THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

I’m working on an article for The APDT Chronicle on what are called “secondary emotions” in non-human animals. I have an article in the latest issue (May/June 2009) about “primary emotions” like fear and anger, and am following up with a smaller one about emotions like jealousy, guilt and empathy. I guess it’s obvious from my last big book, For the Love of a Dog, that I’m fascinated by the topic of emotions in other animals, and equally fascinated by our perception of them.

Almost by definition, primary emotions are accepted as occurring in a wide variety of species; and yet, I’ve had numerous people disagree with the concept that animals can experience some of them, with the most concern about attributing anger to non-humans. (As I’ve written earlier, anger is an extremely primitive, basic emotion, and denying the existence of it in other mammals is hard to justify once you know the biology behind it, but it seems to be important for people to try.)

There is much more controversy and confusion over what are called the “secondary emotions” in animals, which are generally argued to exist only in humans, and are believed to require complex cognitive abilities often uniquely attributed to us, including self awareness and what’s called “theory of mind.” These emotions, like jealousy, empathy, pride, guilt and shame can be further categorized as “self-conscious emotions” like jealousy and “self-conscious evaluative emotions” like guilt and shame. The “evaluative” modifier refers to the requirement that the experience of guilt or shame is based on evaluating a behavior against a rule or standard that is understood by the individual experiencing it.

I’m reading an interesting article related to all this in Cognition and Emotion (2008, 22(1), 3-20) by Morris, Doe and Godsell about secondary emotions and the perceptions of pet owners. The authors do an excellent job summarizing the controversy, arguing that secondary emotions are not necessarily uniquely human, and describing a study in which pet owners were asked if a list of primary and secondary emotions were observed in their pet (including dogs, cats, horses, birds, rats, rabbits….). In a second study, they asked owners to describe the situations in which the emotion of jealousy occurred. (“Can you give examples of the situations in which your dog gets jealous?”) Needless to say, this is tricky stuff–publishing an article in a scientific journal about what owners think of their pets–and in my opinion, the authors did a great job with it. I especially like their thoughtful discussion about the value (and problems) of owner reports, including the obvious fact that just because someone thinks their dog is jealous doesn’t mean that their dog is jealous.

They address these issues extremely well, and conclude by, in part, arguing that the behavior described by the owners (as the basis for their perception of jealousy) are the same behaviors described as jealousy in humans. In their study the context of the presumed occurrence of jealousy always involved a triad of people and animals, in which one animal attempted to divert attention away from another by pushing between the other two or vocalizing. Thus, they focus on the behavior of the animals, showing that the “jealous” animals did exactly what humans do when we label their behavior as motivated by jealousy. They correctly argue that this is not proof that non-human animals experience jealousy, but that it is important information that suggests we should at least seriously consider it. Here here.

Note that for this second study they focused on what I think of as the “simplest” of secondary emotions: jealousy. I’ve long argued that jealousy is simply a form of anger (“I Want It, You Have It and I Don’t and I”m Angry about It.) It seems logical to me that the other secondary emotions are indeed the result of a more complicated type of cognition . . . but, what do you think? Can dogs be guilty (fyi, I’m not saying they can’t, but think this is the emotion most often MIS-attributed to dogs). Can dogs feel shame? True Empathy? I’d love to get a conversation started about this….

By the way, the study I cited above found differences in secondary emotions attributed to animals based on species: Over 70% of dog owners reported jealousy and guilt in their dogs and over 70% of horse owners reported jealousy and pride. Interesting, hey? Is this a result of our expectations? Mis-reading their facial expressions? A true species difference?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Spring is in all its glory and I honestly don’t know how it could be more beautiful. Here’s our giant Lilac bush, back lit by the Sunburst Locust and the Oak/Hickory forest across the road:

Redford is now safely  ensconced at Jim and Peg’s beautiful farm. It can be dangerous to put two unfamiliar rams together; they are highly territorial and can injure or even kill each other. We talked at length about how to make the transition safe: the standard method is to put them together in a pen so small that they can’t back up and ram into each other with any force. Peg also got two “ram shields” that block their forward vision and are reputed to prevent aggression. She thought she’d use them once she let the rams out into a bigger pen after a few days–she’s had rams stand side by side in small pens for a few days, and then immediately back up and shake the ground with the jack hammer-like force of their bony heads smashing together.

