Meet Your Dog 2 3 Meet Your Dog
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1 MEET YOUR DOG 2 3 MEET YOUR DOG MEET YOUR DOG the GAME-CHANGING GUIDE to UNDERSTANDING YOUR DOG’S BEHAVIOR BY KIM BROPHEY, CDBC, CPDT-KA FOREWORD BY RAYMOND COPPINGER PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON HEWITT Dedicated to the late Raymond Coppinger—the father of the modern canine science movement, whose life’s work revolutionized our understanding of dogs. Your honesty, humor, and friendship were never lost on those of us lucky enough to know you. Copyright © 2018 by Kim Brophey Foreword copyright © 2018 by Raymond Coppinger Photographs copyright © 2018 by Jason Hewitt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 978-1-4521-4899-1 (hc) ISBN 978-1-4521-4930-1 (epub, mobi) Design by Hillary Caudle Chronicle Books LLC 680 Second Street San Francisco, CA 94107 www.chroniclebooks.com CONTENTS FOREWORD 6 INTRODUCTION 8 Chapter One: The Four Dog L.E.G.S.® 18 Chapter Two: Learning 26 Chapter Three: Environment 58 Chapter Four: Genetics 78 Natural Dog 84 Key Concept: Ritualized Signaling and Communication 97 Sight Hound 100 Key Concept: Good Management 112 Guardian 114 Key Concept: Dominance and Resource Guarding 129 Toy Dog 132 Key Concept: Oxytocin’s Hook 145 Scent Hound 148 Key Concept: Impulse Control 162 Gun Dog 164 Key Concept: Biting 177 Terrier 181 Key Concept: The Premack Principle 190 Bull Dog 194 Key Concept: The Arousal-Aggression Continuum 208 Herding Dog 212 Key Concept: Sudden Environmental Contrasts 228 World Dog 230 Key Concept: Choice 235 Chapter Five: Self 240 CONCLUSION 247 SOURCES 250 IMAGE CREDITS 252 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 254 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 256 FOREWORD Raymond Coppinger Professor Emeritus of Biology, Hampshire College I wish I had read this book fifty years ago when I first started to train dogs. Back then I was a college professor with a team of sled dogs, which were part of my professional academic research. I published dozens of scientific papers, often with my students, about the neurophysiology and anatomy that help make a successful sled dog. Toward the end of the 1970s, my wife Lorna and I started the Livestock Guarding Dog Project at Hampshire College, where we raised and trained pups to protect American sheep from predation. Eventually we had records on over 1,500 dogs, most of them descendants of the original imports that we had collected in Eurasia as breeding and working stock. We placed them on farms and ranches where they did a brilliant job defending livestock. In those early days of introducing this relatively unknown type of sheep dog to Americans, people would ask if you could train a dog to both herd and guard sheep. Could one dog do both jobs? We didn’t know the answer. So Lorna and I went to Scotland on our way home from a field trip with a pile of puppies from Italy and Yugoslavia, and bought ourselves six border col- lies. Many of the pups were born on the same day. Thus, we had a controlled experiment going where we raised those pups in a large pen for almost a year and watched their behavioral development. What we found was that each breed was different in the timing of their development. They also acquired very different kinds of behaviors. So, we got our answer: No—dogs did not develop with joint guarding and herding abilities. It was during that experiment that I acquired the most difficult dog of my life—Jane, one of the six Scottish border collies. She was an intense drov- er’s dog, so when I put her on a mountain road behind 3,000 sheep, she would work all day long pushing them up the mountain. We herding guys would sit F OREWORD 7 on the roadside playing cribbage and someone would say, “Shouldn’t some- one go and check on that dog?” And someone would answer, “Naw, she’s all right.” She was a hard worker. But in the van on the road, she’d drive me nuts. I had this little red van with a bunk bed behind the driver’s seat. Jane would stand on the bunk and vigorously eye-stalk passing cars, wiping her nose along the window as she did it. By the end of the day the window would be opaque with dog drip. If I put her in a crate, she would whine and scratch continuously or jump at imagi- nary objects. I didn’t understand why her behavior was so compulsive. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I just thought of her as a “bad dog.” Meet Your Dog helped me see Jane’s experience in an entirely new light. Jane was essentially trapped in the van for hours, even days, when we were on a long trip. All the time her sensitive herding dog nerve endings were tingling inside her as the pent up energy built. A car passing was enough to release her innate herding behaviors. Even when I put her in the crate, the flickering movements of light released the motor patterns she had been bred to display. Jane’s genetics and environment were clashing, resulting in her compulsively displaying the very behaviors that made her a great droving border collie. What I now realize from reading Meet Your Dog, is that, in a sense, I had taught her how to deal with her own impulses. The only way she could feel com- fortable in the environment I provided was a way that drove me out of my mind. What I like about Kim Brophey’s book is that it helped me understand what was going wrong with Jane’s experience, but also what was wrong with my expectations of her. It also allowed me to connect the dots between my experiences with Jane and the larger context of the puppy herding/guardian experiment. The relationship between genetics, environment, and behavior is an important one that we can’t afford to overlook. Meet Your Dog is an original book that will lead even the best of us dog people to think about both dog behavior and our own behavior in new ways. It is an important book that creates a bridge between behavior science and its daily practical application by dog owners and trainers. I truly wish I had had this book to read fifty years ago. INTRODUCTION ou scour the internet for hours reading personal profiles and Ygushing at the pictures of adorable faces. You find a prospect. You are captured by him and arrange a meeting, hoping for chemistry with that special companion you’ve been looking for. Maybe you’re getting over a recent heartache; it took months to get over him, but the empty house has gotten the better of you, and you’re ready to take the risk again. Life just isn’t the same without that kind of love—the magic between you and your dog. This canine relationship has the potential to be one of the most meaningful partnerships we will ever know. It is unlike anything else in this world—an honest and vulnerable friendship that invites us to exchange our own natural innocence, playfulness, and affection with another in ways not generally available in our relationships with other people. But as in all relationships, there is more to success and harmony over the long haul than just an emotional connection. There are certain natures, needs, desires, and expectations that a person and a dog each bring to the table. And there’s a lot more to the story than the warm, fuzzy feelings of love at first sight. If you’re like most dog owners out there, you’ve come face to face with this reality somewhere along the way. When the honeymoon is over, you discover that a happy life with your four-legged partner may be a little more complicated than you had anticipated. But don’t panic. Dogs are more forgiving than most people, and are almost always ready and willing to cooperate as soon as some reasonable expectations can be established in the relationship (which might be more than you can say for your ex). When Introduction 9 trouble arises in canine paradise, it’s often because we as owners have lost sight of (or never knew about) certain critical factors that affect our dog. It’s far too easy to get caught up in the romantic notion of the “per- fect” companion, holding every dog to a single black-and-white standard of our imagined ideal. In reality, of course, there is no such thing as a “good” or “bad” dog, any more than there is a “good” or “bad” human partner. What it comes down to is largely just compatibility between two creatures’ basic natures, needs, and circumstances. Getting exasperated about all the stuff we don’t like about our friend—taking it personally and trying to change him according to our fixed standard—is simply a waste of time. Though well-intentioned, our habit of treating every dog generically according to our concept of what a “good dog” is, while disregarding their inherent differences, may pave the way to some seriously undesirable ends. For Rebecca and her dog, Dexter, the bump in the road of their love story came when she moved into her new mountain home. Two years earlier, when she decided to purchase a Wheaten Terrier puppy from a breeder, she knew she was getting a highly active and intelligent dog. She was up for the challenge, and raised her wickedly adorable little pup from the age of eight weeks old on her family farm in Tennessee.