Why Do Some Dogs Act "Sneaky?"

This article is linked to a recent blog article I wrote for PsychologyToday.com. If you've clicked on the link in that article, please scroll down to the red sentence below to avoid having to re-read the material from that article.

Why Do Some Dogs Act "Sneaky?"

"Uh-oh, I think someone's coming!"

In a recent blog article Marc Bekoff has said that dogs -- these amazing animals we all love so much -- have what’s called a Theory of Mind, a theoretical construct used by cognitive researchers to determine where a particular species’ forms of cognition lie on the evolutionary and psychological scale. In the study Dr. Bekoff cited, what’s ostensibly been proven is that dogs have the first of three levels of a ToM, the conscious awareness of the perceptual states of other beings (also called “mind reading” by cognitive scientists).

Bekoff says, “We”ve learned that dogs know what others can and cannot hear,” and provides a link to a new study “proving” this idea.

I’ve read the paper, and I don’t think it comes anywhere near to proving that “dogs know what we can and cannot hear.” The researchers have clearly assumed that this is so, but I don’t think that, within the confines of their study, they’ve showed any such thing.  

Here’s how the study was done.

20 dogs were collected to see if they changed their behaviors in relation to whether a human being could or could not hear what they were doing.

1) “Dogs were allowed to familiarize themselves with their surroundings by exploring the area (10 – 15 min.).” I don’t think this enough time to get a true baseline on how anxious the dogs might or might not have been before the trial started. It would have been better to let the dogs explore the space for at least an hour a day, each day, for two weeks. 

2) “Following acclimation, dogs first completed a short inhibition task to mark the human as ‘gatekeeper’ for treats.” I agree this is probably an important step to set up the dynamic of being given access to treats only when a human allows the dogs to do so.

However, as above, I think it would have been better if the dogs had all been acclimated to the researchers, i.e., fed by hand, once a day, every day, for two weeks. This would have greatly reduced whatever baseline anxiety they might have had about those persons.

It’s also not clear how many dogs passed or failed this first test, or how they failed, exactly. “Dogs were allowed a maximum of 5 min to take the treat. If the dog had not taken the treat in 5 min, the dog was given the treat.” What happened to the dogs who didn’t wait? We’re not told.

3) After the inhibition test, the dogs were shown two translucent containers. Each had three strings of small brass bells, hung across the openings. On one container, the “ringers” had been removed. The other bells rang normally. When the researcher put treats in the containers, she made sure to demonstrate the noisiness, or lack thereof, for each container. (Without seeing the video, I’m not sure what impression, if any, this made on the dogs at the time this demonstration was performed.)

4) Each dog was only given one trial, which makes perfect sense. Subsequent responses are more likely to be the result of learning rather than of some innate cognitive faculty.

Once the “sound properties” of each container had been demonstrated, “the experimenter sat between two containers,” and either looked straight ahead (Looking Position) or “pulled her knees to her chest and placed her head between her knees, facing the ground.” (Not Looking.)

Then the dogs were given permission by their owner or another researcher to go get a treat.

5) When the experimenter was in the Not Looking position (knees pulled to her chest, hiding her face), the dogs always chose the silent container. When the experimenter was in the Looking position, each dog’s choice of container seemed entirely random. 

“This suggests,” the researchers conclude, “that [the] dogs’ pattern of approach in the Not Looking condition was not due to either a general preference for the silent container or an aversion to the noisy container. Instead, dogs appeared to prefer the silent container only when the experimenter was not looking and therefore did not have knowledge of their approach. This suggests dogs took into account the noise caused by their approach only when that noise could change what the experimenter knew about their actions.”

As an attorney in one of my novels might say, “Objection. Based on facts not in evidence!”

There is no clear evidence that the dogs were showing an awareness of the humans’ knowledge states. I would suggest that without giving the dogs enough time to acclimate themselves, both to the space and to the strange “gatekeeper,” it’s entirely possible that, to paraphrase the study, the “dogs significantly preferred the silent container only when a strange person sat in front of them in a strange position, with her eyes hidden from view.” And I would paraphrase the conclusions drawn as follows: “Dogs appeared to prefer the silent container only when the experimenter was acting in a strange manner, with her eyes hidden, which from the dog’s point of view, created feelings of uncertainty. This suggests dogs took into account the noise caused by their approach only when that noise would further impact their feelings of insecurity.”

The researchers don’t give us any insight into why they think the dogs felt that they had to be quiet. Since the dogs were being “allowed” to get a treat, there’s no logical reason for them to be “sneaky” about it. So what was their motive in “making less noise?”

Instead of setting up an artificial study, in an artificial environment, as was done here, let’s look carefully at one way that dogs do seem to be acting sneaky when in their home environment: the dog who sneaks up on the bed only when his owners aren’t home or are fast asleep.

This would seem to be based on the dog’s knowledge of its owner’s perceptual state, correct?

