Dog Sense

My grandfather, an architect, liked to walk. He walked to and from his office in the industrial city of Bradford and to and from the churches and mill buildings he specialized in; but especially he walked for recreation, whether in the Yorkshire moors or in the Lake District or in Snowdonia. Whenever he could, he took Ginger with him. The family maintained that Ginger, who was taller than he should have been for his breed, had acquired his longer-than-average legs through all this exercise. Actually, in the photographs I have of him he looks quite typical of his breed, and not unlike the Cairn chosen to play Toto in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. It was not until much later on, when I became professionally interested in pedigree dogs, that I was struck by how much the breed had changed over the intervening decades, including becoming significantly shorter in the leg. I doubt many modern Cairns would enjoy the amounts of exercise that my grandfather evidently relished, although Cairns today are less prone to inherited diseases than many other breeds are.

Ginger was a genuine Yorkshire "character," and the family had a fund of stories about him, but what amazed me the most was the freedom he had been given, even though he lived within sight of the city center. Every lunchtime, when my grandfather was at work, Ginger was allowed to take himself for a walk around the neighborhood. Apparently he had a routine. First he would cross the road into Lister Park, where he would sniff lampposts, interact with other dogs, and, in summer, try to persuade the occupants of the park benches to part with one of their sandwiches. Then he would cross the tram tracks on Manningham Lane and amble to the rear of the fish and chip shop, where a scratch at the back door would usually elicit a handful of scraps of batter and some misshapen chips. Then he usually headed straight for home, which involved crossing a busy junction. Here, according to family legend, there was usually a policeman, directing the lunchtime traffic, who would solemnly stop the cars to allow Ginger safe passage across.

I've not been to Bradford for many years, but if other cities are anything to go by, Lister Park is probably now ringed with poop-bins, most of the dogs walked there are at the end of a leash, and the Bradford dogwardens are called out to catch any dog that routinely roams the park, let alone the nearby streets. The trams are long gone, of course, and traffic lights have replaced policemen on point duty, but I doubt that one of today's body-armored community support officers would dare to stop a car to allow a small brown terrier to cross the road, even if he or she wanted to.

Seventy-odd years have passed since Ginger was allowed to roam the streets and charm his way into the affections of everyone he met, including the local law enforcement officers. During that same period, almost unnoticed, there have been enormous changes in society's attitudes toward man's best friend.

Such attitudes were still quite relaxed when I was growing up in 1970s' Britain. My first dog, a Labrador/Jack Russell cross named Alexis, was also a roamer, although he was more interested in the opposite sex than in lunchtime snacks. Despite our best efforts to keep him in sight he would manage to get away once in a while, and so, unlike Ginger, he did end up in police kennels a few times (in those days the police in the UK still had responsibility for stray dogs). But no one seemed to mind much. Nowadays such tolerance of dogs and their ways is hard to find, especially in cities, and dog ownership is showing signs of retreating to its roots in the countryside. After many millennia in which the dog has been man's closest animal companion, cats are taking over as the most popular pet in many countries, including the United States. Why is this happening?

First of all, dogs are expected to be much better controlled than they used to be. There has never been a shortage of experts telling owners how to take charge of their dogs. When I took on my second dog, a Labrador/Airedale terrier cross named Ivan, I was determined that he would be better behaved than Alexis. I decided I ought to find out something about training but was then shocked to discover the approach adopted by the trainers of the day, such as Barbara Woodhouse, who seemed to see the dog as something that needed to be dominated at all times. This simply didn't make sense to me—the whole point of having dogs as pets was for them to become friends, not slaves. As I researched, I found that this approach to training had stemmed from the ideas of Colonel Konrad Most, a police officer and a pioneer in dog training who, more than one hundred years ago, had decided that a man could control a dog only if the dog was convinced that the man was physically superior. He derived this idea from contemporary biologists' accounts of wild wolf packs, which at that time were considered to be controlled by one individual who ruled the others through fear. Biology, by then my profession, seemed to be at odds with my gut feeling as to how my relationship with my dogs ought to work.

To my relief, this dilemma has resolved itself over the past decade. The wolf pack, always the touchstone for the interpretation of dog behavior, is now known to be a harmonious family group except when human intervention renders it dysfunctional. As a consequence, the most enlightened modern trainers have largely abandoned the use of punishment, relying on reward-based methods that have their roots in comparative psychology. Yet for some reason, old-school trainers continue to dominate the media—largely, I suspect, because their confrontational methods make for a more exciting spectacle.

