There was quite the dust up on Twitter last week about a blog in Psychology Today by Nathan Lents, titled Dogs Apologize Better Than Some Humans. Skipping the observation that humans have a lot more to apologize for than dogs do, (clown horror movies come to mind), Lents addresses the "guilty look" of dogs and wolves. He argues that what people often interpret as a "guilty look" in dogs is the equivalent of an apology. He says: "A dog that bites too hard is punished by temporary shunning. They are removed from the social unit and ignored for a time. In order to be reintroduced, the offending wolf must approach with an apology bow and be re-admitted into the group." There's more. The quote that got him in the hottest of water was this: "In a sense, an apology is indeed an expression of Read More
Archives for April 2017
Want a Laugh? “Peanut Butter Dogs” Guarantees It
The book Peanut Butter Dogs, Photographs by Greg Murray, is the best thing to cross my desk in ages. We now know that the ingredients for a giggling, smiling, heart-warming laugh fest are: 1. Dogs (80% of the dogs in the book were adopted from shelters or rescues). 2. Peanut butter. 3. A great photographer. The inspiration for this book came from Greg's dog Bailey, a Mastiff rescued from a tough life, underweight and frightened of the world. But Greg gave her love and care, and she lived a life of "joy and adventure" until her untimely death at two and a half years of age. While Bailey was alive, Greg happened to take an amusing photo of Bailey slurping peanut butter off of her face. An enlarged photograph of that image greets visitors to the house, each of whom begins smiling when they Read More
Why Don’t Dogs Get Angry More Often?
I've had a lot of interesting conversations on book tour for The Education of Will, and one of the topics that comes up relates to dogs and anger. I've heard: "Are you really saying that dogs can experience anger? Isn't that being anthropomorphic; surely anger is a human construct?" And from a few concerned people: "Aren't you afraid that attributing anger to dogs just gives people an excuse to punish them?" Good questions, and an understandable controversy. I've learned that even putting the words "anger" and "dogs" into one sentence can be distressing to some people. So much so that I've written about it twice in the past, once in 2008 (Can Dogs Get Angry?) and again in 2011 (Anger & Anger Management). To summarize those posts, in spite of our vision of dogs as having Read More
Fighting Words
It seems that we all have something we are fighting right now. This next month, I'm all about doing battle with cancer. Cancer. Ugh, I hate it. I actually began this piece with a direct conversation to cancer itself, but it contained so many swear words I had to delete it. I have good reason to hate cancer, as does almost everyone reading this article. Personally, I’ve lost two dogs, a sister-in-law and a best friend to cancer. I have several friends who are battling cancer as I write. I look at my three dogs and find myself wondering—will I lose one of them to it? (That’s not paranoid, cancer affects dogs at higher rates than it affects people.) What about Jim? Argh, I can't even go there. Of course, none of us can have a direct conversation with cancer. It’s not sentient, it doesn’t Read More