The Importance of Play

Here's a little article on the importance of play!

The Benefits of Free Play

About twenty years ago, before I studied to become a dog trainer, I got my first dog as an adult. He was a black-and-white English field setter named Charley. I was surprised and delighted at some of the things dogs learned from one another while they were playing. And they often seemed to learn in a way that didn’t exactly fit with what I knew from my basic college psych courses of B.F. Skinner’s views on learning. One experience in particular stuck with me:

I was with a group of dog owners, hanging out with our dogs in Central Park one summer morning, when a new dog showed up. I don't remember his name, so let’s call him Spike. After the preliminaries were over (sniffing, play bowing, and the like), Spike got my dog, Charley, to start chasing him. And in the course of their game, Spike did a maneuver where he faked left and went right, which totally fooled Charley, causing him to go left and run into a tree. He yelped in pain, and I was worried that he might’ve really hurt himself. But before I could run over to check on his condition, he stood back up, shook himself off, and ran after Spike again, chasing him even harder than he had been before. 

Huh, I thought. That was a very negative experience for Charley, and yet, I supposed, because perhaps his adrenalin and endorphins were set at a pretty high level during the chase, it only made him want to play even harder, not give up and go home.

Then, during the next “lap,” another strange thing happened: Spike tried the same fake-out maneuver but this time Charley wasn't fooled. He stayed right on Spike's tail. I had always thought that learning required trial and error and repetition, but here Charley had learned Spike's “strategy” through just one experience. Still, as I watched them continue to circle around I thought, “Well, it certainly was a singular experience for Charley. Maybe that’s all he needed.” But then another strange thing happened, this time Spike faked right and went left and Charley still stayed on his tail. So Spike tried another maneuver, he faked left and went left. Yet Charley stayed on his tail.

Looking back on it now I realize that there must’ve been something Charley saw during that first fake which registered in some part of his brain; there was some ineffable change in Spike's kinetic energy or motion that “signified” or signaled fake as opposed to real, though Charley didn’t recognize its significance until he almost hit that tree and then landed on his butt.

They played like this for a while, and then Spike and his owner left, and a little while later Charley began playing with another dog. (And here's where it gets really good.) During a chase with this new dog, Charley incorporated the fake-left-go-right maneuver he'd just learned from Spike. Only here the roles were reversed: Charley was now doing the fake maneuver. He’d never done it before that day, yet he effortlessly incorporated it into his play repertoire, including, on subsequent laps, all of Spike’s variations. In other words he’d seemingly generalized everything there was to know about that play-fake maneuver in just one, head-over-tail experience. It was instant learning.

That's when I realized that there was something about the physical and emotional dynamics of play that increases a dog's ability to process information, that decreases the amount of time it takes him to learn something new (decreases it to almost zero, in fact), and which increases his ability to remember a new skill to the point that he’s able to immediately make it a part of his own behavioral vocabulary. How does this happen?

I’m still not sure. But it seems to work on many different levels at once, which makes it distinctly different from other training methods. My sense of how and why it works better than free shaping or force training, is that for dogs rough-and-tumble play involves instincts and emotions which simply require a great deal of attention to detail, not to mention a great deal of attention to a lot of details all at once (a gestalt, if you will). Because of this, free play probably creates more dendritic connections inside the brain in one single burst of learning than free-shaping or force-based training does over a period of weeks or even months. In other words, free-shaping creates connections one branch at a time, force-based training creates similar connections, but since they’re based on fear a lot of unwanted, survival-based connections get made at the same time. But play-based learning seems to create whole dendritic trees, and maybe even whole forests, in a single burst of joy and excitement.

Do I know, scientifically, that that’s the case? No. But there's starting to be some scientific evidence about this. Social play in rats, for example, activates certain brain growth factors such as BDNF (or brain-derived neurotrophic factor). These growth factors stimulate neurons and synapses for a) more growth, b) more differentiation, and c) better long-term survival, particularly in the hippocampus, cortex, and basal forebrain—areas that are all directly related to learning and memory. (Gordon, et al., 2003).

