THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

This is a great question, one that none of us really know the answer to. Of course, it actually includes several questions: Do dogs learn to associate a smile with good things? Or a frown? And/or are dogs inherently able to “read” our faces because their expressions are so like our own? Or, do none of our expressions have any effect on our dogs? Do they take cues about our internal states and future behavior from other clues, our voices, our posture?

A friend and colleague sent me information from the just concluded Canine Science Forum in Vienna (thank you Julie!!!) about a study done on that very topic. Anais Racca, from the University of Lincoln in the UK, showed 21 dogs 6 images, two each of a person and a dog looking “negative” (we’d call the human’s face angry), “neutral” and “positive” (classic smiling-faced human, open-mouthed, slap-happy dog). They measured what’s called a “Laterality Index,” or how often the viewing dog’s eyes went left, right or stayed on center. In human research, there’s a suggestion that more negative emotions are processed in the right hemisphere (or left eye) and vice versa.

Their primary question was whether the dog’s would respond similarly to the expressions of the people as they did to the dogs. A summary of their conclusions was that the dogs were more sensitive to the facial expressions of their own species (not surprising) BUT did show different responses to “positive” versus “non-positive” (negative and neutral) expressions in both humans and other dogs. Interestingly, they noted that prototypical “neutral” faces in humans are still evaluated in a negative way (cold, threatening)–thus we tend to lump “neutral” in a similar category as “negative,” and so did the dogs.

Of course, this is a small study, and there are all kinds of issues that it brings up, but it is interesting as far as it goes. Based on my experience, it appears to me that many dogs are adept at reading human facial expressions. Just like people (who we know from Paul Ekman’s research vary greatly in their ability to ‘read’ faces), some dogs are a lot better than others.  It would be great to see a study that continued the one above, and that also tried to tease out learned versus inherently correct interpretations of the facial expressions of another species–us.

I’d love to hear what you think… have you had dogs who seemed much more attuned to your facial expressions (or other indicators of mood or future behavior)? If you say yes, tell us how you think you can separate your facial expression from body posutre, voice, etc etc. Just to get you started, I’ll mention that I call Willie “Trisha’s mood ring,” but I suspect much of his response is based on extremely subtle changes in my voice. As soon as I’m done here, though, I’m going to go smile at him!

On another note, I had a great time spending a morning at the Int’l Society of Human Ethologists. Wish I could’ve spent more time there. I especially enjoyed a talk about how people perceive facial structure… (turns out that wider faces, measured at the top of the cheekbones, are considered less trustworthy than more narrow faces. Love this kind of stuff!). I had to leave before a study about the benefits of bringing dogs to the workplace, darn, but will try to contact the author of the study directly sometime in the future.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: It’s hatefully hot here, I feel so sorry for my sheep. No air conditioning for them. It’s making exercising the dogs rough, I’m not good in hot, humid weather, and neither is Willie (he had a heat stroke one summer when I was out of town, and like many dogs, he’s never been the same–though he was always especially heat intolerant. But then, so am I. Me and Willie: peas in a pod.

Here’s Hope and Will playing chase a few minutes ago. Look at Hope digging in to try to keep up. Wow can that little dog haul . . .

Needless to say, I didn’t let them play long. Here’s where they ended up after just a few minutes:

A short post today, but I hope a helpful one. It’s inspired by the “mud luscious and puddle wonderful” nature of spring, and the need to wipe off Will’s paws as we enter the house when it’s wet outside. As I was drying Willie’s paws a few days ago, I thought about how much easier it is now that I say “Ready?” right before I pick up each leg. Since I started communicating my intention (“now I am going to pick up this paw”), he is beginning, on occasion, to pick up a paw himself, but more often he will shift his weight so that it is less awkward for him. (Yep, I could train him to pick up each paw on cue… also a potential solution, but keep reading for some potential benefits of a more generalized cue.)

Keep in mind that this is the dog who, as an adolescent, growled at me  when I picked up a paw to dry off the mud. That was 3 years ago, and I remember saying something like “Oh, don’t be silly” and continuing what I was doing. He growled one or two more times, but we worked through it and I haven’t heard him growl at anything in years. However, he doesn’t enjoy his paws being cleaned, as most dogs don’t, and the process got me thinking about how little control a dog has over having his/her body moved around, even gently, without any say in the matter. That’s especially difficult if there is any pain involved in putting more weight than usual on one limb. I’ve always been aware of Will’s bad shoulder, and have always been extra careful about picking up the other paw, but a few months ago I started saying “Ready?” right before I picked up a paw, giving him a chance to shift his weight himself.

It’s made a difference to both of us. I lean down and put my hand close to a paw and say “Ready?” and he either shifts his weight or picks it up. Paw cleaning is not only faster, it feels like Will and I are moving down the same path, instead of trying to go in opposite directions. This is a cue that has so many applications; Will’s structural troubles require acupuncture and chiropracty, and he’s not the kind of hail-fellow-well-met who takes being handled lightly. I would bet the farm (and, hey, I have one) that handling Will with force and punishment would have created a severe aggression problem within a few months. In both cases, we give Will lots of options, using patience and communication during the treatments. He adores both practitioners, but he literally hides behind me when the greetings are over and it’s time for treatments. But we work through it, sort of like a dance; sometimes asking, sometimes quietly insisting, but always with an awareness that Will desperately needs to have some say in what is happening to him.

I know many others use cues like “Ready” for a variety of reasons. I’ve heard similar cues most often in obedience, meaning “Okay, time to start working together”. But I’ll bet there are many examples from your own experience of using a cue to communicate your intentions to a dog. I’d love to hear them. I think we’d all learn something from hearing about all the ways that concept can be used. (By the way, signals like “Ready” are called “meta-communication,” meaning “communication about communication.” A play bow is an example in dogs, meaning “Everything that happens next is in play, don’t take these bites and growls seriously!”

Meanwhile, back on the farm: The new fence is working beautifully (more on Will and the fence soon), the bottle lambs have learned to use the self feeder, though they still mug me relentlessly for more, and Snickers has stopped looking for her 3rd lamb, the one I had to take to a friend because 1/2 of Snicker’s bag dried up. The tulips and blossoming trees are in full bloom. Here are Tulip’s tulips, the flowers I planted over my Great Pyrenees grave, her body deep in the soil, nestled onto a bed of of hundreds of tulips, warm and safe in the small hill in front of the house, where she’d stand strong and tall, and bark out her great, white presence to the world.

