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, Read More
Tulip’s Tulips
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, Read More
What are You Grateful For? and… House Training Dogs
Every morning I start my day writing a list of things that I am grateful for. Sometimes they are big things (Jim, my dogs, opportunities to learn, grow and improve relationships between people and animals) and sometimes they are small (the plaintive Wooo Heee song of courting Chickadees, the deep, purple blue of the first spring flowers). This morning I surprised myself, by adding: I am grateful that none of my dogs potty in the house. House training and elimination control is like health, isn't it? If everything is fine, you don't really think about it much. But when it's not, it can be overwhelming. I went through two years living with old dogs who simply couldn't control themselves. Pippy Tay lost control of her anus in her last year of life (at age 15) and I picked up poop at least Read More
Why are some People more comfortable around animals?
There's an interesting discussion going on, on-line, in my university course right now. One of the students asked why some people like non-human animals more than they do members of their own species. There are some extremely interesting comments posted to that question, especially about animals being 'innocents' rather than moral agents who can choose to be cruel. The question, and other potential answers, reminded me of an essay I wrote in Dog is My Co-Pilot, titled "Love is Never Having to Say Anything at All." In it I argue that one of the reasons we love dogs so much is that, well, because they can't talk. As I write in the essay: "Words may be wonderful things, but they carry weight with them, and there's a great lightness of being when they are discarded." Of course, this Read More
Human-Animal Relationships; People and Dogs
I started teaching my University of Wisconsin course yesterday, titled "The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships." It is, granted, a lot of work, but I love doing it. I love the intellectual stimulation it creates, and I love working with 150 smart, motivated young people with minds like steel traps (okay, most of them) who are hungry to learn how to relate their education with the day-to-day issues of life. We'll be talking tomorrow about "humans and animals." Or, is it "humans, and other animals?" What really makes us different from the rest of the animal world, and what makes us the same? I love thinking about those questions, and I love how dogs are always reminding me that while we humans are special... different in so many ways than all the other animals on earth, Read More
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