In this blog post, I’m sharing chapter 2 from the second module of my course Resolving Challenging Behaviour. As you’ll see, in my courses I often incorporate previous students’ insightful comments and selected links to important work from colleagues across the industry.
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In this chapter, I discuss why some dog breeds are like fish out of water and the mismatch between modern society and animals’ innate behaviour.
Check out the video below (and click the cc-button at the top right for subtitles).
There’s debate about when dogs may have diverged from wolves – some suggest it was up to 100,000 years ago. Regardless of when it occurred, many breeds are still not well adapted to modern life with humans.
To truly understand what our beloved pets experience when entering a human home, a useful approach is to look through a distorted mirror that reverses our roles. In her book the Culture Clash, Jean Donaldson provides the perfect thought experiment to generate this perspective shift: Planet Gorn.
“Imagine you live on a planet where the dominant species is far more intellectually sophisticated than human beings but often keeps humans as companion animals. They are called the Gorns. They communicate with each other via a complex combination of telepathy, eye movements and high-pitched squeaks, all completely unintelligible and unlearnable by humans, whose brains are prepared for verbal language acquisition only. What humans sometimes learn is the meaning of individual sounds by repeated association with things of relevance to them. The Gorns and humans bond strongly, but there are many Gorn rules which humans must try to assimilate with limited information and usually high stakes.
You are one of the humans who lives with the Gorns in their dwelling. The dwelling you share with your Gorn family is filled with numerous water-filled porcelain bowls, complete with flushers. Every time you try to urinate in one, though, any nearby Gorn attacks you or yells at you. You learn to only use the toilet when there are no Gorns present. Sometimes they come home and stuff your head down the toilet for no apparent reason. You hate this and start sucking up to the Gorns when they come home to try and stave this off, but they view this as increasing evidence of your guilt of some unknown act.”
By sharing this metaphor I’m not trying to criticize pet guardianship, but rather to bring your attention to the huge, often unnoticed, mismatch between the human’s culture and the animal’s culture.
And I can’t think of any example where this culture shock is more evident than in the practice of adopting free-ranging street dogs. One might wonder if we’re doing them a service – or a disservice? Some research even suggests that the intense stress of transition might cause rescued free-ranging dogs to develop trauma responses similar to PTSD. Here’s that study comparing the welfare of companion dogs versus village dogs.
Cheryl said: “I see the complexities modern dogs encounter in our homes every day. I work primarily with rescue groups and see street dogs being placed in tiny apartments in urban environments. As you might expect, it is incredibly stressful for them. For my part, one way I try to help my dogs have some of that free-ranging feeling while still being safe from traffic is to walk my dog on 30′ leashes so they can explore and sniff. I was shocked that, as I lengthened the leash, the dogs became much less stressed and more responsive to my verbal cues when I did.”
To see what that free-ranging lifestyle looks like when fully respected, we can look to Turkey, where there’s a no-kill and no-capture policy to stray animals. A documentary follows the lives of the stray dogs of Istanbul. There’s also one on the cats of Istanbul.
Mismatch doesn’t just apply to street dogs; we have actively bred it into our companion lineages through artificial selection.
Take terriers, for instance. They were bred to crawl down dark and cramped burrows to confront and flush animals like badgers, foxes and rats – animals that would often fight back ferociously. During the domestication process, the most successful dogs came to possess an under-developed instinct for self-preservation, and were hardwired to be undeterred by physical threats or injury.
Now, in modern society, this lack of self-preservation sometimes creates a severe culture clash that manifests in a vulnerability to severe conflicts with other dogs. Even when facing off against a larger rival, many terriers simply won’t back off – several terrier breeds have been classified as more dog-aggressive than other breeds, and they’re more likely to develop leash-reactivity and barrier frustration than other breeds.
Here’s the podcast episode that I mentioned with Kim Brophey and Michael Shikashio.
One thing that we might not consider is that many dog breeds show different gait patterns, some of which may be more or less incompatible with human walking styles, as discussed in this blog post by Simone Mueller.
Carol Ann said: “I agree that we should be conscious of breed characteristics but not all individuals in a breed will act in the same way as they are not clones but share a certain genetic pool. Dog personalities vary due to many factors, genetics being one. There is a lot of variety within a breed. This sometimes creates prejudice, good or bad, for some breeds. Pit bulls for example on the bad side and Golden Retrievers on the good side. It’s important to have a good understanding of breed predispositions, for sure, but don’t be surprised if your Shetland sheepdog barks or chases cars, for example. On the other hand, many dogs are mixed so it can be quite difficult to predict behavior as genes for physical appearance are only one part of the equation.”
I have no idea if the video below is spot on or not, since I have very little practical experience with dogs. What do you think?
I’m not that familiar with the different horse breeds, but the same line of reasoning applies here: they were bred for different purposes. For instance, hot bloods were bred for speed and endurance, cold bloods for slow, heavy work, and warmbloods for specific riding purposes. One might assume that using breeds for purposes other than what they were bred for might be problematic: can all cold bloods carry the weight of a human on their backs, for instance? I don’t know… anyone?
…Otherwise, one of my biggest concerns when it comes to horses is the mismatch between their evolved foraging behaviours (grazing and trickle-feeding for 16-18 hours a day) and how that clashes with humans’ feeding routines of providing concentrated food twice a day. Not only does this lead to an increased risk of behaviour problems such as stereotypic oral behaviour, but also potentially hazardous health problem such as colic.
This brings us back to that square peg – round hole analogy that I mentioned in the video: rather than try to squeeze the animal (peg) into the hole, we need to change the hole. More about this in later modules – including a discussion on food-related frustration in horses!
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In the Resolving Challenging Behaviour course, we look closely at why animals choose to show undesired behaviour, and how we can help prevent and reduce – or even eliminate – them. Being mindful of this potential mismatch is an important piece of the puzzle: we fix the hole, not the peg..!
Sounds interesting? Enrollment is in August – more information here!
Or sign up below, and I’ll let you know when it opens! I’ll also keep you posted on other learning opportunities, all related to animal behaviour, learning and wellbeing!