Next week I’ll start writing about social hierarchies, the “D’ word and dog training. Eeee Hah!  But for now, it’s Friday, I get a weekend without 4 hours a day of grading papers or doing grant reviews for the first time in a month. Ooooooooooh, there’ll be lots of gardening and cleaning of house and playing with critters and eating and exercising and cleaning up the house and watching of golf (yep, no kidding).

Some sad news: Something happened a few nights ago that scared Willie so much that he won’t sleep in the bedroom anymore. He goes upstairs with me, and as soon as we both enter the room he begins to tongue flick and flatten his ears. He then slinks out of the room as if it contained monsters. He sleeps in the adjoining bathroom, and slips back into the bedroom sometime during the night. It seems to have something to do with me, but only me in that room in that context. Before we go upstairs we usually spend at least an hour lying together on the living room floor while I watch television. We cuddle and I rub his belly and he licks my face, and we have a mammalian love cuddle fest and then we go upstairs and he acts like I’m a werewolf. Here’s my guess: either something fell off of the bed (which I tend to pile with books and magazine, or I had a nightmare and made some kind of racket. He is so easily frightened that I can imagine either one being the cause. Poor Will, he is such a bundle of anxiety sometimes. And poor me, because it feels lousy, like I’ve become an abusive dog owner. I know intellectually that it has nothing to do with anything I’ve consciously done, but still . . . He seemed a little better last night, so hopefully this will resolve itself soon. I’m going to try some counter classical conditioning to see if I can speed things along.

Back in the barn, four more ewes are still due, and I admit to getting a tad impatient. However, I’m not the one carrying around 2 or 3 lambs the size of adult dogs inside my belly, so I have little to complain about. This weekend I’ll put the 9 lambs we have already out on grass for the first time. Can’t wait, the lambs of my new ram seem to be especially playful and spring loaded. I’ll try to get pictures. . .

Meanwhile, last night we had a hard, hard freeze. You can see the frost on the daffodils here. They should be fine, they are super hardy, but I am a bit concerned about some of the buds on the trees. Our atypically warm weather pushed a lot of plants too hard and too fast, and the buds of things like lilacs and apple trees aren’t as hardy as the buds. All paws crossed. . .

Here’s a dog-sized view of Barbie’s belly–taken two weeks ago. Now we call her the EXPLODO EWE… stay tuned.

If you’ve been following the bouncing ball, we’ve been talking about how the concept of “dominance” and social status may or may not relate to dog behavior. Now I’d like to summarize a bit and discuss how we might handle conflict between dogs within the household. After all, whether you buy into it or not in relation to dogs, the proper use of the term “dominance” is as a form of conflict resolution. First, some comments of my own in relation to your excellent additions to this inquiry:

WHO CARES? A few of you mentioned that you don’t care about labels, and so why waste time worrying about what to call a behavior? Why not just reinforce what you like and train out what you don’t? I can see the logic here, but as a few others mentioned in the comments, I just can’t leave it at that. I am fascinated by all aspects of behavior, including the inner life of a dog. How do dogs see the world? How is that different, or the same, from how we see it? Can understanding “dogness” help us relate to them better? It’s true that BF Skinner and others made tremendous strides in our understanding of learning by only focusing on observable behavior. And it is also true that we can get into trouble by reading too much into the actions of non-verbal animals. Believe me, as an ethologist, I’m all about accurate, objective observations. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a rich internal life inside every sentient being, and I can’t help wanting to know as much about it as I can. And so do most dog owners, so the more we understand about behavior, the better we can help them understand how to relate to and train their dogs. I think there’s value in understanding all that we can about animals, for both their sake and our own.

IS THE ‘D’ WORD RELEVANT OR USEFUL when evaluating interactions between dogs? Well, here’s my answer at the moment: I almost never use the term “dominance” any more when talking about relationships between dogs. The term is so loaded and so mis-understood that it rarely feels useful in any way. However, and this is a big however, I still think that the evidence suggests that the concept of “social status” is relevant to domestic dogs. As in our own species, social status is interwoven with issues related to personality, context, reactivity, resource distribution, etc, etc, and is only one of many factors that influence and explain behavior. But as members of complicated and complex societies in which all the bells and whistles of social hierarchies are evident (visual displays, some dogs with unquestioned priority access to some resources, living in an environment with “clumped, high quality resources” etc.), it seems reasonable to argue that status is relevant, in varying degrees, to domestic dogs. That in no way takes away from the importance of different levels of desire, confidence or a lack of it, an individual’s charisma, an obsessive need to control the world in order to decrease anxiety, etc.

I suspect that part of the confusion about status (and the D word) is that people want it to mean too much. It’s simply a way of describing how others in a group view one individual, and how that one individual would like to be viewed in relation to others. This makes it a much more general term than “priority access to a resource.” One could get priority access because of one’s status in the group, but they are not the same thing. Make sense? Surely social status could only be relevant in complicated societies, in which individual animals have complex perceptions of the role of others in the group. Dogs and wolves appear to fit within that category, and in my mind their advanced sociality is one of the reasons that dogs and people have developed such profound social bonds. I also think this shared social structure is part of why the “dominance” model of training is so seductive. Not only is it sometimes successful (for a variety of reasons, as pointed out in the comments), but it plays to our inherent understanding of the power of social status within our own species’ interactions.

[Note: A quick comment about the problem of a word, like "dominance," having a different definition in science than in general use. Ah, yes, it is so frustrating, but it is not unique to this issue. "Positive" and "Negative" punishment" are great examples also related to dog training. "Positive" means "good," right? "Negative" means bad, right?  Argghh, no wonder people struggle to learn the true definitions in operant conditioning paradigms! Perhaps the most problematic example is the word "theory," as in the Theory of Evolution, meaning in science a "model of reality" or an underlying fundamental process explaining a variety of phenomenon. In general parlance, "theory" means hypothesis, which is something completely different. But I digress...]

WITHOUT THE ‘D’ WORD, WHAT DO WE CALL DOGS who greet all other dogs tail up, head up, body elevated? Who stare hard and stiff-bodied at another dog over a bone on the ground? Confident? Rude? On Offense? Several of you have asked great questions about how to describe different types of dogs, and I think therein lies one of the problems. The word “dominant” provides a short, handy way of describing a particular way of behaving around others, and we are all hard-wired to try to find terms that allow our brains to sort the world into categories. But again, that word is so loaded and defined differently by the general public) that I think it is best avoided. That’s why I am more comfortable talking about “high status” dogs or “status-seeking” dogs if it seems relevant to the conversation.

