Dog Sense

by John Bradshaw

  Unreliability of visual signals may well be a reason why dogs are so intent on sniffing one another when they meet. As far as we know, selective breeding has had little or no effect on dogs’ abilities to communicate by odor. However, the very instability of odor signals as they are altered by microorganisms means that they have to be continually relearned if a dog is to keep up to date with “who smells like what.” Of course, to do so, dogs have to get close to one another, and in judging whether this is a safe maneuver, each must depend on long-distance, mainly visual signals from the other dog. Thus dogs cannot escape the problems of an unreliable body-language, even in this scenario.

  As we know from observing their interactions with humans, however, dogs are very flexible when it comes to learning new signals and cues. This flexibility goes a long way toward explaining why most interactions between dogs—even those with a limited repertoire of visual signals—end without incident. Dogs are quick learners and can recall the identities of many other dogs, so they can presumably also learn to make allowances for the inevitable body-language deficiencies in dogs they have met before. In addition, they can modify, even completely alter, their responses depending upon other information available to them. Who is sending the signal? Have I met him before? If not, have I met a similar dog before, and how did that encounter work out? What else is going on? For example, what is the context for the signal: Is the dog standing over a toy, or are other dogs watching us? It’s usually to the receiver’s advantage to take all of these factors into account before making his response—except on those rare occasions when the other dog appears to be about to attack, in which case immediate flight is probably a more sensible option. Moreover, each encounter provides more information about the signaler that can be stored away for use on a subsequent occasion. In this sense, dogs’ native intelligence has enabled them to compensate, most of the time, for the liberties we have taken with their visual signaling structures.

  Selective breeding for appearance is largely a product of the last hundred years; for far longer—probably since the earliest stages of domestication—man has been breeding dogs for behavior. This tendency has continued right up to the present day, as dogs’ roles continue to become more specialized and demanding. For example, the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in the UK has developed a strain of golden retriever/Labrador retriever crosses that are particularly suited for guide-dog training. Much of this breeding has fitted dogs to particular working roles, thereby doing a great deal to strengthen the bond between man and dog. But in the contemporary West, where dogs’ working roles have diminished, some of the more exaggerated behavioral traits—such as indiscriminate chasing and forceful territoriality—can be unhelpful for dogs whose primary role is to be companions.

  One clear personality difference between breeds lies in the extent to which they enact the predatory behavior of their canid ancestors. Some dogs don’t show predatory behavior even when you’d expect them to: Wolves, on seeing a small animal running away from them, would instinctively give chase—as would many dogs, especially the hunting breeds. Others, especially some of the guarding breeds, seem oddly uninterested. Although training plays a part, these differences between breeds are, at their heart, genetic.

  The sheep-guarding breeds are extreme examples of this kind of unresponsiveness. Originating around the Mediterranean, these dogs include the Pyrenean mountain dog, the Italian maremma, the Hungarian kuvasz, and the Turkish karabash and akbash. Many of them are entirely or largely white, bred to look more like sheep and less like wolves. Traditionally, these dogs were raised with livestock and then kept with the flock to guard it against predators. They thus treat members of the flock as part of their own social group, confining their aggression to whatever they perceive as threatening to themselves or their flock. They do attack and kill rabbits, so some of their predator behavior must remain intact. However, they have been reported not to know what to do with their kills—they simply carry their dead prey around until it falls to pieces. All dogs may be born with the ability to perform the various elements involved in predatory behavior, but in some breeds some of these elements don’t appear until adolescence and thus never become integrated into the rest of their behavior.9

  On the other end of the spectrum are working collies, who display a different modification of predatory behavior—albeit also for peaceful ends. Hounds and terriers used for hunting will complete the entire wolf hunting sequence right through to consuming their prey, unless they have been trained not to, but this is essentially unreconstructed canid predatory behavior; the aforementioned hunting elements are present, but subtly reorganized in the collie. Herding sheep the collie way involves three key elements of predatory behavior: the “eye” (fixing the gaze, thought to be intimidating), the stalk, and the chase. Collie pups start to perform these behaviors at a very early age and integrate all three into their play. It is then possible for the shepherd to train the young dog to perform each of these separately, on command. The later and most violent parts of the predatory sequence—biting and, eventually, killing—are suppressed if necessary by training, although many collies seem to break off naturally after the chase. Herding ability in border collies is surprisingly heritable (in other words, some collies are born better herders than others), indicating some residual variation even within the breed. Thus selection for this crucial ability, while it must have been and probably still is intense, hasn’t yet reached completion.