So, absent a ToM, how does that happen?

First of all, there would be no need for a dog to act sneaky unless he’s engaging in a behavior that will “get him in trouble.” Very young puppies never act sneaky. Everything is jake, as far as they’re concerned. It’s only when their owners start scolding them, or pulling them away from things that interest them (like mommy’s dress shoes, or the television cords), or lunge at them when they try to make inside the house, do they start to “act sneaky.” So sneaky behavior is based on past experience, not necessarily on an innate understanding concerning whether we can see or hear what they’re doing.

Secondly, a dog’s social instincts give them very sensitive “antennae” for reading our emotional energy and our attentional states. They learn to detect even the slightest difference between an owner who’s wide awake (active, or +, levels of energy) and one who’s fast asleep (absent, or -, levels).  They also have a capacity for reading our levels of intensity. The more intense the energy coming from the owner, the more the dog will be motivated to act in certain ways to either avoid the owner, acclimate themselves to the energy’s intensity, or to find a way to offset or offload it.

So being able to read the owner’s energy and attentional states is step one.

Step two is that, over time, and with experience, the dog learns that whenever he tries to get up on the bed when the owner is lying in bed but is still in an active (+) state, the owner pushes him off. But when the owner is in a passive (-) state, she doesn’t.

The dog also learns that certain ways of approaching the bed (based on a simple ability to register how the dog’s own energy does or doesn’t cause a perturbation in his owner’s energy and/or attentional states) can sometimes change the owner from a passive (-) to an active (+) state, which results in the owner pushing the dog off the bed. The more intense the owner’s reaction to the dog’s behavior, the sneakier the dog will be.

In this model, the dog’s “sneaky” behavior is based solely on a) the ability to read the owner’s energy states and b) past conditioning. That’s it. 

Some may think I’m splitting hairs. But hopefully this analysis will give the careful reader a slightly different way of interpreting their dog’s behavior, one that doesn’t imply that dogs are doing the things they do because they’re capable of knowing right from wrong, that they understand when they “did something wrong,” or that they do things with deliberate intent.

The more we understand how dogs really think, they better our relationships with them will be. 

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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Tuning In to Your Dog's Emotions

Something that came up in the comments section today made me realize this topic is one I haven’t discussed here. And I think it’s pretty cool, and kind of important.

Tuning In to Your Dog’s Emotions

One of the most important aspects of dog training—and it’s one I personally think gets overlooked far too often—is developing the ability to tune into your dog’s emotional wavelength.

What do I mean by this, exactly?

It’s pretty simple. Whenever your dog is doing something that stirs up positive emotions in him, even on a minor scale, you simply pretend that you feel the same way about whatever he’s doing or experiencing. It has to be something that’s not too disgusting, of course. You don’t want to make him feel that you share his feelings about raiding the litter box for some tasty “kitty fudge,” for example. But if he’s happily chewing a bone, though, you might say, “Oh, is that a GOOD BONE? Is that a good TASTY bone? Ooh, you LOVE your bone!”

You have to say it in such a way that he doesn’t feel like you’re interested in the bone yourself, of course, just that you share his feelings for it.

Another great example is when a dog is out for a walk and he “gets stuck” on a smell. We all have agendas in these situations. Our agenda might be to get somewhere, even if it’s the same general agenda our dog has: to get to the dog run or to the park. But when a dog stops walking and keeps sniffing and sniffing and SNIFFING the same damn spot and won’t move, our tendency is to tell him to knock if off and get him to keep walking.

My dog Fred was doing this one day, sniffing the same spot over and over. And that’s when I discovered this simple secret about dog training. At the time I had decided, as an experiment, to do things backwards to the way I would normally do them, or the opposite to what all the training books say, just to see what would happen. So instead of pulling Freddie away from this “wonderful” smell and getting him to continue our walk, I said, “What do you SMELL?” in an excited tone of voice.

He wagged his tail.

“Oh, is that a GOOD smell?”

He wagged his tail harder.

“Oh, Freddie! You’re such a GOOD SNIFFINGdog! You’re the best sniffing dog in the WORLD!”

Strangely enough, he decided he’d had enough of that smell and we continued on our walk. (I still use this technique with all of the dogs I work with; it works every time...)

I soon began incorporating this concept into a lot of the little things Freddie did. When he woke up from a nap, for instance, and began to stretch I would stretch my own muscles a bit too (to help me get into the mood) and say, “OHHH, stretch…GOOD stretch, that feels GOOD…”

He would usually come over and lick me on the nose (once he’d finished stretching, of course).

This approach to changing a dog’s behavior is not dissimilar from consciously doing something that most of us do in our relationships; we make an effort to understand and share our loved one’s interests. You don’t necessarily have to take up knitting (if you’re a guy) or memorize hockey statistics (if you’re a gal). Just the fact that you’re willing to make an effort to understand and appreciate the other person’s point of view makes them feel better about you, about themselves, and about the relationship.

