Understand Anger of your Dog
The Dog Psychology:
The Dog Psychology:
It is the best way to understand the anger of your dogs. According to the Journal of The American Medical Association the number of dog bites in America topped 4.5 million in 2010. This means that 4.5 million people—many of them children—were the victims of canine aggression in just that one year.
One obstacle to solving the
problem may be that aggression doesn’t seem to be a simple behavior or even a
simple set of behaviors. There are over 250 definitions of aggression in the
scientific literature. The ASPCA lists 12 types of aggression in dogs.
Another thing to consider is that
our current understanding of
aggression has some inherent paradoxes. It's often classified as a
survival-based behavior, designed to protect an animal’s survival or the
survival of its genetic code. Yet acting in an aggressive manner can endanger
an animal, undermining both aspects of its “survival” value. This is especially
true of dogs: the quickest way for a dog to be euthanized is to bite someone.
To confuse matters
further, in human society the word aggression is often used as a positive. A
businessperson might be praised for having an aggressive business model. We
might talk of a painter or composer showing a new aggression in their work.
There are “aggressive” forms of cancer. The word can even be applied to plants.
And clearly if two of the world’s
leading experts on dogs—Dr. Stanley Coren and Dr. Roger Abrantes (both quoted
above)—see canine aggression in two seemingly opposite ways, there’s not much
chance the rest of us can attain any kind of clarity on this.
That said, using some principles
adapted from modern affective neuroscience,
from Freud,
and from Aristotle's principles of dramatic structure, I’ll attempt here to
provide a simple definition that explains all forms of aggression in all
mammals including humans
What You See Is What You
Get
All scientific explanations of
natural phenomena—including animal behavior—should be based on what’s
observable, measurable, testable, and repeatable; we can’t know what intrinsic
qualities might motivate an animal behavior’s behavior, we can only know what
we can see, measure, test and replicate. As Dr. Abrantes noted on his blog
recently, “We must distinguish between what we reasonably can claim to know and
what we presume or assume.”
Unfortunately, while this is
sound science, it seems to almost force us to project human-like thought
processes onto animal behavior.
Here are 3 examples:
1) “A dominant dog will make its body appear large and stiff.”
2) “An aggressive dog will curl his lips back to signal aggressive intent.”
3) “The purpose of aggression is to change the behavior of another creature.”
2) “An aggressive dog will curl his lips back to signal aggressive intent.”
3) “The purpose of aggression is to change the behavior of another creature.”
Here's a list of what we can
reasonably claim to know, and what's actually being assumed in the 3 examples
above.
1) We can know that a so-called dominant dog’s posture will become
more stiff and erect at some times than it is at others, and that that this
happens most often during times of social friction. But we can’t know that he’s
deliberately making “his body appear larger.”
2) We can know that a dog’s lips sometimes curl back when he’s in an aggressive mood. But we can’t know or assume that he’s doing it deliberately to signal his intent.
3) Finally, we can know that during a display of aggression the aggressee’s behavior may change in ways that might cause the aggressor to stop aggressing, but we can’t know that the aggressor had this desired outcome “in mind.”
2) We can know that a dog’s lips sometimes curl back when he’s in an aggressive mood. But we can’t know or assume that he’s doing it deliberately to signal his intent.
3) Finally, we can know that during a display of aggression the aggressee’s behavior may change in ways that might cause the aggressor to stop aggressing, but we can’t know that the aggressor had this desired outcome “in mind.”
What kinds of things can we
know about a dog's internal states?
This may sound heretical, but I
think by carefully observing canine body language,
and by finding commonalities in human and canine responses to certain stimuli,
we can reasonably presume to know at least a littlesomething
about how dogs might feel.
Getting Under the Hood
Of course it's easy for me to
stand on the sidelines and criticize how the principle of objectivity almost
forces us to anthropomorphize animals. But my position, as a dog trainer, is
that in order to successfully deal with a problem like aggression, we have to
know what’s motivating a dog to behave the way he does. When you take your car
to a mechanic, you want someone who can get under the food, find the problem
and fix it. So what’s under the aggressive dog’s hood?
