Dog Behavior Blog

Do Dogs Know Right From Wrong?

Yesterday, my Standard Poodle, Raja, got into the garbage while I was gone. The garbage can has a tight lid on it, opened by a foot treadle, and to make sure that the can was dogproof, I put a plastic gallon water jug on top of the lid whenever no one is in the house. Raja knocked over the garbage can, sending the water jug flying, and somehow pried open the lid to get at the contents of the can. Fortunately, there was nothing in there but wet paper towels, so he couldn’t hurt himself by eating decaying garbage. He did have a great time shredding the paper towels and scattering the shreds over the living room rug.

On previous occasions when this happened, I reprimanded Raja by scolding him in a deep, low voice, pointing to the shreds of garbage and telling him “No!” several times. I do not believe in hitting dogs, so the only punishment that Raja received was my stern and deep-voiced “No.” Throughout his life, Raja has gotten into the garbage perhaps once or twice a year, so this was a relatively unusual event, triggered perhaps by absolute boredom.

When I walked into the house, Raja greeted me with his usual enthusiastic tail-wagging at the door. I petted him, as is our usual custom, and then stepped into the living room, where I saw the shreds of paper.

I simply pointed to the garbage, and looked at Raja. He immediately started to cringe, crouching down low, with his tail between his legs. I did not say a word, but kept pointing to the papers scattered around. Raja then lay down on the floor and rolled over, exposing his belly, with his front feet folded up and his eyes closed.

When I have been asked about the proper thing to do with a dog who has gotten into the garbage hours or minutes before the dog’s people come home, I have always said that the best thing is to do nothing, because by then the dog does not remember having strewn things around, and punishing the dog after the fact would be counterproductive. I have always said that the dog does not at that point understand what the punishment is about, and would only get confused if punished. This is straight out of classical learning theory, where a response has to follow an event immediately for the lesson to be learned.

However, here was Raja clearly acting as if he knew that he had done something wrong. Not only that, but he was apparently remembering our last lesson about garbage from at least half a year previously.

Does that mean that he knows right from wrong? And, in the larger picture, do dogs in general know right from wrong? In Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals, a new book that is due to be released in March, Marc Bekoff and his coauthor Jessica Pierce argue that dogs and other animals have a sense of right and wrong, and a moral sense of fairness and empathy. Although the main thrust of the book deals with animals in general, Bekoff and Pierce have some examples from the behavior of dogs. They mention a case of a larger, stronger male dog playing with a smaller, weaker male and restraining his bites so as to not injure the smaller dog. They also mention the work of Friedericke Range and her colleagues in Austria, who have shown that dogs will refuse to work for food if they see that other dogs are getting more for doing the same thing. Bekoff and Pierce give a number of other examples, ranging from elephants to mice, that show that animals have a sense of morality, compassion, and a sense of right or wrong.

So how about Raja and the garbage? Does he have a sense of right and wrong? I would say yes. I think that he knows perfectly well that he is not allowed to get into the garbage, and perhaps feels a sense of remorse or shame when he is called on this issue. What’s more, he remembers prior scoldings, even though they happened a long time ago, and knows that they apply to the current situation.

Just like I still remember being scolded as a kid for getting into things that my parents told me not to touch.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Helping a Visiting Dog Adjust

We recently had the pleasure of hosting a lovely four-year old Pomeranian for a few days while his owners were out of town. Because he is a sweet, housetrained dog who loves children and is not prone to destructive chewing or stealing food, it was pretty easy on us to have him around. In addition, we did all that we could to make his transition to our home as easy as possible to keep him from being stressed.

The best advice for anybody hosting a dog is to get him outside in the yard and on a walk as soon as possible. If they immediately get a chance to be out running, sniffing, and playing, most dogs adjust right away to the idea of being in a new place. After all, the new place has access to amusement parks! Additionally, this lets them know straightaway where the bathroom is. My usual strategy is to let them be in the backyard as soon as the owners drop the dog off, and then go on a walk the moment the owners are out of sight. That way, most dogs focus on the fun of the walk, rather than on the absence of the owners.

