THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

I am grateful for so much. I often spend time every morning thinking about what I am grateful for, but it seems especially meaningful at this time of the year. Here’s just a few of the many things I have to be thankful for:

I am grateful for Willie’s smiling face and his pink tongue.

I am grateful for the times when he sends his joy spinning out into the universe.

I am grateful to have Lassie still in my life and to be anticipating her 16th birthday party.

I am grateful for the black circle around her eye, and the little brush of black on her ear.

I am grateful for Sushi’s soft, creamy fur, her cat ears and her cat eyes and the fact that she is so very different from my dogs.

I am thankful for every day that I get to spend with her. I am becoming more allergic to her every week, and am trying many, many things to make it work, but am aware that my days with Sushi might be limited.

I am grateful for the colors of fall, the beauty of nature and the amazing luck I have to be able to live in such a beautiful place.

I am grateful to Jim, who has been like air and water to me for nine years. I am grateful to all in his family, and all in mine… how incredibly lucky I am to be a part of their lives.

My own list will go on for pages and pages, but here’s one more . . .

I am grateful for all of you who read this blog, and participate in a conversation about the amazing relationship we have with animals of another species.

What are you grateful for? I would love to know.

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, basic emotion, and denying the existence of it in other mammals is hard to justify once you know the biology behind it, but it seems to be important for people to try.)

There is much more controversy and confusion over what are called the “secondary emotions” in animals, which are generally argued to exist only in humans, and are believed to require complex cognitive abilities often uniquely attributed to us, including self awareness and what’s called “theory of mind.” These emotions, like jealousy, empathy, pride, guilt and shame can be further categorized as “self-conscious emotions” like jealousy and “self-conscious evaluative emotions” like guilt and shame. The “evaluative” modifier refers to the requirement that the experience of guilt or shame is based on evaluating a behavior against a rule or standard that is understood by the individual experiencing it.

I’m reading an interesting article related to all this in Cognition and Emotion (2008, 22(1), 3-20) by Morris, Doe and Godsell about secondary emotions and the perceptions of pet owners. The authors do an excellent job summarizing the controversy, arguing that secondary emotions are not necessarily uniquely human, and describing a study in which pet owners were asked if a list of primary and secondary emotions were observed in their pet (including dogs, cats, horses, birds, rats, rabbits….). In a second study, they asked owners to describe the situations in which the emotion of jealousy occurred. (“Can you give examples of the situations in which your dog gets jealous?”) Needless to say, this is tricky stuff–publishing an article in a scientific journal about what owners think of their pets–and in my opinion, the authors did a great job with it. I especially like their thoughtful discussion about the value (and problems) of owner reports, including the obvious fact that just because someone thinks their dog is jealous doesn’t mean that their dog is jealous.

They address these issues extremely well, and conclude by, in part, arguing that the behavior described by the owners (as the basis for their perception of jealousy) are the same behaviors described as jealousy in humans. In their study the context of the presumed occurrence of jealousy always involved a triad of people and animals, in which one animal attempted to divert attention away from another by pushing between the other two or vocalizing. Thus, they focus on the behavior of the animals, showing that the “jealous” animals did exactly what humans do when we label their behavior as motivated by jealousy. They correctly argue that this is not proof that non-human animals experience jealousy, but that it is important information that suggests we should at least seriously consider it. Here here.

Note that for this second study they focused on what I think of as the “simplest” of secondary emotions: jealousy. I’ve long argued that jealousy is simply a form of anger (“I Want It, You Have It and I Don’t and I”m Angry about It.) It seems logical to me that the other secondary emotions are indeed the result of a more complicated type of cognition . . . but, what do you think? Can dogs be guilty (fyi, I’m not saying they can’t, but think this is the emotion most often MIS-attributed to dogs). Can dogs feel shame? True Empathy? I’d love to get a conversation started about this….

