyone I know who has worked with aggressive dogs says they are better at reading anger on the faces of people now that they’ve gotten so good at seeing it on dogs.

In all animals, the external signs of anger are accompanied by a suite of internal changes. When we and our dogs get angry, our amygdalas begin a series of biochemical changes that ready us for battle. Our heart rate accelerates, our blood pressure rises, our muscles tense, and our breathing speeds up. Neurotransmitters called catecholamines flush through our bodies, producing a burst of energy. That rush of energy is one of the reasons we feel compelled to
do something
when we’re angry, and why it takes maturity and experience to pause and think before acting. No wonder we blurt out hurtful words that were best left unsaid: part of our brain is compelling our body to act, even when caution is the wisest choice. Bathed in the stimulating hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline, an angry body is, by definition, aroused and looking for a fight.

As we saw in the chapter on fear, adrenaline and its relatives can take a long time to leave the body. This is one of the reasons it can be so hard to let go of anger. All of us have, at some point, been angry at a perceived injustice, only to discover that we were misinformed. But rather than immediately relaxing, it is common for us to still feel angry, even though the anger no longer makes any sense. That’s because our bodies are primed for battle, and no matter how hard our rational brain tries to calm us down, it takes time for our internal chemistry to get back to normal. We can go on alert in an instant—the need for an immediate response being obvious—but we can’t calm our bodies down as quickly as we can ramp them up. That’s why it can be hard to calm down after someone apologizes to us. We may intellectually
grant forgiveness, but our body’s chemistry can’t turn things around that fast.

Dogs undergo the same physiological changes as people, and they, too, can have lingering adrenaline in the system, so that their bodies remain primed for action long after the initial incident occurred. That is one of the reasons I often ask clients what happened in the hours
before
an incident occurred: residual adrenaline can make dogs more likely to react with anger, just as it can in people. This is also why it can be dangerous to use a strong physical correction on some dogs: engaging in battle with a dog who is already pumped up for a fight can make things worse. I’ve seen hundreds of examples of these spirals of arousal and anger in which both the person and the dog become increasingly enraged. This is a situation you want to avoid: fights don’t always have winners, and too often the result is that both of you end up losing.

Anger has many similarities to fear: it’s a primitive emotion that is dependent upon the amygdala, and it results in a flush of adrenaline and other substances that ready the body for action. Anger is also like fear in that its expression can be influenced by genetics, early development, and a lifetime of learning and experience. We’ll talk about each of those components next, and then move on to talk about how to avoid anger-related problems between you and your dog.

Frankie, all of eight weeks old, wobbled into the offices of Dog’s Best Friend, Ltd., and work pretty much came to a standstill. It’s always a great day when a puppy comes to visit the office; it’s a welcome change from our usual routine. Eighty percent of our cases are about aggression, and all of our staff are taught to sit on their hands when a dog enters the building. Until we’ve had a chance to evaluate him, who knows what his triggers are? Maybe he’s fine until someone reaches out to pet him. Perhaps the dog loves women with blond hair, and only bites brunettes. You learn fast, sitting in a little room with a dog who has bitten, to be thoughtful about each and every move you make. After a while, slow, quiet movement becomes so routine it can be run out of your energy-conserving cerebellum rather than your cortex. But there’s always an edge of arousal—at least, there should be, if you’re going to do your job right
.

But puppies are another matter. In they squirm, bodies wagging and eyes shining and the office breathes a great, collective sigh of relief. Five-year-old children don’t hold up convenience stores, and eight-week-old puppies don’t tend to be aggressive. Neither do they come in with histories of growling and biting people. They waddle into the office with disproportionately large paws and foreheads, their baby-mammal “cute factor” off the charts. We do what everyone does when they see a puppy. Our voices go up and our bodies sink down, the better to pet and coo and soak up the sweetness of youth
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Frankie got all the attention that every puppy engenders, and then came into my office for an evaluation. The family was concerned about a few incidents of nipping and wanted to get my opinion before it was too late to return the dog to the breeder. That was the last thing they wanted to do, but they had three young children and were wise enough to understand the importance of ensuring that the puppy was a good match for their family
.

I was glad they’d come in, because it’s impossible to evaluate this kind of case over the phone. It’s hard enough to predict how a dog will behave as an adult on the basis of her behavior at eight weeks. It’s downright impossible to do so over the phone. I’m also glad they understood, as many people don’t, that dogs come with predispositions to behave one way or the other. That’s as true of a dog’s tendency to lose her temper as of the tendency to be fearful
.

