On the topic of a Dog's emotions...
Have a read of this post: http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/“aggression-emotions-behaviour-and-labels”
I think he did a great job wording what we on this forum spend a lot of time posting about - the vagueness of labels in dogs.
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I think he did a great job wording what we on this forum spend a lot of time posting about - the vagueness of labels in dogs.
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Comments
I feel people don't want to understand or don't think enough to understand the emotions a dog has at any given time. It's very frustrating when it happens, too. Aggression is the worst. I actually had a whole rant about aggression and the varying emotions/reasons behind it and blah blah blah, but I... decided to save people the trouble of reading through my lengthy babble.
It's a great post. I'm really relieved to when I see things like this, maybe because I'm especially close to the subject of "aggressive" dogs.
Another is about how animals' emotions may be moreintensethan ours because we have psychological constructs to talk ourselves out of feelings, reason, rationalize, and self-pacify. I cannot "talk" Sage out of his feelings- reactivity is "show me, don;lt tell me."
I'll be back with those quotes when I can...a very good book to think on animals and instinct and tameness and social windows and stuff.
p46-
"Scientists are generally afraid to assert that animals feel such emotions, mainly because it's hard to prove through experiments and accepted scientific methods. More and more scientists, though, are begining to believe that animals do have emotions and that their feelings may be stronger than our own. Emotion arises from the old brain, thelimbic system, which birds & repitles as well as dogs, humans and other mammals share. humans have additional brain structures and symbolic language to process our feelings and a complex array of psychological defense mechanisms to allay or soften the impact of our emotions. We repress, deny, subjugate, dissociate, and use all kinds of conscious and unconscious machinations to separate ourselves from our feelings, but animals have no such recourse, so thier emotions are likely raw and strong"
p73
"Since owls dont flock, pack or herd up, they have no social setup for correcting each others behavior. Therefore, Wesley had no way to interpret any act of aggression excpet as a threat on his life. For this reason the #1 rule in interacting w/ birds of prey is that you can never show them any aggression. You cannot try to discipline or correct them . They would not understand it"
p120
"Dr Goodall's biggest influence on my life has been her refusal to see animals as simply instinct driven, stimulus-response mechanisms, which has been the dominant view of many scientists since Descartes declared that animals had no real feelings, and his 2oth C. descendants, led by BF Skinner, described them as little more than furry automatons. Goodall proved that each chimp is a unique, sentient being, and other scientists have taken courage from her and have studied other animals proving that these creatures, too, exhibit individuality and personality. The emphasis on empiricism in behavioral biology often keeps us from seeing clearly and may actualy bias and block us from observing the very truths we seek."
p201
"people working w/ all kinds of animals are altering thier methods from those that used force and negative consequences such as spurring, hitting, shocking or yelling to gentler approaches using +Reinforcement. Many scientists now are not interested in mere "behavior modification" but instead see their interactions with animals as flowing from a true relationship with that animal- a partnership with a fellow being. These interactions are infintely more complex than mere behavior modification. Friends do not modify each others behavior but they do teach and learn from each other, This goes far beyond "training techniques."
I agree with you about emotions, and with the author about how people can deal with our emotions better than dogs (due to our "conscious and unconscious machinations"). I have seen this a lot in our dogs, where they "switch" and emotions take over - I often wonder if the best way to understand dog behavior is to allow yourself to be completely emotional (empathetically speaking), like tapping into your "Id" ... To me, most of a dog's behavior appears to come from their emotional drives.
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There is much good,applicable stuff outside the Dog-training-specific Book culture. Another bookI need to find is called Zoomility- about animals in zoos and their handlers. Its training stories but people have different expectations for wild animals, and we might remember that. We expect much more in the way of emotional control from our dogs than any other animal we encounter. Sure they are domestic but there are other domestic animals that we dont expect so much of. My sister has domestic, farm animals: goats, sheep, horses, chickens- and it has been interesting to watch her figure out her "prey" animals. The sheep are SO flighty, and very flcoky, the goats are more curious, riskier. It gives you perspective.
But then we take our dogs into Santa Fe for training, and they are less "civilized" compared to the others in class and we get all kinds of looks and comments from the other (sub)urban dog owners. Even a lot of the trainers seem to miss this point, and we find ourselves having to remind them ... Actually, in regards to that same basic idea, we had our first bad training experience in Santa Fe a few weeks ago with Chupa and a puppy class, we ended up eating the $300 and not going back to the class (after several long, patronizing, and rather uncomfortable emails). Chupa was being a typical young working dogs in class, and was reacting to a very hyper-active and out of control lab as well as a bunch of very new dog owners that had no direction from the trainer ... It turned into a negative experience for Chupa (lots of grabbing & holding him, some reinforcement of bad behavior, and rude comment) - a negative experience in a puppy class when our puppy is withing the socialization window is exactly the opposite of what we were paying for.
On the topic of prey animals and the differences in behavior when compared to predators, there is an emerging concept in the behavioral community about dogs. A lady behaviorist (I cannot remember her name) suggests that categorizing domestic canine as "predators" is largely inaccurate, in some cases (like in hunting breeds) it is accurate but in many other breeds where the "kill", and in some cases even the "bite", pattern has been removed from their predatory sequence calling them a "predator" is completely incorrect. She also argues that referring to them as a "scavenger" is not correct either since some of the breeds do in fact have full predatory motor sequence (FAPs). with our very defensive guarding breeds I have noticed they behave more like "prey animals" than predators - always on guard as if under threat from a predator and ready to defend their flock if needed. It becomes more and more obvious to me that the "balanced dog" people, who believe all dogs are the same and need the same set of criteria to be "balanced" are just completely wrong.
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I'm sorry about the class, too. It really sucks, because the whole point of puppy class is socialization. I had some problems with a class in ABQ when Toby was a puppy....they thought he was too "dominant" because he stared at the other dogs, and wanted me to get him "under control." It was supposedly a positive training class too, and one of the trainers had an AA so I expected better....I mean part of the point of me taking him was to learn how to work with him, so telling me he couldn't come back because of his staring and "dominant behavior" was not very helpful. (And frankly a little ridiculous. He was an 9 or 10 week old Shiba! He was tiny!)
If you wouldn't mind, could you whisper to me which class this was? I'm thinking of doing my puppy class in SF rather than ABQ and I don't want to get into one that won't be good. There are several places in ABQ I absolutely will not go to, so I'd hoped for better in SF, and the drive isn't too much further for me. Not that I have a puppy yet. But I keep thinking that if I plan ahead maybe somehow my puppy will miraculously appear!