THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

CAN DOGS GET ANGRY? Yup, I’m here to say that they can. Do they get angry as often as humans? Nope, and thank heavens for that. If they did, I doubt we’d live with them, given that they have carpet knives in their mouths. Just like people, they vary tremendously in how often they experience or express anger. I’ve known some dogs who appeared not to have an angry moment their entire lives. More commonly, I’ve worked with dogs who, on occasion, are clearly frustrated at not getting what they wanted or expected. And rarely, I’ve worked with a small number of dogs who appeared to live in a state of ‘road rage’ for weeks, months or years on end. So even though I would never say that anger in dogs is an exact replica of anger in people, both in its frequency and how we experience it, it is a basic biological fact that dogs are capable of experiencing anger. Here’s why:

Anger is as primal an emotion as fear, and if an animal can experience fear, then one is wise to assume it is capable of experiencing anger. The two, it turns out, go hand in hand. Both are mediated primarily in the amygdala and both evolved to protect us. Fear is the emotion that signals the body that it is in danger, and motivates us to take some kind of action to protect ourselves. Anger is the emotion that backs up fear when being on defense is not enough. Roger Abrantes tells a compelling story of when he was about to be in hand-to-hand combat as a young soldier. As he stood in a trench, watching the enemy soldiers run toward him with bayonets drawn, he was initially terrified. But at the last minute, just as the soldiers were within a few feet of him, he was overwhelmed with a burst of rage. That’s the emotion that poured energy into his body and allowed him to move forward to fight for his life.

That’s what anger does: it floods the body with energy, increases the heart rate, pumps blood into our muscles in preparation for action. Anger demands action; that’s why it can be so problematic. Have you ever done something you wish you hadn’t when you were angry?  If not, please consider either offering life coaching sessions for the rest of us, or ask your parents if you actually are an alien. Anger, at varying intensities, compels us to do SOMETHING, anything, and thus… we sometimes do something we shouldn’t and get ourselves in hot water until we learn to take a breath and let our emotions settle. The same thing can happen to dogs. If you’re interested in following this thread, I write more about the biology of emotion in For the Love of a Dog.

Dogs have all the same wiring (and external expressions) related to anger as people. They just, as I said, don’t seem to experience it as often as we easily-angered primates do. (Ever seen chimps lose their tempers? It’s common, and it’s not pretty.) Of course, like all emotions, dogs exhibit a vast range of intensities of experiencing anger, from being slightly irritated, to being truly frustrated, to downright mad to being in an out-of-control rage. All of those are manifestations of anger, just at different levels, and all are within a dog’s capability.  Of course, dogs don’t have the same complexity of cognitive overlays as we do; their experience of anger has got to be different in many ways than ours. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t share the basic, fundamental emotion of anger. As I’ve said before, glass half empty or glass half full, both are equally accurate.

Here’s a photo of a dog illustrating what I claim is an angry emotion. Note the furrowed brow, the offensive pucker and the hard stare. Any one of those things by themselves would not be enough to suggest an internal emotion of anger, but without the fur and black nose, this is exactly the face of an angry person.

ANGER MANAGEMENT? Here’s something else we share: a need to learn how to handle being frustrated or angry. Many of the behavioral problems I’ve seen in my practice relate to either dogs who have never learned how to handle being frustrated and lose their tempers when they don’t get what they want, or owners who, uh, have the same problem.

Dogs need to be taught to be patient and polite (the basis of the Feeling Outnumbered program), and we need to learn to take a breath, or two or twenty, before expressing anger or frustration at our dogs. I needed this advice just recently: until recently Willie had stopped harassing Sushi with his obsessive indoor herding, but after his long, long period of inactivity and Sushi now being inside more because of the weather, the problem cropped up again. I found myself starting to get truly frustrated about it, until I put on my behaviorist/trainer hat, took a breath and put Willie in his crate when I found myself unable to do anything constructive. (Things are improving again, whew.)

