Dog Sense

by John Bradshaw

  Dogs are fundamentally different from all other animals in this respect. We take it for granted that we can exercise them off-lead and that, once trained, they will return to us for no more immediate reward than being reunited with us. The mechanisms involved are essentially developmental; domestication has imbued the dog with the capacity to achieve this unique social behavior, but it is only through the learning environment we give them that dogs come to understand how to behave toward people.

  CHAPTER 6

  Does Your Dog Love You?

  Dogs are obviously attached to their owners—in the sense of their behavior, in the sense that they follow them around. But does your dog actually love you? Of course it does! It tells you, every time you come home, by the way it greets you. Your dog may be “just” a household pet, but I’d be very surprised if most owners couldn’t bring themselves to say that they loved their dog and that their dog loved them in return. Anything less, and the relationship is probably in trouble.

  Emotions are not easy to pin down, scientifically speaking. As a scientist, I can investigate how much you love your dog, and as a human, I can be reasonably sure that what you describe to me as “love” is much the same emotion that I have felt for my own dogs. We can both articulate this, first, because we are members of the same species and therefore are likely to have similar emotional repertoires and, second, because we can communicate our feelings to each other through language.

  However, the love that flows in the other direction, dog to owner, is much harder to pin down. First of all, dogs can’t tell us how they feel, so we have to deduce it from their behavior. Can we be sure that we always get this right? Second, because we belong to different species, we cannot simply assume that dogs experience the same array of emotions that we do. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s unethical to make that assumption. Scientists have a responsibility to convey as much as they know about the reality of canine emotions, guiding owners to a proper perception of what their dogs can and cannot feel.

  I am convinced that giving proper consideration to the emotional life of dogs is not just an academic exercise—it has real and practical implications for their welfare and their relationships with people. But not all scientists agree that dog emotion is even a proper subject for investigation. Some behavioral scientists think that every attempt should be made to explain the behavior of other species without referring to emotions at all,1 because emotions are ultimately subjective and therefore not completely accessible to scientific investigation. Others think it’s okay to ascribe emotions to our nearest relatives—perhaps just the apes, or maybe the higher primates—but are more inclined to restrict themselves to more mechanistic explanations of behavior in less closely related species, including dogs. Of course, most pet owners would find this degree of skepticism absurd—they firmly believe in the emotional lives of their pets. These points of view are so divergent that many scientists have simply come to regard owners as deluded whereas many dog owners dismiss science as too out of touch with the realities of dog ownership.

  But in fact the human mind is sufficiently sophisticated to comprehend both views simultaneously. Subjective and objective perspectives of emotion can exist side by side even within the same person. Scientists will casually talk about their own pets as if they have complex internal emotional lives but, if pressed, will admit that there is little direct evidence that the animals are actually experiencing precisely those emotions. 2 Does this mean that they are living in a fantasy world at home, where they’ve fallen into the trap of behaving “as if” animals have emotions, but then return to objective reality at work and deny that such emotions exist at all? Although this seeming contradiction may appear paradoxical, I don’t see it that way. Rather, I consider it a natural expression of the complexity of human thought and consciousness.

  It’s well established that the human mind loves to project emotions and intentions onto everything, especially things it can’t control. Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman creatures—to phenomena such as the weather and even inanimate objects like rivers and mountains—is an intrinsic part of human nature.3 So are zoomorphism and totemism, the complementary processes by which humans ascribe the characteristics of animals to other humans. We talk about dogs as being “little people,” and we may refer to a person as “a dog” (though what we might mean by that will vary from culture to culture and possibly with the gender of the target!). Does that mean we don’t know that dogs and people are different, not only in outward appearance but also in inner characteristics? We may blur the distinction from time to time, but mostly these attributions are metaphors, and we use them with full awareness of that fact.

  As humans, we have the ability to stand back from a situation, detaching ourselves from its emotional component and making logical decisions on what to do next. Parents can simultaneously experience an emotional bond to their children while objectively analyzing their transgressions and the motivations behind them. Our capacity to detach ourselves from our automatic emotional reaction to something they’ve done, in order to work out the most effective response, does not mean that the emotional response is in any way demeaned or diminished. Equally, why should we not express ourselves in anthropomorphic terms as animallovers, while being simultaneously aware that such projections may be the product of our imaginations? I cannot see any dissonance—as psychologists call it—in such behavior.

  Without an emotional bond, there would be no pets—and yet this bond can sometimes create problems for dogs and humans alike. The emotional bond between owner and pet is often, perhaps always, bound up in anthropomorphic projections.4 Many people really do unthinkingly treat their animals as if they were little people. Yet most pet owners are also capable of conceiving of their animals’ behavior in a logical way, especially when decisions have to be made that affect the well-being of that animal. It is perfectly possible to hold a logical view about the “otherness” of animals without interfering one iota with the emotional aspects of the relationship. It is when these two approaches become blurred that the relationship is destined for problems and potential breakdown. For example, owners who treat their dog as if it were a person may project responsibilities onto it that the dog is not even aware of, let alone capable of responding appropriately to. And, consequently, owners may feel justified in punishing the dog for something they mistakenly think the dog “knows it has done.”

