For the Love of a Dog (7 page)

Much of the adherence to this perspective was driven throughout the twentieth century by America’s influential behaviorists John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. Both Skinner and Watson were committed to avoiding speculation about those messy and unapproachable aspects of behavior, like emotions, thoughts, and consciousness. Skinner argued that it can’t ever be known what goes on inside an individual’s head (whether human or animal), and so we must focus exclusively on observable behavior. Skinner did
not
say, as some do, that there is no such thing as consciousness in humans or animals. He argued that because we can’t possibly know what an individual is really thinking and feeling, we should avoid trying to find out. Just days before his death in 1990, Skinner argued against any scientific consideration of “thoughts, perceptions and expectations.” To his credit, he wasn’t just talking about your dog or your cat; he held the same views about studying human emotions. But as this perspective became pervasive in science and society, others began to argue not that we couldn’t understand the mental life of animals, but that animals simply didn’t have one.

Especially in the United States, the distinction between “human” and “animal” grew in the mid-1900s, such that any experience beyond simple learning was judged to be exclusively human.
⁹
This view was pervasive in some fields of science and in society in general. The early work of the primatologist Jane Goodall was roundly criticized because she used the term “personality” in relation to chimpanzees: ascribing a “human characteristic” (the subtext being
“exclusively
human”) to a nonhuman animal was considered sloppy science. David Bodian, one of the researchers responsible for discovering the polio vaccine, was criticized at a 1952 scientific conference for referring to one of his research chimpanzees as a “he” rather than an “it.” His critic argued that the use of “he” made the animal the “equal of men.” I sent my first research paper to the journal
Animal Behaviour
in fear and trepidation, because I purposefully gave the subjects (puppies) names instead of numbers. At the time, that was a relatively radical thing to do; the belief was that naming an animal in an experiment might lead to an unscientific assumption that the animal experienced a life of hopes and fears, as would any human with his or her own name.
¹⁰

Based on the principles of learning theory, parents were advised to employ the basic laws of learning by reinforcing good behavior, ignoring or punishing bad behavior, and inhibiting their foolish tendencies to show affection randomly. Dog owners were demeaned for attributing “exclusively human capacities” like emotions, expectations, and, worst of all, “thinking” to their dogs. The cautions of many of these scientists are with us today. Most scientists, biologists, and health care workers have been carefully trained to avoid ascribing human emotions or thoughts to nonhuman animals. In a recent article in the popular Sunday magazine
Parade
, a pediatric neurosurgeon said: “Animals are victims of circumstance. They can only react to their environment. But humans, thanks to our frontal lobes, can plan, strategize and exercise control over our environments. We don’t have to be
victims who simply react”
(my italics).

Even veterinarians can argue either side of the coin—dogs as thinking, feeling individuals or as fuzzy, mindless machines. While I was working on this very section, a veterinarian on a television show was asked: “Can we tell our animals’ emotions by looking at their body postures?” “Well,” said the vet, “emotion is a human term,” and went on to say he hesitated to use it in relation to dogs. Given the primitive nature of fear and rage, I was more than a little surprised by his statement.
I was reminded of Darwin’s
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
, in which he draws parallels between the expressions of people and animals, and of how, although the topic may be controversial, scientists still consider the book a classic.

Darwin’s work is a good reminder that the controversy about emotions in nonhuman animals doesn’t have animal lovers on one side and all of science aligned on the other. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s as much disagreement among scientists about the mental states of animals as there is in the general public. If you pick up some of the many books written by scientists in the last twenty years about animal minds and animal thinking, you can see just how heated the debate has become. (See the references for Chapters 1 and 9 for a list of some truly great books on those topics.) In 1984, a scientist named Donald Griffin, well known for his rigorous research on the navigation abilities of bats, published a book on the mental lives of animals titled
Animal Thinking
. It generated such heated controversy in the world of science that it’s since been called the
“Satanic Verses
of animal behavior.”