It isn’t always easy, of course. Quite often the other person knows you’re only pretending to show an interest in the ballet vs. a monster truck rally, and they may feel that you’re only patronizing them when they know you like Steely Dan and hate Alanis Morrisette yet they see you stop yourself from flipping the radio dial to look for "Do it Again" or “Deacon Blues” the second “Isn’t it Ironic?” comes on.

Dogs are much simpler. They’re easier to fool. And you have to fool them sometimes in order to make them feel that you understand their plight.

What is their plight, exactly?

Well, they’re essentially wild animals living in a “civilized” world. Never mind the fact that they’re one of the primary civilizing influences on the evolutionary development of the human race (in my opinion). They still need and want to do things that we find inappropriate, not to mention downright disgusting (like raiding the litter box).

On the other hand, our desires are very important to our dogs. It’s part of what feeds them, emotionally. And it’s where the old canard that “dogs want to please their owners” comes from. Dogs don’t actively set out to try to please us. That would require having a Theory of Mind, the ability to be aware of one’s own thoughts, sensations, and feelings and to be able to project those same qualities onto others, along with the ability to know that the other person’s thoughts, sensations, and feelings may be quite different from their own. That sounds like a pretty complicated set of thought processes for a doggie to manage.

On the other hand, one of the most amazing things about dogs is that they’re actually capable of experiencing—on a very real, very palpable physical level—what other members of their group are experiencing in-the-moment. Watch dogs at play sometime. When one dog is really into a game with a dog he likes, it’s almost as if the two are connected magnetically. They’re as one. Time disappears, everything just flows. It’s quite fantastic.

To understand this ability dogs have, and how it’s so often misunderstood or misinterpreted, there was a recent study done at the “Clever Dogs Lab” in Austria, purporting to show that dogs are capable of knowing when they’re being treated unfairly.

The dogs were taught to give paw for a treat, then divided up in pairs. The researchers set up a pattern of rewarding the dogs with bits of sausage (or bread) for obeying the “give paw” command. Then after a while, they deliberately stopped rewarding one of the two dogs. When this happened the unrewarded pooch stopped cooperating, and even showed physical signs of unhappiness in terms of facial expressions and body language, which the researchers eagerly interpreted to mean that the dogs felt as if they’d been treated unfairly. Why else would they look so glum?

I’ll tell you why: because they were part of a group activity and were suddenly excluded from it. And I don’t just mean that each of the dogs felt he was one separate, individuated part of the activity. When the feeling of desire is strong in dogs and there’s a group dynamic going on, they feel unindividuated, as if they’re at one with the other dog, at one with the researcher, and at one with the bits of sausage. (This is the way dogs feel when they’re playing together and are in-the-moment, as I described above.) This unindividuated state of desire, especially a desire they’re confident is about to be fulfilled, is one of the most pleasant states a dog can be in. (Kevin Behan goes into much further detail on this in a recent article, available on his website.)

So to be in that enormously pleasurable state while giving paw with your pal and eating sausages together, and then to have the researcher exclude you; it’s like being punched in the gut or having the rug pulled out from under you. You go from feeling totally connected, both emotionally and physically, to feeling totally separated, isolated, and alone. And according to a 2003 study done at UCLA, feelings of social exclusion are registered in the same part of the brain that controls physical pain. This is why separation anxiety is so strong in most dogs who have it. They’re not just feeling lonely, they’re feeling actual physical PAIN.

So when the desire these dogs had for continuing to play the “give paw” game (and the piece of sausage that was part of it) was suddenly squelched, and they were denied the completion of their desire, they went from a feeling of “Isn’t this great! We’re giving paw! We’re eating sausage!” to suddenly being told, “Get out! You don’t belong!” And that’s why they exhibited that sad body language and those glum looks. Their reaction wasn’t one of, “Hey, that’s not fair!” but “Ow! That hurts!”

It’s important to realize that dogs have two distinct ways of interacting with us and with their environment (though when you think about it, we’re probably biggest part OF their environment). One state of being is where they’re in a group mood, and the other is when they’re flying solo. They’re like emotional photons in this way: sometimes they behave like an emotional particle (individuated, separate, alone) and sometimes like a wave (UNindividuated, totally connected physically and emotionally to everything in their environment). So when we do something as simple and as stupid as telling our dogs that they’re the best sniffing dogs in the world or stretch when THEY stretch, it means a lot to them. It makes them feel even more connected to us emotionally than they already do. And the more emotionally connected a dog feels to his owners, the happier and more obedient and responsive he’ll be. It’s automatic.

Don’t just take my word for it. Try it. You’ll quickly see the difference it makes in your dog’s feelings toward you. Not to mention how it will increase his willingness to listen and obey.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

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For the record: I’d rather be in a relationship with a dog who occasionally raids the litter box than with someone who thinks Alanis Morrisette has “talent.” 