After thinking about it, she decided to put them in adjacent small pastures at first to let them become familiar. I agreed with the plan, and with a bit of “loading-into-the-truck” drama, we got Redford settled in a small pasture with a couple of wethers (neutered males) beside the Katahdin ram, who I call Chili Bean.

Peg went to check on them a bit later, and found that Redford and friends had crawled on their knees through a low, tiny hole in the fence…  and cuddled up to Chili. Here are the boys now, best of friends and potentially amused at all of our concerns. . .(could that be a secondary emotion in sheep, best labeled “amusement brought on by the behavior of humans”?)

xxx

We are soon going to tape the pilot of a potential podcast and would love some questions from dedicated readers. Each podcast will have an interview with an author or professional of interest (we have Temple Grandin and Karen Pryor lined up first, how fun is that?) and the answers to two to four questions about behavior or training, and that’s where you come in.  We’d love to get some real questions from you… we could make them up (that is VERY common by the way on lots of shows) but would much rather get them from you. So here’s your chance… send in a question you’d like us to consider for the podcast.  The good news is that we might use it on the show and you’ll get your question answered. The bad news is that you’ll send in a question and never hear a thing in response. That will happen a lot.. there’s no way I can answer everyone’s question that starts “I have just a quick question for you…..”. If I did, that’s all I’d do all day long until me and my dogs starved to death and could only send answers metaphysically.

So, send in a question by posting a comment to this post. It doesn’t have to be about your animal, it could be anything related to training or behavior of either wild or domestic animals. The question MUST be no more than 125 words (yep, that’s short!). Anything longer gets tossed into the bin, so keep ‘em short and sweet. I’ll post all the questions so that everyone can see what’s coming in (and what’s already been asked).

We’re all ears (eyes?), can’t wait to see what comes in…

I wondered if you have seen this — an automatic ‘dog washing machine,’ in which you put your dog into a metal box, streams of water and soap engulf him or her, then presumably the dog is dried with blasts of hot air.  Here’s a link to the Dog-O-Matic (sent to me by an alert UW student). I’m relieved to say it’s only in France so far, but honestly, keep your eyes peeled for it to show up in your area (and be ready to stop it!). Poor poor dogs!

Speaking of animal welfare, thanks to everyone who wrote interesting and informed comments about my last blog, basically a rant on the problems associated with horse racing. If you are interested in the topic you might want to read the comments, there are some very good ones. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, and keep up the conversation.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, I promised I’d tell you what happened to Redford the Ram (and Willie). It was one of the accidents that come out of nowhere, in which everything is going according to plan, and then, surprise!  Redford had been split off from the flock, along with a neutered five month-old ram lamb to keep  him company. I needed to ensure that my ewes didn’t get bred early and deliver lambs in the depth of winter (like last year) so Redford and friend were moved out of the main flock, and into the orchard pasture up the hill from the house. We call it the orchard pasture because of the wild apple trees that used to punctuate the grass in spring with a flurry of white blossoms, and it is my favorite place on the entire farm. The sheep seem to like it too (that’s where the photo from the last blog was taken.)

I went up to practice Willie’s flanking whistles on Redford and lamb, knowing that they’d be a bit more flighty than the main flock because they were split off from them. The main flock is slow and pokey, so a bit more speed is good practice for me and Will.  But, Redford and friend weren’t a ‘bit more flighty.’  They were an ovine version of hysterical.  I sent Will to take them out of a corner, something we’d all done–sheep, dog and human–a gazillion times. However, rather than moving away from Willie and out of the corner, as usual, the ram lamb panicked when Will was a good 40 yards away, and turned and smashed his head into the fence to try to get out. Oh my… I love my sheep and hate seeing them frightened or hurt, so I immediately said “LIE DOWN”  to Will, and bless  him, he did. The lamb settled down and moved away from the fence a few feet, so presuming we were back to relative normal, I flanked Will and asked him to go around the sheep to move them out of the corner.