Nearly 2500 years ago Plato extolled the benefits of free play: “those natural modes of amusement which children find out for themselves when they meet.” And in The Republic he wrote “Our children from their earliest years must take part in all the more lawful forms of play, for if they are not surrounded by such an atmosphere they can never grow up to be well conducted and virtuous citizens.”

The same is true today, for both children and dogs. Free play—where the puppy decides on its own how it wants to interact playfully with another puppy or adult dog—is also a vitally important part of that puppy’s emotional, social, physical, and even his neurological development. Evidence also shows that outdoor play is much better for dogs, on many different levels, than indoor play.

One of the most intriguing benefits of free play is that it facilitates maturation of frontal lobe inhibitory skills that regulate and inhibit impulsive urges (Panksepp, et al., 2003). In other words, the more our dogs play as pups, the more impulse control they’ll exhibit as adults. It’s also known that dogs who’ve had fewer opportunities for free play as pups are more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviors as adult dogs. And this isn’t just due to lack of socialization, it’s that play is vitally important for healthy, lasting growth of the neural connections between the aggression centers in the brain, like the amygdalla, and the impulse control center in the frontal lobes (Potegal &; Einon, 1989). Play has many benefits in developing animals (van den Berg, et al. 1999). And “since the urge to play is a neurological drive — an insistent emotional motivation — ludic tendencies become excessive in play-starved animals.” (Panksepp, et al., 1984)

So that’s some of the growing scientific perspective on the need for play. And from my perspective, as a dog trainer of fifteen years (using a play-based model of training), play is also one of the best tools for teaching a dog to learn and obey. I also use a form of play therapy to cure severe behavioral problems in dogs.

Some scientists are now looking into a theory of how free play among pre-school children might prevent some cases of ADHD, and perhaps reverse others. The fact is, there’s been a huge swing away from allowing our children to engage in free, unstructured play, particularly outdoors. Many children are being put into pre-school (or pre-pre-school) before they can walk! Kids are signed up for structured kiddie play groups at very young ages, where they’re not allowed to engage in free play so much as they’re expected to learn things, even pushed into learning.

What’s wrong with that? 

Jaak Panksepp (formerly an evolutionary psychiatrist and neurochemist, and now a veterinarian!), is the author of one study on play. In it he says that when we allow pre-schoolers to engage in free play, where they make up their own games and their own rules (under adult supervision), natural processes of learning impulse control, fairness, and controlling aggressive feelings take place naturally. The brain develops faster. New abilities to learn and move through space develop quicker. He also writes: 

“Our recent broad-scale brain gene expression analysis has indicated that activity of about a third of the 1,200 brain genes in frontal and posterior cortical regions are significantly modified by play within an hour of a 30 min. play session (Kroes, Burgdorf Panksepp and Moskal, 2006, Unpublished observations from Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Northwestern University).” He adds, “If such dynamic brain changes evoked by play facilitate brain growth and maturation, perhaps solidifying pro-social circuits of the brain, we must worry about anything that diminishes the progression of such developmental processes.” 

To me this brings up an issue some dog trainers, like myself, are starting to have with puppy classes, and how we think in many cases such classes might be interfering with our puppies’ natural mechanisms for learning impulse control, and which may even stunt some forms of neurological development. Personally, I think getting a puppy to settle down, stop fooling around, and pay attention at a puppy class qualifies as something Panskepp talks about, that “diminishes the pro-social circuits of the brain,” not to mention brain development which is one of the natural, biological results of free play. It’s also why I think play itself is, generally speaking, a more valuable form of training for dogs than plodding through the process by reinforcing single behaviors, one at a time, or by forcing or scaring a dog into obeying.