But maybe that’s just me.

Mental Associations v. Reduction of Tension II

Another article about behavioral science, and some of its flaws and inconsistencies.

Do Dogs Learn Via Mental Associations? Part II

Let me start by saying I have no problem with the idea that certain neurons in a dog’s brain are capable of forming dendritic trees with other neurons when they’re activated at the same time. Hebb’s Law sums it up: “Cells that fire together, wire together.” This energy exchange between neurons ultimately creates an actual physical, biological pathway in the brain creating a direct connection between what might otherwise be disparate, unrelated stimuli. But it starts as an energy exchange.

I also don’t have a problem with the idea that some of a dog’s memories are stored in the hippocampus, one of the “memory” centers in the dog and human brain. And if the paired stimuli also create a change in the dog’s hedonic state at the time they’re perceived or experienced, that connection is strengthened by the “pleasure and pain circuits” in the amygdalla. But one has to realize that these connections all take place in a primitive part of the brain called the basal ganglia, located near the brain stem, and are exhibited to some extent by all vertebrates, not just dogs and humans.

My point is that when some trainers say that dogs make a mental association between the word sit, the behavior itself, and the resultant reward, it all depends on what they mean by “mental association.” The common implication is that there’s an actual conscious thought process involved—which would have to take place in the frontal lobes, not just the basal ganglia—and that’s simply not the case; there is no “If I sit when I hear the command then I’ll get a reward,” construct in the dog’s mind. And according to John Staddon, the head of Duke University’s behavioral science department, anytime you have an “if-then” construct you’re using hypothetical or at the very least propositional thinking, which requires the use of language.

It seems clear to me that when dogs make associations between cues (commands), actions (obedience behaviors) and the resulting conse- quences (reinforcers) it’s all happening on a totally unconscious level (perhaps entirely within the basal ganglia). And I don’t know about you, but when I hear the words “mental association,” it always implies that some form of conscious thinking of a higher order is taking place.

Learning in Rats, Flatworms, and Protozoans

The idea of learning to produce a specific behavior in response to a command (or “discriminate stimulus”) goes back to Skinner’s lab rats who learned to press a lever to get a food pellet whenever a light was flashing (as one example). But would any dog trainer truly believe that when a rat presses a lever he’s doing it because he’s thinking logically, conceptually, or through any kind of internal linguistic-based thought process? How about planaria? Experiments done with flatworms show that they can “learn” through operant conditioning to navigate a maze. Do flatworms learn this by inductive reasoning: “If I go this way I’ll get food?” Do they make mental associations? Clearly not.

We could stick with canines and ask if Pavlov’s dogs really “learned” to salivate on cue (when the bell rang) through some higher-level cognitive process which required logic and language, or even through some lower, rudimentary thought process, such as pattern recognition. I had a well-known “positive” trainer tell me recently that when Pavlov’s dogs heard the bell it signaled to them that “food was on the way,” never mind the fact that all they ever got in conjunction with the bell ringing was a little meat powder, sprayed in the mouths while their heads and bodies were held immobile by leather straps. The fact is Pavlov simply found a trip-wire for one of a dog’s unconscious reflexes, and Madison Avenue has been using that kind of tripwire to get consumers “salivating” ever since!

Even the stentor, a single-celled organism, is supposedly capable of learning to avoid slightly noxious substance called carmine through a kind of trial and error method. This initially happens in such a way that it’s obviously a biochemical reaction; this is a protozoan, after all. (Its behavior was first observed and recorded in 1906 by H. S. Jennings.)

How a Protozoan “Learns”

When the carmine grains are introduced into the stentor’s environment, the first response is no response at all. The organism doesn’t react. Then, after a bit, the organism’s structure sort of bends away from the source of the irritant. That’s obviously a matter of biochemistry. When that doesn’t work, the stentor begins to reverse the motion of its ciliae, moving the substance away from its body. And if that doesn’t get results, the stentor contracts itself into its own feeding tube, interrupting its current “meal.” That trick usually solves the problem if none of the others haven’t.

So?

So this is a protozoa, and we wouldn’t naturally expect a single-cell organism to be changed by its experience, would we? It can’t really learn which of these behaviors—the contractions—was ultimately the most effective, can it? And yet let a little time pass, introduce the irritating substance again, and the little guy doesn’t go back to square one—ignoring the substance—or step two—bending away from it—or step three—reversing the movement of its ciliae. No, it goes straight to step four and begins contracting in on itself, doing so quite violently now, as if it had learned from its previous experience that the more violent the contractions are, the quicker and better the results. And it does this even though that particular behavioral pattern prevents it from being able to feed.

