AT h.e.l.lO.
Early in my life with Pumpernickel, I got a full-time job and she got a cla.s.sic case of separation anxiety. Mornings as I prepared to leave the house after our walk, she began to whimper, shadow me from room to room, and, finally, vomit. I consulted with trainers who gave me very reasonable guidelines to reduce her stress at separation. I followed all known commonsensical procedures, and before too long Pump returned to a healthy mental and physical state. But there was one dictum I didn"t follow. Don"t ritualize your departure and later return, they advised; don"t celebrate your reunion. I refused. Her snuffly, nosed greeting, our heaping together on the floor in a joyous commemoration of togetherness, was too good to let go.
Lorenz called the greeting between animals after being apart a "redirected appeas.e.m.e.nt ceremony." That nervous excitement one might feel on suddenly seeing someone else in one"s den or territory could lead to two different results: an attack of the potential stranger, or a redirection of the excitement into a greeting. His idea was that there is very little difference between the attack and the greeting, besides a few subtle alterations or additions. Between mallards, one of the birds he studied extensively, two individuals meeting each other engage in a rhythmical "ceremonial to-and-fro movement" that could become aggressive, but for the male mallard, the drake, lifting his head and turning it away. This leads to a mutual ceremony of pretending to preen each other, and the greeting is complete: another fight inhibited.
The greeting among humans is similarly ritualized. We look each other in the eyes, wave hands at each other, hug or kiss once or twice or thrice depending on one"s native country. These all may be redirections of an uncertain feeling upon seeing someone else. What is more, we may smile or chuckle. Nothing is more rea.s.suring of the good intent of another person than laughter, Lorenz proposed. This paroxysm of noise is surely most often the expression of joy, but it might also be an eruption typical of alarm reformulated as delight or surprise (not unlike the rough play context in which dog laughter appears).
Having channeled one"s excitement into a greeting in this Lorenzian way, one might add other components to the h.e.l.lo. Wolves and dogs do. Their greetings, and the greetings of all social canids, are similar. In the wild, when parents return to the den, the pups mob them, madly lunging at their mouths in the hope of getting them to regurgitate a bit of the kill they have consumed. They lick at their lips, muzzle, and mouth, take a submissive posture, and wag furiously.
As we have seen, what many owners cheerfully describe as "kisses" is face licking, your dog"s attempt to prompt you to regurgitate. Your dog will never be unhappy if his kisses in fact prompt you to spit up your lunch. This greeting isn"t complete without an excited approach and constant, energetic contact. Ears that were p.r.i.c.ked to hear your arrival fall flat against the dog"s head, which dips slightly in a submissive gesture. The dog pulls his lips back and drops his eyelids: in humans, markers of a true smile. He wags madly or beats a frantic rhythm with the tip of his tail against the ground. Both wags contain all the excited running-around energy that the dog suppresses in order to stay close to you. He may whine or yelp with pleasure. Adult wolves howl daily: among packs, a chorus of howling may help coordinate their travels and strengthens their attachment. Similarly, if you greet the dog with cries and vocal h.e.l.los, your dog may cry back at you. In every move he is breathing and exuding his recognition of you.
If greeting and contact were all, we might expect a rash of monkeys bonded with wolves, of rabbits cohabitating with prairie dogs. They all require contact in infancy. And even ants greet homecomers to the nest. I suppose that, predatory issues aside (a big aside), the potential is there. A gorilla named Koko, taught to use sign language to communicate and raised in a human home, had his own pet kitten.
We are relieved of acting instinctually in the way few animals are. But there is one other aspect that makes human-dog bonding unique: timing. We act well together.
THE DANCE.
On a long walk Pump stays near me, but not too. If I call her to me, she comes charging forth full-steam and stops just past me. She likes to be one step off. And yet when we walk together on a lean path and she is ahead of me, she checks checks-regularly looking back to see where I am. She only needs to turn her head partway round to see me, lifting it from its regular downward cast, surveying the ground. If I ever lag, she turns all the way round, ears up and attentive: waiting for me. Oh, I love to come to this beckoning stance of hers: I might gallop a bit as I near her, and this cues her to play-bow, or to pivot on her rear legs and a.s.sume her trot leading us on our walk.
He has begun, on this second day, to come to a snap: just picked it up right away. We snap him back and forth between us.
Dogs, though they do not hunt cooperatively, are cooperative. Watch the parade of leashed dog-person twosomes along a city street. Despite small diversions, they are dancing in masterful synchrony, traveling together. together. Working dogs are trained to heighten their sensitivity to the dance. Blind people and their guide dogs take turns initiating movement, completing each other. Working dogs are trained to heighten their sensitivity to the dance. Blind people and their guide dogs take turns initiating movement, completing each other.