I’d love to hear your thoughts: How do you interpret the dog above? What are your best coping strategies for dealing with your own frustrations, and helping your dog through his or hers? Never happens at your house? Ever? Really? Wow. Can I come over?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. Well, two steps forward physically, and four back behaviorally. Willie’s shoulder is doing well, really well.  As I said earlier, I’ve adjusted to a new normal, and have accepted that his shoulder will never be sound, but given that, he’s doing really well. He can play with his current favorite toy (Flappy) without any sign of regression, so that’s just heaven for both of us. However, last week he literally peed his pants (okay, he didn’t have any on, but you get the idea), barking in terror at a man he didn’t expect, standing in the kitchen. Granted the guy is tall, has hair like Einstein and was standing stock, staring, but still… Willie has never, ever reacted to a person like that. He became somewhat nervous around unfamiliar men when he was an adolescent, but it was easily countered by having guys throw ball for him every time we could arrange it. Willie has always adored people, guys especially, but as you may know, has had a lot of fears over the years, but primarily toward other dogs. A few days later another man came over. I asked him to sit down before I let Willie out. Willie didn’t bark as he did before, but he was clearly frightened of the man (who he’s seen at least 15 times over the years and always been fine with.)

I’ll write next time about the factors that could be contributing to his behavior (our hermit-like existence after his injury clearly being one of them, but I doubt that it’s the only one). There are at least 4, maybe 5 I can think of… I’ll discuss them, and our treatment program, in the next post.

Here are the noses of Barbie (on the left) and Butterscotch, one of the ewe lambs we’ve kept from this year’s breeding. It looks as though she did get bred by King Charles, so stay tuned to see if we have a teen0-aged pregnancy (that’s a good thing in sheep). The sheep must be loving the cool but not cold weather; who knows though, maybe they are yearning for snow?

Well, it seems appropriate now to talk about disgust after a weekend of gluttony. (But what fun cooking paprika chicken and pot roast and roasted brussels sprouts and home made bread and pumpkin and cherry/raspberry/rhubarb pie. Not to mention eating all the turkey that others cooked and I ate up as if I was starving.)

It’s been interesting reading about whether dogs people believe that dogs can experience disgust. Recall that 66.2 % of seminar participants said yes, and 78.3% of blog readers who responded said yes (this may have changed as later responses came in, but not significantly). (The Morris research listed only 34% of people responding yes, but a blog reader commented wisely that the question wasn’t “Can your dog…” but “Have you observed your dog experiencing disgust.”)

But here’s the deal. Disgust is perhaps the most basic of all emotions. Disgust, or “an aversion to something offensive,” is seen in all mammals, most often in response to a smell or taste that is aversive for some reason. Our expressions of disgust are similar across species, as Darwin noted in The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Here’s is a more current illustration of that from Youtube:

Disgust is registered primarily in the Anterior Insula of the brain, an area that is active both when one feels disgusted and when one views a disgusted expression on the face of another. Because of its close association with the sense of smell, disgust has been postulated to be the “first emotion,” designed to prevent the ingestion of dangerous substances. However, I was surprised to find very little about disgust in Panskepp’s classic book on emotions in animals, Affective Neuroscience. In spite of that, I know of no biologist who argues that other mammals don’t experience disgust on a basic level.

Of course, what is perceived as disgusting is both species specific (the stink of fox poop not being a human favorite) and culturally transmitted. Not surprisingly, this  is especially true of food: for example, some cultures find big, fat juicy insects and their larvae highly palatable and others, not so much. There’s an interesting article in Time Online about the research of Andrea Morales and Gavan Fitzsimons who found that just being next to something perceived as disgusting made an item less attractive (ie, don’t try to sell cookies next to Kitty Litter at the supermarket.)

That brings to mind a seminar I did in Canada in which the host hotel thought it would be a hoot to serve the chocolate pudding desert in the shape of dog feces. Seriously. It looked exactly like poop sitting on a white plate. They were actually surprised that no one ate it, but not as surprised as we were that they did it in the first place. We all laughed, and then looked at each other with somewhat stunned expressions on our faces, and pushed the plate away.

It also reminds me of John Rogerson’s technique of inhibiting dog-dog aggression by throwing a bag of dog feces into the face of the offending dog. I’ve never done it, but I’ll bet it would absolutely get a dog’s attention. Of course, some dogs eat feces, but I doubt they’d enjoy poop-in-the-face. Personally I’d rather not use it as a training technique (pretty negative for the person too), but I have thought it would be a great last ditch tool if you were walking down the street with a bag of poop in your hand and a dog charging at your reactive dog.

