Dog Sense (38 page)

However, let us for a moment give dogs the benefit of the (considerable) doubt and assume that they
can
feel guilt. In order for dogs to communicate that guilty feeling, they would have to behave in some specific way that unequivocally signaled that feeling to their owners,
before
the owners became aware that the dogs had done something to feel guilty about. Although dogs could conceivably learn some specific piece of behavior that would convey this message, it's very difficult to surmise why such an ability might have evolved. Would it be sensible for a young wolf to walk up to its father and confess that it had eaten the best piece
of meat of a kill while his back was turned? Unlikely. However, let's entertain for a moment the possibility that this is one of the cognitive abilities that dogs are supposed to have gained during the course of domestication. What happens after a dog signals its “guilt”? Most likely, it will be punished by its owner. Why would a dog learn a social signal that immediately triggers punishment? The punishment should
inhibit
the performance of the signal, not promote it.

Thus it is probably not surprising that, in a study examining the kinds of behavior that dog owners took as evidence of guilt in their pets,
⁵
all that the scientist found were signs of fear or affection. Owners were asked to describe what their dogs did that made them believe the dogs were feeling guilty. They came up with a long list of behaviors, including avoiding eye contact, lying down and rolling over, dropping the tail, rapidly wagging the tail in this lowered position, holding the head and/or ears down, moving away, raising a paw, licking, and so on. But all of these behaviors are evident in other situations too—some associated with fear, some with anxiety, and some with affection. None could reasonably be claimed as diagnostic of “guilt.”

The next phase of the study was conducted in fourteen of the owners' homes, where a test was set up to make the dogs look “guilty.” All of the dogs had previously been trained to take a food treat only when their owners gave them explicit permission. During the study, a treat was duly produced and the owner commanded the dog not to eat it. The owner then left the room. Once the owner was out of earshot, one of two things happened, depending on the experimental protocol: Either the treat was removed or it was handed to the dog with encouragement to eat it. Once there was no longer any visible evidence of what might have happened to the treat, the owner was invited back into the room.

The owners' behavior was then manipulated to see how it affected their dog's behavior. Just before they were allowed back into the room, the owners were told that the dog either had “stolen” the treat or had not stolen it. The owners were then encouraged to do whatever they would normally do in that circumstance; that is, they could praise the dog if they had been told that it had left the treat alone or admonish the dog if it had disobeyed and eaten the treat. Whether this was the appropriate behavior for the situation depended, of course, on whether
or not the owners had been told the truth about what had happened when they were out of the room. The clever twist in this protocol was that all possible combinations were presented: “right”—dog scolded after actually eating the treat or dog praised for not eating and “wrong”—dog praised after actually eating the treat or dog scolded having not been allowed to eat. To avoid affecting the sincerity of their reactions, the owners weren't told until after the experiment was complete that they had at times been deceived about what their dogs had really done.

The results were very clear-cut. The way the dogs behaved depended not on what they had or had not actually done but, rather, on the owners' behavior, which in turn was based on what they
believed
their dogs had done. If the dogs had really experienced “guilt,” they should always have looked guilty after they had eaten the treat. In fact, they performed their “guilty” behavior (each dog was slightly different in this regard) only when the owner had been
told
they had eaten it and therefore scolded them—even when they hadn't actually been given any opportunity to eat the treat. Moreover, the three dogs who were regularly physically punished (forced down, grabbed, or hit) by their owners when they disobeyed were those who performed the “guilty” behavior most intensely. The inescapable conclusion is that “guilty” behavior is in fact a mixture of fearful anticipation of punishment (hence the exaggerated behavior of the dogs who were physically punished) and attempts to reestablish a friendly relationship with the owner (hence the dogs' “submissive” behavior such as rolling over, licking, and paw-raising).

So what is actually going on in these dogs' minds, if they're not feeling “guilty”? Let's assume that they are using their default learning “rule” of associating events that occur very close together in time. So the dog understands this pattern: Owner comes home, owner punishes me, I can reduce the intensity of the punishment by performing affiliative (submissive) behavior. The next time the owner comes home, the memory of previous punishment triggers this affiliative behavior regardless of whether the owner has any intention of punishing the dog. All the dog understands is that on some occasions the arrival of the owner is followed by punishment and on other occasions it is not—in an apparently unpredictable way. As a consequence, the level of anxiety rises and the affiliative behavior becomes more frantic, the goal being to achieve
reconciliation with the owner so that the anxiety goes away. We have no evidence to support the idea that dogs can, at such an intensely emotional moment, “think back” to what event in the past might be determining whether the normal friendly greeting is replaced by chastisement.

