Dog Behavior Blog

The Emotions Of Dogs

My dog Raja was invited to the home of a friend, a dog with whom we walk almost every day.  Raja was very excited. At last, he would have a chance to play all evening. When we arrived, Raja’s friend was excited too. But she quickly cooled her excitement when Raja started playing with her toys and lying down on her bed mat. She went off to lie down at her people’s feet, and snarled when Raja came close. Raja was dejected. His tail drooped, his head hung down, and he kept coming up to us and nudging our hands, seeking reassurance.  When it was time to go home, Raja’s friend did not get up from where she was lying, and did not even wag her tail in farewell. The next day, Raja was clearly depressed. He spent most of the day sleeping, and could not even be roused for a game of fetch, one of his favorite games. The following day, I took Raja out for his daily walk where he usually meets his friend, only to find that his friend did not want to come up to him, much less give him the enthusiastic greeting that he always received before. Raja seemed devastated. During the entire walk, he had his head hung low, and showed none of the symptoms of being a bouncy dog who loves his walks. Fortunately, the following day, when we met up with his friend, she greeted him with the usual affection, and Raja was transformed back into the happy, bouncy dog that he was before our visit to his friend’s house.

What was happening here? Could Raja have been experiencing a variety of emotions, similar to what we might feel when we have been rejected by a friend? Could his friend have been experiencing emotions of anger that Raja was playing with her toys, and experiencing jealousy because Raja was getting praise from her people? While we have to be careful of indulging in anthropomorphism, or ascribing human traits to animals, I think that the answer is clearly “Yes!”  Raja was feeling badly because he expected to have a good time, and instead was rejected. While some scientists would scoff at this and say that dogs are not capable of experiencing emotions, the bulk of the evidence seems to be showing that dogs, as well as other animals, can experience at least the basic emotions of fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, and surprise.

Now there are several books that explore the question of emotions in dogs. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s book, Dogs Never Lie About Love, explores the emotions of dogs. Among his other books, The Pig Who Sang To The Moon explores the emotional lives of farm animals, and When Elephants Weep explores the general question of emotions in animals. Marc Bekoff’s book, The Emotional Lives Of Animals, provides abundant evidence that a variety of different animals have extensive emotional lives. And Patricia McConnell’s book, For The Love Of A Dog: Understanding Emotion In You And Your Best Friend, presents a variety of evidence of emotions in dogs, as well as ways that people can recognize the signals that dogs give when they are experiencing different emotions.

We are finally emerging from the days when dogs, and animals in general, were looked upon as inferior creatures that operated on programs of instinct, kind of like mechanical robots with no feelings and thoughts. We are beginning to recognize that dogs are sentient beings who have rich emotional lives, just as we are sentient beings who have rich emotional lives of our own.

---Con Slobodchikoff

Two of a Kind: Handling the Trouble with Littermates

The last fight had been the worst, requiring surgeries for both dogs, and stitches for two human family members who finally separated them. For two years, tensions had been growing between the two dogs, and the vet bills were also on the rise. Beginning with object guarding and progressing through stiff postures and stalking each other, dirty looks at every opportunity, lunging, snapping, and biting, the trouble had finally resulted in this fourth fight which required two people and 10 minutes to stop. How could two adorable, otherwise sweet Spaniels who had known each other since birth have become such bitter rivals?

The allure of getting two puppies from the same litter creates a huge temptation. Sadly, it is not unusual for littermates within a household to be a source of real difficulty. These problems range from the mild to the heartbreakingly unmanageable. As a result, getting two puppies from the same litter is something to which most trainers and behaviorists are adamantly opposed.

Some littermates are so bonded to each other that it’s hard to get their attention. More worrisome is that littermates are more likely to fight with each other. Often, aggression between littermates does not get serious until they are two years old, so you may not know you’ve got trouble brewing until you’ve had the dogs a long time. While some lucky people with littermates do not have these problems, it’s best to do everything possible to make problems unlikely when getting puppies, and that means not getting littermates.