By the way, the study I cited above found differences in secondary emotions attributed to animals based on species: Over 70% of dog owners reported jealousy and guilt in their dogs and over 70% of horse owners reported jealousy and pride. Interesting, hey? Is this a result of our expectations? Mis-reading their facial expressions? A true species difference?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Spring is in all its glory and I honestly don’t know how it could be more beautiful. Here’s our giant Lilac bush, back lit by the Sunburst Locust and the Oak/Hickory forest across the road:

Redford is now safely  ensconced at Jim and Peg’s beautiful farm. It can be dangerous to put two unfamiliar rams together; they are highly territorial and can injure or even kill each other. We talked at length about how to make the transition safe: the standard method is to put them together in a pen so small that they can’t back up and ram into each other with any force. Peg also got two “ram shields” that block their forward vision and are reputed to prevent aggression. She thought she’d use them once she let the rams out into a bigger pen after a few days–she’s had rams stand side by side in small pens for a few days, and then immediately back up and shake the ground with the jack hammer-like force of their bony heads smashing together.

After thinking about it, she decided to put them in adjacent small pastures at first to let them become familiar. I agreed with the plan, and with a bit of “loading-into-the-truck” drama, we got Redford settled in a small pasture with a couple of wethers (neutered males) beside the Katahdin ram, who I call Chili Bean.

Peg went to check on them a bit later, and found that Redford and friends had crawled on their knees through a low, tiny hole in the fence…  and cuddled up to Chili. Here are the boys now, best of friends and potentially amused at all of our concerns. . .(could that be a secondary emotion in sheep, best labeled “amusement brought on by the behavior of humans”?)

xxx

I’m just back from the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. I was one of several speakers discussing the Human/Animal Bond at NIH’s STEP Forum, a monthly meeting for all NIH staff designed to educate staff about issues relating to science in the public health. It was very much worth the travel; the talks given by zoo-anthropologist Dr. James Serpell, Dr. Sandra Barker and Dr. Joan Esnayra were each worth the trip alone. Dr. Serpell discussed historical and cross-cultural aspects of the human-animal bond, and dispelled the myths that “pets” are only luxuries indulged in by industrial societies and that people who love animals do so from some social pathology that prevents them from “normal” relationships with other people. His books In the Company of Animals and The Domestic Dog are classics, you might want to look them up.

Dr. Barker, a Professor of Psychiatry and active participant using animal in therapy, spoke about the impact of Animal Assisted Interventions (distinguishing between Animal Assisted Therapy, in which the animal works with a licensed therapist toward a specific goal for the client and Animal Assisted Activities, in which animals are brought in to comfort and alleviate stress–both vital efforts) and her ongoing research projects at VCU to elucidate the context in which AAT  and AAA can be clinically valuable.

Dr. Esnayra founded the Psychiatric Service Dog Society and gave a compelling speech about the effective use of assistance dogs for those with mental illness (instead of physical disabilities). She is absolutely up front about living herself with Bipolar Disorder and PTSD, and has 2 beautiful (and beautifully behaved) Rhodesian Ridgebacks who work with her (and attended the forum). We also met Mike Townsend and Donna Dellaglio, who have a Helper Monkey who has ‘changed their lives’ . Mike has severe MS, is confined to a wheel chair and no longer has the use of his arms. Kathy, their capuchin, allows him to watch television, turn lots of equipment off and on, and most importantly, use the computer. “Kathy gave Mike his life back” is a pretty inspiring thing to hear at the end of a morning on the importance of animals in our lives.

I spoke second, after Serpell, arguing that the profound love that many of us have for our dogs is a biological phenomenon that deserves more scientific attention. In my talk I speculated, as I did in the book For the Love of a Dog, that one of the reasons we become so intensely attached to dogs is that dogs have such expressive faces and as Darwin argued over a century ago, their expressions of fear, anger and happiness are very much like our own.

Those comments were soundly criticized by a veterinary behaviorist in the audience who argued that I was being problematically anthropomorphic to 1) make any association between the expressions of people and the expressions of dogs and 2) use the word ‘anger’ in association with dogs. I can’t quote the person exactly, but the point was that anger is a human construct, and it is wrong to attribute it to dogs.

I was (and am) fascinated by her criticisms. First off, the evidence continues to grow about the continuum of the biology of emotion in mammals.. we share the same basic neuro-anatomy related to emotions, the same neuro-physiology related to emotions (serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin to name a few) and many of the same behavioral reactions. Emotions are such primitive things, it always interests me that ascribing them to non-human animals makes people uncomfortable. Of course, there’s a huge difference between how an emotion is processed in the brain of a human and that of a dog, but the glass is half full as well as half empty, and the biology of emotions is far more similar in dogs and people than it is different. In addition, I’d love to claim credit for the notion that the expressions of emotion on the faces of dogs and people are related, but since Darwin wrote about it over a hundred years ago I don’t think I’d better! Unless you believe that people and other animals have virtually no biological connection of any kind, it is sound science to compare the expressions of 2 highly social mammals who use subtle visual signals to maintain social harmony.

