For the Love of a Dog (2 page)

My first thanks are to all the dogs I’ve known who have given me joy, insight, and purpose. I thank my clients’ dogs for all they have taught me, I thank dogs I’ve only read about for their inspiration, and, with no apologies for the lump in my throat, I thank my dogs Lassie, Pip, and Tulip—my friends and family for over a decade. I thank Cool Hand Luke for being Cool Hand Luke, and for taking my heart and running with it. This book is for you.

Jennifer Gates continues to be the agent of every writer’s dream, and I am grateful every day for her support, knowledge, and wisdom. I thank my editors Dana Isaacson and Caroline Sutton for their help and advice, and for skillfully escorting the book through the labyrinth of publishing. I am grateful to all at Ballantine/Random House for the hard work involved in bringing any book into the light of day, with particular thanks to my walk-on-water copyeditor Jolanta Benal. Earlier drafts of the book profited greatly from readings by Jim Anderson, Rick Axsom, Jeffrey Baylis, Jim Billings, Jennifer Gates, Andrea Jennings, Karen London, Aimee Moore, Nancy Rafetto, Charles Snow-don, Tony Stretton, Denise Swedlund, and Chelse Wieland. I also owe a debt of thanks to Paul Ekman for his insightful comments about the chapter on visual signals. Julie Hecht did a yeoman’s job in her research for the book, and I thank her not only for that, but also for her support and enthusiasm while the book was being written.

This book could never have been written without the dedication of
the staff of Dog’s Best Friend, Ltd., who continued to help people and dogs while I spent the mornings writing. I am deeply grateful to Andrea Jennings, Aimee Moore, Denise Swedlund, Chelse Wieland, and all the trainers at DBF for their commitment and hard work to members of both species. I thank veterinarians John Dally, Chris Bessent, and Kim Utech for their caring and extensive efforts during Luke’s illness and death—I count myself lucky to have them on the team.

Many people helped me round up photographs for the book. I am very grateful to Marc Bekoff, Peter Burghardt, Jim Billings, Julia Dayoub, Corey Dingman, Khris Erikson, Carl Fritscher, Aimee Graham, Suzanne Hetts, Dana Isaacson, Karen B. London, and Sarah and Tim McClure. Sue Sternberg provided several of the most dramatic photos, and deserves special thanks. You can learn more about her work by going to
www.roundoutkennels.com
. The North Shore Animal League America, which sponsors and provides care for needy dogs, also graciously allowed me to use one of their photos, and you can go to
www.nsalamerica.org
to learn more about the organization. Dog Days of Wisconsin summer camp (
www.dogcamp.com
) for dogs provided the photo of the smiling Rottie, and I thank them and the photographer both.

Several professional photographers also stepped up to the plate, and I am grateful to Dan Becker in Gurnee, Illinois (
www.pyrphoto.com
); Chip Peterson in Decorah, Iowa (
[email protected]
); Monty Sloan at Wolf Park in Battle Ground, Indiana (
www.wolfphotography.com
); and Holly Montgomery in Calgary, Alberta (
www.mutshotsphotography.com
) for their generous assistance. Chelse Wieland gets lots of credit for posing for some of the expressions— here’s a happy face right back at you, and I thank Paul Ekman for the use of some of his examples of human facial expressions. The photo of the recumbent black dog with the huge fear grimace was given to me many years ago by a client, who was happy that her dog might help others understand their dog’s emotions. It’s a great photograph, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to use it.

I thank Wendy Barker, Saranindranath Tagore, and publisher George Braziller for the use of an excerpt from the poem “Recovery 14,” published in
Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems
, selected and translated by Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore. It’s worth obtaining
a copy of the entire volume—just the one poem itself is so exquisite that it is worth the price of the book. I am also grateful to
The Bark
magazine for permission to reprint a column on how to pet your dog included in the chapter on happiness.
The Bark
magazine and its editors are committed to improving the lives of both people and dogs through literature and art, and the world is a better place for it.