Donald Griffin was castigated by some for allying himself “with the layman, the affectionate pet owner and curious huntsman,” simply because he argued that animal thinking was an important subject for scientific inquiry. Comparing a scientist with an “affectionate pet owner,” is, in some circles, a scathing rebuke. Luckily, scientists like Griffin seem to take it in stride. He volleyed back by calling his critics “mechanomorphs,” whose narrow views demean animals into little more than automatons. A more recent discussion of the controversy is found in
Affective Neuroscience
, in which Jaak Panksepp argues that the basis of human emotions lies in our evolutionary heritage, and counters the arguments of critics that animals may “have” emotions but are unable to “feel” them.
¹¹

And so, the debate rages on, with some believing not only that animals like dogs can think and feel, but that it’s possible for us to inquire into what they’re thinking about and how they’re feeling.
¹²
But to others, attributing a “mind” full of thoughts and feelings of any kind to a dog is unscientific and objectionable. It’s not just scientists and veterinarians who argue about what goes on between the ears of your best friend. A student in my “Human/Animal Relationships” class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told me that a philosophy professor informed his class that not only are animals unable to think and feel, they can’t learn anything either. To him, the behavior of all animals, from bumblebees to Black Labs, is simply a series of mindless, mechanical responses to the world around them. Given that virtually all of the early studies on learning were done on animals, that’s an amazingly ignorant statement.

Ignorance about what goes on in the minds of animals appears to be an equal opportunity employer. Just about everyone seems to have a strong belief about the mental lives of animals, unrelated to their level of knowledge about the topic. Not too long ago I sympathized with a dog having what looked like a painful medical procedure done without anesthetic. “Oh, it can’t feel anything,” the owner said. “It’s just a dog.” The other end of the spectrum is equally easy to find, and equally astounding. I had a client who told me flat out that the reason her dog pawed obsessively around his dinner bowl was that he knew her mother was coming to visit. It seems Mom was a fastidious housekeeper, and my client thought the dog was trying to help clean up before she arrived. I don’t remember any more details of her explanation; I was too busy trying to keep a straight face. Stanley Coren tells a laugh-out-loud story in
How Dogs Think
about an attorney who called and asked him to interview the Akita involved in the O. J. Simpson murder case, quoting him as saying, “Couldn’t you just come down here and interview the dog?”

You can easily find the same dizzying variety of opinions in your own life. Just start paying focused attention to what you hear and read. You’ll find that there are few, if any, fields of science and popular belief in which there is so much disagreement. It’s as though some people, from scientists to pet owners, believe that the earth is flat and all of existence ends at its edge, while others are working on how and why the universe is expanding into infinity. I wonder whether this level of controversy suggests that we are talking about something that is deeply important to us, but that we know little about. I’m reminded of the bitter debates in the 1800s when Darwin proposed that animals evolved
through the process of natural selection, and that humans share common ancestors with apes. The idea of any kind of continuity between humans and animals so threatened people’s beliefs about the unique status of humans that debates about the topic were frequent and heated (as they can be today). One of my favorite remarks from Darwin’s time was made by the wife of the Bishop of Worcester: “Descended from monkeys! My dear, let us hope that it isn’t true. But if it is true, let us hope that it doesn’t become widely known.”

Perhaps her fears are relevant today. Perhaps it’s fear that drives some of the critics, because the more we uncover about the mental processes of animals like our dogs, the more we will have to examine our relationship with them. Arien Mack writes, in
Humans and Other Animals
, that “the delineation of human/animal relationships occurs in all cultures, and in all cultures this boundary is a matter of great significance.” Redefining who we are in relation to the dog at our feet or the horse in our barn can be a scary prospect. No wonder it generates so much controversy.

There is one thing that’s not controversial among dog lovers: we want to know what’s going on inside the minds of our dogs, pure and simple. We don’t need them to think and feel about the world exactly like we do. Rather, we want to know how much of our experiences we share with our Lukes, our Gingers, and our Goldies. And so, all of us make guesses about the thoughts and feelings of our dogs. It’s unavoidable.