For example, Luke was a high status dog who never had to work for his social position. He was benevolent, loved other dogs, calm and confident. He had what one commentator called “charisma,” which is a great way to achieve social status around others in both species. (And why the training techniques of those that have charisma often don’t work with those who don’t?)  His nephew Willie is a status-seeking, anxiety-ridden dog who attacked my seemingly super “submissive” adult dog Pippy Tay when he was 9 weeks old over a piece of food on the ground. (And, argh, there’s that word problem again, this time ’submissive”… sometimes it is SO useful to describe a dog with this kind of term…you all know exactly how Pip behaved around other dogs now, right?)  When Will went after Pip his commissure was forward in an offensive pucker, and there wasn’t one sign of fear in his rude, little body. If anything, he looked angry. My evaluation of him now is that, at his worst around other dogs, he is status-seeking, easily frightened and easily frustrated, sound sensitive, reactive, and controlling. Thank heavens, he is also incredibly biddable, smart and truly seems to adore many other dogs once he gets over the evil twin that sits on his shoulder. I get the strongest sense from him that he desperately wants to do the “right” thing, that he understands that there are “right” and “wrong” things (in some simplistic doggy way) and that he finds great relief in learning that he can get what he wants by being patient and polite. I am the first to admit that I might be reading things into him, but all my gut says that he desperately wants to be thought of as way cool by other dogs, but that he doesn’t have the confidence or serenity of his uncle.

BUT FOR NOW, WHAT IS THE BOTTOM LINE in terms of the way we manage multi-dog households? There’s no ultimate truth here, but I’ll give you my perspective. Remembering that there are many ways to get what one wants, here’s what being high in the social hierarchy gets a dog in my house. Nothing. Or, not much anyway. I’m not saying that I could somehow manage the environment such that two status-seeking females of equal power and intensity could get along, but I can create a world in which dogs learn that they get what they want by being patient and polite, not by throwing their metaphorical weight around.

For example, when Luke used to push in between me and another dog when I went to pet it, I’d quietly ask Luke to “get back and wait” while I continued to pet the other dog. Luke learned that he’d get a food treat as well as attention IF waited his turn, but being pushy resulted in a being backed up in space and told to sit and stay. When I had 4 or 5 dogs in the house, all the dogs learned to sit and wait while another dog was eating out of a plate on the floor (see a video of this in the Feeling Outnumbered DVD, including Tulip’s hysterically funny inability to keep from licking the air after being told to back away from the plate.)

I describe teaching dogs to be patient and polite in detail in the booklet,  Feeling Outnumbered, which Karen London and I wrote after working with so many clients whose dogs weren’t getting along. I used it on a daily basis with Will. Right after he went after Pip over food I’d dropped on the floor I said “What did you do?” and backed him up into a sit. I told him to sit and stay (he knew sit and was just learning a “puppy stay”) and fed Pip some more food. As I did, I praised Will (I’d conditioned him to like the sound of praise already), gave him his own treat for staying in place and then released him. We repeated that 2 or 3 times and I spent the next 6 months teaching Will that if he sat and waited his turn while I fed/petted/played with another dog, something wonderful would happen. He’s been wonderful with my other dogs since then, (though he did always take Lassie’s Kong away if he’d finished his first) but it’ll be interesting to see what happens when a new dog comes to the farm. I suspect I’ll be right back to reminding him of the benefits of being patient and polite. Thus, I take a very functional approach, using both operant and classical conditioning to shape the behavior I want. (And I can understand why some would then say… then why worry about labeling it? Why even bring up issues like status, etc? My answer goes back to how I started this: because to me, it’s not enough to be able to manage and control their behavior, darn it, I want to understand it!)

Can this solve all the conflict between dogs in a household? No, not at all. Personality is just too, too important.  Some dogs just hate other dogs. Some dogs have serious issues with emotional control and impulsivity (a topic for another blog soon!) Some turn into the bullies of the world, the canine equivalent of a boss from hell who wants to control everything but doesn’t have the chops to do a good job at anything. But teaching dogs to be patient and polite seems to be the best solution to dealing with what can at least be described as “competition” for resources.

Soon I’ll talk about this in relation to dogs and people, but I thought we should work our way up to it in a logical manner, first looking at the issue in terms of one species before we throw another one into the mix!

Meanwhile, back on the farm: We had one of those barn-busting thunderstorms last night, complete with hail and rain so hard and plentiful it looked like water coming out of a faucet as wide as the sky.

Amazingly the flowers seemed to make it through. Here are some Bloodroot flowers, a native ’spring ephemeral,’  just before opening early this morning.

And best news of all: Willie is back to playing with his frisbee outside, and worked sheep last night when I let the ewes without lambs out onto the front lawn. No sign of any lameness still, but I am still holding my breath!

Last week I wrote about that ever-so-controversial word, “dominance,” and how it might or might not relate to dog behavior and dog training. To refresh: In animal behavior, dominance refers only to “priority access to a limited resource,” has little to do with controlling the actions of another in any other context, is highly dependent on context and the distribution of resources and is maintained by species-specific displays that act to avoid conflict rather than create it.

In decades past, it was assumed that classic dominance hierarchies existed in domestic dogs. After all, drop a pork chop between two hungry dogs and in short order, one of them is going to get it more often than not. Dogs greet one other in classic “dominance/submission” displays of ears up/tail up versus ears flat/tail tucked. “Submissive” dogs greet others with the same appeasement behavior of puppies, ears flat, body low, tail tucked, foreleg cocked, licking another’s muzzle with a submissive grin, even urinating in some cases.

In addition, dogs are not only derived from wolves, they are so close genetically they are now considered sub-species of Canis lupus. And wolves used to be the story book species of dominance/submission social relationships. We were told that only the alpha male and female mate, that extremely strict social hierarchies existed between each member of the pack, and woe unto an omega wolf who tried to usurp power from a dominant member of the same sex.

Ah, but that was then, and this is now. First off, as we learn more, it is clear that social relationships in wolves are a tad more complicated than previously believed. We’ve learned from following packs in Yellowstone National Park that, in some packs, several females have litters. Nor does the hierarchy seem to be as strict in wild packs as it does in captive ones. And several authors have questioned the concept of dominance in domestic dogs: To name just a few: the Coppingers in the book Dogs said they saw little sign of it in the free-ranging dogs that they observed around the world; Bradshaw et. al. wrote in the J. of Veterinary Behavior (2009, Vol 4, 135-144) that learning and ’subjective resource value’ are better explanations for agonistic behavior than ‘dominance.’

