Читать книгу Clever Dog: Understand What Your Dog is Telling You - Sarah Whitehead - Страница 15

Case history: Amber, the cotton-wool Cocker Spaniel puppy

One of the most potent arguments that the old-fashioned ‘pack’ theorists rely on is that in order to live together, dogs – and, by default, people – must fit into a structured hierarchy. This notion was based on the work of a Norwegian zoologist called Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe in 1921. He looked at social systems amongst hens and developed the idea of a ‘pecking order’ – a hierarchy based on physical dominance, in which one hen would peck another in order to establish rank. The phrase ‘pecking order’ has become commonplace in everyday parlance in this country and many others to describe social hierarchy. However, it takes more than a single step to extrapolate chicken behaviour to that of the wolf or dog (or even humans), and this is where myth and reality part company.

Watch wild dogs hunting as a pack, and what you see is not a rigid hierarchy at work but a fluid and flexible team operation. In any group of wild dogs there will inevitably be some individuals that are particularly fast, light on their feet or agile. These may be the dogs that chase the prey animal to tire it, effectively corralling it towards other members of the group that have different but no less impressive skills. For example, there might be one or two dogs that are recklessly fearless, and these are the ones who get the job of hanging onto the prey’s nose until other heavier or stronger team members do what they are good at and bring the prey down. In such an efficient hunting team, no individual has supremacy over any other; in fact, each individual has an equally important part to play in their survival.

Ah, but what about competition over resources, I hear you ask? What about those classic wildlife documentary scenes where you see two wolves – or even a group of adolescent youngsters – wrestling over a piece of hide or the last bone from the kill? Surely hierarchy has a part to play there? Well, in my view, only humans would watch a group of dogs tussle over a remnant and instantly come to the conclusion that they are competing. What about the possibility that they may be co-operating to rip apart pieces of carcass that are impossible to tackle alone? How about the idea that they might be gathering information about each other? Dogs that rely on a team to hunt need to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They need to know whether one individual is faster, stronger, slower or weaker on the right side or the left, and the time to find this out is not at the moment when an extremely angry warthog is bearing down on you, but well in advance during everyday interactions.

Of course, many dog owners find the idea that dogs are really wolves in disguise appealing. It’s fun – and rather powerful – to imagine that somehow humans took wolf cubs, raised them in their caves and ‘created’ domestic dogs. The myth says that we then managed to manipulate how they look and act, breeding them for long coats, short legs and droopy ears, and as long as we maintained ‘alpha’ status then we remained in control. The myth is wrong, though. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, domestic dogs are not the same as wolves. Despite sharing the vast majority of their genes with their cousins, they are simply not the same creature, as some wonderful 1960s studies demonstrated rather neatly.

In 1959 Dmitri Belyaev, a Russian geneticist, launched a long-term experiment to tame foxes with the initial aim of making them easier to handle for the fur trade. While this may seem horribly unethical to us now, in those days it was essential that captive animals bred for their fur were easy to care for and manage – primarily because injury resulted in the potential loss of the pelt’s commercial value. Starting with a population of caged wild foxes, which demonstrated typical fear and aggression towards humans, Belyaev selected cubs from each generation based on one criterion only – those that were tamest around people.

Changes began to appear very rapidly. It took only six generations of breeding for the foxes to start showing friendly behaviours, such as approaching when their keepers arrived rather than running away. Even more amazing was that after only thirty-five generations of breeding for friendly temperament, Belyaev’s foxes began to act like domestic dogs. The foxes wagged their tails when they saw their human carers approaching, whined for affection, used appeasement signals and made care-soliciting gestures. However, what was remarkable was not that Belyaev succeeded in breeding friendly foxes that seemed truly to like human contact; it was that with those behavioural changes came unexpected physiological ones too.

The friendly foxes lost their pricked ears and developed floppy ones instead. Their coats changed and acquired black and white patches, like a Collie, and became long and plush. Their tails turned up at the end, like a dog’s, rather than hanging down like a normal fox’s brush. In addition, the females came into season twice a year, like a bitch, rather than once a year, like a vixen. The foxes also started to bark in a way that was quite unlike anything the keepers had ever heard from a fox before.

Clearly, the genetic shift that caused ‘domestication’ in these foxes also had many other effects, which resulted in dog-like characteristics. Perhaps, as some eminent ethologists such as Ray Coppinger believe, a very similar set of circumstances occurred among wolves. Some of them might have shown less fear of humans way back in our collective past, and they were the ones that were inevitably ‘selected’ for breeding by the people who lived close to them, and probably used them as a food source too.