Modern affective neuroscientists
would disagree. Charles Darwin himself wrote an entire book on the similarities
between The Expression of Emotions in
Man and Animals. Modern researchers like Jaak Panksepp and
Tim Dalgleish have located the specific neural substrates controlling human and
animal emotions. They’ve gotten under the hood.
Even without the work done by
modern neuroscientists, I think it’s entirely possible to see things from a
dog’s perspective and still be objective. After all, much of human behavior
seems to originate in the older parts of the brain (the reptilian complex and
the limbic system), shared by both dogs and humans. So we just have to tap into
the instinctive centers in our own minds to find homologues of instincts and
emotions that form the motivations for most canine behavior.
Aristotle, Dramatic
Conflict, and Aggression
Humans are social beings. So are
dogs. If you’re reading this on the internet, you’re using a set of tools that
allow you to feel connected to other people and to various forms of
information. If you’re like some people (a lot of people, apparently), you
don’t feel completely grounded unless your smart phone, tablet, or computer are
always nearby.
No organism on earth can survive
for long without the ability to form connections of one kind or another. Dogs
clearly have a need to feel connected, particularly to their owners, and to
certain objects of attraction which provide them with feelings of pleasure. I
call this “the drive to connect,” derived from the Freudian concept of the
pleasure principle, i.e., that pleasure often comes through the release of
instincts and emotions that have been "dammed up to a high degree."
(Dog trainer and natural philosopher Kevin
Behan calls
this the “drive to make contact.”)
Freud was heavily influenced by
Greek philosophers and dramatists like Aristotle and Sophocles. When outlining
the principles of drama, Aristotle said that dramatic tension is created when
the protagonist’s desires come up against an obstacle, created or caused by a)
another character’s behavior, b) the world at large, or c) inner conflicts
within himself.
Of course there has to be a
precipitating event. Some unforeseen occurrence has to interfere with the
protagonist’s normal, every day life, his "homeostasis," if you will.
It’s that initial change in circumstances or internal feelings that sets him
down a comic or tragic path.
In the biological sciences,
events that disturb an animal’s homeostasis are known as stimuli. A need (like
food) or desire (like wanting to play) stimulates the animal, interrupting his
homeostasis, creating a flow of tension, which, in effect, pulls or motivates
the animal to move toward an object of attraction.
If an obstacle presents itself or
comes into the animal’s path and prevents him from attaining his goal, he can
a) find a way around it, b) give up momentarily to try again later, or c) push
right through it.
It’s my hypothesis that c) is
what precipitates all forms of aggression in animals. Pushing past an obstacle
is aggression in its most basic form. Whether a dog will actually attack
another dog, person, or animal is—at this level of understanding—irrelevant,
and depends on other variables such as temperament type, past history, even
something as simple as the dog’s physical health (dogs are often more likely to
act aggressively when they're not feeling up to par).
What about offensive,
defensive aggression, and predatory aggression?
If a dog’s emotional balance
(homeostasis) is adversely affected by the stimulus of a strange dog coming
into his “personal space,” or by a uniformed stranger (like a mailman) entering
his yard, etc., those would be precipitating events, causing the dog to feel
threatened, and motivating him to interact in such a way as to return to
homeostasis, i.e., a non-threatened feeling state. In neither case could we
reasonably assume that the threatened dog is acting aggressively to “change the
behavior” of the other being, defending what he thinks of as his “territory,”
or attempting to dominate (put himself in a higher social position than) either
of them.
So here the dog's need or
desire is to feel safe. And the obstacle is the appearance of another being—dog
or human—that stimulates sudden feelings of danger.
As for predatory aggression, that
too can be successfully explained using this basic model. Hunger,
and the movements of the prey animal, are the stimuli. The changing terrain and
the potential for the target animal’s escape are the obstacles.
Are my hypotheses based on what’s
observable and testable?
Frankly, I don’t know. What I do know
is they’re no less observable than most of the explanations for aggression that
we have now, explanations that rely on assumptions about a dog’s internal
mental states rather than on his or her emotional or embodied feeling states.
But for now, I think this gives
dog trainers and dog owners a new way of looking at aggression, from the dog’s
point of view. And once we know that a dog's aggression is essentially an
attempt to relieve feelings of pressure, tension, and stress,
we can find ways to show the dog how to find an alternative outlet for those
feelings.
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Image source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1271302
Image source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1271302
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