Most obedience classes aren’t really designed for what’s most natural in terms of how young puppies are genetically designed to learn. New owners often expect their puppy to meet certain obedience criteria, and too many trainers are all too happy to teach puppies without considering whether the client’s wish-list is truly appropriate. In nearly every puppy class young pups are taught things like paying attention and sitting still, when biologically speaking, and I mean from purely neurological and physiological points of view (regarding proper development of both brain and body structure), a young puppy’s attention needs to wander continuously: he needs to watch how things move, he needs to sniff things, grab them with his teeth, investigate in his own puppylike way.

If you simply spend time looking at many of a puppy’s natural behaviors you’ll see that they exhibit some of the strangest, seemingly unrelated and illogical physical movements imaginable. Why? Because their bodies need to in order for their muscles and nervous systems to develop properly. In terms of learning, and for the development of motor skills, and even for the proper growth of his young brain, a pup needs to just plain move his little body around constantly in meaningless ways. And he needs to do that a whole lot more than he needs to be taught how to sit still in puppy class. So it seems to me that all too many trainers firmly (yet wrongly) believe they’re not interfering with the puppy’s natural development when they get that little guy to finally sit still and pay attention!

Should pups not be trained at all then? Of course they should. They need to be gently directed away from chewing things they shouldn’t and encouraged to chew things they should, for example. And there’s nothing wrong with teaching the puppy in your home, occasionally asking him to “sit” or encouraging a recall when he's bored and looking for something interesting to do. But that’s a whole lot different than taking him to the most distracting environment possible (a lot of other puppies and strange people) and then tugging at his attention and pulling him away from what his genes are telling him to do, which is to develop his curiosity, grow new neural pathways, and improve his motor skills! This is a time in a young animal's life where nature has decided that splitting is most needed, and puppy classes seem almost devoted to doing the exact opposite.

So rather than impose a curriculum on the dog from the outside in, I think it’s much better to let puppies develop at their own pace without overt external pressure. Yes, we should provide every opportunity for our puppies to learn and explore and become bold and confident, all of which happens best through playing with other pups and adult dogs, and comes not at all from being told to sit still, lie down on command, or walk nicely on a leash. If those things are to be taught at all (and they should be at some point), it’s best to wait until the puppy’s brain and emotions are more developed, which happens naturally and best through free play. And when you do teach a pup these things (preferably not until after 6 months), it’s best to teach them as part of an active, high-energy game, where the puppy gets to win by obeying. That’s because the more actively the older pup's whole organism is involved in the process—his emotions, his kinetic energy, his instincts, and his brain—the better and faster he'll learn.

Panksepp also makes the case that free play in young mammals is a basic, neurologic drive, as strong as any other natural drive there is. And quite often, at least in my experience, teaching a dog to use this drive to play in a natural, rough-and-tumble way, can cure some of the most severe behavioral problems we see in dogs, from aggression, to fear and panic-based disorders, to separation anxiety.

The reason this is so, is that in my view, behavioral problems arise, generally speaking, when a dog's natural energy isn’t being used properly. Whether the dog’s domestic origins are based on scavenging (and I don’t think they are, though that’s the current model) or hunting, it doesn’t matter. Dogs are predators at heart. (Why else would puppies “kill” their toys, using a modal action pattern that’s an exact homologue of one of a wolf’s predatory behaviors?)

The first wolf appeared millions of years ago. And long before that—before wolves were even wolves—they were members of the micadae family, who were also hunters. And their evolutionary history goes back another 40-60 million years. So it seems to me that a mere 12-120 thousand years of domestication hasn’t erased those 40 million+ years of predatory needs or tendencies in the evolution of the domesticated dog. As a result dogs have a neurological drive to hunt, just as all mammals have a neurological drive to play. But since most dogs don’t need to hunt in order to “make a living,” their main behavioral question (once they've got a stable social structure) is:

“What do I do with my predatory/aggressive energy?”