It helps that dogs live at our speed. A house mouse, its heart beating four hundred times a minute at rest, is always in a hurry; a tick can wait for a month, a year, or eighteen years in suspended animation for that odor of butyric acid to come along; dogs function much more at our pace. Though we outlive them, their lives stretch across a generation. And they act act at a pace sufficiently close to ours-if slightly quicker-to enable us to discern their movements, imagine their intent. They act in response to our actions, with alacrity. They dance with us. at a pace sufficiently close to ours-if slightly quicker-to enable us to discern their movements, imagine their intent. They act in response to our actions, with alacrity. They dance with us.
A puppy initially balks at a leash, pulls at it unyieldingly, or simply fails to grasp that he is tethered to it-and thus to you-as he pulls toward that very interesting newspaper wafting down the sidewalk. In very little time, though, puppies learn to be highly cooperative walking partners, walking at roughly the same rate and often in step with their owners. They match match their owners, almost mimicking us. In turn, we unconsciously mimic our mimickers. In ethology, this is called "allelomimetic behavior" and is implicated in the development and maintenance of good social relationships among animals. More than that, though, the puppy has learned about the sequence of behaviors that you repeat, that make up a walk-and antic.i.p.ates them. Before long, he knows the series of steps to get the walk started, the corners you turn on your route to the park, the place where the leash is snapped off or the ball is brought out. He antic.i.p.ates the long-walk turnaround point; the short-walk turnaround point; and knows how to evade the latter. Some dogs even seem to know exactly how far the parameters of a leash extend from our hands, and they dart about within those parameters, grabbing a stick or sniffing a pa.s.sing dog without our breaking stride. their owners, almost mimicking us. In turn, we unconsciously mimic our mimickers. In ethology, this is called "allelomimetic behavior" and is implicated in the development and maintenance of good social relationships among animals. More than that, though, the puppy has learned about the sequence of behaviors that you repeat, that make up a walk-and antic.i.p.ates them. Before long, he knows the series of steps to get the walk started, the corners you turn on your route to the park, the place where the leash is snapped off or the ball is brought out. He antic.i.p.ates the long-walk turnaround point; the short-walk turnaround point; and knows how to evade the latter. Some dogs even seem to know exactly how far the parameters of a leash extend from our hands, and they dart about within those parameters, grabbing a stick or sniffing a pa.s.sing dog without our breaking stride.
Once we take them off their leashes, the dance continues. My conception of the perfect walk, occasionally achieved, has my dog off-leash running not alongside me but in great circles around me, with our average forward progress over the miles more or less the same. Ideally, we encounter a dozen other dogs. There is little as therapeutic as watching two dogs at play together in a boisterous full-bodied brawl: it extends our pleasure at turn-taking games to high-speed, exuberant result. The rules of play-signaling, timing-are similar to our conversational rules. And so we can enter into a dialogue of play with our dogs.
I start it. I inch to where she"s lying and I put my hand on her paw. She pulls it away-and puts her paw on my hand. I place my hand over her paw again; more quickly now, she mimics me. We trade slaps like this until it is too much: I laugh, breaking the spell, and she stretches forward over her paws, mouth open nearly in smile, to lick my face. There"s a special intimacy of having her put her hand-its weight, the scratchiness of her pads, the feeling of each claw-on mine. Mostly it"s the simple fact of the use of this appendage to communicate with me-it is not seen as a hand independent of its arm until she treats it as one, parallel to mine.
The elements that make play enjoyable are hard to pinpoint, just as a great joke always seems to be funnier than its deconstruction. Try getting a robot to play with you: they always seem to lack a certain ... playfulness. playfulness. A few years ago Sony developed a mechanical pet, "Aibo," designed to look like a dog-it is four-legged, has a tail, characteristic head form, et cetera-and to act something like a dog-it wags, barks, and performs simple trained-dog routines. What the Aibo does not do is play like a dog, and the designers wanted it to be more playfully interactive with people. With this in mind I studied dogs and humans playing together: wrestling, chasing, tossing and retrieving b.a.l.l.s and sticks and ropes. I watched, videotaped, and then transcribed all the behaviors that each of the partic.i.p.ants did. Then I looked for the elements that were consistent across the successful bouts of this interspecies play. A few years ago Sony developed a mechanical pet, "Aibo," designed to look like a dog-it is four-legged, has a tail, characteristic head form, et cetera-and to act something like a dog-it wags, barks, and performs simple trained-dog routines. What the Aibo does not do is play like a dog, and the designers wanted it to be more playfully interactive with people. With this in mind I studied dogs and humans playing together: wrestling, chasing, tossing and retrieving b.a.l.l.s and sticks and ropes. I watched, videotaped, and then transcribed all the behaviors that each of the partic.i.p.ants did. Then I looked for the elements that were consistent across the successful bouts of this interspecies play.