Such ‘domesticated’ attributes are certainly abundant in the juvenile and social dogs that we keep today. Artificial selection for appearance has done the rest, creating dogs as huge as the Great Dane and as diminutive as the Chihuahua – but this has only occurred relatively recently in dog terms. However, although domestication may have taken the adult wolf out of the dog, it’s important to understand that the dog itself is not fully ‘tame’ unless we help to make it so.

My mother, a primary school head teacher for thirty years, always stood by the adage, ‘Show me the boy before he is five, and I’ll show you the man’. While genetics have a huge part to play in canine behaviour traits, there is little doubt that the early weeks of a puppy’s life are also integral to the way the dog will behave as an adult. If you deny a puppy the chance to meet other dogs, people and the outside world, you can end up with a dog that is effectively institutionalised and fearful of all new experiences.

Puppies who are not exposed to all the sights, sounds and smells that life has to offer before the age of twelve to sixteen weeks may never gain confidence in later life, and may always have problems relating to other dogs or humans. This makes sense. Keep a child locked away in isolation until he or she is eight years old and we would not expect him or her to make a quick and easy social recovery. In fact, we would expect that he or she would be affected for life.

It’s obvious that puppies should have lots of positive experiences in those early days and weeks, but they also need to experience ‘real life’ in a gentle way too. Only by experiencing different emotional states can dogs learn to cope with them, and this means dealing with negative emotions as well as positive ones.

The first time anything negative happens in a puppy’s life is at about four weeks of age. Up until then, everything that it needs and wants has been supplied by its mother. Warmth, food in the form of milk, protection, even going to the toilet is prompted by mum – who licks the puppies’ bellies to stimulate them to urinate and defecate. Then, gradually, the puppies begin to grow teeth. These are small and sharp and now when they latch on to their mother to feed, they hurt her! This produces an important reaction – mum starts to say no. For the first time in their lives, the puppies are denied something they want. Every time they see her, they clamour to feed, but while she will still allow some feeding, on other occasions she will turn around and walk away from them. Soon, she will also walk off during feeding, leaving puppies to drop off her teats unceremoniously as she goes. As time goes by and the puppies start to develop more muscular co-ordination and the ability to move more quickly and determinedly, mum may have to step up her rejection techniques. She might fix them with a direct stare followed by a deep growl or even a snap or nose-butt if the hungry pups don’t back away. In this way, the puppy learns what hard stares mean. Here we should also explode the myth that mother dogs shake puppies by the back of the neck to discipline them. Picking up and shaking only has one purpose in the canine world: it’s a killing mechanism (and one that nearly every dog owner is familiar with, as dogs play at ‘killing’ their toys as part of an enjoyable game). It’s clearly not a maternal gesture.

Over time, puppies learn to control their own impulses to rush at their mother and mob her in an attempt to get a feed. In a wild situation, the mother and other adults would bring solid food to the pups via regurgitation, thus successfully redirecting their attention from teats to mouth. For this reason pups still want to lick at our faces and mouths. Domestic dogs rarely regurgitate for their puppies – yet another link with their wild cousins which has been diluted by social evolution. However, it’s at this stage that humans start to take over the parental role and supply solid food in a dish to take over from where mum left off.

The whole weaning process is the pups’ very first lesson in how to cope with that most difficult of emotions – frustration. Of course, it won’t be the last time that puppies experience this. Living with humans exposes them to frustration every single day. In order to get used to it, puppies between eight and eighteen weeks should get out and about to meet and mix with as many other dogs, people, sights, sounds and smells as possible. This builds confidence and reduces anxiety, but it also buffers the puppy for the fact that not everything is going to go their way, not everyone they meet is going to be lovely, and not every dog is going to want to play. Getting this in perspective is basically a numbers game. Venture out for the first time at fourteen weeks old and bump straight into a grumpy adult female Dobermann, and the pup might be forgiven for believing that all other dogs are like this – and learn to avoid them. Meet fifty dogs – males and females, young and old, some lively and playful, some snappy and irritable and some indifferent, and the pup’s view of the world will be far more balanced.

A local vet gave me a call to say she wanted to refer a client for behavioural help. The client had been in that morning for her dog’s first vaccination, but it had not gone well – indeed, the vet was now sporting a plaster on her wrist where she had been bitten. The bite was quite nasty, and unexpected – primarily because the dog was only fifteen weeks old!

Amber’s owner, Tina, called me soon after. She said that she was shocked, not because her beautiful puppy had bitten the vet but because the vet thought she needed behavioural help. In her view, the vet must have really hurt the puppy to make her bite. We arranged to meet.

Amber was indeed a beautiful puppy. The Cocker Spaniel lay cradled in her owner’s arms as I was led into the hallway of her new home. I put up a hand to touch her but she turned her face into the crook of her owner’s arm and trembled with fear. At fifteen weeks of age, this was not a good response to the careful hand of a stranger. Puppies should be outgoing, curious and friendly, not fearful and withdrawn.

