For the Love of a Dog (53 page)

The amazing connection between love, grief, and physical pain is well described in Jaak Panksepp’s book
Affective Neuroscience
. See the following books if you want to read more about pet-related grief and its management: Julie Kaufman’s
Crossing the Rubicon;
Enid Samuel Traisman’s
My Personal Pet Remembrance Journal;
and Lagoni, Butler, and Hetts’s book
The Human-Animal Bond and Grief
.

There is a vast literature about the relationship between thinking and language; I’ve only scratched the surface. Myers’s
Psychology
is the text that linked thinking and language in the same chapter, although I want to reiterate that the author does not argue that thinking is not possible without the equivalent of human language. His book is the source for my discussion here about language and human development. For more about the amazing parrot Alex, see the article by Irene Pepperberg listed below. It will at least get you started. Temple Grandin’s book
Animals in Translation
contains information about the relationship between the perception of pain and the ability to feel fear. For a riveting read about a man who grew up with no concept of language at all, see Susan Schaller’s book
A Man Without Words
. You can read descriptions of Sally Boyson’s work in Marc Hauser’s
Wild Minds
, or you can refer to some of her academic articles, listed below.

See
How Dogs Think
for a description of Norton Milgram’s experiment asking dogs to choose larger or smaller objects, and
The Truth About Dogs
for the experiment in which dogs were tested on “non-matching to sample.” Rebecca West and Robert Young did the study asking whether dogs would be surprised by the “wrong” number of objects revealed from behind a screen, and Hank Davis did the study that asked whether rats behaved as if they have a concept of number. The
Time
magazine article about the clever Golden Retriever was written by Michael Lemonick. The story about Luah, the Poodle who played hide-and-seek by burying his head, was published in
The Bark
magazine (Summer 2005). You can read more about Rico, the dog who could fast-map, in the article by Kaminski, Call, and Fischer in
Science
, listed below.

The neurologist Antonio Damasio is responsible for educating us about the truth that emotions and rational thinking go hand in hand. For more on the unfortunate people whose emotions have become disconnected from their rational
cortex, see Damasio’s fascinating
Descartes’ Error
and
Looking for Spinoza
. Frans de Waal can always be counted upon to write scientifically rigorous and yet highly accessible books about social behavior in primates. See his books, some listed below, for descriptions of what he doesn’t hesitate to call jealousy in chimps (and his enlightening discussions of our discomfort with our animal origins). His books are also a good introduction to the controversy about self-awareness in animals; also see Hauser’s
Wild Minds
and Griffin’s
Animal Minds
. See Gordon Gallup’s article, cited below, to begin delving into the current controversy. Reiss and Marino did the study on mirror recognition in dolphins; see Clive Wynne’s book
Do Animals Think?
for criticism of the conclusion that mirror studies can tell us whether animals are self-aware. See Griffin’s
Animal Minds
for more about Boakes’s comment that scientific discussions of animal consciousness should be avoided. The information about children and mirror recognition is in my old friend
Psychology
by David Myers.

Discussions about theory of mind can be found in an increasing number of books, from the more academic ones, such as Panksepp’s
Affective Neuroscience
and Bownds’s
Biology of the Mind to
books more accessible to dog lovers, such as Coren’s
How Dogs Think
, Katz’s
Katz on Dogs
, and Hauser’s
Wild Minds
. You can read more about “mirror neurons” in David Dobb’s article, cited below, in
Scientific American Mind
. For two different perspectives on deception in animals, see
Wild Minds
and
Animal Minds
.