It’s even better if the dog can come over to visit at least once before the dog is actually left in your care. If the dog gets the opportunity to come over and play without the owners leaving, your home will be familiar to the dog. If a dog has been someplace before and had a positive experience in that location, the likelihood that the dog will adjust well to being there when the owners depart goes up dramatically.

Many dogs are really uncomfortable with anything unfamiliar, so being left at an unfamiliar house can be traumatic. If the house is no longer unfamiliar because the dog has visited and had fun there before, then many potential problems can be avoided.

Besides making sure the dog has a positive experience right away, give him good times during the whole visit. Depending on the dog, that may mean lots of petting and grooming, new toys or things to chew on, playing games such as fetch or tug, or even working by training the dog to do a new trick. Boredom is the enemy of the well-behaved, happy dog, so making sure the dog has lots of activities, play time, and loving will help keep your visiting dog satisfied and well-mannered.

To make sure that every one our visiting dog met was considered a friend, we had everyone who he met give him a little treat. This also prevented him from barking at all our human visitors, as he tends to do. (He doesn’t have a serious issue. He’s just barks at anybody coming or going unless he’s otherwise occupied with treats or toys. Many Pomeranians bark, and it’s only a problem if anyone in the household considers it one.) Besides keeping the barking to a bare minimum, this helped our guest learn that our house is a great place where great things happen, which may have been part of the reason he seemed to enjoy being at our house as much as we enjoyed having him.

--Karen B. London

How Dog Training Imitates Life

In my experience of teaching dog training classes, many people initially find it difficult to understand the principles behind the training methods. But really, the methods of training dogs are based on the same principles that we all encounter in our lives.

One important principle is the clarity of communication. If we want someone to do something for us, the best way to accomplish this is to clearly state what it is that we want. Hinting, skirting the issue in roundabout ways, or trying to state our request as a question (Do you want to stop for a cup of coffee?) will not get for us what a clear statement of our desire will do. It is the same thing in dog training. If we clearly state a command, the dog will understand, provided that the initial training has been done to teach the dog the meaning of the command.  A clearly stated “Sit” accomplishes more than a roundabout “Won’t you please consider sitting?”

Another important principle is trust. We tend to respond well to people who we trust. If these people tell us to do something, we are confident that they will not be leading us astray, and will not turn on us and put us into a hurtful situation. And what do we do with the people that we don’t trust? We either avoid them, or if we can’t do that, we are very cautious about our actions around them. Similarly, dogs need to trust their people. They need to be able to know that their people will not hurt them or put them into scary situations. With trust in their people, dogs are willing to do a lot. Without trust, dogs are usually reluctant to do anything other than avoid the people that they don’t trust, just as we tend to avoid the people that we don’t trust.

A third principle is rewards. While animal behaviorists and learning theorists talk about reinforcement (defined as anything that strengthens a behavior), much of dog and human behavior can be described as driven by rewards. We like to do things that give us rewards, whether those rewards are more money, good food, good friends, interesting partners, or toys to play with. We generally do not do well in an environment where we are punished, and try to either avoid that kind of environment or become very stressed if we can’t do anything about it. Similarly, dogs are usually happy to do things for rewards, whether the rewards are food, praise, strokes, or a chance to play with a favorite toy.

A fourth principle is sociality. We humans are social beings. We like to be around other people. We enjoy the company of our friends and sometimes our family. People who are isolated from other people often become depressed and fail to thrive. So it is as well with dogs. Dogs are social animals, and they like being around their friends and family. With dogs, family is usually either their pack or the humans that they live with, who become the functional pack. But dogs also have friends, and they like to be around their friends as well. Dog who live rich social lives tend to be happy dogs, while dogs who are isolated, who are put out into the yard alone or locked up in the house all day by themselves, tend to be depressed and unhappy.

At the level of these principles, there are a lot of parallels between human behavior and dog training. With these principles, we learn as we are growing up how to do well in the world around us, and once we have learned that, we apply these principles to most of our interactions with other people. Dog training is based on these same principles. While there are a lot of details that go into training dogs (for example, getting the timing right between saying the command and responding with praise, either with voice or a clicker, when the dog obeys the command), and these details are best taught by experienced teachers, without these principles the training is going to fail, and both the dog and her people will be very unhappy in their relationship.

--Con Slobodchikoff