  Even owners who treat their dogs quite rationally can fall into the trap of presuming that they know more than they actually do about how their dog is feeling. In a study conducted in Switzerland,5 the investigators showed still photos and short video clips of dogs interacting with one another as well as with people to sixty-four Swiss dog owners and sixty-four randomly chosen individuals with little or no experience of dogs. Both groups were able to correctly associate the dogs’ facial expressions with obvious emotions and behavioral states such as fear and inquisitiveness. But this was not the case with other emotions, such as anger and jealousy; moreover, the dog owners tended to be more anthropomorphic in their descriptions than the non-owners. The closeness of their relationship was evidently affecting their judgment.

  Dog owners may think they can interpret canine communication, but in actuality they are often misled by their anthropomorphism. In the second part of the same study, the dog owners were shown a video clip of an owner getting her dog ready for a walk—putting on her coat, putting the dog on the leash—and then immediately removing the leash, taking off her coat, and ignoring the dog for a few minutes. The dog followed her to the door, then went back to where she kept her coat, and finally sat down, watching her while she directed her attention elsewhere. Almost all of the participants who were shown the whole sequence identified the dog’s emotion, while it was being ignored, as “disappointment.” But among those who were shown only the last part of the scene, after the owner had left the picture, very few identified the dog’s emotional state in this way. Clearl
y, the former participants were projecting onto the dog’s body-language their own sense of how they would feel under those particular circumstances. The dog’s actual behavior was almost irrelevant. The implication, of course, is that even the most well-meaning and rational of owners may know significantly less than they think they do about their dogs’ inner lives. Those owners who regard their dog as a “little person” may even unconsciously prefer explanations for their dog’s behavior that rely more on projections of what they guess the dog is feeling than on what its body-language is telling them.

  A better understanding among pet owners of the emotional life of dogs would improve their relationships with their pets. It would enable them to deal with their dog’s behavior in a reasoned and informed way—ultimately enhancing, rather than diminishing, the emotional depth of the relationship. Some dog owners may treat their dogs as “little people,” attributing to them mental and emotional capabilities that they don’t actually have, simply because it has never been pointed out to them that there is a more rational basis for understanding why their dogs behave the way they do. This more rational perspective, in turn, can allow them to make sensible decisions about how to resolve any problems that arise.

  In order to understand the emotional lives of dogs, we first have to come to grips with what emotions actually are. Unfortunately, psychologists are still not in total agreement about what emotions consist of or, indeed, precisely how they should be discussed. One key issue is the role that emotions play in guiding behavior. Some philosophers have suggested that, even in man, the brain controls behavior directly, and that what we experience as emotion is merely our consciousness commenting on what’s going on. In this view, full consciousness is required for emotions to exist at all. Since dogs do not appear to have the same degree of consciousness that we have, this seems to suggest that they can’t experience emotions either, or at least not in a way that would be intelligible to us.

  However, we no longer have to think about emotional states in such an abstract way. New techniques now available to neuroscientists have enabled a fuller understanding of how emotions are generated—specifically, through an interplay among hormones, the brain, and the rest of the nervous system. For example, MRI scanning can show what is going on in the brains of fully conscious humans (and one day soon, hopefully, dogs too), helping to pinpoint where in the brain emotions are generated.

  It’s now generally agreed that what we experience as emotions are an important part of the machinery that allows us to lead our everyday lives, and not just a side effect of consciousness. They are thought to act as essential filters, enabling us to make appropriate decisions at the right moment, without waiting for our brains to come up with all the possible courses of action and attempt to choose logically between them. In this conception, emotions exist for the purpose of providing a rough-and-ready indicator of where we are in relation to where we ought to be. If I see a figure approaching me late at night out of a dark alley, fear will instantly propel me in the opposite direction. If someone breaks into my house while I’m at home, anger will take over and make me aggressive toward the intruder. The first of these responses is probably as appropriate today as it was for my hunter-gatherer ancestors a hundred thousand years ago. The second is probably more effective now than it was then, and I will have to keep my anger in check if I want to remain within the reasonable limits of force that the law allows in deterring intruders. Nevertheless, anger does channel my brain toward the immediate threat (the intruder) rather than wasting its time on less urgent tasks that can wait (such as working out how I’m going to get the newly broken lock on the door repaired or trying to remember where I wrote down the phone number of my insurance agent).