While a more sympathetic understanding of dogs' minds is being applied to training, albeit patchily, their physical health has been progressively undermined. As more and more demands have been placed on the family dog in terms of hygiene, control, and behavior, the breeding of dogs who might be suited for this ever more demanding niche has been left in the hands of enthusiasts whose primary goal is to produce dogs that look good. Ginger, although he came from pedigree stock, was only ten or so generations away from Scottish and Irish rat-catchers of no particular breeding and, as a result, led a long and healthy life. Now, the Cairn terrier is in danger of becoming the victim of inbreeding for the show-ring, plagued by over a dozen hereditary complaints such as the exotically named but apparently excruciatingly painful Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease.

Biologists now know far more about what really makes dogs tick than they did even a decade ago, but this new understanding has been slow to percolate through to owners and, indeed, has not yet made enough of a difference to the lives of the dogs themselves. Having studied the behavior of dogs for over twenty years, as well as enjoying their company, I felt it was time that someone stood up for dogdom: not the caricature of the wolf in a dog suit, ready to dominate his unsuspecting owner at the first sign of weakness, not the trophy animal who collects rosettes and kudos for her breeder, but the real dog, the pet who just wants to be a member of the family and enjoy life.

And yet dogs today unwittingly find themselves on the verge of a crisis, struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing pace of change in human society. Until just over a hundred years ago, most dogs worked for their living. Each of the breeds or types had become well suited, over thousands of years and a corresponding number of generations, to the task for which they were bred. First and foremost, dogs were tools. Their agility, quick thinking, keen senses, and unparalleled ability to communicate with humans suited them to an extraordinary diversity of tasks—hunting, herding, guarding, and many others, each an important component of the economy. In short, dogs had to earn their keep; apart from the few lapdogs who were the playthings of the very rich, the company that dogs provided would have been incidental; rewarding, but not their raison d'être. Then, a few dozen generations ago, everything began to change—and these changes are still gathering pace today.

Indeed, an ever-increasing proportion of dogs are never expected to work at all; their sole function is to be family pets. Although many working types have successfully adapted, others were and still are poorly suited to this new role, so it is perhaps surprising that none of the breeds that are most popular as family pets have been specifically and exclusively designed as such. Thus far, dogs have done their best to adjust to the many changes and restrictions we have imposed upon them—in particular, our expectation that they will be companionable when we need them to be and unobtrusive when we don't. However, the cracks inherent in this compromise are beginning to widen. As human society continues to change and the planet becomes ever more crowded, there are signs that the popularity of dogs as pets has peaked and that their adaptation to yet another lifestyle may be a struggle—especially in urban environments. After all, dogs, as living beings, cannot be reengineered every decade or so as if they were computers or cars. In the past, when dogs' functions were mostly rural, it was accepted that they were intrinsically messy and needed to be managed on their own terms. Today, by contrast, many pet dogs live in circumscribed, urban environments and are expected to be simultaneously better behaved than the average human child and as self-reliant as adults. As if these new obligations were not enough, many dogs still manifest the adaptations that suited them for their original functions—traits that we now demand they cast away as if they had never existed. The collie who herds sheep is the shepherd's best friend; the pet collie who tries to herd children and chases bicycles is an owner's nightmare. The new, unrealistic standards to which many humans hold their dogs have arisen from one of several fundamental misconceptions about what dogs are and what they have been designed to do. We must come to better understand their needs and their nature if their niche in human society is not to diminish.

Our rapidly changing expectations are not the only challenge that dogs face today. The ways in which we now control their reproduction also represent a major challenge to their well-being. For much of human history, dogs were bred to suit the roles that humankind assigned to them—but whether their task was herding, retrieving, guarding, or hauling, dogs' stability and functionality were considered far more important than their type or appearance. In the late nineteenth century, however, dogs were grouped into self-contained breeds, reproductively isolated from one another, and each assigned a single ideal appearance, or "standard," by breed societies. For many dogs this rigid categorization has not worked out well; rather, it has worked against their need to adapt into their new primary role as companions. Each breeder strives not to breed the perfect pet but to produce the perfect-looking dog who will succeed in the show-ring. These winning dogs are considered prized stock and make a hugely disproportionate genetic contribution to the next generation—resulting in "pure" breeds whose idealized appearance belies their deteriorated health. In the 1950s, most breeds still had a healthy range of genetic variation; by 2000, only some twenty to twenty-five generations later, many had been inbred to the point where hundreds of genetically based deformities, diseases, and disadvantages had emerged, potentially compromising the welfare of every purebred dog. In the UK, the growing rift between dog breeders and those concerned with dogs' welfare finally became public in 2008, resulting in the withdrawal of the humane charities—and subsequently that of BBC Television, the event's broadcaster—from Crufts, the country's national dog show. While such protests are a start, the dogs themselves will not feel any benefit until the problems brought about by excessive inbreeding have been reversed and dogs are bred with their health and role in society, not their looks, in mind.