And so, is the concept of a social hierarchy and dominance even relevant in domestic dogs? I think yes, but then, I think no. Here’s the beginning of this potentially profoundly unsatisfying answer:

DISPLAYS: There’s no getting around it. Dogs are the poster children of visual displays that have historically been used to describe signals of social hierarchy. What are we to make of two dogs greeting, one with her tail flagged forward, the other with tail tucked? We can call lip-licking and flattened ears appeasement displays, but what do we call the opposite? Dogs who are flagging their tails, and giving hard direct stares over a favorite toy should be described how? Well…. there are other terms. We could describe them as “on offense” or “threatening” or “confident.”  We can label the opposite postures as “insecure” or
“appeasing” or “on defense.” I should mention here, however, that I’ve seen a gazillion dogs with extreme versions of what are usually called ’submissive displays’ who appear to be full of confidence around other dogs. File this away for a moment, and continue pondering:

PRIORITY ACCESS TO RESOURCES: There also seem to be a plethora of examples of multi-dog households in which one dog is “more equal than others.” (Remember the famous quote from the book Animal Farm?: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”) The resource may vary, from access to their human, to access to the great outdoors to access to the pig’s ear, but there are a gazillion examples of groups of dogs in which one dog appears to priority access to what it wants.  But, of course, (of course!) there are complications:

What of the issue about “wanting something equally?” Several of you have asked in your comments about how one can determine if two individuals desire a resource equally. Could all “wins” simply be an example of an individual who wants something more than any other? It IS a complication, and is yet another reason why the concept of “dominance” can be a tricky one. However, I don’t think it’s always impossible to make this judgment. Luke would let any dog take food out of his bowl, because he just didn’t care much about his dinner. Figuring that out was trivial, because sometimes I had to encourage him to eat. But he never, ever let another dog pick up a tennis ball that was between the two of them. His intensity around tennis balls was best illustrated when he was an adolescent and first became interested in fetching. I threw the ball and little Misty, a tiny, fox-faced BC of mine, got to the ball first. As she ran toward me with it in her mouth, Luke rushed up behind her, grabbed her tail in his mouth and flicked his head to the side. Misty, being attached to her own tail, flew threw the air and landed so hard the ball popped out and dribbled through the grass. Luke snatched it up and proudly brought it over to me (at least, until I, coming out of my shock, said WHAT ARE YOU DOING? and body blocked him backward about 10 feet. FYI, that is all I did, and he never did it again.)

Possession is the law: The concept of “priority access” is often confounded by a lack of understanding of what it means. It is often said that “possession is the law” in wolf society, and I have found it often true in dogs. If a dog who normally behaves submissively/appeasingly (etc etc) has a hold of a bone, a dog who would be called “dominant” by many does NOT have priority access. Often, he who has the bone gets the bone. “Dominance” was originally used to described two individuals who do not have possession of a resource. Given that scenario, when two individuals do NOT have possession of something yet, who gets it? That’s partly why Luke was being such a jerk in the example above. As an adolescent, he hadn’t read that memo, and was breaking all the laws of canine custom, as well as just p….’g me off.

Resources Vary: In biology, the word “resource” can refer to a wide range of things. Common zebra males compete for females, as the limited factor in passing on their genes. Grevy’s zebra males compete for good waterholes, an indirect way of competing for females who are attracted to the resources necessary to provide for their young. Cavity nesting birds compete for territories with old, dead trees that can provide good nest sites. Etc. Etc. Dogs can compete for a favorite toy, or access to outside or sitting next to their favorite human.

Resource Distribution Varies: Did you notice from my descriptions above that social hierarchies seem to be less strict in wild than captive wolves? And that observers watching free-ranging dogs see less evidence of “dominance” displays than others have reported in other contexts? Ah, I wish more people had taken Ecology, because here’s what all ecologists know: social systems, in the same species, vary tremendously, dependent upon the distribution of resources. “High quality, clumped resources” tend to create stricter social hierarchies, while “Low quality, evenly disbursed resources” tend to create looser social organizations.  Hmmm.  Which would describe house dogs?

PERSONALITY MATTERS: Besides an interest in status, the personality (that’s temperament + life experience) of each dog surely makes a huge difference in their behavior around other dogs. There are dogs out there who are what I call “alpha wanna-bees” — status seeking, controlling BUT insecure and nervous. They turn into the bullies of the world, the canine equivalent of a boss from hell who wants to control all the resources but doesn’t have the chops to do much of anything with confidence. Other dogs, my Luke was one, are what some people call “natural alpha’s.” Luke was an intact male, he met hundreds if not thousands of other dogs, some of whom were dog-dog aggressive. He never got into a fight, not even a skirmish.  Not once. Luke was accepted by all dogs who met him as being . . .  dare I say it? A leader? He greeted other dogs with his tail flagged and his entire body elevated, but he also broadcast a benevolent, Gandhi-esque-like aura that appeared to calm all who met him. Granted, there were a few client’s dogs that I did not let him meet, so I’m not saying that Luke was magical in any way. Dogs who were still seriously dog-dog aggressive did not get a chance to interact with Luke, but Luke was the vehicle for curing hundreds of aggressive dogs, in part because he seemed to make everyone, dogs and people alike, feel better standing next to him.

In reality, there is no such thing as a “dominant personality”. Dominance is a relationship between individuals, not a description of a temperament. However I DO think (and I know some will disagree) that one component of personality in dogs is whether or not they are “status seeking.” I use “social status” to describe the general phenomenon that some animals are more equal than others. This is as true in our society as it might be in dogs. The actress gets the best table at the restaurant because she is famous and fame in our culture gives one social status. In my opinion, some people care deeply about social status, while others don’t seem to care at all. Status simply means ones position relative to that of others, and surely it is an obvious feature of human interactions.

But some dogs just don’t seem to care about social status either, do they? And here is perhaps one of the reasons why this issue can become so confused and confusing. I suspect that dogs vary tremendously in how important social status is to them. This makes sense: dogs are neotonized wolves, meaning that there’s been selection for a regulator gene that basically keeps them in eternal adolescence. This interference with development also creates ideal conditions for tremendous variability–not just in size or coat color, but also in behavior. Perhaps you’ve known some dogs who just couldn’t care less about who’s who in the social register, and others who are obsessed with being king or queen of the mountain? And then there are others, the equivalent of a gold digger who is always looking for power–and who may or may not get it, depending on a myriad of other factors.