Frankie busily explored the office while the family and I talked about some of the incidents that concerned them. The first nipping incident had occurred when Frankie was pulled away from a chew toy, the second when she was stopped from bolting out the door. “Nipping” can mean a lot of things, from gentle mouthing of the hand to a serious bite. The family thought Frankie’s version of it was troubling and wanted a more experienced opinion. My job was to elicit the behavior in a humane way, in order to see for myself whether Frankie’s behavior was typical of a puppy suited to live with a family
.

I called Frankie over to me and gave her a treat for coming and then after a few minutes of petting I gently rolled her over on her back. I wanted to see what she’d do when she tried to get up, but couldn’t. The incidents described by the family all occurred when Frankie wanted something and couldn’t get it—classic frustration. By gently holding the puppy
on her back long after she wanted to get up, I could see for myself how she responded when she felt frustrated. When you do this, most puppies squirm a bit; some mouth at your hand as if to make it go away. Others go stiff and silent, the corners of their mouths pulled back in a fear grimace. I tried the exercise on Tulip when she was seven weeks of age, and I can still remember her firecracker expression as she joyfully, but determinedly, tried to get up. That pretty much sums up Tulip—joyful and determined—and I’ve learned over the years that this particular exercise can tell me a lot about who a dog is, and how they respond to the frustrations that life always has to offer
.

Rolled over on her back, with my hand resting on her chest, Frankie went still momentarily, and then began to thrash like a fish out of water. As she did, she started to growl, and began biting my hands with enough force to hurt. Her agitation increased, and the corners of her mouth moved forward in an offensive pucker. Her growls deepened into sounds too low, it seemed, to come from such a tiny chest. After just a few seconds of being held on her back, Frankie had worked herself up to a full-blown rage. Her eyes radiated fury, her mouth was forward and puckered, and her teeth were exposed. She tried desperately to sink them into my hand. She was so aroused that saliva was bubbling around her lips. I remember thinking: “This is what ‘spitting mad’ means.”

All this was bad enough, but Frankie’s response when I released her was even worse. Rather than getting up and licking my hands (a common response from sweet, docile puppies) or even moving away and glaring at me, Frankie took a split second to realize she was fee, and then lunged straight at my face as if to bite it. She didn’t—at eight weeks, she was easy to stop— but the look on her face chilled me to the bone. Straight out of a horror movie in which young children turn evil and violent, she had the steel-trap expression of an adult willing to kill you, on a face that should have reflected the innocence of youth
.

Frankie, thank the stars, was taken back by the breeder. The family found an amiable dog from the shelter who didn’t give it a thought when her tail was grabbed by the family’s two-year-old
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In the right environment and with the right handler, Frankie might have turned into a fine dog although I would never have placed her with young children. Nonetheless, sometimes you can work wonders. A veterinarian friend and colleague once brought in a Corgi puppy she had bred
who reacted very much like Frankie. Rightfully concerned, she kept the dog and worked with him for months, rather than send Darth Vader to some hapless family expecting Prince Charming. Working together, we developed a doggy anger management program, and son of a gun, the pup grew into a good dog who lives happily and politely in the home of a single woman. He’s a reminder that genetics are blueprints that can be altered by the right architect, if you can modify them before the foundation is set in stone
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Frankie the puppy is a good example of the genetic basis of anger. People and dogs share the ability to become angry, but, in both species, the frequency and intensity of anger vary from individual to individual. We all know that some of us come out of the chute a lot grumpier than others—ask any parent with more than one child. Sporting events, with their potential for both frustration and emotional arousal, are great tests of an individual’s ability to handle frustration. When he was young, John McEnroe charged onto the tennis court with a temper as powerful as his forehand. Red-faced with rage, he’d scream at the line judge and slam his racket to the ground when things didn’t go his way. Older fans were appalled, accustomed as they were to the more genteel play of times past. Times may have changed, and outbursts of anger may be more acceptable now than they were before, but McEnroe’s behavior wasn’t just about “letting it all hang out.” Look at another tennis star, Roger Federer, who’s playing at the same age that McEnroe was when he was stomping around the court. Federer is so calm and polite that commentators (including the now mellow and gracious McEnroe) are surprised if he so much as raises his voice. Two different people, with two different personalities. We see it all the time, and yet we often don’t focus on its importance. I’ve never seen anger management skills mentioned in a personal ad (“Attractive, intelligent, handles frustration with grace and aplomb …”), but which personality type do you want to spend the rest of your life with?