Ultimately, people will have to change their attitudes if the dog's lot is to improve. So far, however, neither the experts nor the average owner have had their preconceived notions challenged by the wealth of new science that is emerging about dogs. Much of the public debate thus far, whether about the merits of outbreeding versus inbreeding or the effectiveness of training methods, has amounted to little more than the statement and restatement of entrenched opinions. This is where scientific understanding becomes essential, for it can tell us what dogs are really like and what their needs really amount to.

Science is an essential tool for understanding dogs, but the contributions of canine science to dog welfare have, unfortunately, been somewhat mixed. Canine science, which originated in the 1950s, sets out to provide a rational perspective on what it's like to be a dog—a perspective ostensibly more objective than the traditional human-centered or anthropomorphic view of their natures. Despite this attempt at detachment, however, canine scientists have occasionally misunderstood—and even given others the license to cause injury to—the very animals whose nature they have endeavored to reveal.

Science has, unwittingly, done the most damage to dogs by applying the comparative zoology approach to studies of dog behavior. Comparative zoology is a well-established and generally valuable way of understanding the behavior and adaptations of one species through comparisons with those of another. Species that are closely related but have different lifestyles can often be better understood through comparative zoology, because differences in the way they look and behave mirror those changes in lifestyle; so, too, can those species that have come to have similar lives but are genetically unrelated. This method has been highly successful in helping to disentangle the mechanisms of evolution in general, especially now that similarities and differences in behavior can be compared with differences between each species' DNA, so as to pinpoint the genetic basis of behavior.

Yet although the applications of comparative zoology are usually benign, it has done considerable harm to dogs, as one expert after another has interpreted their behavior as if they were, under the surface, little altered from that of their ancestor, the wolf. Wolves, which have generally been portrayed as vicious animals, constantly striving for dominance over every other member of their own kind, have been held up as the only credible model for understanding the behavior of dogs.¹ This supposition leads inevitably to the misconception that every dog is constantly trying to control its owner—unless its owner is relentless in keeping it in check. The conflation of dog and wolf behavior is still widely promoted in books and on television programs, but recent research on both dogs and wolves has shown not only that it is simply unfounded but also that dogs who do come into conflict with their owners are usually motivated by anxiety, not a surfeit of ambition. Since this fundamental misunderstanding has crept into almost every theory of dog behavior, it will be the first to be addressed in this book.

Despite the misapplication of comparative zoology, more recent scientific discoveries could, if applied properly, benefit dogs considerably. Although canine science went into eclipse in the 1970s and '80s, the 1990s saw the field's resurgence, which has continued to the present day. After nearly fifty years of almost total neglect, this extraordinary uplift in scientific interest in the domestic dog has been driven partly by the increasing role that dogs play in detecting substances such as explosives, drugs, and other illicit substances (which they still sniff out more effectively than any machine) and the attendant realization that humans need to better understand how dogs perform these tasks. It has also been due to the shift in attention from the chimpanzee to the domestic dog on the part of a few primatologists who have attempted to gain fresh insights into the way that animal and human minds work. A further contribution has come from veterinarians and other clinicians who wish to improve the therapies available for treating dogs with behavioral disorders. Finally, it should not be forgotten that many biologists are dog lovers too. Once the professional stigma of working on so-called artificial animals has been overcome, such scientists are often keen to apply their skills to improving dogs' lives.

By further pulling back the curtain on dogs' inner lives, the new school of canine science has the potential to provide everyday dog owners with new ways of thinking about—and relating to—their pets. Thanks to the efforts of this new community of scientists, we now have a vastly improved understanding of how dogs' minds work—specifically, how dogs gather and interpret information about the world around them, and how they react emotionally to varying situations. Some of this research has revealed startling differences between dogs and people, suggesting that it is both desirable and possible for dog owners to "think dog" rather than simply assuming that whatever they themselves are sensing and feeling, their dog must be sensing and feeling too.