Consciousness—now there’s a topic that can keep you reading until your dog begs to go on a walk! I found the discussions in
Biology of the Mind
and
A User’s Guide to the Brain
particularly useful and clear. The latter book contains Ratey’s wonderful line regarding presumptuous arguments about a phenomenon we don’t even know how to define. If you’d really like to dive into the subject, try
Wider Than the Sky
by Gerald Edelman, although you’re forewarned that this is not a book for the beach. Malcolm Gladwell’s book
Blink
was my primary source for the workings of the unconscious, and relates the experiments of John Bargh on how embedded words affect our behavior. I learned about Giulio Tononi’s work on sleep and consciousness in the
Wisconsin State Journal
(January 22, 2006). The remark by Jonas Salk that I use to illustrate our embarrassment about emotions is quoted in Oshinsky’s
Polio: An American Story
. My own words about losing Luke feeling like the oxygen being taken from the air were from
Dog Is My Co-pilot: Great Writers on the World’s Oldest Friendship
. The delightful book
Marley and Me: Life and Love and the World’s Worst Dog
is by John Grogan.

Anonymous. Winner of “Tickle My Funny Bone” contest.
The Bark
31 (Summer 2005), p. 24.

Bargh, John A., Mark Chen, and Lara Burrows. 1996. “Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on
Action.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71
, no. 2, pp. 230-44.

Boakes, R. 1992. “Subjective Experience” (review of
Animal Minds). Times Higher Education Supplement
, November 22, p. 22.

Boyson, S. T. 1996. “More Is Less”: The Distribution of Rule-Governed Resource Distribution in Chimpanzees. In A. E. Russon et al., eds.
Reaching into Thought: The Minds of the Great Apes
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——, and E. J. Capaldi. 1993.
The Development of Numerical Competence: Animal and Human Models
. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Budiansky Stephen. 1999.
The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication
. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Csányi, Vilmos. 2000.
If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind
. New York: North Point Press.

Damasio, Antonio. 1994.
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
. New York: HarperCollins.

——. 2003.
Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
. New York; Harcourt.

Davis, H., K. A. Mackenzie, and S. Morrison. 1989. “Numerical Discrimination by Rats
(Rattus norvegicus)
Using Body and Vibrissal Touch.”
Journal of Comparative Psychology
103, no. 1, pp. 45-53.

De Waal, Frans. 1989.
Peacemaking Among Primates
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

——. 1996.
Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

——. 2005.
Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
. New York: Riverhead Books.

Dobbs, David. 2006. “A Revealing Reflection.”
Scientific American Mind
17, no. 2, pp. 22-7.

Edelman, Gerald. 2004.
Wider Than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness
. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Frey R. G. 1989. “Why Animals Lack Beliefs and Desires.” In T. Regan and P. Singer, eds.
Animal Rights and Human Obligations
. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Gallup, G. G. 1991. “Toward a Comparative Psychology of Self-awareness: Species Limitations and Cognitive Consequences.” In
The Self An Interdisciplinary Approach
. G. R. Goethals and J. Strauss, eds. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Goodall, Jane. 1971.
In the Shadow of Man
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Grandin, Temple. 2005.
Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior
. New York: Scribner.

Griffin, Donald R. 1992.
Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Grogan, John. 2005.
Marley and Me: Life and Love and the World’s Worst Dog
. New York: HarperCollins.

Hauser, Marc D. 2000.
Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think
. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Kaminski, Juliane, Josep Call, and Julia Fischer. 2004. “Word Learning in a Domestic Dog: Evidence for ‘Fast Mapping.’”
Science
304, no. 5677, pp. 1682-83.

Kaufman, Julie. 1999.
Crossing the Rubicon: Celebrating the Human-Animal Bond in Life and Death
. Cottage Grove, Wisc.: Xenophon Publishing.

Lagoni, Laurel, Carolyn Butler, and Suzanne Hetts. 1994.
The Human-Animal Bond and Grief
. New York: W B. Saunders.

Lemonick, Michael. 1993. “Can Animals Think?”
Time
, March 22.

McConnell, Patricia. 2003. “Love Is Never Having to Say Anything at All.” In
Dog Is My Co-pilot: Great Writers on the World’s Oldest Friendship
. The editors of
The Bark
, eds. New York: Crown.

Myers, David G. 2004.
Psychology
. New York: Worth.

Oshinsky David. M. 2005.
Polio: An American Story
. New York: Oxford University Press.