This all gets me thinking about the use of ‘disgust’ in behavior modification. You all know I’m a positive trainer, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t suggest someone use something aversive to prevent some behavior problems if the solution is humane. I’m thinking about Bitter Apple for example: I just sprayed a plant with it to prevent Tootsie from chewing on the leaves.  But what about an aversive scent versus taste? Any use for that? I’ve seen commercial products that are supposed to keep dogs out of plants, etc, but frankly I’ve never seen them work very well. You?

Here’s another great example of the expression of disgust, by the way, sent in by a reader from Europe of her Pap at a show after being forced to be in cold, wet grass and then touched by a judge with cold, wet hands. Thank you Ute for sending these photos, they are great!

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Willie’s shoulder is as good as it’s been since the injury last February. He is allowed to run around outside for brief periods with no hobbles and longer ones with the hobbles. Great news is that my adrenals are now getting used to seeing him running around, so I don’t suffer from cortisol toxicity every time I see him run anymore! He is not a fan of the treadmill now, he came out of it yesterday and sniffed the floor of the room for a full three minutes before acknowledging me or Courtney. But it’s helping him, so I sympathized, gave him lots of cuddles when he did come over and then told him to suck it up.

Tootsie continues to make tremendous strides. I am so proud of her. Her recall is coming along beautifully, and I can now take her up into the pasture and keep her from hysterically and desperately eating as much sheep poop as it is possible to cram into her mouth. She gets lots of more appropriate treats and is actually spend time sniffing around the grass, apparently interested in something besides gobbling up sheep poop as if she was starving to death. And for one brief magical moment, Willie and Tootsie actually sniffed each other at the same time a few days ago. Will wonders never cease?

THANKS to you all for contributing to the survey! I’ll give you the results of the blog survey first and then compare them on the right with a survey done at the Madison Seminar (thanks!) and with research done by Morris et. al. in 2008 (Cognition & Emotion 22(1), 3-20). First, emotions and dogs (of course!)

CAN DOGS EXPERIENCE THE FOLLOWING EMOTIONS?

EMOTION   BLOG YES                SEMINAR YES                      MORRIS 2008 YES

FEAR                   100%                               100%                                       93%

JOY                       100%                              99.5%                                      99%

ANGER                85.7%                             95.1%                                       65%

DISGUST            78.3%                              66.2%                                      34%

GUILT                 22.9%                              40.0%                                      74%

JEALOUSY         82.9%                               84.6                                        81%

Pretty interesting, hey? Note that Fear, Anger and Jealousy have relatively similar responses between blog readers, seminar attendees and animal owners as asked by Morris et al. (Although isn’t it interesting that only 93% of dog owners thought dogs could experience fear? Oh my. Look, though, at the answers to Disgust and Guilt. Wow, quite a difference, hey? And only 65% of Morris’s respondents thought dogs could be angry, while 86% of blog readers did.



IF ONE ASKS THE SAME QUESTION ABOUT “ANIMALS:” (And yes, the question does arise, as well it should, what animals? Grasshoppers?  Morris’ research actually asked animal owners: “Is your animals ever fearful?” The respondents could have birds, horses, hamsters, etc. So in that sense I didn’t follow the methods of the research, but I was curious what folks would say to the general question and would like to compare it later to my UW student’s answers, so bear with me….). You’ll see that the Madison seminar attendees were not asked this question:

EMOTION       BLOG YES               MORRIS YES

FEAR                      100%                                      97%

JOY                          98.4%                                    98%

ANGER                   93.5 %                                    68%

DISGUST               82.3%                                     33%

GUILT                    47.6%                                      41%

JEALOUSY           87.3%                                       63%

* Percentages don’t always add up to 100% because some answers were “don’t know.” In addition, some respondents included humans (logically) and I think answered if ANY animal could, while others answered if ALL animals could. A good example of a poorly worded question! Note to self.

