THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

A recent comment motivated this post. It was from a veterinarian who tries her hardest to alert clients to current and potential behavioral problems, and is a tad frustrated on occasion by how few of them seem to take her cautions seriously. I am sure that other vets, dog trainers and behaviorists are all sighing in sympathy as they read this. I sure am. It is such a common problem that I thought it might be worthwhile for us all to have a brain storming session about how to handle it. All of the pro’s reading this blog know what I mean: a 3 month old puppy in puppy class who plays well with others, but growls at you as you approach. Growling at a person at 12 weeks of age? ALARM BELLS! RED FLAGS! DIVE DIVE (the submarine)!!!

So, here’s the question. If you are a pro, how do you handle it when you see signs of impending (or current) problems? If you are not in the business, how would you want someone to tell you that they saw something that concerned them?

Here are some things I have learned that seem to help, but just like everyone else, the more ideas I have the better, so I’d love to hear yours:

1. Make analogies to human behavior. This is where being anthropomorphic can actually help our dogs. I’ll say something like “Right now your adolescent dog is like a teenage son who has drugs hidden under his bed, and is hanging out with guys named Rat Sniffer and the Dude from Hell. He’s a good kid, your son, but he could go either way. He needs you to benevolently intervene so that he ends up living a wonderful life, instead of making license plates in a federal prison.” I’ll adapt the story, depending on the people… making guesses about what will best resonate with them.

2. Don’t exaggerate, and don’t bring it up until you have established a connection. They must believe that you are on their side and that you want nothing but the best for you and your dog. If something happens the instant they walk in the door, keep your mouth shut until you’ve worked with them for awhile, made gooey over their dog (as best you can) and made it clear that you want to be their helper, not someone who judges them or their dog. If you don’t feel as though you are getting through, it is always a good idea to ‘mirror’ their behavior, which means speaking slowly if they speak slowly, leaning forward if they lean forward, crossing your legs if they cross their legs.. etc. Whenever I do it I am sure that someone will notice and think I’m making fun of them, but so far no one ever has. (Until now….. when I meet one of you and you ask me at a break in a seminar what to do about your 7 fighting dogs and I can tell you don’t like my answer. Sigh. Oh well, if you notice, then you’ll know I’m desperately trying to tell you something!)

3. Talk about it from the dog’s point of view. This is hugely important in most cases. It’s how you let people know that you are on their side, but that part of your job is to try to be an advocate for their dog. Again, make analogies and use the good side of anthropomorphism: (“And how would you respond if a strange man walked up to you on the street, grabbed your head and pressed his lips onto yours?”)

4. At the same time, although this might sound contradictory, we also need to be adept at explaining how dogs are different from people. (“Well, your dog probably greets you at the door with head and tail down, licking her lips and groveling because she is using what’s called ‘appeasement’ behavior (give an example from humans), not because she “feels guilty. If you grab her collar and drag her over to the puddle on the carpet she won’t understand why and respond as if she has to defend herself.”

5. Use visuals: Have posters (like the ones from Dream Dog Productions) on your office walls that show visual signals of stress or social discomfort in dogs. Have “before and after” photos of fearful puppies hiding from visitors at 3 months, and and “after” version showing their teeth at two years.

This is a short list, and if I had more time I’d add more to it, but it’s a conversation starter… I’d love to hear your ideas.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Finally, as of this morning, all sheep butts are red! Yeah, Redford did his job. Took 2 weeks for all of them to come in. That’s longer than I’d like (it’s nice when lambing comes to have the lambs come closer together when you have a flock as small as mine), but at least I know when everyone if due and when they are bred. (They are all due now in late March and early April. You’ll be the first to see lamb photos.)

Here was Will last week, helping me keep the flock safely away from the road.

Here’s some more information from IFAAB, based on a talk presented by Dr. Samuel Gosling at UT-Austin. He is studying personality in animals, and has looked at it in species as varied as hyenas and dumpling squid. (And yes, dumpling squid are just as cute as they sound).

He spoke briefly about the history of scientific attitudes toward personality in animals–at one point it was almost a dirty word, but in the last twenty years the term (and the concept) has become generally accepted.  (Although he mentioned one researcher who still uses the term “behavioral syndrome” to avoid sounding anthropomorphic.) I must admit, as a someone trained in science myself, I still find it remarkable that the concept of personality in animals was ever controversial. It is astounding how essential it is to many to keep the division between human and animal clear and strong.

Related to that, here are two quotes I use in the Introduction to my UW class on Human/Animal Relationships:

“…the delineation of human/animal relationships occurs in all cultures, and in all cultures, this boundary is of great significance.” (Arien Mack – Humans and Other Animals,  1995)

“Our culture and our dominant religions have tied human dignity and self-worth to our separation from nature and  distinctiveness from other animals.” Frans de Waal, Ape and the Sushi Master

So true.

However, the concept of personality even in people was controversial  to some behaviorists. Encouragingly, Gosling reported that journal articles using the word, both in studies on human and animal behavior have seen a large increase, especially in the last decade. It seems that the pendulum is finally swinging back to a reasonable place, where we can acknowledge that genetics and experience combine to create predictable behavior patterns in individuals, whether they are human, dog, horse or kangaroo.