What I hoped to find were clear routines and games that could be modeled in a doggish toy such as Aibo. What I found was both simpler and more powerful. In every bout, the player"s actions were importantly contingent contingent on-based on and related to-the other"s actions. This established a rhythm to the play. on-based on and related to-the other"s actions. This established a rhythm to the play.
Such contingency is easily seen in even very early human social interaction. At two months, infants coordinate simple movements with their mothers, such as mirroring facial expressions. In play, coordinated responses to actions, such as a ball leaving a thrower"s hand, happened in as little as five frames of the videotape (approximately one-sixth of a second). Mirrored responses-lunging after being lunged at, for example-are rife during play. The timing is crucial: dogs respond to our movements in the time frame another human might.
A simple game of fetch, for instance, is a dance of call and response. We enjoy the game because of the dog"s reactive readiness to respond to our actions. Cats, by contrast, are simply not enjoyable fetch playmates: they may in fact fetch you an object, but in their own time. Dogs partic.i.p.ate in a kind of communion with their owners around the ball, with each responding at a conversational pace: in seconds, not hours. The dogs are acting like very cooperative humans. Another game is simply doing an activity in parallel: running together. In play between dogs parallelism is common. Two dogs may mimic each other"s gaping mouths yawing back and forth. Often one dog will observe and then match the other"s preoccupation: hole digging, stick chewing, ball trumpeting. As wolves hunt together collaboratively, this ability to act with others, matching their behavior, might come from their ancestry. To have your play-slap matched by a dog"s is to feel suddenly in communication with another species.
We experience the dog"s responsiveness as expressive of a mutual understanding: we"re on this walk together; together; we"re playing we"re playing together. together. Researchers who have looked at the temporal pattern of interactions with our dogs find that it is similar to the timing patterns among mixed-s.e.x strangers flirting, and to the timing among soccer players as they move down the field that feels like great teamwork. There are hidden sequences of paired behaviors that repeat in interaction: a dog looking at the owner"s face before picking up a stick, a person pointing and a dog following the point to what it"s directed. The sequences are repeated, and they are reliable, so we begin to get the feeling, over time, that there is a shared covenant of interaction between us. None of the sequences is itself profound, but none is random, and together they have a c.u.mulative result. Researchers who have looked at the temporal pattern of interactions with our dogs find that it is similar to the timing patterns among mixed-s.e.x strangers flirting, and to the timing among soccer players as they move down the field that feels like great teamwork. There are hidden sequences of paired behaviors that repeat in interaction: a dog looking at the owner"s face before picking up a stick, a person pointing and a dog following the point to what it"s directed. The sequences are repeated, and they are reliable, so we begin to get the feeling, over time, that there is a shared covenant of interaction between us. None of the sequences is itself profound, but none is random, and together they have a c.u.mulative result.
Walk down Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan around lunchtime on a weekday and you experience the frustration and pleasure of being a member of the human species. The sidewalks are mobbed, jammed with tourists wandering and gawking; office workers rushing to grab lunch or dallying before returning; enterprising street vendors rushing from enforcement officers. It is a formidable sight, one you may not relish joining. On most days, though, you can take any pace you"d like, and just as easily wend your way through the crowds. It has been speculated that people walking en ma.s.se don"t crash into each other because we are instantly and easily predictable. It only takes a glance to calculate when the oncoming person will reach you. You unconsciously veer subtly right to avoid him; he has done the same with you. It is not unlike (but not quite as completely successful as) the school of fish that abruptly, with one mind, turns tail and goes back from where it came. We are social, and social animals coordinate their actions. What dogs do is cross the species line and coordinate with us. Pick up the leash of any dog in your neighborhood and suddenly you are walking together, like old friends.