Misconceptions about canine emotion are an important issue in pet-keeping. In general, owners want their dogs to live up to the expectations they have of them; when the dogs do not, they may resort to punishing them—or even disposing of them. If such expectations are based on a misapprehension of what dogs are actually capable of, dogs have little hope of rectifying the situation, since they will have no comprehension of why their owners are behaving in a particular way. Hence their relationship is likely to deteriorate.

There are probably few problems in store for a dog whose owner mistakenly believes it is grieving, since the owner's reaction will presumably be an affectionate one, but the misattribution of guilt can have serious consequences for the dog. Many dogs get upset at being left alone by their owners. As a consequence of the insecurity they feel when alone, they may do things that their owner will disapprove of—for example, chewing the frame of the door that the owner left through or trying to bury themselves under the sofa cushions and damaging them in the process. The returning owner sees the damage and immediately punishes the dog, thinking, almost certainly wrongly, that the dog will associate the punishment with the “crime” and thus not do it again. In fact, quite the opposite will occur: Because the punishment is associated with the owner returning, the anxiety felt during separation intensifies, making it
more
likely that the dog will be driven by its insecurity to do something the owner disapproves of while the owner is away. More punishment follows, and so a vicious cycle ensues (one that can last for years unless the owner seeks expert help). Indeed, a dog's life can be ruined by a simple and easily corrected misunderstanding of its emotional intelligence.

However, it's not just owners who have difficulty in interpreting and understanding their dogs' emotions: Dogs themselves, given their inability to think dispassionately about how they're feeling, are not good at dealing with their own emotions. Their lack of emotional sophistication manifests itself not only in their relatively limited emotional palette but
also in their inability to rationalize such simpler emotions as fear. Unlike us, they cannot “tell themselves” that there's nothing to be frightened of; they can't calm themselves down. Nowhere is this more evident than in their irrational fear of loud noises.

Given that dogs have long been used as aids for game shooting, it's surprising that so many of them are frightened of noises. (If there was any genetic basis to this fear, the expectation is that it would have been largely selected out by now.) Up to half the dogs in the UK react fearfully to fireworks, gunfire, and so on. Although some dogs probably habituate quickly to loud noises, so that their owners never notice a problem, many instead become sensitized. It's perfectly natural for a dog to be fearful of a loud noise that happens without warning and with no identifiable source or cause. Yet this very unpredictability is what makes it difficult for the dog to know how to react. Unfortunately, whatever it does will be only partly effective; hiding behind the sofa may provide a feeling of protection, but it doesn't serve to reduce the volume of the next bang very much. This inability to deal with the noise triggers an inability to cope, then an escalation of the emotional reaction and, in some dogs, the emergence of a full-blown phobia such that the triggering sound, even at a low level, will set off an extremely fearful reaction. Such phobias also occur in humans, of course, but their much greater prevalence in dogs is a sign of just how much dogs are at the mercy of their emotions when faced with situations that evolution has not prepared them for.

Dogs' limited capacity for emotional self-control can therefore have real consequences for their welfare. Dogs cannot “pull themselves together.” Their instincts tell them to be frightened of sudden, novel events, and when they find such events incomprehensible (e.g., when they hear the loud bang of a firework from behind a closed curtain), they are not capable of dismissing the events as irrelevant. On the contrary, some dogs become more and more frightened every time. Similarly, since dogs lack the mental abilities to feel “guilt,” let alone its more abstract cousin “shame,” owners who punish them on the basis that they “obviously know they have done wrong” are doing them a great disservice.

The scientific exploration of canine emotions and moods is still in its infancy, but there will surely be new developments in the near future. In particular, a new technique allowing dogs to tell us how they are feeling may have great potential (see the box titled “
In the Mood?
”). But there is little doubt that emotions are part of their minute-by-minute experience of their existence.

Finally, I must allow that even the detached, scientific approach to emotion that I have tried to adopt contains at least one residual trace of anthropomorphism: I have discussed emotions using the names that we humans give them. The most basic emotions are so rooted in mammalian physiology and the more primitive parts of the mammalian brain that it is reasonable to assume that they are fundamentally the same whether experienced by a dog or by a human, even though the details of that experience may differ. However, when it comes to the simpler self-conscious emotions, such as jealousy, can we be sure that dogs possess only those that we humans have, and can put a name to? While I am reasonably confident that dogs don't feel guilt (as just one example), it doesn't necessarily follow that their emotional lives are any less rich than ours—just different. For instance, since they are such social animals, maybe they compensate for their less sophisticated cognitive abilities by having more fine-grained emotions. If the Inuit can have fifteen words for snow,
⁷
maybe dogs can experience fifteen kinds of love?