Almost all behavioral problems stem from this one question. By giving dogs an outlet for that neurologically based predatory energy through play, and by building that drive to the point that it becomes like an irresistible force (which is what nature intended it to be), the dog's instincts and energies are brought back into alignment with his environment, and behavioral problems (which are merely attempts by the dog to express that predatory energy in some seemingly unrelated way), disappear. For that dog, the question, “What do I do with my energy?” has been answered: you focus it on obedience through play.

That’s what I’ve learned in the past 15 years or so. But right now? I’ve got three dogs here (two puppies and one Trevor), tearing up my apartment (not literally) who need to go out to play...


LCK

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Is Your Dog Dominant, or Just Feeling Anxious?

The following post is already available elsewhere. Summer’s Mommy e-mailed me today about a trainer she’s been working with who uses some of the same techniques we do, but is still hung up on the dominance label. If you know anyone like that, e-mail them this post.

Is Your Dog Dominant, or Just Feeling Anxious?

Dominance: I Know It When I See It!
You hear a lot of talk among dog owners, dog trainers, and even the man on the street, about dominance in dogs. What is it, exactly? Is it an instinctive behavioral tendency, an inherited genetic trait, part of a natural power struggle to become top dog? We all have our own ideas as to what it means, and we all “know it when we see it,” but what are its scientific origins? How does it manifest in behavioral terms? Does it have a sound evolutionary purpose? Or is it based on a simple misunderstanding of a dog’s true emotional nature?

One clue is that in multiple dog households you often hear owners say that one dog is “dominant” over food, while another may be “alpha” over the couch, and a third may be “the pack leader” when it comes to who’s first through the door or who gets to play with which toys. But if dominance were a real genetic behavioral tendency, geared toward ruling the roost, why would it be so specific to food bowls and not to the best sleeping spots and going through doorways and controlling how others play as well? Why wouldn’t one dog in a multiple dog pack be dominant about everything? Isn’t that his role as the pack leader?

As part of a new trend away from this idea, many experts in animal behavior are now beginning to replace the old terms of dominant and submissive behaviors with the more accurate threatening and non- threatening postures. In other words, where before we’d see a dog acting dominant over food but not over the couch or during play, we now know that he might simply exhibit a series of threatening postures to keep other dogs away from his food bowl in the one case, but not exhibit such postures in the others. Is this true dominance, or is the dog simply engaging in resource guarding—keeping the other dogs from having access to the things that mean the most to him individually? If it’s resource guarding, then the behavior is probably caused by simple possessiveness, not by an instinctive need or desire to be “alpha.”

It might clarify things if we knew how the idea of dominant behavior originated.

A Reflexive Dance
Konrad Lorenz was the first to describe the basic difference between dominance and submission in canines his 1952 book KING SOLOMON’S RING. He stated that when two dogs or wolves are engaged in a conflict, the defeated animal supposedly offers his neck to the other because if he does he’ll “never be seriously bitten. The other growls and grumbles, snaps with his teeth in the empty air and even carries out, without delivering so much as a bite, the movement of shaking something to death. However, this strange inhibition from biting persists only as long as the defeated dog or wolf maintains his attitude of humility.”

Hasn’t it ever struck you as strange (a word that even Lorenz uses) that when two animals are fighting one would offer himself up to the other to be executed? Why wouldn’t he struggle with all his might to survive? Does this dog suddenly have some magical awareness of Ghandi’s “peaceful resistance?” Has he studied Zen? Or is something else going on?

That’s exactly what biologist Rudolf Schenkel, who disagreed with the alpha theory from the very outset, said. “It is always the inferior wolf,” Schenkel wrote, “who has his jaws near the neck of his opponent.” Schenkel also points out that it’s the supposedly dominant wolf or dog who walks away from the fight, making him “more vanquished than victor.”

Now that makes sense. The submissive wolf actually has his teeth closer to the throat of his opponent, putting him at a slight advantage. That’s why the “dominant” wolf doesn’t bite, and that’s why he walks away without finishing his enemy off. Yes, the lower wolf is in a weaker position physically, but he’s not rolling over on his side in submission or to commit suicide; he’s putting himself in a position that, given the weaker nature of his temperament, feels most natural to him, yet still enables him to defend himself if need be.