After years of clinical experience, my concerns about these situations have continued to grow, but I have also become experienced with a broad range of techniques for preventing and managing littermate issues. Since some cases cannot be resolved while the animals share a household, prevention is critical.

To make trouble with littermates less likely, get a male and a female. Littermates, like other dogs, are less likely to fight when they are not the same sex. My experience is that male littermates are more likely to fight than female littermates are, but if the females do fight, their fights are more likely to be serious or even deadly than the males’ fights are.

Spend time alone with each dog to build a strong relationship with each individual.  Besides helping you connect with each dog, this will help your dogs get accustomed to being without each other, so they are not reliant on each other socially. If they have experience being separated, they will not be stressed when they are temporarily apart at the vet, the groomer, in training classes, or in case of an injury that prohibits roughhousing. 

One thing you can do while spending time alone with each dog is work on training, which will make your life and your dogs’ lives more enjoyable because of the increased freedom well-trained dogs can safely enjoy. They need to be trained individually before working on even basic commands around each other because they will be more distracted when they are together. 

Don’t tolerate any fighting or threats and respond immediately if one dog does anything aggressive to the other one. Deep growls, snapping, showing teeth, lunging or fighting are clear indications of trouble. Less obvious behavior that can also suggest a problem includes one dog pushing another aside for access to you, to food, or to toys, guarding food bowls from each other, watching each other warily or with hard stares, or displaying stiff postures around each other. Other signs to watch out for are one dog bullying the other dog by taking away all the toys and bones, one dog preventing the other from moving freely around the house, or one of your dogs slinking around the house.

It is easy to assume that littermates don’t have to socialize with other dogs since they have each other.  Please don’t make this mistake! Raising dog-social dogs involves giving them lots of practice meeting, greeting, and playing with new dogs, not just each other.

Two puppies means twice as much time housetraining, socializing, teaching manners, and grooming, and also twice as much money for the vet, training, toys, food, collars, leashes and licenses. When you go to get your puppy, there is a risk of getting two puppies instead of the one you planned on.  Be firm and strong! Avoid getting talked into two puppies no matter how cute they are, no matter how much they need a home, and no matter how much difficulty you and your family have deciding which puppy to choose. Impulsively bringing home two puppies from the litter doesn’t have a happy ending often enough to justify the risk.

The Spaniels mentioned above were kept separate in their own home in a Berlin Wall style situation until one of the adult children moved to his own place, taking one dog with him. Neither dog has since shown any aggression to any other dog, though they still cannot safely be around each other.

---Karen B. London

Dogs And A Sense of Humor

Sometimes, I like to think about the question, do dogs have a sense of humor? This is not a very easy question to answer, because we can quickly slip into anthropomorphism, or ascribing human-like qualities to animals without any evidence. But is there any evidence that dogs have a sense of humor?

From a personal standpoint, I can relate many stories of apparent sense of humor in dogs. When I play with my dog Raja, who loves to chase balls, he can sometimes invent games that make me laugh. One game that he invented is pretending that he cannot find the ball. He will sometimes stand right over the ball and look all around as if he can’t find it. He turns one way, then another way, all the time standing right over the ball. Then, suddenly, he “discovers” the ball that was touching his feet and grabs it. He doesn’t do this all the time. Sometimes days or weeks go by before he repeats this game, and then he might do it for several days straight, until he apparently gets bored with it and goes back to running after the ball and retrieving it. Another game that he invented is tripping on the way to get the ball. He will deliberately trip and slide about half-way to the ball, and then trip and slide about half-way back with the ball.  This always reminds me of slapstick comedy, and I break out in peals of laughter.

So how do I know that he thinks it’s humor? As he does this, he starts to pant rhythmically. At first, I noticed this behavior but did not realize that it had any sort of meaning. Then I read about the work of Patricia Simonet and her studies of laughter in dogs. She has found that dogs will produce a distinctive pattern of pants when they are playing, or when they are interacting with friendly people. This pattern is different from the panting that dogs do when they are hot or when they have been running. I don’t think that it is a large leap of faith to assume that if dogs can laugh, they can have a sense of humor.