The significance of these three elements is corroborated by the kinds of feelings generated when they disappear: of mild betrayal, of momentary severance of the bond. There"s a feeling of disconnect when a dog one reaches for ducks her head away, preventing contact. The frustration is immediate when a dog stops cooperating in taking turns in a game: refusing to bring the ball back, not seeing the toss or pursuing a seen toss. A betrayal is felt when the simple communication come! come! isn"t followed by a dog isn"t followed by a dog coming. coming. And it would be heartbreaking to approach your dog and to fail to prompt a tail to wag, ears to flatten to the head, or a stomach to be bared for scratching. Dogs whom we perceive as stubborn or disobedient are those dogs who flout these elements. But these elements are natural for both them and for us; a disobedient dog more likely simply does not realize what rules he is being asked to obey. And it would be heartbreaking to approach your dog and to fail to prompt a tail to wag, ears to flatten to the head, or a stomach to be bared for scratching. Dogs whom we perceive as stubborn or disobedient are those dogs who flout these elements. But these elements are natural for both them and for us; a disobedient dog more likely simply does not realize what rules he is being asked to obey.
THE BOND EFFECT.
Our bond with dogs is strengthened by contact, by synchrony, and by marking reunions with a greeting ceremony. So too are we strengthened by the bond. Simply petting a dog can reduce an overactive sympathetic nervous system within minutes: a racing heart, high blood pressure, the sweats. Levels of endorphins (hormones that make us feel good) and oxytocin and prolactin (those hormones involved in social attachment) go up when we"re with dogs. Cortisol (stress hormone) levels go down. There is good reason to believe that living with a dog provides the social support which correlates with reduced risk for various diseases, from cardiovascular disease to diabetes to pneumonia, and better rates of recovery from those diseases we do get. In many cases, the dog receives nearly the same effect. Human company can lower a dog"s cortisol level; petting can calm a racing heart. For both of us, this is a kind of placebo, which is not to say that it isn"t real, but that a change is induced in us without a known agent of the change. Bonding with a pet can do the work that long-term use of prescribed drugs or cognitive behavioral therapy do. Of course, it can go wrong, too: separation anxiety is the consequence of a dog feeling so very attached that he cannot stand a moment of detachment.
What are the other results of the bond? We"ve seen how much they know about us-our smell, our health, our emotions-due not just to their sensory acuity but also to their simple familiarity with us. They come to know how we normally act, smell, and look over the course of our days, and then they are able to notice, many times in ways we cannot, when there is a deviation. The bond effect works because dogs are, at their best, acting as extremely good social interactants. They are responsive, and, crucially, they pay attention to us.
And this connection to us runs deep. A simple experiment consisting of dogs and yawning humans indicates that our link is instinctual-on the level of reflex. Dogs catch our yawns. Just as happens between humans, dog subjects who saw someone yawning themselves began uncontrollably yawning in the next few minutes. Chimpanzees are the only other species we know of for whom yawning is contagious. Spend a few minutes yawning at your own dog (trying not to glare, giggle, or give in to his inevitable complaints) and you can see for yourself this deep-seated connection between human and dog.
Yawning dogs aside, there is a limit to the science here. Science is quite intentionally not looking at the very feature that is most important to dog owners: the feel of the relationship between person and dog. That feel is made up of daily affirmations and gestures, coordinated activities, shared silence. It can be deconstructed somewhat with the dull b.u.t.ter knife of science, but it cannot be reproduced in an experimental setting: it is importantly non-experimental. Experimenters often use what is called a double-blind double-blind procedure to a.s.sure the validity of their data. The subject is always blind to the point of the experiment, and in a double-blind the experimenter is also blind to which subject"s data-one from the experimental group or the control group-he is a.n.a.lyzing. In that way, one avoids inadvertently seeing a subject"s behavior as fitting in just a little more tightly with the tested hypothesis. procedure to a.s.sure the validity of their data. The subject is always blind to the point of the experiment, and in a double-blind the experimenter is also blind to which subject"s data-one from the experimental group or the control group-he is a.n.a.lyzing. In that way, one avoids inadvertently seeing a subject"s behavior as fitting in just a little more tightly with the tested hypothesis.
Dog-human interactions, by contrast, are happily double-seeing. We have the feeling of knowing exactly what the dog is doing; the dog may, too. What we think we see is not the stuff of good science, but it is the stuff of a rewarding interaction.
The bond changes us. Most fundamentally, it nearly instantly makes us someone who can commune with animals-with this animal, this dog. A large component of our attachment to dogs is our enjoyment of being seen seen by them. They have impressions of us; they see us in their eyes, they smell us. They know about us, and are poignantly and indelibly attached to us. The philosopher Jacques Derrida ruminated on his cat seeing him nude: he was startled and embarra.s.sed. To Derrida, what was startling was that the animal reflected his image back to him. When Derrida saw his cat, what he saw was his cat by them. They have impressions of us; they see us in their eyes, they smell us. They know about us, and are poignantly and indelibly attached to us. The philosopher Jacques Derrida ruminated on his cat seeing him nude: he was startled and embarra.s.sed. To Derrida, what was startling was that the animal reflected his image back to him. When Derrida saw his cat, what he saw was his cat seeing him, seeing him, in nakedness. in nakedness.
