by Gene Lyons
This just in: Your dog doesn’t feel even a little bit guilty for jumping up on the counter and scarfing down an entire baked chicken. He’s just afraid because you’re yelling at him.
The same applies when he’s torn up an expensive new pair of shoes or pooped on an Oriental carpet.
Dogs don’t really have what human beings would call a conscience. If you leave a baked chicken where they can get it, they’re going to gorge themselves until they can’t eat any more, and then barf on the sofa and take a nap in your bed.
Behavioral rules apply only when you’re there to enforce them. You don’t want Ace and Stanley wallowing around in the bed? Close the bedroom door, or put them in the yard. Otherwise, dogs aren’t a whole lot more obedient and conscience-stricken than cats — just more social and demonstrative.
According to a recent article in The Washington Post by Kelly Conaboy, this is perhaps the main finding of what appears to be the latest academic fad: animal cognition laboratories. Professors are busy designing experiments to determine if dogs feel guilty for misbehaving or are putting on a show to avoid punishment.
One problem, according to Zachary Silver, a canine cognition specialist at Occidental College, is that researchers don’t always agree about what those emotions are.
“There is, for example, some research that suggests dogs might experience jealousy,” Conaboy writes, “which is considered a secondary emotion; even neural imaging research that suggests dogs display similar patterns of activation in the brain that humans do when experiencing jealousy. ‘But is that really jealousy?’ Silver asks.”
Me, I’d like to know where neural imaging of jealous humans comes from. Stick people in a machine and show them videos of Mommy kissing Santa Claus? With dogs it’s comparatively easy: He gets a treat, and I don’t? As Silver tells the reporter, more research is needed.
Based upon on my own experience of multiple dogs over many years, I’d say that where their own interests are concerned, most dogs understand people more than people understand them. Also, they are definitely capable of deception. The family beagle won’t leap up on the counter to grab that chicken while somebody’s watching. Chances are, you won’t even know he can jump that high until your supper disappears.
Dogs are also extremely good at reading each other. At the dog park where I exercise my four every afternoon, people sometimes mistake Aspen’s barking and feinting as a sign of aggression. He’s a big boy, half-great Pyrenees and half-husky, so it’s understandable why people are leery. But I’ve never seen another dog misread him. He’s not looking for a fight; he just wants to play.
Which brings up another issue in canine behavioral studies. Breeds of dog aren’t “natural” in the ordinary sense of the word. They’re among the oldest products of human genetic engineering, and kinds of dogs differ immensely.
I also keep two basset hounds — stubborn, loving and pretty much happy all the time. Bred to follow game trails in packs, bassets pretty much show no aggression, ever. They’re also basically untrainable; you’ll meet a seeing-eye cat before a basset hound.
But if you could isolate the specific neurotransmitters that make them so happy, you’d be richer than Elon Musk.
In my experience, individual dogs also differ from one another quite as much as people do. So it’s important, as the Post’s Conaboy understands, not to overthink these things.
“When a dog goes to the vet and is displaying behaviors people might call stubborn or dramatic, those behaviors are indicating a negative affective state,” one researcher tells her. In plain English, if the dog acts scared, it’s because the dog is scared. Firm but gentle is the only approach that works. You can’t change their minds.
Dog number four at our house is a “Cowboy Corgi” called Marley. Half-corgi, half-Australian cattle dog, Marley lives to herd — other dogs, mostly, because that’s what she knows. She and Hank the basset came to us as an inseparable bonded pair.
She bosses him around and he obeys because that makes them both happy. She has also taught a couple of dog park regulars to throw a tennis ball for her; I don’t play, because it never ends.
All four show up in my office every afternoon at 4 p.m. to lobby for their daily outing. Here’s another thing about dogs: They don’t need a wristwatch, because they always know exactly what time it is.