My mistake, because apparently the sheep weren’t as settled as I had thought.  Redford turned and, true to his name, rammed full speed into Willie, who stood up for himself without biting, bless him. It gets blurry from there… imagine two white shapes and a smaller black and white one, moving left, right, up and down at high speed for a few seconds. Somewhere in there, Redford took a tumble, and ended up with a bruised shoulder. He limped quite badly a few hours later, and I fussed all night worrying about him. I’m quite fond of him, and he’s valuable besides, so it felt important that he recover.

Good news, after two days Redford is as good as new. He’s going to some dear friends on Saturday morning, to live with their ram for the summer, and then we’ll both use him for breeding. I’ll let you know how the transfer and ram introduction goes. Unfamiliar rams can be very aggressive to each other.. think National Geographic and Mountain Goats.. and in some cases can even kill each other. Peg and I have no intention of that happening, I’ll tell you more about what we’ll do to prevent that in a subsequent blog. Meanwhile, here is one of Redford’s daughters, a lovely little ewe lamb from the good ewe Martha 2.0 (her face is behind the lamb). Martha is my oldest ewe and is beginning to breath in a labored fashion, so I’m waiting for a visit from the vet for her. She was born by emergency Caesarian section when her mother, the original Martha, died in delivery. Thus the name, Martha 2.0. Cross your hooves that it’s nothing serious…

zxx

Please don’t run Rachel Alexandra in the Belmont. If you don’t follow horse racing, that request if meaningless. If you do, you know that the Belmont is the third race in the Triple Crown, the be-all and-end of American Thoroughbred horse racing. You also know that “fillies” rarely win horse races (could we call her a mare, please?) and that Rachel’s win yesterday in the 2nd leg of the Triple Crown was historic.

What you may or may not know is the depth of controversies that currently runs rampant (pun intended) in the world of horse racing about the welfare of the horses involved. My knowledge of the arguments for and against horse racing have recently been enriched by the term papers written in the class I teach at UW- Madison.  Each student has to write two papers about the biological and philosophical aspects of a current controversy regarding our relationships with animals. (Which would you have chosen?  Pick from: 1)Horse Racing, 2) De-Listing or Not De-Listing  Wolves from the Endangered Species Act, 3) Gestation and Farrowing Crates for Hogs, 4) Wind Turbines (“green energy” which some say kills large numbers of bats and hawks) and 5) Purpose-Bred Injurious Mutations in Rodents in Bio-medical research)???

One of the many great things about the class is that I get to learn so much. One of the unfortunate things about the class is that I get to learn so much. Two years ago one of the topics was a comparison of farm-raised versus wild-caught shrimp. Now I don’t eat either kind, after learning about the ecological devastation of both methods. And I did love shrimp, truly I did.

I loved horse racing too. While other little girls had dolls, I painstakingly cut out tiny pieces of leather to create bridles and saddles for the plastic horses that sat on my dresser. I drew horses in my sleep, and sobbed for hours when Tim Tam broke a sesamoid bone and lost the Triple Crown. And so I couldn’t resist watching the Preakness. Sexist colors flying, I cheered so passionately for Rachel to win the race that Jim and Willie ran into the house, frowns of worry on their faces, to see what was wrong.

I cheered for Rachel knowing that thousands of horses who don’t make the grade are sent to unregulated slaughter houses in Mexico. That the use of steroids and bizarre cocktails of drugs have been used for decades to mask injuries or pump up muscle where muscle shouldn’t be. (The big tracks have finally banned steroid the use of steroids.) Perhaps worst of all, the driving force behind racing is no longer breeding and training horses that win a lot of money. Rather, the money is in the stud fees (at $25,000 to $200,000 a pop, a mature stallion can ‘cover’ at least a mare a day .. you do the math). So if you want to make a lot of money in horse racing, you breed horses who have muscles like weight-lifters and legs as light and thin as a glass icicle. That makes them really, really fast, and some argue, really, really fragile. Decades ago owners wanted sound horses who could win a lot of races, who brought in a lot of money from the purses. Now the focus is on winning a couple of big races, pulling their valuable merchandise off the track, letting boys be boys and collecting their money.