AND  HAMSTERS? Fewer of you responded here, 50 versus 70 for dogs (understandably, and good for you for saying you didn’t know!). Summarizing, all three groups are less likely to attribute all emotions except Fear to hamsters than dogs (Yes to Joy in Hamsters was from 80 to 91% — the highest number from Morris’ research interestingly enough!). For example, 83% of blog readers thought dogs could be jealous, but only 36 % thought hamsters could.

Interesting stuff, hey? Here’s what I plan to do next week: Enroll you in why ALL mammals can experience Disgust, Fear and Anger, show you some research that suggests that indeed dogs can experience something akin to human Jealousy, and agree with many of you that Guilt is a complicated construct that of all the emotions is least like to be similar in dogs and people. (Great research on that to come too!)

Til then, see you in Cleveland I hope this weekend, and if not, definitely in Orlando January 7th for an all new seminar on Canine Communication that I am having a ball working on, or Naples on January 12th for a half-day seminar on using dogs in AAT and AAA (details to come VERY soon.)

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Oh the weather! Why am I inside for heaven’s sake! It’s been sunny and 50′s, and everyone who has lived here a few years know how very sweet the weather is for this time of year. Tootsie did beautifully with the snow after a few days, but now the ground is dry again so I’m sure we’ll have to start over once it snows or rains again. Her biggest strides in the last few weeks have been coming when called. She’s doing so well I am even taking her outside off leash, but only under certain circumstances: I have incredibly good food and she knows it; we’re behind the house and she can’t be distracted by cars on the road; I know she needs to pee;  Willie is beside us and is under 100% vocal control and she pays some attention to where he goes; and, most importantly, we only stay out for 3-4 minutes maximum.  In other contexts she’s on leash and I practice calling TOOTSIE COME! and run the other way and give her treat treat treat for turning and running to me. I gotta tell you, there’s not much cuter than watching her fly across the grass, ears flapping like Dumbo, tail turning like a crank, mouth drooling in anticipation of treats.

And good news on the Willie front too. He’s progressed enough that he gets occasional times outside without the Hobbles (rare and short), and today, for the FIRST TIME since February, I took him up the hill behind the house and let him run free (with Hobbles on, but still…) I’ll take it back a notch tomorrow and keep him extra quiet until I see how he does. We go one two steps forward and one step back, but mostly we’re going in the right direction. My dream of working him on sheep in November is gone (today was going to be the day, by the way. I circled it on the calendar many months ago.)  His PT says probably not until well into 2012. Deep breath. We’ll be okay, it’ll come before we know it, and at least he can be off leash outside now for awhile.

Willie and Tootsie are about the same with each other. They continue to pretend that they are the only dog in the house. They do sneak sniffs more often when the other isn’t looking, and Willie gets my eternal gratitude for tolerating all kinds of rude behavior from her. He lets her lick food out of the same plate (allowed after the humans are done with dinner), ignores it when she dances on his head to get up to our faces, and let’s her take over a sleeping place without so much of a grumble. Again, I see no love lost, but they seem to be accepting each other as the new normal. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s gorgeous outside. I just wish I was able to spend more time out there. But it is great to feel like we’re getting ready for winter. Our chest freezer (large enough to put a cow into. Standing up. Well, okay, not quite, but it’s HUGE) is full to the brim with strawberries and raspberries and rhubarb and apple butter and chard and broccoli and spinach and 1/4 of a kindly raised hog, an entire lamb from the farm, and 15 organic, local chickens. And a gazillion other things. Trips to the market will be little more than orange juice and toilet paper, flour and sugar.  And best of all, all the ewes have been bred by the new ram, King Charles. (I named him KC because he seemed tiny to me when he arrived. I named him after, you guessed it, King Charles Cavalier Spaniels).

Here’s the evening sun on the back hills behind Lady Godiva, Spot and Rosebud, who have come down for their nightly alfalfa. This was last week, now the snow is long gone, the sun is shining and it’s warm and balmy.

I love the patterns of snow on branches and sun on leaves:

Surely you’d agree that both you and your dog can be frightened, but what about feeling jealous? Guilty? Ashamed? Ah, now it gets trickier, doesn’t it? Emotions like jealousy and guilt are called “secondary” emotions, and many biologists, psychologists and philosophers believe that non-human animals can’t experience them. The argument is that they can’t be experienced without a relatively high level of cognition, particularly the ability to be self aware and knowledgeable about the mental state of others.