SOCIAL STATUS IS JUST ONE WAY to get what you want. Here’s another problem I have with the way the concept of “dominance” is used. Somehow, if an individual is “dominant” it is presumed to be able to get everything it wants every time it wants it. But that’s just not the way complicated societies work. You might get a better table at the restaurant because you are more famous that I am, but what if I slip the Maitre D a hundred bucks? What if he’d seen your movie and hated it? My super submissive/appeasing BC Pippy Tay got a chew bone out of Queen Tulip’s mouth one night by lip-licking and tail thumping so relentlessly that Tulip finally got up and walked away. Pip was brilliant, and yet, I assure you: Tulip would’ve gotten a pork chop lying between them every time, but I’d bet the farm that Pip wanted it more than Tulip did.  Pip never, ever would’ve ‘won’ a piece of  yummy food off the floor if Tulip was around, unless she’d had 15 minutes to work her magic as she groveled her way toward Tulip, grinning, licking and tail thumping like a fool. And no pork chop was going to last in Tulip’s mouth for 15 minutes. Take my word for it. “Priority access” may mean that a higher status dog has gets the goody more often than not, but it is NOT the only way to get what you want in a social group.

Just to confuse things (or to clarify?): There’s one other phrase used by a wolf ethologist (Zimen) that I really like: Dominance simply means whoever has the most social freedom. Is that the same as priority access to a preferred resource? Hmmmm. More food for thought.

THUS, MY ANSWER IS YES AND NO: Here’s what I meant by “YES, the concept of “dominance” is relevant to dogs, and NO I don’t think it is relevant”. I think the concept is relevant IF AND ONLY IF it is understood that it is merely a way of describing one aspect of the relationship between social individuals. And I think NO, because once you use the word “dominance” all other aspects of personality, context, and the complexity of social interaction seem to fly out the window. I could write on and on, but this is becoming something of a book, and I need to get something else done today and you are probably getting sick of reading . . . I’ll take this topic up again soon, because it deserves it, and so do you, dear reader. In it I’ll address some of your very thoughtful (and considerate!) comments.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Busy weekend. One new set of twins, but still nothing from Dorothy, now 9 days late. Best guess is that she didn’t get bred the first round, and will deliver lambs from the next cycle, 8 days from now. The lambs, all 9 of them now, are doing wonderfully, fat-bellied and playful. Even better, Will got to run free for the first time on Saturday. I even let him work sheep for about 6 seconds! What a joy for us both. So far, so good. Cross your paws.

Yesterday we visited a friend with a litter of 4 week old Border Collies. Puppy rapture on all counts:

Heavenly rain on Friday, sunny and cool Saturday and Sunday; grass and flowers lifting upward toward the blue sky. Good golly I love spring.

Ah, here I go into the fray. Picture my loins girded. In some ways I’d love to avoid this topic altogether, because as most of you know, conversations about “the D word” can sometimes turn into arguments that make the American health care debate seem like a day at the spa. (I was going to say “like a tea party,” but then . . . )  But I think the issue is important, and deserves consideration. So EEEEE HAH! here we go.

This post will only be a beginning, because the topic of “dominance” and social relationships is actually a big one, and I’d like to facilitate a thoughtful, meaningful discussion about it in dogs. As you all know, some people think that just about all of our problems with dogs relate to “dominance” and advise owners to “be the alpha dog.” At the other end of the spectrum, some argue that “dominance” and even the concept of “social status” are completely irrelevant to a dog’s behavior, and that the terms should be struck from our vocabulary. I don’t agree with either extremes of the spectrum (but I’m a lot closer to one than the other!), so hang onto your hats, here we go . . .

First of all, it would be good to start with a definition. The simple definition of ‘dominance,’ as the term is used by the general public is something like: “control or command over others.” However, (and this is a huge “however”) that is NOT the definition as the term is used by people who study animal behavior, the ones who first coined the term to describe a certain kind of social relationship in non-human animals. In ethological terms, “dominance” refers to “priority access to a preferred, limited resource“. In other words, if there’s only one really great table open at a restaurant, who is going to get it? You, or the famous actress standing beside you?

Relating this to dogs, if someone dropped a pork chop between two dogs, who would get it? If you repeated this numerous times and the same dog got it every time, that dog was described in the literature as “dominant” over the other IF both dogs wanted the food equally.  The “dominant” dog could get priority access to the food in a variety of ways; s/he could simply look toward the other dog with a hard stare, could try to be the fastest one every time, or could fight for it. The problem is that fights are dangerous if you are a predator who can rip open elk hide with your mouths. (For a reminder of the power of the canine jaw, try making a gash in a leather purse with your teeth. If you are successful, please send video….heck, send one if you’re not successful!)

The potential of injury in social predators, is the reason that many argue why social hierarchies developed in animals like wolves. (Yes, I know dogs aren’t wolves. Bear with me here.) If every time one had to fight for what one wanted, the genes that predisposed an individual to fight would be eliminated out of the gene pool. That’s the explanation for the existence of social hierarchies: they allow individuals to get ‘priority access’ without having to fight for a resource every time it was available. Note that serious fights do happen in some species: In many ungulates (hoofed animals like elk for example), the males fight every breeding season for priority access to females. They are continually challenged by other males, and spend so much energy guarding their females that even if they aren’t killed or injured in a fight, (it happens, but not commonly), they sometimes die over the winter, having been unable to spend enough time feeding in fall to put on body fat to get them through the winter. However, before they are mature,  young male ungulates often spend years in “bachelor herds,” in which they may play at fighting, but no one individual has priority access to anything else during that period. Their food is widely dispersed and the only ‘resource’ they need to compete over is females during a breeding season. As this Elk examples shows,  a ‘resource’ can be many things, from a pork chop, to the best sleeping place, to a female in heat. But, remember, the “D” word is about “priority access to a resource,” not about anything else.

Here’s what “dominance” ISN’T: It has nothing to do with decision-making about the actions of a group or one other individual. There is no relationship in the literature between who decides when to move on, where to go or what to do. Period. (Bookmark this point!)

It has nothing to do with “who’s in front.” (In prey animals, the ‘dominant’ member of the group is often found in the middle of the herd if the group is in an area that might be dangerous.)

It is not fixed and immutable: Who “has dominance” can vary in time (as one individual ages for example), in space (one individual can have it in one area and not another) and in context (perhaps one individual with dominance doesn’t like pork chops.) In some species it appears to be linear (as in chickens, for example, in which if A is over B, and B is over C, then A is always over C). In most social mammals, it is non-linear and much, much more fluid and complicated.

It is highly influenced by resource distribution: “Clumped, high quality resources” tend to exaggerate social hierarchies, which probably explains why captive wolves appear to be absolutely obsessed with hierarchy, while wild wolves appear to be more relaxed about issues related to social status. (Keep this in mind for later when we talk about studies on feral dogs versus owned dogs.)