Would we for a second consider the idea that the stentor made a positive mental association with the one behavior that worked to relieve its irritation the first time, and that that’s why it immediately went straight to that behavior when the substance was re-introduced? Of course not; it’s a single-celled organism. If there was any sort of change that took place in its internal structure it has nothing to do with memory (not as we know it), or any sort of thought process. It’s got to be the result of a simple biochemical transformation of some sort. In fact, on a very simple level it’s solely about reducing tension. The carmine creates stress on the stentor’s simple biological system. Each of its behaviors are simply reactions to the stress and are designed to get rid of it and return to homeostasis. The “learning” that takes place is, again, due purely to a temporary chemical transformation*.

And how do single cells undergo chemical transformation? Through an energy exchange. In fact, as I stated up top: whenever a human or a dog learns something new, a more complicated and sophisticated form of energy exchanges takes place: one neuron sends energy to another, which sends that energy to another, and on up the line. And the main reason it’s more complicated is that there are more cells involved. On a cellular level, it’s still pretty simple.

So anyway, back to dogs…

Theory of Mind

I think one problem in applying some of these lessons (the stentor, the rat in the box, the planarian in the maze, and Pavlov’s bell) to dog training has to do with the way the dog’s closest biological relative hunts its prey: In some instances one or more wolves will chase the prey animal toward a spot where they know other members of their unit are waiting to leap out and pounce. A you watch this take place it sure seems like a carefully thought-out, deliberate, and well-orchestrated plan. The mere fact that some of the wolves are keeping themselves hidden suggests that they have a rudimentary theory of mind; one that involves the ability to know and understand the logical proposition that

a) I am able to see things because I have eyes,

b) other animals with eyes must have the same ability to see things, ergo

c) if I can prevent my prey from seeing me, I’ll catch him by surprise...

When we watch footage of wolves hunting it seems almost incontrovertible that wolves must have this first level ToM. (There are three levels: sensory, emotional, and intellectual.) But does a dog or wolf even know that he has eyes? How could he? He may have a vague sense of where his field of vision is centered—somewhere above his nose and away from his hindquarters, etc.—but they don’t have the ability to understand how they look to themselves, let alone what “look” or “themselves” mean. So how could they know what another animal's perceptions of them are, or that other animals have perceptions?

In discussing this with a +R trainer once, she said she was convinced that when a dog brings a ball back and drops it at your feet he’s placing the ball where you can see it. So in her mind dogs definitely have a first level ToM. And on first glance this sounds quite plausible. But once you go back in time and look at the way the dog first learned to bring the ball back, you’ll see that the main criteria the dog has is to put the ball where you can reach it, not where you can see it.

I know of many dogs who’ll bring a ball back and when it rolls past me, or under the bench where I might be sitting at the dog run, they’ll bark in frustration that I’m not throwing it fast enough. I have to teach them to bring the ball back to a spot that’s close enough for me to reach down and grab it. That spot will be in front of me and not under the bench, etc. If these dogs had a rudimentary ToM they would already understand naturally that they didn’t put the ball where I can see it (which would also most likely be where I could reach it). But they don’t.

If you ask me the most relevant bit of human anatomy in the dog’s experience of fetch (and a lot of other daily events) is your hands, not your eyes. Yes, the eyes are great for communicating emotion, but if a dog wants you to throw the ball he’d be pretty dumb to focus solely on your eyes. He sometimes needs you to pay attention to him, of course. That’s why the dogs I mentioned a moment ago start barking at the dog run. But knowing where your owner’s attention is focused is something separate and apart from knowing that your owner’s eyes are what provides him or her with visual input (or even what visual input is).

Speaking of attention, another proof some people give that dogs have a first-level ToM is the dog who’s been punished for making mistakes in the house. As a result whenever the urge comes on her she might develop the habit of finding a place to eliminate where her owner can’t “see her.” We’ve all known or heard of dogs who do this. It has to be ToM, right? She doesn’t want to be seen. Perhaps. But maybe the more relevant thing to the dog is that she can’t see you when she sneaks off. Or what’s even more probable, she’s simply trying to escape your attention. Attention and focus are things a dog can understand. The business of how visual input comes through these orbs in the face, then through neural pathways to the brain, etc., is way out of reach.

By the way, there are scientists who study this stuff. They set up very complex experiments to test whether chimps, for example, have this first level ToM. We’re not talking about the casual observations of misinformed dog owners. These brilliant men and women are doing cutting- edge work. And yet there’s currently no consensus that even chimps have this first-level ability. But if any animal on the planet would be expected to be able to, it would certainly be our closest living relative. (I know I’m leaving out dolphins and cetaceans, but I’m not sure science has found a way to run tests on them.)

If behavior and learning are all about making mental associations then it’s almost impossible to not see dogs as having a theory of mind. We, as dog lovers automatically make that leap. But if we see what’s really going on, and what’s really relevant to the dog’s experience—whether it’s getting his owner to play fetch, or finding a place to eliminate where his owner can’t “see him,” or even the wolf’s tactic of hiding from his prey—we might recognize that all of these behaviors are about reducing internal tension, not making mental thought processes.