The behaviors of both parties probably originated simply for the evolutionary purpose of defusing tension and maintaining harmony between pack mates. Wolves and dogs are predators. And being a predator of any kind requires that you have a reservoir of aggressive energy available to you at all times. But if you’re a group predator, meaning you’re a social animal too, nature doesn’t want that aggression being directed at your brothers-in-arms, she wants it directed only at prey animals and sometimes at other packs who invade your turf. (Which again, is a form of resource guarding.)

Meanwhile, it’s doubtful that either one of the wolves in Lorenz’s example would be consciously aware of his position of advantage or disadvantage, of power or weakness. Instead, it would be much like the interaction between two magnets whose poles counter one another’s energy: the superior wolf has a direct, assertive energy, which when directed at the inferior wolf causes his indirect energy to spin off in the other direction, both physically and emotionally. If they were both direct and both assertive, and came toward each other with ears, tails, and shoulders held high, bloodshed would quickly ensue. But nature is wiser than the individual wolf; she wants the pack to get along, so she created this reflexive dance.

So here we have, at the very start of this idea about dominance and submission, what is probably a major misunderstanding committed by the primary architect of the alpha theory, a misunderstanding so major, in fact that it turns out that the “submissive” wolf or dog is in fact controlling the “dominant” one’s behavior as much if not more than the other way around. Yet despite the simple, obvious logic of Rudolf Schenkel’s view, Konrad Lorenz’ misinterpretation that the weaker wolf is offering his neck because he’s showing submission, or “humility” (as Lorenz calls it), continues to be handed down to us as “fact” today.

They Aren’t the Same Animal
Part of the problem with the manner in which the ideas about dominance and submission emerged may come from the belief that Lorenz and others of his time had that the social behavior of captive wolves, being held prisoner in zoos and sanctuaries, would be much the same as it is in wild wolves, who roamed free in the wilderness. This belief may have arisen partly out of scientific necessity, because during the 1930s and 40s, when these initial studies were done, wild wolves were almost totally inaccessible. That’s no longer true.

Dr. L. David Mech (pronounced Meech) of the University of Minnesota, who has spent his entire career studying wild wolves in their natural habitats, writes, “In captive packs dominance labels were probably appropriate, for most species thrown together in captivity would usually so arrange themselves. In nature, however, the wolf pack is not such an assemblage.” [1]

If Mech is right, then captive wolves and wild wolves aren’t the same animal, at least not when it comes to their social behaviors. In fact, in Mech’s observations over the past forty years, there actually is no pack leader in wild wolf packs, at least not in the traditional sense. He writes, “The concept of the alpha wolf as a ‘top dog’ ruling a group of similar-aged compatriots is particularly misleading.” Mech and his colleagues are also reluctant to use the word alpha because, as they put it, “It falsely implies a hierarchical system in which a wolf assumes a place in a linear pecking order.” They reserve the term alpha for the breeding pair, though Mech says that’s a bit like calling your dad a “male” father.

So in wild wolves there’s usually no hierarchy, no pecking order, and no pack leader. Is there such a thing as dominance?

Yes, says, Mech, though it only occurs in rare instances, and usually only take place over how to disburse food to the young. Yet one of the most striking things about these battles is that it’s usually the “submissive” (or non-threatening) female who triumphs over the “dominant” (aggressively threatening) male! She actually wins by acting in a manner that we’ve all been taught is the instinctive way one wolf will submit to the authority of a dominant pack mate.