I’d also like to thank two groups of people, who feed and nurture me in very different ways: the members of the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior, for the intellectual nourishment and support they provide, and the women of the Vermont Valley Vixens, whose friendship anchors me in place like oak trees on a savannah. Special thanks goes to Sandi Stanfield, who put up with me writing about her dogs Samson and Delilah in
The Other End of the Leash
, and to her dogs (who are now model citizens of the neighborhood). Thanks also to the people at Vermont Valley Community Farm for spoiling me and my staff with fresh, organic produce. Special thanks go to Carol Klapste, who introduced me to Father Murray and his dog, Blaze, and who was instrumental in turning a potentially tragic situation into one with a happy ending. I can’t imagine completing this book without the support of my dear friends David and Julie Egger, whose friendship and support over the years means more than I can say.

And finally, I save my warmest and most oxytocin-enriched thanks to my other guy, Jim Billings, who stays steady and true within the roller coaster of my own emotions, and who, most remarkably, has never once complained about a house covered in dog hair.

Tulip broke away from me as we approached the body of an ewe named Harriet, and sniffed her from head to hoof. Harriet’s death was a significant event on my little farm. Until the very end, even at the ancient age of fourteen, Harriet was a remarkable individual. In her youth, her delicate bone structure and toffee-colored wool qualified her for supermodel status. In old age she was little more than a scraggly skeleton, but even when fed a liquid diet through a turkey baster, she managed a sense of dignity that elicited respect from sheep, humans, and dogs alike. I was fonder of Harriet than of any sheep I’ve ever had, and I’d already cried like a baby by the time Tulip and I walked down to visit her body, lying cold and stiff in the grass
.

Tulip, my Great Pyrenees sheep-guarding dog hadn’t been in the barn when the veterinarian put Harriet down. I’d put Tulip in the house so that the vet could end Harriet’s life with no distractions. It’s Tulip’s job to protect the sheep from the coyotes and stray dogs that flow throughout the Wisconsin countryside. Tulip’s commitment to nonviolence is impressive, but she can be counted on to protect her sheep when they need her. Normally docile, Tulip can switch from gentle nanny into Xena, Warrior Dog, in a microsecond. Although she’s never hurt a person, dog or sheep in ten years of guarding my farm, she’s roared in like a freight train when a three-hundred-pound ram attacked me, when a visiting dog tore into one of my own, and when a foolish Border Collie switched from herding sheep to hunting them in the excitement of youth. She’s also playful and curious, so
it seemed wise to let the vet do his work without her. Because of that, Tulip hadn’t seen Harriet pass from life to death, and when she found Harriet’s body lying in the grass, she seemed profoundly affected by it
.

She sniffed Harriet’s body, circling, sniffing and repeatedly nudging her. After a few minutes, she lay down beside the body. She placed her big, white muzzle on her paws, sighed once—a long, slow exhalation of what we’d call resignation in a human—and then refused to move. She growled at the approach of my Border Collies; they withdrew and came over to sit beside me, about twenty-five feet away. I don’t remember how long Tulip lay beside Harriet, but she wouldn’t leave her voluntarily. Finally, as darkness softened the sky, I gently took her by the collar and walked her back to the house
.

Tulip looked for all the world as if she knew that Harriet had died, and she looked as sad about it as I felt. There’s only one catch. She behaves in similar ways to pigeons she’s killed herself, and last week, to an ear of corn I’d given her to chew. While my three Border Collies munched away on their own corncobs, milky yellow juice running down their chins, Tulip carried hers with great gravity over to her favorite spot, gently and carefully placed it between her paws, and proceeded to guard it from all comers. She didn’t chew it. She didn’t lick it. She lay beside it, her face quiet and grave, just as she lay beside Harriet’s body that sad morning at Redstart Farm
.

I want it to be true that Tulip’s behavior around Harriet was an expression of something more meaningful than her demeanor around an ear of corn. A respectful awareness of Harriet’s life fits into my belief about who Tulip is, and, more importantly, who I want her to be. Perhaps it is meaningful that Tulip’s behavior toward Harriet was not exactly the same as her behavior toward dead pigeons or corncobs. She never put her head down on her paws with food as she did beside Harriet, and she never sighed a great gulping sigh when looming over a dead pigeon. I find it hard to believe that my big-eyed, soulful dog had the same response to Harriet’s dead body as she did to a vegetable.