It is usually maintained by visual or chemical displays that are innate and are species-specific. It can be achieved by an initial fight in which one individual wins and the other backs off, or, more commonly, by nothing more than the types of display specific to that species. (Think high tail, erect ears and forward posture of a captive wolf). If the individuals continue to fight over a resource, then there is not an established hierarchy.

It is not a relationship desired equally by all individuals in a group. In complex social societies, not everyone is equally motivated to be first in line for the goodies. In our species, for example, some people would love the status associated with being famous, while others would consider a guarantee of a great table at a restaurant to be a poor trade for losing their privacy and would avoid it at all costs. In some species, high status is associated with increased responsibility, which can be dangerous and burdensome.

That’s a good starting place for our discussion. In my next post, I’m going to write about how all this might relate to domestic dogs. But I will say here that the misuse of the term “dominance” in dog training is so pervasive that it causes ethologists like me to want to poke pencils in our eyes. The examples are endless: “Your dog won’t come when you call unless he accepts you as alpha!” (Uh, not relevant, see above.) “Teach your dog a “Dominance Down” and he’ll respect you in the morning!” (Uh, not relevant, see above….). I suspect that much of this comes from the two different definitions of dominance used by the biologists versus the general public. I also think, although I admit to just guessing, that our species loves the idea of control, and anything that suggests we can get it easily is seductive. Whatever the reason, the mis-use of the concept of “dominance” is pervasive.

I’d love to hear your examples of the misuse of the term. I suspect there are some egregious ones that will allow all of us to have a good laugh… and then move on to talk about whether the “D” word is ever (ever!) relevant to dog behavior. Do be considerate please, and don’t assume that everyone believes that way you do. Remember, thoughtful and considerate . . .

Meanwhile, back on the farm: UW is on spring break and besides running the business (and writing blogs!) my life is full of two other things: grading term papers (right now it’s the ones on: “Biological Issues Related to the Use of Non-Human Primates in Biomedical Research” — both ’sides’ must be covered objectively; next it’s Cloning Pets) and of pacing the barn floor. I have 4 ewes who are overdue, one by 5 days. A day or two is, of course, meaningless, lambs paying no more attention than babies to when they are supposed to arrive. But 5 days? Jeeeez, Dorothy, have your lambs already!

Here’s the first of the lambs: A twin boy and girl from Lady Godiva. The all-black ram lamb is lying behind Lady G and the ewe lamb with the white body and black eye spot. I’m calling her the Lassie Lamb.

Here’s the first flowers of the season, crocus. Color! Whaaa Hooo! Daffodils are JUST starting today…

And lest you think it’s all lambs and flowers out in the country, here’s a photo of just a few of the hundreds of Asian beetles that invade my house for 2 weeks every spring and fall. They were brought over to control aphids, and the person who made the decision to import them wouldn’t last a day in southern Wisconsin. They are a scourge, somewhat akin to locusts. What you are seeing was taken about 10 minutes after 30 minutes of vacuuming, which followed another long session of vacuuming earlier in the day. They look like our native “Lady Beetles,” but they have no natural predators, bite when they’re hungry, smell horrific, land in your drinks, fly into your food and generally make life miserable. You can spray for them, but the active ingredient makes me sick and and is not safe for cats. Now you know why I went out for dinner tonight.

xx

A generous friend just sent me one of Nina Ottoson’s interactive dog toys, and Will and I have been having a great time playing with them. Well, he plays, I watch. And, I think he is having a great time. And that’s the question for the day. Is he really? Do dogs enjoy these toys as much as we like watching them?

I thought of this the second or third time that Willie worked with the toy (Dog Fighter–an unfortunate name in this country, but probably not relevant in Sweden.). He had learned that there was food under the wooden knobs, but hadn’t yet figured it out how to get to it quickly. After pawing unsuccessfully, which only pushed the knob in the opposite direction of what would release the food, he tried to chew on the knob. As suggested in the instructions, I quietly moved my hand between his mouth and the toy to stop the chewing, and let him try again. He nudged with his nose (wrong way), pawed with his paw (wrong way) and then sat back and looked at me in the classic domestic dog’s ultimate problem solving method: “Yo, human, can you fix this for me?” (Something any respectable wolf would never do.)

It was his face that got me thinking. He didn’t look curious, or excited, or plaintive, he looked downright frustrated. I’ve seen the same look on his face when I’ve been clicker training, and I’ve seen an even more intense look, one I’d call desperate, on the faces of other dogs who are being trained through shaping. “WHAT?!!!” I imagine them thinking. “Give me a clue for heaven’s sake!”

I did give Willie a clue, I nudged the knob a bit in another direction, and although I doubt that he was imitating my action (something that is actually a complex cognitive process… that’s a blog topic unto itself) he went back to nudging and pawing and finally got the food treat.

After 5 sessions he is a whiz at it. He’s got the nudge and paw down pat, and although I don’t think he can use the shape of the slot that the knob moves within to figure out which way to move the knob, he seems to know right away that he should change the direction of his nudge if the knob stops moving. And now, his face looks relaxed and excited. Once he’s cleared the board, his face rises, as if coming up for air, with an open mouth, shiny eyes and relaxed facial muscles.

So here’s the question: How much of “working for food” is fun for dogs, how much is just frustrating? Here’s some speculation on my part. Trying to solve a problem can be frustrating, but a limited amount of frustration isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think Will’s brief moments of frustration while he was trying to figure out the puzzle were actually good mental exercise and a good learning process. However, if the problem was too hard to solve, then I suspect that frustration can become aversive enough to be problematic. In the case of this particular toy, I think the mental exercise was truly good for him in the long run.

And what does he think of it now? Is it “Oh boy, here comes fun?” or… “Why the #&(*^%$ doesn’t she just give me the #@%&*% food? Your thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

One last comment for today: There are SO many meaty topics I want to talk about in future posts: “Social Status and the D.. Word,” “How much time should we be training our dogs..” and on and on.  And I thought I’d run out of ideas. Silly me. (Don’t hesitate to suggest topics. I probably won’t get to them all, but I’ll try….)

Meanwhile, back on the farm: There has been a huge change in the world around us all: the weather is profoundly different. Besides being still light at 5:45 (5:45! Amazing!), there’s still lots of snow on the ground, but the temperature is over freezing every day, high 30’s and low 40’s and it feels balmy and so very very much like early spring. The Chickadees and Blue Jays are singing, the woodpeckers are drumming, the Red Tail Hawks have already laid eggs and are settled over them, belly feathers spread over the oval eggs, somewhere high in the oaks across the road. We’re all starting to talk about “mud season,” the 5th season anywhere with snowy winters. Once it continues to warm, the snow melts, the upper layer of the ground melts, but the soil below stays frozen for awhile, leading to deep, soggy lakes of brown muck that sticks like glue to your boots and covers your kitchen floor, no matter how many times you towel off your dog’s paws.