How Does a True Dominance Display Happen?
The male has killed a hare and comes trotting back toward the den where, presumably, he wants to eat his kill in peace and safety. As he approaches, the female comes toward him. His neck and back go up. He stands tall and stiff. She approaches, low to the ground. The closer she comes, the stiffer he stands. The stiffer he gets, the lower she gets to the ground. Then as she comes right up to him, while he’s growling and standing firm, she very nearly rolls over on her back in the way the inferior wolf in Lorenz’s description does. Here, though, she’s not on her back and not offering her neck. So why is she so low to the ground? The next part of the drama explains it: crouching in front of her mate, so low to the ground as to almost be on her back, her jaws are actually now in a perfect position to grab the hare right out of the male’s mouth. Which is exactly what she does! Then she runs back to her pups, leaving the male standing there, hare-less and “wondering” what the hell just happened.

So again, this natural behavior in wild wolves is in direct contradiction to the idea that dominance is about being in control. It’s not; it’s simply about resource guarding. (The male wants the hare for himself; she wants it for her pups.) And just as in the battle Lorenz described, it’s the non- threatening wolf that actually exerts more control and eventually wins the confrontation.

Are there other times when dominance displays erupt between wild wolf pack members? Yes, they happen rarely and usually occur when the pack is hungry and hasn’t hunted large prey in a while. This might explain why dominant behaviors are much more common in captive wolves who never get a chance to hunt large prey together as a real wolf pack would.

Dominance = Anxiety
Wait, let’s go back. Why would hunting large prey reduce a wolf’s tension?

Simple. Because hunting large prey uses up a lot of aggressive energy. In wild wolf packs this goes a long way to reducing their individual levels of internal tension and stress. But since captive wolves don’t have access to this natural method of reducing stress, or of offloading their natural predatory aggression, or of fostering group harmony (you can’t hunt large prey without working together), captive wolves find themselves fighting over little things instead; that’s what they do with their aggressive energy—they scrimmage.

The same process would be apparent in both village dogs and domesticated dogs. Village dogs don’t usually hunt together; they mostly scavenge. So they tend to have the same build up of tension seen in captive wolves, so they skirmish a lot. With pet dogs, who are like both village dogs and captive wolves in that they don’t routinely hunt as a group, it’s often the most “dominant” dog in a household who doesn’t know how to play, for example. And since play is nature’s stand-in for the hunt (it teaches young predators how to catch prey, and young prey animals how to avoid being killed), it’s a great tension reducer, as well as a kind of social “glue”—it bonds dogs and owner together emotionally. And for dogs, in fact for all animals, social play is probably the best tension-reducer there is.

That’s why when a “dominant” dog is taught how to play hunting games in a harmonic social context, or when his owner or trainer find another way to reduce his inner anxiety, you’ll find that all his supposed instinctual dominant behaviors begin to “magically” disappear.

So it turns out that what we’ve all been taught was “dominance” is really two things: a build up of internal stress, and a form of resource guarding, which is an anxiety-based behavior.

Wait, dominance is nothing more than a form of anxiety? Yep. The standard pharmacological treatment for “dominance aggression” in dogs comes in the form of anti-anxietal medication. And though these drugs don’t cure “dominance aggression,” they are generally effective at managing it! So yes, clearly “dominance” is just a symptom of anxiety.

Dr. Karen Overall of the University of Pennsylvania writes, “The ‘alpha’ concept is an outdated one with almost no data to support it. There are no truly ‘submissive’ or ‘dominant/alpha’ dogs, and by [using] these labels we blind ourselves to all of the interesting information that dogs are communicating with [their] postures.” (“Interdog aggression: What are the warning signs?” April 1, 2002, DVM Magazine)

So now we’re back to our new terminology: dominant and submissive behaviors aren’t what they seem: they’re more rightly called threatening and non-threatening postures. And they aren’t inherited traits in dogs and wolves, nor are they part of the pack instinct’s non-existent hierarchical structure; they’re simply communicative actions and postures that express a dog’s inner tension, stress, and anxiety. So the upshot of all this is, if you think your dog is dominant, you might want to take another look. He could just be anxious and need a lot more play time…

LCK

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Footnotes:

1) Mech has since gone back on this statement. Ignoring the data he gathered during his 9 summers studying the Ellesmere Island pack, he now says that dominance is a key feature of canine social behavior.