Yes dogs and wolves are far more complex than stentor and flaworms, or even rats. But if you ask me, all of nature—all the changes that take place in the natural world, from plate tectonics to hurricanes to the way rivers flow, or the way seeds fall from a tree, absorb nutrients from the soil and then burst out of their casings and start to grow, reaching up toward the sunlight—all these phenomena are built around the very simple, energetic properties of tension and release. I think even the earth’s orbit around the sun is a constant dance between these two expressions of energy.

Wolves, Spiders, and Jellyfish

At any rate, let’s go back to the idea that wolves have to have a ToM to be able to exhibit this predatory behavior of “hiding” from their prey. But let’s go down the evolutionary ladder a little. There’s a type of spider who, when he’s hungry (if spiders get “hungry”), will find a hole, climb into it, cover himself with a leaf, and wait for an insect to come by. Then he’ll jump out, kill his prey, and eat it. Does the spider have a theory of mind? Does he “know” he’s invisible to that insect when he’s under that leaf? Does he think about all this? If he doesn’t need such cognitive abilities to perform these behaviors, then why do wolves and dogs need them?

“Because,” (those who see dogs as having some intellectual abilities would tell us), “the spider has a much smaller brain.”

There’s no arguing that point. So how about looking at a species of animal (in the broadest sense) that has no brain at all—the jellyfish—which is technically a type of plankton? The jellie has no brain and no sensory organs. And there is one species of jellie that actually hunts its prey in a fashion very similar to that used by wolves: one jellie will “chase” while another seemingly “hides,” or least circles around from the other side, “waiting” for the prey to be driven toward him.

And yet the jellyfish has no brain! No face, no eyes, no ears, no nose.

And no brain!

Granted their “strategy” isn’t anywhere near as complicated or nuanced as the one performed by a wolf pack. Jellyfish don’t even “swim,” really. They sort of use the ocean currents to help propel them in the direction they “want” to go. So it seems to me that when we look at such splendid underwater footage of a seeming concerted effort among two jellyfish, we have to wonder: “How the hell do they do that?”

Of course all of this is sort of beside the point I’m trying to make, which has more to do with how dogs learn to obey commands or to produce new behaviors or learn to let go of old ones than how spiders and jellyfish hunt, right? I mean do spiders even have the capacity to learn new behaviors or change old ones? Maybe so: (how some spiders learn)

What about jellyfish? Some species do tend to return to a place where they’ve successfully found food before. Does that constitute learning? If so, why don’t we say that spiders and jellyfish learn by making mental associations (I mean, besides the fact that they have no real mental capacities at all)?

Face Recognition Software

While a spider has eyes, and a tiny brain, his face, if you could call it that, is expressionless. Do spiders have emotions? It’s doubtful. Then there’s the jellyfish, who doesn’t even have eyes or a face (or a brain!) to give us any clues as to how he’s thinking or feeling. On the other hand, when we look at wolves hunting or see our dogs listening to our words we see their eyes, we see their facial expressions, we see the changes in their body language. They tilt their heads as if thinking, even though we might know logically that the head tilt is just a way a dog has of hearing us better. We also see gaps in the action. And when we see those gaps we focus on the changes, if any, taking place in the animal’s face, particularly its eyes.

Human infants do five basic, important things: eat, sleep, cry, eliminate, and look at faces. The first thing a toddler draws when given a crayon and some drawing paper is a face. Face recognition is one of the driving forces in human behavior. And so it seems to me that any time we see an animal with a face and eyes who stops for a moment in the middle of a concerted activity, our brains are both engineered and taught practically from birth to read some sort of thought process onto that momentary lacuna; we have to fill that gap. We can’t help ourselves; it’s an automatic reflex in us. After all, what is a dog doing at that moment if not thinking?

Meanwhile, if we see a gap in the action of two jellyfish using a similar hunting “strategy,” we think no such thing, partly because the jellyfish has no face. He has no body language, he has no emotions. So we see a gap in the action and think, “It’s just due to a change in the ocean current,” or “The jellie really wasn’t hunting at all; it was just an illusion.” But should the action resume, and if the jellies are then successful at hunting their prey by working in unison, we have to wonder: “How the hell do they do that?”

With dogs and wolves we’re sure we know—they’re thinking the whole thing through. They’re changing their strategy, or developing a new one on the fly. But they’re definitely thinking it all out the whole time, or so we believe.

Another part of the problem may go back to how evolutionary biologists have framed their explanations of the evolutionary process itself. Organisms are said to have adaptive and reproductive “strategies.” We don’t even question it when we hear the word strategy intoned dramatically in nature films: “The spider has a clever strategy for killing insects,” or “The call of the male meadowlark is part of his mating strategy.” Even certain viruses are supposed to have adaptive strategies. It’s like every living thing in nature is playing chess or planning to invade Poland on a regular basis! They’re all strategizing!