I am especially interested in the expressed concern that anger is “human construct.” I’ve heard that before from several different fields (mainly psychology and from other veterinary behaviorists), and yet… anger, or ‘rage’ as it is usually called in the literature, is considered one of the most basic and primal of emotions. Jaak Panskeep, the author of Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions calls rage one of the “core” emotions of all mammals.  Truly, you can’t attribute fear to a dog and deny then that a dog could get angry… those two emotions are too closely tied together in so many, many ways.

I believe completely and without question that dogs can experience anger, the biology to support that is overwhelming. However.. and this is a big HOWEVER… I also think that anger is one of the emotions that people most mis-understand in dogs. Owners often tell trainers or behaviorists that their dog defecated on the carpet because he was “angry” that he’d been left, when the motivating emotions was either fear of being left alone, or none in particular, because the dog simply wasn’t house trained!  I suspect that although dogs can get angry, (for example when frustrated by being pulled away from the window while barking at a passer by), dogs actually experience anger very very little compared to humans. I write more about this in For the Love of a Dog… and am inspired to write more in a magazine article somewhere, sometime . . .

But right now I’d better get home. Lassie and Willie have been waiting for me to come home and start the holidays with them, and I don’t want them to get angry at me if I come home late. (Please, oh please know that I am kidding and that no, honestly, truly, I really do not believe that my dogs will experience anger if I get home later than I am hoping to. . .

Meanwhile, have a great holiday.  I hope you have a lot to be thankful for. I certainly do and I am overwhelmed with gratitude because of it.

So much to say, so little time! First off, I thought I’d let the folks who get WPR daytime know that I’ll be a guest on Larry Meiller’s show tomorrow at 11:45. It’ll be a hoot to see him. I’m feeling sort of smiley-silly about it, so watch out what you ask me if you call in!

Second, here’s a photo of Lassie with her canine chiropractor, Dr. Mark McCaan (spelling?). We go in every month (Willie every other), and there is simply no question that it helps her 15 year old body (almost, she’ll be 15 in 3 weeks!). The effects are immediate and obvious. If I skip them she develops a significant limp originating in her right shoulder. If I stay on schedule she still clearly has some arthritis (treated in many ways, not just chiropractic). [Did I mention, that in spite of Dr. Mark’s kindness and care with her old body, Lassie is never thrilled about going to the vet clinic? Look at the faces below… talk about absolute opposites of emotional expressions! Lest you are worried about my Lassie girl, she looks exactly like that in the car too… no one does ‘disdain’ better than Princess Lassie!

I was talking to a dear brother-in-law on my way there, and had the conversation you well might have had too…”Yes, really, there really are canine chiropractors and yes, really they can do amazingly wonderful things for a dog’s body, just as is true in human medicine.” (And what wasn’t said was “Yes, really, I know she’s a dog but she’s my dog and I love her like family and I am lucky enough to be able to afford it and look at all the money that people spend on golf clubs and fancy shoes so why the heck shouldn’t I spend the money on my dog!) My brother-in-law is a dear, understanding man, so I don’t think he was being judgmental as much as he was being surprised.) But it seems so common to hear from journalists whose editors want them to write a “CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW MUCH PEOPLE SPEND ON THEIR DOG!” story. Well, yes, some of us do, because we are lucky and can afford it. Is that really so strange or terrible? I wrote in For the Love of a Dog that one interviewer wore $400 shoes while asking me, incredulously, if people really paid money to have acupuncture done on their dogs. I was very polite when I answered, honest.

It’s winter at the farm.. we just got the barn shoveled and scrapped and brushed and bleached in time. Snowed a little last night, 14 degrees on the kitchen thermometer this morning. I am NOT ready. Apparently, Willie is:

Next post will be about great research that’s piling up on my desk… all done on species other than dogs, all relates to us and our dogs directly!