However, ultimately, there is no way yet of conclusively proving this. But if they can laugh, it suggests that they might very well have one.  At least with my dog, I laugh and he pants, and we both have a good time playing.

---Con Slobodchikoff

Kids and Dog Bites

When I see what dogs have to deal with in their interactions with children, I am amazed that more kids aren’t bitten. Due to lack of education, inadequate supervision, well intentioned but unwise behavior, and the occasional “Dennis the Menace” sort of personality, dogs have to put up with more than most people would be able to tolerate without responding badly. By no means am I condoning dog bites or suggesting that children are to blame when they are bitten. I’m simply saying that most dogs DO tolerate an incredible amount of harassing from kids in the form of tail pulling, ear lifting, eye poking, grabbing and the like without biting. However, the reasons kids get bitten by dogs extend beyond some dogs not being as tolerant of these sorts of behaviors as society requires of them.

From a dog’s point of view, kids behave erratically. They run around, fall over, change directions, scream, and do all manner of normal things that just so happen to make many dogs uncomfortable. Since the vast majority of aggression, including bites, has its roots in fear, it’s no wonder that dogs bite. As a loving parent myself, it pains me to say this, but kids’ behavior can be frightening, even if it is typical behavior performed by nice children. When I was three years old, I used to go over to visit the neighbor’s Old English Sheepdog. I would pull up the hair that was over his eyes and have prolonged conversations with him practically nose to nose. It is a wonder that nobody took pity on the dog and made me stop these tête-à-têtes, and even more remarkable that the dear fellow never reacted badly.

While most adults follow the wisdom of “Don’t bother him when he has a bone!” or “Let sleeping dogs lie,” kids have fewer inhibitions against going up to a dog at any time. While ideally all dogs would tolerate being bothered in any way when they are eating, sleeping, resting, or chewing on bones and rawhides, it is good practice not to approach a dog in any of these circumstances. Many kids ignore the signs that the dog is anxious or wanting to get away. While it is true that many adults also fail to recognize the warning signs of a dog who may bite, kids tend to take even less notice, and are therefore at greater risk of continuing to behave in a way that may elicit a bite.

The two most common contexts in which children are bitten by dogs are when a child approaches a dog who is tied up and when a child hugs a dog. Approaching and hugging dogs are very natural behaviors for children, so it requires both education and supervision to prevent many of these bites.

Dogs who are tied up are much more likely to behave aggressively than those same dogs when they are not tethered. Dogs who are tied up cannot get away. Even the ones who would naturally move away from an approaching child are unable to do so. Feeling trapped makes many dogs panic and a dog who is panicking is more likely to bite than a dog who is in a more relaxed state. Additionally, dogs who are tied up are often in an area that they consider their home or territory. If the dog spends a significant amount of time tied up in one spot, then that small area is often perceived by the dog as a critical part of their territory and will often be defended vigorously. Of course, dogs should be trained to accept approaches by anyone, even when tied up, without behaving aggressively, but as a practical matter for safety, our children must be taught to follow the simple rule of never approaching a dog who is tied up.

When a child hugs a dog, there is the potential for a huge misunderstanding. Most children want to hug dogs because they are used to expressing affection in this way with their parents, other relatives, friends, and even their stuffed animals. When a child hugs a dog, it is because that child cares for the dog and wants to feel close to it. For people, wrapping our arms around someone or something and holding on tight is a gesture of affection. Unfortunately, the perception of dogs to this behavior is very different. For dogs, putting a paw and especially a chin over their shoulders is a sign that the one doing this is asserting high status over them. Many dogs find it aversive when anyone does this, especially a child. Generally speaking, dogs are least likely to be tolerant of a child who is inadvertently acting as a relatively high-status individual. Of course, it would be great if all dogs could tolerate this innocent behavior of children, but for their own safety, children must be taught not to hug dogs. Even dogs who do not react in any bad way to being hugged usually express disgust on their faces in response to being hugged.

--Karen B. London