Shearing the sheep was postponed, my shearer got a job after being laid off for a year, so who could do anyting but cheer him on? He’ll be here next Saturday. I’m anxious to see the sheep without their coat of wool; it’s hard to judge their condition until they are shorn. But, sigh, they’ll still be fat, and not just because they are pregnant. We’re all a tad overweight here, but it’s a lot easier to regulate their diet than my own. They are eating the bark off my apple trees now (don’t worry, they are getting super rich hay and supplements–they really aren’t starving), but, alas, I couldn’t resist the chocolate chip cookie that Jim brought home last night. Maybe I could develop a taste for tree bark?

Here’s Will playing with the Ottoson toy:

One of the great comments on my post about the new Puppy Book reminded me that training “step by step” is not intuitive. Someone may know that there are multiple steps between a dog sitting on cue when asked in the kitchen at dinner time, versus being asked to sit when barking at the visitors at the front door. But what are those steps? And how do you know when to move on to the next one?

I thought it would be helpful to give a few examples. However, I would love it if some of the experienced readers would add an example of their own. My favorite part of writing this blog is the wealth of knowledge of its readers, and I am sure that many of the readers would benefit greatly from hearing a range of examples.

Here’s an example, using the dog sitting on cue when it’s easy for him to comply and when it’s hard (in kitchen, no distractions versus at door, company ringing door bell): Note that this is only one way to get to Step 25: There are many paths to the top of a mountain…

Step 1: Teach the dog to sit (I use the Lure/Reward method to get it started quickly) when holding a treat as a lure, with as few distractions as possible. Use food as lure, do not say “sit” yet.

Step 2: Once dog will sit as you move your hand through its ears and toward its tail, say “sit” before you move your hand.

Step 3: Modify your hand movement so that it is less of a lure and more of a hand signal, sweeping your hand upward toward your face. (This could be in session 1, 2 or 3, depending on how well things are going)

Step 4: 3 times in a row, use your visual signal (hand movement) and reinforce with the treat. The 4th time, immediately after the first 3 (assuming they were successful), say “sit” and don’t move at all. Wait for the dog to respond just to your voice.

Step 5-8: Practice using either the VISUAL or the VERBAL cue one at a time, being careful to only use one or the other.

Step 9-12: Begin to ask your dog to sit when there are MILD distractions. For example, try it outside in the yard when it’s relatively quiet or in the house when someone else is making some noise. Be sure to practice in many different places, not just the kitchen. Begin to give a food reinforcement when asking during mild distractions, and substitute other reinforcements for times when it is easier. For example, you could clap, say GOOD! (I also teach people to condition an association between a praise word and a food treat) and let your dog chase you as a game. Or throw a toy, or rub a belly….

Step 13: Start asking your dog to sit when you are by the front door, or whatever door company comes in through.

Step 14-18: Have all family members ask the dog to sit when they are greeting the dog. Put treats by the entry door so that all family members can easily reinforce the dog for sitting while greeting. Get in the habit of ringing the bell or knocking before you enter your own house, then ask for the sit. Once you’ve given the treat, squat down to greet your dog so that he or she doesn’t have to jump up to get to your face.

Step 19: Have good friends who are dog lovers AND who will listen to you (the hardest part!) start helping you teach your dog ‘door manners.’ Have only one person come at a time. Ask them to ring the bell or knock, and immediately ask your dog to sit (using BOTH the verbal and visual signals) as soon as you open the door. They ask for the sit, but YOU reinforce the dog (because you are the one with the best timing, right?!). If the dog doesn’t sit, close the door and have the person try again. Repeat 3-5 times in a row if you can.

Step 20: (Can be during the same time period as Step 19) When people come over who aren’t part of training, get the best food treat imaginable, and ask your dog to sit (not sit and stay, too hard for now!) before you open the door. Give copious treats for any positive response. If your dog tends to jump up a lot, even after a first greeting, just lure him away from the door with pieces of chicken and put him in a crate, or give him a stuffed toy once he’s made an initial greeting.

Step 21: Once your dog is sitting well when your friends come over and ask for a sit, try it with two or three people coming together (even more exciting and distracting!).  Have each of them ask for a sit, and be ready to give out lots of food as fast as you can!

Step 22: Assuming again, that all is going well (at least 80% compliance), ask for a sit before you open the door when ‘regular’ visitors come over, but this time don’t have a food treat in your hand. Explain through the door that you’ll be right with them (I always say “Just a minute! I’m training my dog to be polite to visitors!”), ask your dog to sit and if you get compliance, praise liberally and run to the kitchen and give your dog a great treat.

Step 23: As above, with anyone, but this time use your praise word and skip any primary reinforcement.

Step 24: Continue alternating primary reinforcements (especially food or toys if dog is toy motivated) with a praise word that you have conditioned.

All this can easily take nine to ten months! (Hey, it’s hard for a dog to control his or her emotions and excitement when people come over. I can relate.)

Step 25: Dog becomes an adolescent. Go back to Step 9, rinse and repeat.

I know that sitting at the front door isn’t a serious behavioral problem for many people, but trust me, for some it really is. I’ve seen so many families whose dogs were out of control at the door, which has resulted in dogs being yelled at, kicked, or stashed in crates for too long. I’ve also met lots of people who have just simply stopped having visitors because they are embarrassed about their dog’s behavior. It can be very stressful to have a dog misbehaving around company (like you didn’t know that.) Of course, there are many alternatives to problems related to greeting visitors (my favorites are training to run into another room when the bell rings, or going to a designated place, see the Manners Minder that Sophia Yin designed.)

Of course, this is just one tiny example… (and I’ve SURE I’ve actually skipped some steps, I reserve the right to modify later!) I’d love to hear from you if you’d like to tackle a description.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: On Sunday, the University of Wisconsin Vet Students interested in small ruminants came out to do pregnancy checks under the supervision of Dr. Harry Momont (standing in back on the left). That’s my girl Rosebud on her butt, getting an ultrasound through her lower belly. We didn’t get a shot of the screen, but the lambs are far enough along that the students could see beating hearts, backbones and other bones of the lambs, all due within 4 to 6 weeks. The ewes didn’t exactly volunteer, but everyone was very gentle and I doubt that any of the sheep were unduly stressed. Jim took the photographs, (thanks hon!), because I had gone up to the house, a tad under the weather and wanting to get out the raspberry/cherry/strawberry pies I’d made for everyone. Ahhh, a little bit of summer in the middle of a snowy day goes a long way!