But the truth of the matter is, I don’t know what was in Tulip’s head as she lay beside Harriet’s body. Did she know that Harriet was dead, and understand what that meant for the future? I want to know what was going on in her mind that quiet summer evening after Harriet
died, but how can I find the way into her head? For that matter, what can any of us know about the emotional life of any of our dogs? It’s hard enough to know what’s going on in the mind of another person, much less an individual of another species.

But we want to know. Understanding what someone else is experiencing is the key to feeling connected, and feeling connected is an integral part of any good relationship. “Penny for your thoughts” is more than an old-fashioned phrase—it’s an expression of our desire to understand the thoughts and emotions of those we love. We humans are social animals, and our desire for connection is deep and relentless.

Those of us who love our dogs deeply, who consider our dogs friends and family, want to know what’s going on in their minds as much as we do in our relationships with other people. We don’t need to think of our dogs as furry little people to want to understand how their emotional life compares with ours. I, and many others, don’t want to live with fuzzy, nonverbal humans who walk on four legs but roll in cow pies. We like it that our dogs are dogs. The differences between us enrich our relationships and increase our sense of connection to the world around us. But the genetic gap between us means it’s even harder to know what our dogs are thinking and feeling than it is with our human friends. No wonder animal communicators, who claim access to the minds of our companion animals, have become so popular.

Sometimes, even without the benefit of language, we make deep connections to the dogs in our lives. Other times, just as in any relationship, things may not go so well. I’ll never forget a dog—one of those special ones with penetrating eyes—who simply stopped looking at her owner. I watched the two of them for several hours at a herding clinic, a petite gray-haired woman with a tidy black-and-white Border Collie on a bright red leash. The dog looked everywhere but toward the woman who loved her, at one point sitting silently at the woman’s side for almost an hour, with her head turned a hundred and eighty degrees away.

The woman who owned and loved the dog was well intentioned, but her words and movements were all so confusing that even I had no idea what she was trying to communicate. I didn’t have the slightest idea of what she was trying to get her dog to do, much less what she was thinking. I suspect the smart, willing little dog found her owner so
frustrating that she could no longer bear to make the attempt to communicate, and so she spent her time avoiding making any connection at all. I was reminded of the times I’ve turned off my car radio because, even though I could still make out some of the words, the static was so aversive I couldn’t stand listening.

I found the mismatch so heartbreaking that at the end of the day I asked the woman whether I could buy her dog. I wasn’t surprised when she said no, because she seemed to love the dog dearly, and you can’t exactly walk up to a stranger and tell them that they’re inadvertently torturing their dog and expect them to thank you and then hand over the leash. But I still can see the dog’s sweet, honest face, and I wonder if she’s still alive, looking off into space, turning off the static as best she can.

Most of us do a better job of bridging the gap between our minds and the minds of our dogs than the woman described above, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a struggle. We may think we know how our dog is feeling, but that doesn’t mean we’re right. We may be sure we know what’s going on inside the heart and mind of our mother or son or partner, but the truth is we’re often mistaken. Psychologists tell us that erroneous assumptions about what others are thinking and feeling cause no end of problems in human interactions. We don’t even know what’s going on in our
own
minds half the time. As we’ll see later, much of our behavior is influenced by processes outside our conscious awareness. No wonder figuring out what’s going on in the mind of your dog is a challenge.

Even though getting into our dogs’ heads isn’t easy, we’re not utterly clueless. For a start, we are making tremendous strides in understanding how human brains work. We may like to talk about the heart as the seat of emotions, but it’s the brain that lies at the center of our feelings. If we want to understand our feelings, we have to start by understanding our brain. Our emotional life begins and ends in our brains, and the more we understand how this amazing mix of neurons, hormones, and electricity works, the better we’ll understand emotions. Right now there are legions of researchers working on the brain, riding a rising tide of scientific and popular interest in the mind and how it functions. Much of that interest and attention has been driven by the amazing new technologies that allow us to watch the brain as it works. One of
the most useful of the new technologies, the fMRI, allows us to see which areas of the brain are active while the brain is working.
¹
You can show people pictures, ask them questions, or inject hormones into their bodies, and learn which parts of the brain are engaged while they are sorting things out. Studies like this have taught us, for example, that most people have a particularly sophisticated area of the brain designated to recognize faces, while a less powerful area is programmed to recognize objects. Autistic people, on the other hand, use the object-recognition part of their brains when looking at faces; no wonder they have so much trouble reading emotional expressions on the faces around them.