Is the focus on too much muscle the reason that the brilliant mare, Eight Belles, died last year, in front of god and gazillion people, when her forelegs exploded after the Kentucky Derby?  Is that why more and more “fillies” are leaving the gate as large and muscled up as the boys? No one knows, but there are plenty of people in the industry who are just as concerned as animal rights activists are about the welfare of race horses. (My student’s papers advocated banning horse racing completely by a two to one margin. Industry take note.)

So, please don’t run Rachel in three weeks. She ran a huge race three weeks ago in the Kentucky Oaks (she won by 20 lengths). She ran a huge race yesterday on a sloppy, difficult track (her own jockey said she was struggling). Three big races only three weeks apart each is too much for any horse. People are calling Rachel Alexandra one of the greatest horses of the year. Of the decade. I don’t care how she is rated years from now. I just couldn’t stand to watch her legs explode.

If she runs, I don’t think I’ll watch.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: In some ways, spring holds the same mix of emotions for me as horse racing. I love it and dread it. It’s gorgeous here dear readers, breathtakingly gorgeous. The lilac bush is in full bloom, the emerald green grass looks lit from within and the warblers flit like crazed jewels in the tiny, new leaves unfurling above our heads. And the high pasture needs fertiziling by hand, the flower beds are rife with weeds, the brush pile needs burning, the flock needs worming, the water tanks need cleaning out…. etc.  I won’t bore you. Spring is an astoundingly busy time on a farm, even a little one like mine. I’m behind at work, I’m behind on campus and I’m behind in just about anything else you can imagine.

Oh. I guess I’d better get to work then, hey?  I’ll tell you next time about Willie and Redford and the January lamb. We had a bit of an adventure earlier. Willie is okay, the lamb is okay, the fence is okay, but Redford has a bad bruise on his head and a cut on his shoulder. I’m hoping it’s minor, but he’s lying down now and he’s not chewing his cud. Cross your paws. More soon.

Here’s Redford on the left under the tree, relaxing after a hard morning eating grass…

Earlier I wrote that you “can’t reinforce fear” and used a dog who is afraid of thunder as an example.  For so long we have been told that we’ll just make our dogs worse if we try to comfort them when they run to us in fear when the skies rumble and the rain falls. In this context, it really is doubtful that comforting your dog is going to make him worse. As I said previously, fear is designed to be aversive, and dogs who are terrified of thunder aren’t going to get worse because you stroked their belly.

Indeed, there is research that some interpret to mean that our petting has little effect at all: As I mentioned in a 2008 Bark column (and an alert reader posted), Dreschel & Granger (Applied Animal Beh Science, 2005) found that cortisol levels, a measure of stress, did not decrease when owners pet their dogs during storms. (The most important factor in decreasing cortisol was the presence of other dogs.) However, note that a study by Odendaa & Meintjes (2003, Veterinary Journal) found that cortisol in dogs doesn’t decrease when we are petting them at other times, (although it does in us when we pet them!). However, it is important to remember that cortisol is not the be-all and end-all of indicators of emotion. The authors found that other indicators of internal affect, such as feel-good hormones like oxytocin and prolactin, increased when the dogs were petted, which suggests that stroking did indeed have a positive effect. And hey, if a dog’s behavior changes such that he is no longer pacing and panting while I rub his belly, I’m going to rub his belly!