  A working collie

  Among dogs who do not work, many of the skills for which they were originally bred become redundant—or worse—in their companionship role. Sometimes this redundancy does not appear to present any problem; for example, many of the most popular companion breeds—such as spaniels and retrievers—are descended from working animals. But even in these breeds, there has been a tendency for separate “working” and “show” lines to emerge, with most pet animals coming from the latter. This implies that the dogs selected specifically for work may not fit the companion niche as well as they might. The conflict between working traits and the pet owners’ requirements can be even more obvious in herding breeds such as border collies and in hunting breeds such as beagles—both of which can require far more exercise and stimulation than the average owner is able to give.

  In recent years those who regulate dog breeding have taken on more responsibility to inform prospective owners of breeds’ working origins and the problems these can cause for an owner who is not prepared to adapt to them. For example, the UK Kennel Club describes the border collie thus: “He needs a lot of exercise, thrives on company and will participate in any activity. He is dedicated to serving man, but is the type of dog who needs to work to be happy and is not content to sit at home by the hearth all day.”10 Compare this to the official UK breed standard, which says simply “Temperament: keen, alert, responsive and intelligent. Neither nervous nor aggressive”—implying to the uninitiated that no collie will become nervous or aggressive, even though some who are denied the active life they crave can become both. (Some references to a breed’s drawbacks are more oblique: “There is no better sight than a Beagle pack in full pursuit, their heads down to the scent, their sterns up in rigid order as they concentrate on the chase. This instinct is mimicked in his everyday behaviour in the park: the man with the lead in his hand and no dog in sight owns a Beagle.”)11 Nevertheless, prospective owners who take the trouble to investigate the behavioral needs of a breed that takes their fancy should nowadays be able to find fairly accurate information.

  However, many of the traits that suit dogs to the companion role—strength of attachment to people, ability to cope with unexpected changes in their environment, trainability, and so on—appear to vary as much within breeds as they do between breeds. While not denying that some breeds suit only active lifestyles whereas others find it easier to adapt to the demands of modern city life, I hasten to add that it is often not so much a dog’s breed as its individual personality that influences how re
warding a pet it will be—and how happy it will be in that role. Breed standards and descriptions can appear to describe a fixed personality (e.g., “Agile, alert ... Should impress as being active, game and hardy ... Fearless and gay disposition; assertive but not aggressive”—from the UK breed standard for the Cairn terrier12), but scientific exploration of canine temperament has shown that this cannot be relied upon.

  The most comprehensive study of dog behavior genetics ever conducted was the Bar Harbor project, which started in 1946 and continued until the mid-1960s.13 At the time, psychologists and biologists held diametrically opposed opinions about whether genetics influenced personality: The biologists maintained that many differences in character between individual animals (and people) were influenced by genes, while most psychologists held that personality was the product of an animal’s early experiences. Dog breeds, at that point genetically isolated from one another for half a century or so, were chosen as the ideal starting point for answering such a question.

  Five breeds, and crosses between them, were examined for consistent differences in behavior. The scientists chose small- to medium-sized breeds with reputations for having contrasting behavioral styles: the American cocker spaniel, the African basenji, the Shetland sheepdog, the wire-haired fox terrier, and the beagle. They bred more than 450 puppies, many purebred, but also some who were crosses between two of the chosen breeds. They raised all of them under standard conditions, allowing the effects of any genetic differences to come through. As they grew up, the puppies were given a wide range of behavioral tests. Some of these examined spontaneous behavior, such as play between puppies in each litter and the response to being picked up by a person. Others tested how easy it was to train each dog to perform simple obedience tasks, such as walking to heel. Still others tested cognitive ability, such as how quickly it took each dog to learn to get through a maze or work out how to pull a bowl of food out from under a wire mesh cover.

  Surprisingly, when all the results were compiled, breed turned out to be less relevant to personality than had been expected at the outset. Although each breed was found to have some distinctive behavioral characteristics (e.g., the cocker puppies were much less playful than the others), it was the basenjis that stood out from the rest. Although the descriptions in their breed standards said otherwise, the characters of dogs from the four American breeds overlapped a great deal.14 Only the basenjis, an ancient breed with distinctive “village dog” DNA, were very different in their behavior. Some of this distinctiveness could be traced to a single dominant gene, which manifested as a tendency among basenji puppies to dislike being handled until they were over five weeks old.

  Basenjis aside, many of the behavioral traits that were measured varied almost as much within breeds as between them. The differences between individual dogs were found to be based upon seven different emotional traits (impulsivity, reactivity, emotionality, independence, timidity, calmness, and apprehension) and only two ability traits (general intelligence and the ability to cooperate with people). Whether the dogs performed well or badly in most of the tests depended not on differences in their “intelligence” but, rather, on their emotional reactions to the situations they were put in and their ability to glean clues from the experimenters about what they were supposed to do. Thus while working traits may be characteristic of breeds or types, emotional traits show much overlap between breeds.