Although the new science about dog behavior has the potential to put the dog's role in human society back on track, little of the research has been made available outside of obscure academic texts until now. In this book, I attempt to translate for the general readers—and dog lovers—the exciting new developments in canine science. Doing so requires me to overturn a great deal of conventional wisdom about dogs and how we should interact with them. In the first half of the book, I show that the most up-to-date account of the dog's origins, while confirming that the wolf is indeed the dog's only ancestor, reveals a very different image of dog's nature than seemed to be the case only two decades ago. Dogs may be constructed from wolf DNA, but this does not mean that they are compelled to behave or think like wolves; indeed, domestication has changed dogs' minds and behaviors to the point where such comparisons can be a hindrance, rather than an aid, to any genuine understanding of our pets.

The new science of dog behavior has dramatic implications for humans—and for our choice of the best and most humane ways to train our dogs. A word of caution here, though: This book is not a training manual. Rather, its purpose is to show where modern ideas about dog training have come from, so that owners themselves can effectively evaluate whether the training manuals or trainers they have chosen really know what they are talking about.

After revising the story of the dog's origins, I will explore what might loosely be referred to as dogs' "brainpower." Scientists have recently turned their attention to the kinds of beliefs that owners have about their dogs' emotional and intellectual capabilities, and their findings are demonstrating how accurate—but also how mistaken—these beliefs can be. It's an integral aspect of human nature to attribute feelings not just to animals but also to inanimate objects—to speak, for example, of "an angry sky" or "the cruel sea"—and yet, until a few decades ago, it was anybody's guess as to what emotions different animals might have. Many scientists, moreover, used to regard emotions as simply too subjective to be accessible to serious study. While animal intelligence has been studied for more than a hundred years, hardly anyone considered dogs worthy of study until perhaps the end of the twentieth century. Since then, research has significantly changed the ways in which we think about dogs' minds. The new canine science reveals that dogs are both smarter and dumber than we think they are. For example, they have an almost uncanny ability to guess what humans are about to do, because of their extreme sensitivity to our body language, but they are also trapped in the moment, incapable of projecting the consequences of their actions backward or forward in time. If owners were able to appreciate their dogs' intelligence and emotional life for what it actually is, rather than for what they imagine it to be, then dogs would not just be better understood—they'd be better treated as well.

Just as canine science can inform human attitudes about dogs' minds, it can also tell us how dogs experience and interpret the world around them. Physically speaking, a dog and his or her owner live in the same house, visit the same park together for exercise, travel in the same car, meet the same friends and acquaintances. However, the types of information arriving at the dog's brain and the owner's brain in each of those situations are profoundly different. We are visual creatures; dogs primarily rely on their sense of smell. We refer to high-pitched noises that we can't hear (e.g., the squeaking of bats) as "ultrasound"; dogs would, if they could, scoff at our inability to hear such sounds, which they pick up perfectly. To fully appreciate our dogs' world, we need science to tell us what they can and can't detect, what they find pleasant and what they would object to if they could. For example, I don't suppose your dog has ever been bothered by the colors you've picked out to decorate your house, but his or her delicate nose was very likely insulted by the odor of the drying paint.

Although our lack of understanding of dogs' nature often compromises their well-being, it pales into insignificance beside the problems we have generated for pedigree dogs through excessive inbreeding. Rigid breed standards encourage breeders to eliminate all traits that don't fit the "perfect" type. In theory this should allow breeders to select for traits that would create healthy and well-adjusted, if rather uniform, animals—but in practice it has led to the appearance of an extensive range of inherited defects that compromise the welfare of large numbers of dogs in many, many breeds. Science, thankfully, can help to get dog breeding back on track. While it is beyond the scope of this book to provide a detailed manual of canine genetics, the penultimate chapter addresses the underlying principles that breeders should be following, emphasizing what it is about pedigree breeding that directly affects dogs' well-being.

In the final chapters of the book, I look at how science can help dogs to adjust to twenty-first-century life. Currently, most of the attention given to dogs' breeding has focused on endowing them with superficial, rather than practical, traits. Many pet dogs are essentially breeders' rejects, deemed unlikely to reach the perfection demanded by the breed standard; puppies who look as though they're never going to become champions in the show-ring are the ones who become pets. Surely the needs of the pet dog deserve more attention than that? As dog owners and dog lovers, we need to think constructively about how to breed dogs whose primary purpose is not to herd sheep, retrieve game, or win prizes at dog shows but, rather, to be rewarding, obedient, healthy, happy family pets.

In writing this book, I have tried to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of the special place that dogs hold in human society. If these aims can be achieved, they should go a long way toward sustaining and reinforcing our relationship with our beloved companions as the next decades unfold.