Here’s an example of fearful behavior from last night at the farm. It’s not about thunder, but it is still instructive: late last night my farmer neighbor was in the field across the street from me in a tractor the size of Connecticut. As soon as Willie heard something and looked out the window, he absolutely lost it. He ran frantically in circles, barking hysterically with his ears pinned, his eyes twice their normal size and a look of sheer terror on his face. When I first heard him bark I honestly thought something terrible had happened, he sounded so horrifically upset. As soon as I saw what it was I said “Will! It’s okay!” and went to him. I used my voice in a soothing way (soft, quiet, looooooooooong notes), sat beside him and asked him to stay still. I rubbed the area between his eyes and the side of his head with long strokes. His barking decreased, although one BOOOOF would still burst out of his mouth every 5-10 seconds at first. In about a minute he stopped barking altogether and stayed still without me helping him. Eventually he put his head down and buried it between my body and my arm. It looked like he was hiding it, and I remember feeling all gooey when I saw that and said “Awww, honey, it’s okay!” but I suspect he was looking as much for the soothing feeling of being cradled as simply hiding his head.

This example brings up an issue that I didn’t address in my first post about reinforcing fear. I should have, but thanks to several thoughtful commentators, I will here. (You can read their comments on the May 4th, 2009 post). They raised the point that surely it IS possible to increase the frequency of a problematic behavior in some contexts, even if fear is one of the motivators. I agree completely that the issue is a bit more complicated that I might have suggested in my first post–ironically I had started to go into it in more depth and then ended up deleting several paragraphs because the post was getting too long and the topic was getting to complicated. But I shouldn’t have, because the topic really does deserve more nuance than I suggested.

The bottom line is you could indeed cause problems by inadvertently reinforcing behavior in certain contexts. There are two things that are important to remember here: one is that fear is an emotion, and “reinforcement” refers to something that increases a behavior. You can’t, technically, reinforce an emotion, but you can increase the frequency of a particular behavior. In the case of thunder phobic dogs I don’t think there is ever a problem, because you are trying to decrease the emotion, which would indirectly decrease the problem behavior. Besides, if you sit beside your dog and stroke him while it thunders, and he stops pacing in circles but sits beside you, then if you are reinforcing anything it is him sitting beside you and not pacing.

Secondly, motivation is key here.  If a dog is barking at visitor from fear, then having the visitor toss treats or toys does NOT reinforce the barking! It decreases it, because the emotion of fear subsides and it is the emotion of fear that drives the behavior. Once the dog associates visitors with treats, her behavior changes to body wags and happy dances. (Visitor = chicken! I love chicken! I love visitors!) This is standard Classical Conditioning, and I can tell you from 22 years of experience that it works incredibly well with lots and lots of dogs. However, if the dog is barking at people not because she is afraid, but because of another reason, it IS possible that you could increase the frequency of the behavior. That’s why it is so important to be able to read dogs and do a good evaluation of a problem behavior. I met a dog once who loved to get right into your face, all body waggy and grinny and relaxed, and then explode in a bark lunge about four inches from your face. I truly believed she just adored it when you startled (I rose at least a foot from my chair), and that is behavior that was clearly being reinforced!

I also think that how you respond to a dog’s fear is critical. First of all, we know that emotions can be contagious, so it is important to not be fearful yourself. Jennifer, in the comments, mentioned the importance of role modeling cool and collected sometimes, and I couldn’t agree more. If I had run to Willie and tried to pet him with an anxious voice and upset affect, it well might have made him more fearful.

Oh, my, I could go on and on, but life continues and I need to get to other things…. But here’s a link to the study on Storm Defender Capes that has just been published (thanks to an alert reader, Chris, for the link!). It looks as though capes in general do indeed have a positive effect, and that there might be something to the Storm Defender cape itself. I haven’t seen the whole study yet, but check it out, even the abstract is interesting. It in Applied Animal Behavior Science.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, it’s been cool and gorgeous and busy. This time of year in the country is never-endingly full of chores. (Did I mention the 150 exams to grade?) The lambs (who, with one exception, are doing beautifully) are thriving but need worming, the grass is growing and so are the thistles which have to be killed one by one, the ram needs to be split out before he breeds Snickers and Truffles, the gardens are full of weeds, the LP tank is leaking, the water tank up the hill needs to be scrubbed out…. and I need to sit in the swing at least a few minutes every day. Can you see it calling to me?

Here’s Sushi this morning. You gotta love the flexibility of cats. I love that Sushi maintained her x-rated yoga pose even while she moved on to licking her legs.