  Basenji

  Moreover, this study—intentionally—did not take into account a very important factor influencing a dog’s character: the individual’s experiences during the first few months of life. All of the puppies were raised under standard conditions, in order to minimize the effects of such experiences. In the real world in which prospective owners look for pets, such early experience can overwhelm most genetic factors. A cocker puppy born and raised in an isolated outhouse will behave much like a beagle raised under similar conditions—timid and frightened of anything out of the ordinary—and will be equally prone to developing fearful avoidance or aggression problems later in life.

  Some breed organizations place insufficient emphasis on the role of environment in shaping a dog’s behavior. This is hardly surprising, as they are loath to admit that any of their breeders rears puppies under less than ideal conditions. A dog’s character is the product of a complex interplay between genetics and the dog’s experiences growing up. No breed standard for character can protect against the damage done to a puppy by keeping it in an impoverished environment for the first eight weeks of its life.

  Perhaps the most important personality trait a potential dog owner will want to know about is whether or not a particular breed is inclined toward aggression. But are there meaningful distinctions between the breeds in this regard? The relative contributions of the genetics and environment in determining whether a dog is likely to bite are still hotly debated: One of the most contentious aspects of personality and breed-specific behavior is whether aggressiveness is a genetic trait among dogs. It’s universally accepted that aggressiveness can be affected by experience, but opinions differ where other contingencies are concerned. Many experts now agree that much aggression in dogs overall is motivated by fear, not by anger, and that early experience and learning play a huge role in determining whether an individual dog turns its aggressive feelings into an actual attack. At the same time, however, genetic influences are hard to rule out. In the case of breeds designed for fighting and guarding, they must play a role, although not necessarily a deterministic one.

  Since differences in experience were minimized in the Bar Harbor project, the scientists’ data should be a good place to look for genetic effects on aggressiveness. All of the dogs in the study were tested for aggressive tendencies under a variety of scenarios, but such tendencies did not emerge in the analysis as one of the seven underlying emotional dimensions. Rather, aggressiveness was strongly linked to general reactivity—characterized by a generally fast heart rate, rapid progress around obstacle courses, and so on. However, none of the five breeds selected for the Bar Harbor project, with the possible exception of the basenji, was especially noted for its aggressiveness, so this study cannot rule out the possibility that genetics may influence aggressiveness in some other breeds, especially those bred for fighting and guarding.

  Aggression in such dogs is still an issue of real public concern, despite many measures taken to reduce the risks involved. Except in very carefully defined and tightly regulated circumstances, such as the training of police dogs in public order enforcement, aggressive dogs are unacceptable to most of society. In recent years, attempts to remedy the problems caused by canine aggression have largely taken the form of breed-specific laws, many of which have proved difficult to enforce. These laws vary considerably in detail from country to country, but most ban or place severe restrictions on ownership of pit bull terriers and similar breeds. But are pit bulls really different from other dogs, or do they simply have the right “look” for those who wish to use dogs as weapons? The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

  Fighting dog

  Reports of biting incidents are notoriously unreliable,15 so care must be taken in considering whether a dog that has attacked someone was actually a pit bull. Since pit bull types generally lack authenticated pedigrees, pit bulls cannot be called a “breed” in the same sense that, say, cocker spaniels are. It is thus difficult to identify pit bulls as such; other breeds, most notably the Staffordshire terriers, are often mistakenly referred to as “pit bulls.” Two other confounding factors may also contribute to the pit bull’s reputation: (1) contagious overreporting of bite incidents following one well-publicized occurrence and (2) the deliberate choice of this type of dog by irresponsible owners.

  Legislating against a whole breed can be justified only if there are underlying biological reasons why that breed should be aggressive. If, on the other hand, the main cause is irresponsible ownership, manifested as a desire to use the dog for fighting (or to merely give the impression of doin
g so), then outlawing one breed is unlikely to solve anything. Either the breed will be pushed underground, further into irresponsible ownership, or other breeds will take its place.

  Pit bulls are certainly descended from dogs intended for fighting. The ancestry of today’s pit bulls can be traced back to bulldogs. Bulldogs were used for bull-baiting in the UK until the sport was made illegal in 1835; after that, they were used for dog-fighting on both sides of the Atlantic. Such dogs have been selected over many generations for specific characteristics: a low level of fight inhibition; rapid escalation of any conflict, often omitting the usual threat communication; and absence of the bite inhibition seen in many guarding breeds, such as German shepherds, who grab and hold but usually do not shake and tear like pit bulls. (The “locking jaw” of the pit bull is, however, a myth.) Breeders reputedly try to select against aggression toward people, for the safety of the owners and their families at least. But it’s not clear that such selection is effective: Since dogs in general are far more likely to choose their targets of aggression on the basis of experience than through genetically driven preference, they are apt to act out against anyone they perceive as threatening—including their owner.