Our guesses are usually based on a variety of factors. Some are good objective ones, like a careful description of our dog’s expressions, postures, and behaviors. Other factors, colored by our own experience and projections, can lead to mistakes about what’s going on inside the minds of our dogs. Those mistakes help drive criticisms of our inquiries into animal thinking: beliefs that horses can do math and that dogs take it upon themselves to clean up before your mom comes to visit haven’t helped convince skeptics that we can look at this issue objectively
¹³

It’s true that all of us, to some extent, project our own feelings onto our dogs. This is the dark side of our remarkable ability to be empathetic, and it can lead to no end of problems, as we’ll see throughout the book. However, the opposite problem—obliviousness to the expressions of dogs—is all too common as well, even among people who really, really love their dogs. No matter how many years you’ve taught dog-training classes, it’s always amazing to watch people who are clearly smitten with their dogs miss what seem like blindingly obvious signals on their dogs’ faces. In every class you can watch someone enthusiastically “praising” their dog, while the dog shrinks back in fear or disgust. To some extent, this happens because of ignorance about the meaning of a dog’s expressions. However, sometimes it happens because we pay too little attention to what our dog is trying to tell us, just as sometimes we pay too little attention to the faces of our human friends when we’re busy inside our own heads, thinking of other things. Accurate, objective observation is a skill that requires practice, but it starts with asking your mind to focus on what you see, not on what you think it means. A very small amount of time and energy spent in reminding your brain to make accurate, objective descriptions of your dog can radically improve the relationship between you and your dog. The section below encourages you to become your own field biologist, and practice making thoughtful, detailed descriptions of your dog’s behavior. The better you get at it, the better you’ll be at avoiding the problems associated with attributing emotions to dogs, and the closer you’ll get to connecting with your dog in the way that so many of us desire.

You’ll be in good company. All students of animal behavior, whether they focus on learning (behaviorists) or on genetic and environmental influences on behavior (ethologists), are rigorously trained in the accurate observation of behavior. This might sound simple, but it’s not. It takes concentration and practice to accurately observe an animal’s actions, but it’s even harder to develop the discipline to objectively describe the behavior, rather than skipping to a belief about what an animal is thinking or feeling when performing it. For example, here’s an all-too-common scenario: “So, what is your dog Murphy doing that’s causing problems for you?” I might ask a client. “Well,” says the owner, “he goes crazy when visitors come over.” “What does he do that makes you say he goes crazy?” I inquire, trying to get a picture of
what the dog is actually doing. “Oh well, he goes out of his mind, I mean he’s just completely out of control.” “Could you tell me
exactly
how Murphy behaves when visitors come that makes him look ‘out of control’?” I ask. “Well, I told you, he just goes crazy….”

This conversation could continue into infinity, with me having virtually no idea what the dog is actually doing. “Going crazy” tells me nothing at all about the dog’s actions—“going crazy” could range from catatonically huddling in a corner, to leaping onto everyone’s shoulders, or to barking bug-eyed while trying to bite the nearest thigh. I have learned to say:
“Imagine you’re watching a videotape
and describe to me exactly what you see when your dog greets visitors.” That helps quite a bit, although the best way to get information about the dog’s behavior around visitors is to be a visitor myself. That’s why people in my profession stress that house calls are always the most effective way to help dogs who are problematic around visitors. However, we’re always reliant on the descriptions of owners to some extent, and the more accurate the description, the better.

The tendency to make assumptions about what a dog is thinking and feeling, rather than to simply describe his behavior, is overwhelming. It also seems to be universal, so don’t start feeling guilty when you catch yourself doing it. It’s actually an interesting ability, and it often serves us well. Being able to empathize, or to put yourself in another individual’s place and imagine what’s going on in his or her mind, is a handy skill. If you have it, then you can use that information to predict an individual’s behavior in the future, and decide on your own course of action. Say, for example, that your dog is behaving in the same way that you’d behave if you were nervous around visitors. Using your ability to imagine his internal feelings, you might put him away in his crate instead of making him defend himself in a forced interaction. Later, you can use your belief about his emotional state at the front door to help him be more comfortable with visitors. Although we take empathy for granted, and use it all the time, it’s actually an advanced mental ability, so advanced that we don’t even know to what extent other animals can do it.