I promised I’d write more about treating thunder phobia in dogs, beyond the earlier posting that it won’t make things worse if you try to comfort them. It’s such a serious problem for some dogs (and their humans), and everyone who has a dog who suffers from it deserves some help (or just support!).

All I can do here is to summarize some of the treatments I have known to work.. a thorough discussion of treatments requires a booklet unto itself . I encourage you to send in comments to let others know what has worked for you, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there is no one treatment that works for all dogs.

Counter Classical Conditioning: This is the first treatment I recommend, and it is especially effective in mild or moderate cases. I’m doing it now to prevent thunder phobia in Will, who is one of the most sound sensitive dogs I know, but so far has not reacted with any anxiety to thunder. In this paradigm (described in a a general sense in The Cautious Canine), you pair something the dog adores (food or play best) with a damped down version of what scares him. Your goal is to condition your dog to associate thunder with something he loves, so that his emotional response to the loud noise is “Oh boy!” rather than “Oh No!” To get this to work:

~ You need to start at whatever stimulus first elicits any sign of fear in the dog. Dogs backward chain storms so well that you can use them as meteorologists… beginning to pace and whine when the wind comes up, and in extreme cases, when the barometer drops long before the storm rolls in.

~ The thunder or other stimulus has to be mild enough to prevent eliciting extreme fear (you can also use CDs or tapes of thunder, but need to have speakers distributed around the room, overhead being best).

~ The “treat” (food or play) has to be highly desirable so that the emotional response it elicits is more powerful than any fear elicited by the thunder.

~ The thunder/noise has to come first… so that it becomes a predictor of something good.

~ You need to proceed in a step-by-step manner, gradually linking louder and louder thunder with the food or play.

In other words, you hear thunder in the far distance, you say “Oh boy! Thunder Treats!” and give your dog a piece of chicken, or throw the ball if they are more motivated by play. Your goal is for your dog to emotionally respond to thunder as a predictor of something good, just like a clicker in clicker training.

Yeah, I know. Believe me, I’ve been through it myself with several dogs. You see the problem here…. how, exactly, does one make arrangements for thunder storms to begin in May with tiny, little quiet thunderettes and then gradually work their way up into glass-rattling boomers once your dog is ready for it? Well, you can’t (if you can, please write soon), but you can give your dog the ‘treat’ (I used food for Pip and play for Luke & Willie) whenever the thunder is relatively quiet, and then just stop once it becomes loud. I’d run outside with Luke and play ball when the barometer dropped and the wind came up, continue playing until the thunder started far away, and then come inside when the thunder began to get so loud that it would overwhelm Luke’s love of ball play. Then we’d go inside, I’d let him hunker beside me, rub his belly, sing and laugh. He got through it in two seasons (I’d call his case a moderate one, not at all severe, while Pip was severe for a few years but came through it fine after two summers of thunder = chicken.).

Pheromone Therapy: I’ve had several clients who had good success with Dog Appeasing Pheromone, or DAP, which is an artificial replicate of the pheromone produced between the mammary glands of a lactating bitch. It is species-specific and has no detectable odor and has the huge advantage of requiring you to buy it and plug it in. Period. Perhaps the easiest behavioral treatment known to science. It has some good research behind it and I’ve recommended it to clients for several anxiety-related problems in dogs and cats (Feliway is the brand name of one of the feline versions) and I’d estimate that it appeared to be helpful in at least half of them.

Acupuncture/Acupressure: I’ve never used this specifically for thunder phobia, but as I’ve said earlier, have used it for a variety of problems with good success.

Wraps: I’d be curious about reader comments on their success with wraps (originally developed by Linda Tellington of Tellington Touch). The theory is that in a general sense, swaddling provides a sense of comfort and safety. More specifically, the speculation is that the continuous neuronal stimulation of the wrap on the dog’s body at minimum distracts him from his fear (a process often called “overshadowing,” in which one stimulus modality dominates an animal’s nervous system) or at best, creates the production of endorphins that de-activate the amygdala and create a sense of calm.