Neuroscience may be exciting, but it’s not for the faint of heart (or, for that matter, the weak of mind). Brains are absurdly complicated things, and understanding the role that they play in our emotional life is no small challenge. Just the language used to describe the structure and function of the brain is, well, uh…elaborate. In his wonderful book
A User’s Guide to the Brain
, John J. Ratey says that after the brain itself, “the second most complex object in the universe is the body of language we use to talk about the brain.” How true that is. I howled when I read it, having started the daunting process of wading through articles on, for example, the role of the anterior cingulate gyrus in ideomotor apraxia.

As luck would have it, more and more books are being written by neuroscientists for those of us who aren’t in their field but who are interested in how our brains affect our behavior. Whether you’re interested in why you left the house intending to buy a Beagle puppy but instead brought home a Jack Russell Terrier, or why you still cry over your Golden Retriever who died ten years ago, these books can help you bridge the gap between the dual, but related, mysteries of brain and behavior. Books like
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
, by Antonio Damasio, and
Biology of the Mind
, by Deric Bownds, allow us non-neuroscientists to share in the fun.

Our focus on mental processes may have been encouraged by new technologies, but interest in the workings of our own brains isn’t new.
However, our interest in the minds of nonhuman animals has waxed and waned over the centuries. Thirty years ago, at least in this country, scientific interest in the minds of animals was barely perceptible; at the moment, it’s increasing by leaps and bounds. One of the most interesting results of that research is the realization that thoughts and emotions can’t be separated from each other as neatly as we once believed. Justifiably proud of our own intellectual abilities, we’ve paid most of our attention to the thinking, problem-solving part of our mind, comparing it (favorably, of course) with the brains of other animals. However, new ways of studying the brain have resulted in an expanding focus on emotions—what they are, how they are generated, and what their purpose might be. Not only are we starting to understand what emotions actually are, we’re starting to understand their importance in humans and animals alike.

This increased interest in the inner lives of animals is a wonderful thing for dog lovers, because the burgeoning interest in the mental experiences of animals has resulted in a parallel interest in the minds of our dogs. Dogs are finally getting some of the attention they deserve, having been proof for decades of the saying “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Scientists could study right whales or Serengeti lions or scissor-tailed flycatchers, but heaven forbid you tried to make your name as a researcher studying dogs. However, that has changed in just the last few years, and lately there have been articles in prestigious scientific journals, from the
Journal of Comparative Psychology
to
Science
, that add to our knowledge about the cognitive abilities of dogs. That interest has been reflected in a group of thoughtful books written specifically about the intellectual abilities of the dog. For example,
How Dogs Think
, by Stanley Coren;
If Dogs Could Talk
, by Vilmos Csányi; and
The Truth About Dogs
, by Stephen Budiansky, act as welcome bridges between what people want to know about the minds of their dogs, and what science has actually discovered.

Our dogs may not be lying around pondering the evolution of emotion and whether their humans experience emotions the same way they do, but it’s the most natural thing in the world for us to wonder about the emotions of our dogs. How could we not? We’ve called dogs our best friends for centuries, and what is more basic to friendship than an emotional connection? A friendship with no emotional component is
no friendship at all, it’s a business arrangement (and even those usually have their share of emotional loading attached). Our dogs evoke a veritable sea of emotions in us, and we ride the waves back and forth between love and joy and sadness and anger almost on a daily basis. For centuries, dog lovers have believed that we’re not paddling by ourselves—surely our dogs are out there with us, experiencing emotions similar to our own. Who could watch puppies play, or observe dogs lying motionless for days after losing a good friend, and not believe that our dogs have emotions as we do?

In contrast to the beliefs of most dog lovers, current beliefs among scientists and philosophers about the emotional life of dogs are all over the map. Some argue that only humans can experience emotions, while others argue that nonhuman animals experience primitive emotions like fear and anger, but not more complicated ones like love and pride. At the other end of the continuum, some say it’s good science to believe that many mammals come with the whole package, being capable of experiencing emotions in ways comparable to the way we experience them.