Here’s an interesting study of Gosling’s that related to how owners view the personality of their dogs. He asked people at a dog park to fill out a questionnaire about their dogs, and then did some simple tests to learn a bit about the personalities of the owners. You guessed it, there was a strong correlation between how people themselves behaved and how they perceived their dogs. Agreeable dogs were more likely to have agreeable owners, neurotic owners more likely to have neurotic dogs, etc. … Hard to say what’s going on here: could be that we owners project our own tendencies onto our dogs, or perhaps we choose dogs with similar characteristics. Or do we and our dogs began to act like one another after being together long enough!?.

Most interestingly, he found that people were consistent in how they rated other people as well… in other words, if they saw a dog as being “agreeable” they tended to rate other people as agreeable as often as not. But he also found the independent observers tended to rate people’s dogs similarly as did the owners, so it is not as though the owners were totally off base….

Gosling also made the point that “Temperament” refers to the genetic predisposition of an individual to behave a certain way, while “Personality” refers to a predisposition influenced both by experience and by genetics. Thus, we really shouldn’t call them “Temperament Tests,” should we?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Remember the photo of the ewe Spot getting shorn, with her pristine white belly appearing underneath her wool?  Well, that was then and this is now. I didn’t get a photo, but this morning I didn’t recognize a sheep in the pen at first, couldn’t figure out who was the little, brown ewe by the feeder?  Turns out it was Spot, covered in mud, literally from head to tail. The only explanation I can think of is that she was resting lying down and struggled in the mud to get up. Sheep can get in trouble if they lay down with their legs pointing uphill. Based on her complete coat of mud, II suspect tht she struggled a long time before she could get up. I couldn’t see any injuries, and she seemed hungry and not visibly the worse for wear, so I’ll keep an eye on her tonight and hope she’s fine. Poor little thing, she’s quite small and clearly the bottom of the hierarchy, I find I feel a bit protective of her.

Back to sunny Sunday, here’s Willie moving the sheep out of the barn after shearing. (don’t they look spiffy?)

In the next photo you can see the white version of Spot.  She is the one  at the very back.. with the, uh, Spot. Now she’s pretty much all dark brown…

Next is Will, trying to ignore Sushi while waiting to work the sheep….

Great comments about who goes when and where, keep it up. I love hearing from you. It is truly amazing how little we know about dog behavior, isn’t it? But here’s some more of Anneke’s results, this time from good-ole-fashioned, ethological studies observing animals in their natural environment–in this case, the dog park.

Dr. Lisberg observed olfactory investigation and urination at the entrance to a popular dog park, recording who urinated  when and where, and who did Ano-Genital investigation (AG), or sniffed each other’s butts. She found that males and females were equally likely to urinate immediately upon entering the park, but that males often urinated more frequently than females.  No surprise there. “Resident” males (dogs already there) counter marked (over or adjacent marked) more than females and also spent more time investigating the urine of dogs entering the park.

Within each sex, tail base position was correlated with urination and sniffing: Animals with high tail base position did more marking and investigating that those with low; as a matter of fact no females in the study with a “low tail base position” urinated when entering the park, or counter marked the urine of those who had.

To me the most interesting result relates to Anneke’s observations on urine marking and Ano-Genital investigation. AG was done more by the residents than the individuals entering, and was done more by dogs with relaxed postures. However, there was no relation of sex or social status on AG rates.

Here’s the part I find most interesting: Entering dogs, as we all would predict, were often swamped by ‘residents’ doing AG investigation. We all know that this is a potentially tense situation for the entering dog…i.e, everyone wants to know everything about you, but they have to get their nose under your tail to find it out. Anneke found a strong tendency for dogs who were subjected to  AG investigation to trot a few feet away and urinate. The residents would then sniff the urine (rather than the dog) and the close contact would terminate. Dr. Lisberg has speculated that urine marking is a good way for dogs to convey social information to other dogs while breaking off the tension involved in the close body contact involved in AG investigation between strangers. Sort of chemical Facebook page that prevents too much intimacy too soon.

That makes me wonder about situations in which dogs are forced to greet one another without being given a chance to urinate (on sidewalks on leash, inside at doggy day care). We all know that many dogs seem to have no social problems when off leash, but are problematic on leash. There are many reasons for that, no doubt, and I talked about many of them in Feisty Fido. However, until Anneke’s results came out I hadn’t thought about the importance of dogs being able to communicate necessary social information through urine rather than encounters in which the dogs are forced into close contact.

So much to thing about… I am so glad that Anneke is at UW-Whitewater and is continuing her studies. Look for her sometime soon, I hope, speaking somewhere like APDT..

Meanwhile, right now it is Wisconsin at its worst. Rainy, muddy, icy, cold, damp, dark, brown… not much to enjoy outside except the  knowledge that this is the only road to spring.  Here’s Lassie and Willie after asked to “go pee” before I left home for the office to post this. This scene replicates itself on a daily basis, like clockwork: I say “Dogs, go pee. Willie goes and urinates while Lassie stands and watches him. As he leaves, she goes over and urinates, not always exactly on top, but where her nose is directly above his urine. (Does she think she is over marking exactly? Does she know her urine comes out a good foot behind her nose?! Does she care!?)

Willie is almost done, Lassie walks up toward him:

Not totally done yet, Lassie just has to wait:

This time Lassie does seem to be going exactly on top of Willie’s urine. Maybe I need to watch more closely…. Hummm.