  If emotions are indeed survival mechanisms, then they most likely evolved to fulfill specific functions. And those functions—avoiding danger, counteracting threats, forming pair-bonds that enhance the survival of offspring—are not unique to man. They apply just as much to wolves as they did to our own human ancestors. Indeed, since both wolves and humans are mammals, and our brains and hormone systems are based on the same biological pattern, it is highly likely that both our emotional systems evolved from those possessed by our common mammalian ancestor. It therefore stands to reason that our emotional lives, and those of dogs, are similar. However, because millions of years of evolution separate us, it’s also highly likely that they are far from identical.

  In order to further investigate these similarities and differences, I’m going to take as valid the idea that emotions, far from being a luxury that only humans can appreciate, are a fundamental part of the biological systems that regulate behavior. I’m also going to assume that like any other biological system emotions have been selected for, and subsequently refined by, the process of evolution. The model I will adopt6 divides emotions into three components. The most primitive level involves responses of the autonomic nervous system (the part that we are unaware of but which keeps the various parts of our bodies functioning for us), acting in concert with the hormones that are associated with arousal, fear, stress, affection, and so on—Emotion I in the illustration below. As humans, we are not always aware of these autonomic responses (exceptions include the pounding heartbeat and sweaty palms triggered by fear), but thanks to the techniques of modern physiology they can all be measured and understood. Emotion II is the corresponding behavior—postures, displays, signals (and, in the case of dogs, odor signals that are imperceptible to us humans). Emotion III is what we are most interested in here—the feelings that we, as human beings, experience subjectively. They are what we refer to in everyday terms as emotions and moods: “I feel anxious” or “I’m happy today” or, indeed, “I love my dog.”

  The three components of emotion. Emotion I is the sum of changes in hormone levels and in the nervous system. Emotion II is the outward expression of emotion, for example in body-language and vocalizations. These can be detected by other dogs (and people), whose reactions can be perceived and may subsequently modify how emotions are felt and reacted to. Emotion III is the subjective experience of the emotion itself, for example, “fear.” Arrows indicate interactions.

  What is the point, then, in labeling both the underlying physiology and the associated behavior as “emotion”? In the context of improving our understanding of dogs, this model emphasizes that if we can measure a change in the underlying physiology (e.g., a sudden increase in the stress hormone adrenalin) and at the same time observe the corresponding behavior (the animal runs away), we can be reasonably sure that the dog is also experiencing the matching emotion (fear). Exactly what that experience is like for the dog we can never entirely know—just as we cannot even know precisely how another human being is feeling. Feelings are private, but that does not mean we cannot and do not take them into account. When dealing with other people, we just make a best guess and proceed accordingly—and if our first guess is wrong, there is a good chance that the other person will let us know. Dogs, however, may be less good at letting us know when we misjudge them, or perhaps we are not as clever as we should be at decoding their signals. In either case, what’s clear is the importance of trying our hardest to understand their emotional lives.

  My second reason for considering this three-level conceptualization of emotion to be helpful is that it proposes that emotions are useful to the animal: They act as special-purpose information-processing systems, alongside the general systems of learning and cognition (to which humans have added symbolic language). Emotions are an essential aid to survival, and if dogs possess the two “lower” levels (and without a doubt they do), then it is difficult to maintain that they don’t also experience the third level, the emotional reactions.

  My third reason is that this conceptualization emphasizes an evolutionary continuum. It posits that human emotions, while possibly unique in some respects, have evolved from those of mammals, which in turn have evolved from those of reptiles, and so on. Unless one subscribes to the view that human-type consci
ousness and self-awareness are absolutely essential to the experience of all emotion, it is very difficult to deny—even from such an apparently dry, purely scientific viewpoint—that dogs must experience at least some form of emotion.

  Alongside the many advantages of this model, however, there is one major disadvantage: the implicit assumption that subjective emotion (Emotion III) always emerges as overt behavior (Emotion II). In humans, most emotions are linked to facial expressions that vary little from culture to culture, thus serving as a near-universal language of feelings. However, we can all think of situations in which we try to hide our feelings or project emotions that are different from those we are actually feeling. Dogs, too, have expressive faces—and bodies—that give away much, but possibly not all, of what they are feeling.

  It’s worth briefly considering why dogs have evolved such expressive faces. Cats have not. Cats suffer in silence. Cats can communicate extreme fear, or extreme anger, but what about anxiety or joy?7 This striking difference between cats and dogs stems from their evolutionary histories. Domestic cats are descended from solitary hunters, an “every man for himself” culture: Two male (or female) cats are essentially lifelong competitors in the business of passing on their genes to the next generation. A gene that made one cat likely to look pleased with itself when it had just returned from an especially successful hunting trip would die out, because it would contribute to its rival’s success at finding food, not his own. The absence of a connection between communication (Emotion II in the model) and the physiological and subjective components of emotion (Emotion I and Emotion III) can thus sometimes be in the animal’s own interest.