Panksepp, Jaak. 1998.
Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions
. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pepperberg, Irene. 1994. “Numerical Competence in an African Grey Parrot.
(Psittacus erithacus).” Journal of Comparative Psychology
108, no. 1, pp. 36-44.

Povinelli, D. J., et al. 1990. “Inferences about Guessing and Knowing by Chimpanzees.”
Journal of Comparative Psychology
104, no. 3, pp. 203-210.

Ratey John J. 2001.
A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
. New York: Vintage Books.

Reiss, D., and L. Marino. 2001. “Mirror Self-Recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin: A Case of Cognitive Convergence.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
98, pp. 5937-42.

Schaller, Susan.
1991. A Man Without Words
. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tomasello, Michael, and Josep Call. 1997.
Primate Cognition
. New York: Oxford University Press.

Traisman, Enid Samuel. 1997.
My Personal Pet Remembrance Journal
. Portland, Ore.: Dove Lewis Emergency Animal Hospital.

West, Rebecca, and Robert Young. 2002. “Do Domestic Dogs Show Any Evidence of Being Able to Count?
Animal Cognition
5, pp. 183-86.

Wynne, Clive D. 2004.
Can Animals Think?
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

P
ATRICIA
B. M
C
C
ONNELL
, P
H
.D., is an adjunct associate professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a certified Applied Animal Behaviorist. Her company, Dog’s Best Friend, Ltd., specializes in family dog training and treating aggression in dogs, and she is an immensely popular speaker around the country. She is the co-host of Wisconsin Public Radio’s
Calling All Pets
, an animal behavior advice show syndicated to a hundred public radio stations, and was the animal behaviorist on Animal Planet’s
Petline
. She works daily with three dogs (two border collies and a Great Pyrenees) on her sheep farm outside of Madison. Visit Patricia McConnell’s website at
www.dogsbestfriendtraining.com
.

People and dogs share expressions of happiness. In these pictures, notice that everyone’s mouths are open and have a similar shape, and everyone has a relaxed full face and a relaxed lower jaw.

A curved line under two dots is enough to signify happiness to us; even infants respond to this simple set of stimuli. Compare this happy face with the face of the dog on the left.

Left to Right:
Lassie, Tulip, Luke (lying down), and Pip. Tulip was the only dog who was nervous about being in an unfamiliar place, and she’s the only one whose mouth is closed.

Look at how open and relaxed these faces are. Not only are the subjects’ mouths open, but the muscles around their eyes are relaxed, and their faces have a fullness not seen when one is tense or angry.

Look at all the open mouths in these relaxed and playful individuals. In the top two photos, Tulip play bows to me and then frolics. In the bottom left photo, Marc Bekoff and his dog Jethro exchange “play faces,” and on the right, little Molly opens her mouth wide in joyful exuberance. Which of the five individuals on this page would you say is the least relaxed? Why?

Lassie’s mouth is closed up tight and the inside corners of the eyebrows are pulled down and together. (Lassie was in the backseat of the car, which she seems to dislike intensely.)

I asked Chelse Wieland to make an angry face—ask yourself what it is about her face that is similar to the face of the dog in the photo below.

This dog is standing over a “prized” object. Notice that his mouth is closed (although his lips are raised as he growls), his eyebrows are furrowed, and his body looks stiff and tense. This is not a dog willing to let you take the object away.

Notice in these photographs that the corners of the dogs’ mouths (the commissures) are all moved forward. The dogs in the top photos are on offense, barking at intruders. You can see the same forward commissure on the face of the angry woman on the left. Notice, however, that her eyebrows are pulled down and together, just as they are on the dog on the bottom of the previous page, indicating “on offense and angry” versus simply “on offense,” like the dogs above.

The “worried” faces of both Lassie and Chelse include closed mouths, and upwardly raised inner eyebrows.

Both Chelse and Lassie are concentrating on something. Both of them have closed mouths, and the commissure (the corners of the mouth) is neither pulled back as it is in a smile or fear grimace, or pushed forward as it is in anger.