Still, when we see footage of a spider climbing into a hole and pulling a leaf over his head, waiting for an “unsuspecting” insect to come along, do we think he’s planned it all out in his head? Spiders do have brains, after all. Do we think Mr. Meadowlark wonders to himself which notes will best attract a female, and then choose them accordingly? No. We perceive those types of behaviors as being purely instinctual.

So why do we automatically impute thought processes onto animals?

Personally, I blame Charles Darwin and Walt Disney...

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

My Psychology Today Blog

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*Not surprisingly, the stentor doesn’t retain this lesson much past four hours or so afterwards.

The "Eyes" Have It!

As promised, here's a description of the “eyes” exercise and how it works. Enjoy!

The “Eyes” Have It!

Before we get into the mechanics of the exercise, it’s important to understand how dogs experience the world. Clearly any given dog will have a somewhat different response to any number of different stimuli. However on the most basic, fundamental level there are a few simple principles at work, and they work all the time with all dogs, no matter the breed type or past history of abuse, etc. And those principles are based simply on how a dog reacts to shifts in energy, whether they’re brought about by changes in the environment or in the dog’s own internal energy. 

To a dog energy, no matter how weak or strong, comes in the form of simple emotions that are most often felt as either a feeling of attraction to something or resistance to it, or a combination of the two. And just as with electricity, or any other type of energy a dog’s natural form of energy, that of simple emotions, will tend to flow more freely toward an attractor while a resistor is something that presents an obstacle. One of our main goals in dog training is to stimulate a dog’s energy to flow toward us, not away from us. In other words, we want a dog to feel highly attracted to us emotionally, not resistant.

With me so far?

To a dog one of the primary natural attractors is prey, or anything that stimulates his predatory emotions such as a squirrel, a toy, another dog he likes to play with at the dog run, a human who plays fetch or tug with him (or who just feeds him), or even a leaf caught in a breeze.

The other polarity—that of resistance—is based on the need to be safe from harm, to avoid danger. In the wild a wolf has no natural predators except for—oddly enough—the same animals he and his pack members prey upon: elk, deer, moose, etc. They’re not really predators, of course; they’re not going to kill and eat the wolf. However, the wolf doesn’t know that. All he knows (or I should say feels) is that his energy, which was flowing so pleasurably toward an objective—involving a deep-rooted urge to bite what's moving away from him—has now been reversed. The moose is no longer an attractor but a resistor. In other words, when a wolf is chasing a moose he’s in predatory mode—full of strong feelings of attraction. If the moose turns and stands his ground, the wolf stops dead in his tracks. And the primary trigger point for his feelings of resistance at that moment is the level of gaze that the moose has, which is exaggerated by his big antlers. In essence, the wolf is stopped dead in his tracks by nothing but the moose’s eyes. And it doesn’t matter in the slightest if you replace the word wolf with proto-wolf, or proto-dog, or pre-doglike-canid, or whatever. The energetic essence of the situation even works with cat and mice.

When a puppy comes into the world he has to have some remnants of those wild, wolflike feelings within him; they’re part of his survival repertoire, what’s enabled the species to survive for hundreds of thousands of years, if not longer. And one of a pup’s first emotional or energetic reactions to a vertical human being, with eyes located way up high in a very big head, is that of unconscious resistance. (Remember this is all unconscious; the puppy doesn’t know what he’s feeling, he just feels it and reacts in a knee-jerk manner.) And as humans when we sense a pup’s “shyness,” what do we usually do? We come down to his level, breaking the tension and attempting to overcome his feelings of resistance toward us. Even a pup who is very friendly, showing no hesitation about coming toward us is in all likelihood experiencing strong feelings of resistance mixed with attraction (that’s why his tail wags or he gets wiggly, he has two opposing emotions working together in his body). And if you think about, even when the wolf is stopped dead in his tracks by the eyes of the moose (or the cat by the mouse) he still has a strong feeling of attraction to that moose.

The “Eyes!” exercise increases your dog’s social attraction toward you, reducing his natural resistance, and has the added side-effect of grounding your dog’s energy whenever it starts to spin out of control. This makes it a great tool for curbing leash aggression, an overeager interest in squirrels, or even for training the recall.

Before we get started, remember, dogs respond to us on an unconscious level either as pack members (when we hang out at home), potential prey (when we play with them), and potential predators (because our level of gaze is the same as that of wolf’s only natural enemies). In the wild, eye contact can spell the difference between life and death. We want to make our dogs’ eye contact with us a solution to their problems, not a cause for concern or resistance to obeying us. We want to reduce resistance and amp up our attraction to them. And one way we can do that is by making our eye contact with our dogs a source of pleasure and satisfaction.