He was right to implicate our self-regard in our regard of our pets. (As far as I know, though, Derrida never had a dog: his discomfiture might have been greater at the dog"s superior gaze.) Of course we revel in the animals themselves. Still, part of what we see when we look at a dog is: the dog looking at us. This is a component of our bond, too. I still imagine my own dog, Pumpernickel, looking at me, seeing herself in my eyes. And I look at her, seeing myself in hers.
The Importance of Mornings
Pump changed my own umwelt. Walking through the world with her, watching her reactions, I began to imagine her experience. My enjoyment of a narrow winding path in a shady forest, lined with low bushes and gra.s.ses, comes in part from seeing how Pump enjoyed it: the cool of the shade, of course, but also the pathiness, pathiness, allowing her to zoom along unchecked, stopping only for rousing scents along the sides. allowing her to zoom along unchecked, stopping only for rousing scents along the sides.
I now see city blocks, and their sidewalks and buildings, with their investigatory sniffing possibilities in mind: a sidewalk along an uninterrupted wall without fences, trees, or variation, is a block I"d never want to walk down. Where I"ll choose to sit in the park-which bench, what rock-is based on where a dog at my side would have the best panoramic olfactory view. Pump loved large open lawns-to plop down in, to roll repeatedly in, to sniff endlessly-and high gra.s.s or brush-to lope regally through. I I came to love large open lawns and high gra.s.s and brush in antic.i.p.ation of her enjoyment. (The interest in rolling in unseen smells remains elusive ...) came to love large open lawns and high gra.s.s and brush in antic.i.p.ation of her enjoyment. (The interest in rolling in unseen smells remains elusive ...)
I smell the world more. I love to sit outside on a breezy day.
My day is tilted toward morning. The importance of mornings has always been that if I awoke early enough, we could have a long, off-leash walk together in a relatively unpeopled park or beach. I still have trouble sleeping in.
It is a very small bit comforting to realize how deeply she is in me, even over a year from the day when she was also aside me, willing to submit to a tickle of the dense curls under her chin as she rested it on the ground for the last time.
Sitting with a dog on my lap, considering what we know about dogs" abilities, experiences, and perception, I feel partway to full dogness myself. Also, right now, I am covered with dog hair.
Even without getting coated with fur, the knowledge of dog science brings us closer to an understanding of, and appreciation for, dog behavior: how it arises from the ancestral canid, from domestication, from their sensory acuteness, and from their sensitivity to us. With any luck it will get under your skin and you will see the dog from the dog"s point of view. Along the way, here is a smattering of ideas of umwelt-ful ways of relating to your dog, of interpreting their behavior, and of considering them in our lives.
GO FOR A "SMELL WALK".
Most of us would agree that we go for walks with dogs for the dog"s sake. It is for Pump"s sake that I woke early every morning, to catch a permitted off-leash walk in the park; for her sake that I came home during the day to circle the block with her; for her sake that I shod myself before bed and sleepwalked a walk. Yet dog-walks are often not done with the dog"s sake in mind, but strangely playing out a very human definition of a walk. We want to make good time; to keep a brisk pace; to get to the post office and back. People yank their dogs along, tugging at leashes to get noses out of smells, pulling past tempting dogs, to get on with the walk.
The dog doesn"t care about making good time. Instead, consider the walk your dog wants. Pump and I had a good variety. There were the smell walks, where we made zero progress but she inhaled untold purple, mesmerizing molecules. There were Pump"s-choice walks, where I let her choose which way we went at every intersection. There were serpentine walks, where I restrained myself instead of her as she weaved on leash from my left to my right and back again. As a younger dog, she tacitly agreed to go on runs with me when I agreed to occasionally stop and circle around her as she circled around an interesting dog. As she got older, there were even non-walking walks, where she lay down, and just stayed put until she was ready to move on.
TRAIN THOUGHTFULLY.
Teach your dog the things you want in a way he can understand: be clear (about what you want him to do), consistent (in what you ask and how you ask it), and tell him when he has got it right (reward him straightaway and often). Good training comes from understanding the mind of a dog-what he perceives and what motivates him.