I tried a wrap on Pip and she certainly appeared to be “calm,” but then, that was because she pretty much stopped moving altogether. I wasn’t sure if she was relaxed or in what’s called “tonic immobility,” (or frozen with fear) but after about 10 minutes she lay down and went to sleep, so I relaxed myself and tried it the next time a storm came up. (Use it first before a storm.) It seemed to work miracles at first… she slept right through the next two storms. But wouldn’t you know, the next storm was a barn burner, and it never worked after that. Have you ever tried wraps? (I should add that Pippy looked adorable in an old pink T-shirt! It made me smile anyway!) There are many commercial products available now, but I’ve never seen any research that they would be more effective than wrapping a la Tellington Touch or using an snugly-fitting T-shirt.

A Safe Place: I wrote in For the Love of a Dog about a dog whose job was to protect acres of vegetables from deer, and who became so afraid of thunder he’d run through the electric fence and risk his life on the county highway. I designed, and the owners built, a ‘safe house’ for him, and his dedicated human, Barb, spent many a wild night hunkering in his straw covered cave giving him chicken in storms. It worked incredibly well, but it took one amazing woman about two months of dashing 200 yards across the lettuce and beans to get to the safe house before the thunder started!

Safe houses can be created inside houses too… I’ve had several clients who did the counter conditioning in a roomy closet or sound-insulated dog house, and ended up with a dog who was still a bit nervous about thunder, but simply went to her safe house and curled up and slept through the storm.

Sound Therapy: I’ve talked before about the interesting work of Leeds and Wagner in developing music specifically designed to calm dogs. Their work is based on solid biological principles, and I’ve seen many cases in which anxious dogs appeared to be calmed by playing their music. You can read more about it, and get a CD of the music by checking out their book, Through a Dog’s Ear.

Eliminating Static Electricity: Nicolas Dodman suggested a few years ago that part of a dog’s fear of thunder storms could be due to static electricity. One of the blog readers commented that she, in desperation, wiped her dog’s coat with an anti-static dryer sheet, and that it seemed to help. Interesting… I know that Tufts was doing a study of Storm Defender (a wrap that is designed to dispel static electricity), but I haven’t seen the results yet. Any one seen any studies on this yet?

The list goes on.... there are so many things that people have tried. Claudeen McAulifee has a good booklet on treatments from homeopathy to flower essences to melatonin, etc. It’s called the Big Bang! and it’s the only booklet I know of exclusively on the topic of noise phobias. She doesn’t talk about counter conditioning, but goes through many different kinds of non-intrusive treatments (including the use of pink light…… interesting!).

And last, but not at all least, Medication: Serious cases of thunder phobia can be life threatening. I’ve had clients whose dogs ran away, and weren’t found for days, and clients whose dogs jumped out of second story windows, mutilating their bodies in the process. I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that someone talk to their veterinarian about using medication as a supplement to counter conditioning or other methods if their dog has a serious case of noise phobia. In the most serious cases the veterinarians I’ve worked with have prescribed both a tricyclic antidepressant (like clomicalm) and a fast-acting tranquilizer (like diazepam). In many serious cases, I’ve found over the years that a combination of meds, counter conditioning and a ‘safe house’ led to a successful resolution, but I would now add in music from a Dog’s Ear without a doubt.

That said, again, every dog is different, and not all dogs can be cured. As John Paul Scott said to me once, (of Scott and Fuller, and yes, I’m dropping names, I was thrilled to meet him!) not long before he died “Of course dogs are afraid of thunder, to them it sounds like GOD IS GROWLING.”

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Spring is glorious, gorgeous, wonderful and exquisite. it’s amazing how few days like today one needs to make an entire 5 months of winter worth it! There is also so much to do (besides grading 300 pages of essay exams and supevising the grading of another 900) it is overwhelming, but I”m going to focus on the good part!