I’ve loved your comments about play styles after the last post. Keep them coming. One of the points that was made by many of you, that I think bears repeating, is that many dogs can adapt and learn new play styles from others. This is especially true of stable, well-adjusted dogs who aren’t overly reactive to something new or challenging.

Along with chase games and wrestling, several of you mentioned hounds (and English Shepherds!) who like to play “catch the prey” by chasing, play biting and then mock attacks at the throat. Another mentioned a play style that I’ve also seen, that I consider truly problematic. In this case, the dog chases another dog until he catches up, and then bites the chasee, often in the back leg, and brings him or her down. Eeeps. I’ve seen this quite often, and it often appears to me that the dog in question has not learned about the importance of “self-handicapping.”  Some of them even seem to have switched from playing to predation. Of course, that’s one of the tricky things about play–it’s actually hard to define because most of the actions of play are seen in the context of fighting or predation.

However, in healthy play, the participants exhibit “self handicapping” so that they don’t injure or scare their play partner. (See my post on September 10th, 2009 for a discussion and video of self-handicapping). When I see it happen I intervene without question. I’ll first try a loud, abrupt yelp, as if there had been an injury. That will often interrupt play, and I’ve seen some dogs adjust their enthusiasm as if it was their play partner who had been injured. However, I’ve also seen plenty of dogs who did not respond to a yelp. In that case I’ve tried, sometimes successfully, intervening by moving as quickly as possible between the two and body blocking the transgressor. I’ll look directly at them, use a low voice, say absurd things that the dog couldn’t possibly understand but that feel good to say (“You are one total loser dog and are going to be in big trouble in a minute…”) and back them up a good ten feet or so (depending on the dog).  That has helped with several dogs, in that I can then use a verbal warning (“AH!”) when they open their mouths to bite.

I can’t tell you exactly how many dogs that has helped, but many dogs do learn to adjust their play styles, and I’ve had good luck with it with lots of dogs. It doesn’t work on all dogs with this particular behavioral problem, but it’s worth a try.

There’s so much to say about role reversals, play styles and social status, (and yes, I do want to address the issue of ’status’ soon), but here’s one point I’d like to bring up now: I talk more about role reversals in my Play Seminar DVD, but the research of Ward and Smuts found role reversals common in what they called “pushes, tackles, and chases.” They found almost no role reversals for “mounts, giving muzzle licks and receiving muzzle bites.”  There was (in keeping with some of your comments and with my observations over the years) no sex effect on type of play or on role reversals.  (However, female dogs did prefer to play with other females  within their own litters… interesting, hey?) They also found it common for one dog of a dyad to always be the one “on top” (in wrestling, for example), countering the hypothesis of some researchers that play always had to follow the “50/50 rule,” in which each player role reversed during each play session.

I think what’s most important is that play is a profoundly complex behavior, and that so much can be going on within it, depending on a dog’s breed predispositions, personality and experience. My favorite video of a play sequence, by the way, is from Pia Silvani, of two Terv’s meeting for the first time, and adjusting their play styles as they become more familiar. It’s truly a gorgeous example of healthy, appropriate play. It’s on the Dog Play DVD for those of you who haven’t seen it. I am ever grateful to Pia for letting me use it. (And it makes me all oxytocin-y too, it makes me want to get out some candles and a white table cloth for the 2 of them . . .)

Meanwhile, back on the farm: White white white. Snow snow snow. I’m about to take up luging. See that red sled by the barn . . . think I could make it down the hill behind the barn in record time in it?

In this next photo, Willie heard a truck on the road behind him. Interesting, I didn’t see his face as looking worried when I took the shot, but I do now. Humm, am I reading something into it?

Here’s a video of Willie playing with a Lily, a 4 month old female Dogo Argentino. He has just met her, and after a brief greeting by the farm house, we walked up the hill to the Orchard Pasture.

I love watching videos of dogs playing; it seems that you can see so much if you watch them repeatedly. Here are the two main events I find most notable about this episode of play (along with the fact that Willie is playing so well with her! Yeah Mr. Will, what a journey we’ve been on together!)

One, notice how Lily’s play is so often on a vertical plane. Even as a young pup, she spends a lot of energy moving upward, and trying to get on top of Will. You’ll see that especially at seconds 17, 23 and 34. There are other examples, but those are the first three that I noticed.

Secondly, notice how Willie always backs away when she gets a leg on top of him, and dashes off, trying to elicit chase/race games with her. Watch carefully at second 59, how he approaches, gets her attention and then runs away. Willie loves to play race/chase games, and it looks to me like he is trying to initiate them with her. It appears to me that Willie is specifically trying to teach her to chase. Of course, she’s small and the snow is deep for her, so there is no way she could keep up with Will, nor is that a play style that she may ever enjoy.

In addition, I suspect that his reaction to her attempts to mount is more than just trying to elicit a chase game. Willie is very uncomfortable when other dogs try to chin over, stand over or mount him. As a matter of fact, when we stopped playing up the hill and went into the house, Lily began not only to rough house with Will, but began to try even harder to get her front legs and head on top of him. Will couldn’t dash away anymore in the close quarters of the house, and his ears flattened, his eyes rounded, his commissure retracted, and he began an offensive pucker at the distal end of his lips. I immediately stepped between the two of them and asked Will if he wanted to crate up. He sped away from Lily, ran to the study and lept into his crate. Poor Will, such angst. He gets so nervous about other dogs when he can’t maintain control. He is a classic “Alpha Wanna-Bee.” He wants to be in control of everything, but is an insecure nervous wreck about doing so with an individual bigger and braver than he is.

Yesterday he played chase/race with his Doberman girlfriend Mishka, and was totally relaxed even in the house until she lept onto the couch and loomed over him. He tensed up and then ran to the study and hid behind the door. He only came out when Jim came out too, and hid behind Jim’s legs. Then we walked behind a big rocking chair, and stayed behind it until I called him to come to me. Oh Willie. He is trying to hard now to stay out of trouble, but it is so hard for him. I am so proud of him, though. (For those of you who haven’t followed the story, Willie was pathologically afraid of other dogs as a puppy, and went through a very aggressive period until we could get it turned around. He will never be a ‘dog park’ dog, but he’s done so well given who he is and what he started with.

Here’s the video: I’d love to hear what you see in it. I’ve only watched it a few times, and focused on the things I mentioned, who knows what else is going on!