I’ll talk in the next post about research related to whether dogs feel guilt or jealousy, but for now, I’d like to replicate another piece of research that asked people what emotions they think animals experience. [If you came to the Madison Seminar, no fair answering after you saw the research results!]

So here’s your question: Which of these emotions can animals experience? (I ask the question as it was asked by the researcher. I’ll ask next about dogs specifically.)

Fear, Joy, Anger, Disgust, Guilt, Jealousy.

Answer by copying that list into a comment and force yourself (sorry) to say Yes or No after each of the 6 emotions listed. We’ll total up your answers and compare it with research done a few years ago, and with the answers we got from the audience in Madison at the Advanced Seminar.

Here are the same emotions:

Fear, Joy, Anger, Disgust, Guilt, Jealousy.

Now answer Yes or No if this time we’re asking about Dogs. Then answer for a different animal, a Hamster. We’ll report back on your answers and how they compare to the general public, the Madison audience and what the research says in about a week’s time. No fair writing about the research yet if you know about it, we’ll all talk about that after the ‘survey’ comes in.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Brrrrr. First real snow, along with bitter winds, sleet, rain, the whole nine yards. Tootsie has already explained to me that she couldn’t possibly walk on just plain old wet grass, so cold, snowy grass, she explained to me this morning, is out of the question. But we’re making huge progress. Here’s what has worked well so far:

1. Obviously, the best treats in the house came out once the rain began last week. Tootsie learned she gets cooked lamb heart for walking on wet grass, instead of commercial dog treats if it’s dry. She taught me it was much more effective to drop the treat on the ground rather than hold it in my hand, so I learned to drop a trail of treats from the garage to the grass to lure her out. (Thank heavens Willie has a great “leave it!” Boy has it come in handy lately!)

2. Treats helped tremendously, but I think the biggest factor in getting her onto wet grass (which she does now willingly) was that she wanted something even more. Tootsie was obsessed with cars when she came to the farm; I have absolutely no idea why. Does she associate them with her escape from the mill? Did someone drive up to feed her every day? (The Amish don’t drive but they often will be in a car that someone else does.) So I “Premacked” it. If she came out and peed on the wet grass (a low probability behavior) she got to run to the car and leap and dance around it, and even get put inside (a high probability behavior.. she’d do anything when I first got her to be allowed to run to a car.)  Why she loves this so much I may never know, but it clearly was what she wanted more than anything in the world–so much so it was hard to get her past a car for the first 2 weeks, so I just used it as a reinforcement.

So we’ve got wet grass taken care of, and house training has been going exceptionally well. Now on to the next challenge: walking on snow and ice. Oh my, poor little girl, this will be a challenge for her, what a switch for her after living all her life inside. Picture me cooking up lots and lots of extra good treats for snow falls…

Willie is being SO good with her. I would not say he is happy she’s there, but no more snake face and mostly he looks happy and content. Every once in a while I think he looks sad, and I assume it’s about her, but it seems less and less, especially as he gets more and more freedom and he’s learned that our belly rub sessions on the living room floor are still part of our day. She’s also getting a little less pushy (although we have a long way to go there, but one day at a time.)

Here’s Tootsie imitating Andy Rooney (note the eyebrows), considering put paw to snow for the first time:

Success! I lured her out with raw meat dropped on the ground. She paused at the border, so I gave Willie a bunch of treats as she watched.  Ah, the power of another dog!  Finally she ventured out onto the snow and got 3 treats for it. Then, bless her, she sniffed around and finally squatted and urinated. This got her 1) pieces of lamb kidney, 2) much clapping and ridiculous celebrating from me, 3) the chance to run back to the car and dance around it and 4) the chance to go back into the house (whence she also got more food, more excitement, and belly rubs.) I’m sure we’re not done with this, but she’s making great progress, none-the-less. I’ll be buying her a little coat soon. (I can not believe those words came out of my mouth. Me? Buy a dog a coat? Really? But she is truly so frail right now, I just can’t imagine her dealing with 30 below weather.)