Here are Tulip’s tulips from the window in the living room, showing the view she had as she overlooked the farm:

I fear you will all get tired of yet another photo of Mr. Will’s bright, expectant face, but it does remind me of spring! (This was taken a week ago, and wow is it different now. The leaves are coming out, the size of a squirrel’s ear, and right on schedule, or a little late, the warblers have arrived this morning. As colorful as any tulip (but too hard to get good photos of for me!). I’ll post more photos of spring at the farm as soon as I can get outside again….

As promised, I’m going to write soon about helping dogs with Thunder Phobia (and the very interesting issue of reinforcing fear and/or the behavior that expresses it) , but I couldn’t resist posting a few photos from this morning.

Here’s Mr. Will, front and center as usual, as I try to take a photo of the tulips that are blooming over Tulip’s grave. I named Tulip, in part, after the white tulips I planted in honor of my first Great Pyrenees Bo Peep. We buried Tulip with the hundreds of fresh tulips her admirers had spontaneously brought to a celebration of her life a few hours before we put her down.

Tulip the dog may have been all white, but her spirit was a rainbow of colors. The flowers are planted over  her grave, in the place that she spent so many hours, chewing on bones, surveying the countryside and barking at coyotes as they howled across the road. I’ve waited all winter in hopes the tulips would bloom, being at risk as they were from squirrels, mice and voles who love tulip bulbs like Tulip loved chicken. I surrounded and over planted them with bulbs that wild animals don’t like so much, like daffodils, scilla and hyacinth, and crossed my paws.  I can’t tell you what it felt like this morning to sit beside them, a joyful reminder that life goes on, and that our beloved friends never really die–at least not in our hearts.

It thundered last week during a rain storm, and it reminded me how much trouble a storm can be in the life of a dog (and for those of us who love them.) Since thunder season is approaching, this seems like a good time to talk about one of the oft-repeated, and ever-so-inaccurate pieces of advice handed out to dog owners: “You mustn’t pet your dog if he runs to you because he is afraid of thunder.”

That’s just wrong. Totally and completely and utterly wrong, but it has gathered gravitas, as things often do, because it has been repeated over and over again.

There are several reasons why that advice is wrong, here’s one of them: Fear is designed to be aversive, that’s why it is an effective way of affecting behavior and keeping animals out of trouble when they encounter something that might hurt them. Fear is aversive enough that no amount of petting or sweet talk is going to make your dog more likely to shiver and shake when she hears thunder rolling as the clouds billow and the rains begin.

Here’s the example for you of how hard it is to “reinforce” fear. What if someone tried break into your home in the middle of the night? Let’s say they did, and after the intruder left, a friend or loved one sat down with you on the couch, brought you tea and gave you a hug. Would the tea and sympathy make you more likely to be afraid if it happened again the next night? Of course not.

Can you imagine someone saying: “Well, I understand that you are frightened, but I’m going to ignore you because any sympathy that I would give you might make you more likely to be frightened if it ever happens again.” I don’t know about you, but that would be my EX friend.

One could criticize this example as one of misplaced anthropomorphism, but the fact is that this process works much the same in dogs as it does in people. The fact is, it is almost impossible to “reinforce fear.” Fear is highly aversive, and if anything, it works in reverse. I suppose, if you did it often enough, you could create an association between thunder and petting that would make your dog afraid of petting, but it is extremely unlikely to go the other way around.

It is true that you can make your dog more afraid than he already is, by doing something yourself that scares him, by forcing him into situations that scare him already or by being afraid yourself. Emotions are contagious, so if you want your dog to be afraid of thunder, then be afraid yourself! But you’re not going to make him more afraid of storms if you stroke his head and tell him it’s going to be okay.

The bad news is that petting won’t help (him or her) much either, so I’ll write next time about how to help a dog who is thunder phobic, but you might also find some ideas in The Cautious Canine, a booklet I wrote about helping dogs conquer their fears in humane and effective ways. I also wrote about why it’s okay to pet your dog when he’s scared in Bark Magazine in October of 2008, and more recently Pia Silvani wrote a GREAT article about it in this month’s APDT Chronicle.

Speaking of emotions, here’s a photo of a boxer with a lot of expression on his face. What emotion would you ascribe to it?