So here’s how we do the “Eyes!” exercise (as with most exercises where you’re using food, I personally wouldn’t do this with a dog who has food aggression, or whom I don’t already know pretty well):

Have your dog seated in front of you. Pet and praise him, holding the leash about 2-3 inches away from the collar. The leash is not there for the purpose of restraining the dog, or to keep him from doing anything he wants to. It’s basically just there to give him a feeling of being under control, and as a safety measure in case the dog gets too frustrated by the exercise (yes, the exercise will be frustrating initially). The reason you want to hold the leash so close to the collar is so that you can use that hand to pet him or scratch his neck if he gets too nervous.

Start feeding him some tasty treats. Then show him a treat, but hold it deliberately between your thumb and forefinger so that when he looks at it he’s also seeing a large negative space, almost like an eye. It’s not an eye, of course, but he’ll feel an unconscious attraction to that space and a mild nervousness, almost as if it were the eye of a predator.
 

 Hold your hand like this, but flip your wrist down, 

so that the palm of your hand is facing the floor

and the empty space, not the palm, faces the dog.

Remember, this is an emotional reaction, not a conscious one. For instance, the workers at rubber plantations in Malaysia wear masks on the backs of their heads to prevent tigers from attacking them. And it works. But it doesn’t work because the tigers “think” the workers can see them. That would require a rudimentary theory of mind and even chimps don’t have that ability (or I should say they probably don’t—the jury is still out). So the tigers aren’t holding themselves back from attacking the workers because the they believe there are actual eyes staring at them from the back of the workers’ heads; they respond on a purely visceral, unconscious level to that negative space and its location in the general shape of the head. It’s something that’s embedded deep into the DNA of all predators and prey animals alike. The same principle applies to how your dog views that space between your thumb and forefinger. (I know this all sounds a little crazy, but you’ll see exactly what I mean once you’ve done it.)

After a few treats, keeping little make-believe eye with your thumb and forefinger in the dog's field of vision, hold your arm out to the side, so that it and your torso are forming a right angle, and your hand is at the same level as your eyes.

Praise him a little, and if he shows nervousness, pet him a little. Then swoop the treat toward him, ending up 3-4 inches away. Keep that “eye” made by your thumb and forefinger visible to him the whole time. (If he tries to grab it before you swoop it toward him either swoop it further away or get him back into position with the leash, etc.)

If he tries to grab the treat when you swoop it close to him (which he probably will), swoop your arm back to its original, right-angle position, at the same level as your eyes. Keep repeating this – swoop it down to about 3-4 inches from the dog’s snout, then swoop it back up (but only if he makes an attempt to grab it). Then, when you swoop the treat toward him and you see that the dog is holding still or pull back, either physically or emotionally, hold it there, still and steady, about 3 inches from the dog’s snout. If he moves toward it again, swoop it back up.

At some point he’ll be staring at the treat while you’re holding it near him, not knowing how to get it, not knowing what you want him to do. And then suddenly, and perhaps very briefly, his eyes will dart over to yours. It’s as if he’s looking to you to help him solve this problem. The instant he looks at you immediately put the treat right into his mouth and praise him. You’ve not only given him the answer to his problem, as far as he’s concerned you are the answer.

Repeat a few more times until you’re able to read his facial expressions so that you can pretty much predict when his eyes are going to dart away from the treat and lock onto yours instead. Then your timing for giving him the treat will be more exact, and you can start adding the word “Eyes,” as you give him the treat. Next, do it with your non-dominant hand, depending on whether you’re right or left-handed, so he’ll understand this is only about making eye contact, not about which side the treat is coming from.

Next, increase the amount of time he’s able to hold your gaze before you give him the treat. Then you can start putting the treat closer and closer to his mouth, working up to the point where you’re actually dancing it on his nose, or pressing it against his upper lip, and he still won’t try to take it; he’ll keep looking you in the eyes instead.

Once he’s got that down, you can give him the “Eyes” command as a way of solving all sorts of other problems. Stand with him at the front door, holding the door slightly open. Say “Eyes,” and when he looks up at you, instantly open the door wide and let him go through. You can do the same thing at the dog run. You can also use it as part of a game of fetch. Hold a tennis ball in the “eye” position, give your dog the “eyes” command, and when he makes eye contact, immediately throw the ball for him to chase.

Once you have all that under your collective belts, if you have a leash-aggressive dog, whenever he gets worked up about seeing other dogs on his walks, say “Eyes,” and he’ll look at you instead. The same for dogs who become obsessed with seeing squirrels in the park. With some dogs I like to play a game where I put the dog in a down/stay then toss a ball or treat in front of her. I wait for her to look away from the object, look me in the eyes, and then I say, “Okay! Get it!”

There are all sorts of applications!

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

My Psychology Today Blog

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