We went into the lounge and Amber’s owner placed the puppy carefully on a fleece blanket next to her on the sofa. The puppy glanced at me over her shoulder then slunk down, tucking herself behind her owner’s back, clearly hoping that if she couldn’t see me, I wouldn’t be able to see her.

Amber had come home only a few days before. Her new owner had chosen the breeder carefully and she showed me her puppy’s pedigree forms with reverence.

‘She has bred Cocker Spaniels for years,’ Tina told me proudly. ‘I saw Amber’s mother and grandmother – they were all stunning. Her grandmother was a champion, you know.’

The puppy had crawled round behind her back and was now heading towards the edge of the sofa. Tina jumped up and scooped it up in her arms, lest the puppy should get too close to the edge. ‘The breeder told me how fragile puppies are at this age,’ she said. ‘She kept them on their own in a warm, padded box, and wouldn’t even let other people handle them. They’re just too precious.’

Indeed, I thought.

‘I think she might need to go to the bathroom,’ Tina said suddenly, and carried the puppy towards the kitchen. Following, I expected to see Tina heading towards the back door but instead she turned off down the hallway, and then – to my surprise – took her into the downstairs loo.

There she placed the puppy on a special ‘housetraining mat’ to do her business. Now, while these ‘flat nappies’ have become very popular with new puppy owners because they mean that the pup doesn’t have to go outside, they effectively condone indoor toileting. This means that owners often need to housetrain their puppy twice: first to the mat, second to the garden. Worse, in my opinion, is that using puppy pads may limit a dog’s experiences and mean that it risks being under-exposed to the world at large.

Some years ago, I appeared on a national TV chat show where the topic of discussion was whether people who live in apartments or flats should ever have dogs as pets. Most of the experts on the show condemned the idea of keeping dogs in high-rise accommodation, saying that they need space both indoors and out. I stood out as a lone voice. As someone who had been one of those city-dwelling owners who lived happily and responsibly with a dog in an upstairs flat, I felt I could speak from experience. There are actually some positive behavioural advantages to raising a pup in an urban jungle. Not least of these is the fact that when you don’t have a garden or yard, you are forced to take the puppy out and about to meet the world a minimum of eight times a day just for him or her to go to the toilet – potentially seven times more than a puppy living a country existence.

Poor Amber. With so little in the way of life experience and such a sheltered start, she had no coping strategies to fall back on when life threw a minor glitch in her path – in the form of having an injection – and she had over-reacted horribly as a result. The harsh fact is that dogs of all ages need to learn how to cope with being examined, having their teeth cleaned, their nails clipped, their ears inspected, their tails held. They need to put up with minor discomfort in the form of injections, anal gland emptying, temperature-taking and a multitude of other common procedures. All of these trivial little annoyances need to be accepted, not fought over or fussed about, and it is only through extensive amounts of handling, exposure and repetition at an early age that dogs learn to take them in their stride.

At fifteen weeks old, Amber’s reactions to other people already represented a behavioural emergency – but getting Amber’s doting owner to see that she needed to loosen the apron strings and let her little dog stand on her own four feet was going to be tough. Knowing that the best understanding always comes from experience rather than explanation, I invited Amber and her owner to attend a ‘puppy nursery class’ that my practice colleagues and I were running during the evenings in a nearby school. I told her it was an ideal opportunity to meet other puppy owners in a gentle social environment. It was also a dramatic eye-opener. On Amber’s first session, she sat on her owner’s lap and hid her face, not once so much as glancing at the other puppies who were quietly practising training, sniffing each other or enjoying short play sessions with each other.

‘Is your puppy ill?’ asked a little girl who was there with her family training their Cairn Terrier pup. ‘Why can’t she come and play with the other puppies?’

Amber’s owner looked at me with tears in her eyes. ‘None of the other puppies are reacting like this,’ she whispered. ‘I hadn’t realised how painfully shy she is.’

It was a turning point. Very gently, very gradually, Amber’s owner tentatively allowed her puppy to explore the house, and then the garden. She practically had to sit on her hands not to dash over and save the puppy from clambering down her six-inch-high rockery. She took her out in the car, let friends touch her and hold her – and even on one occasion left her overnight with a friend (although she did admit to calling almost every hour). Amber’s transformation had begun. The following week when she returned to the puppy class, Amber sat on the floor – although admittedly under her owner’s chair. She managed a sneaky sniff of another pup’s tail as it walked past and even ate a treat given to her by the little girl with the Cairn Terrier.

By week three of the course, Amber could practise ‘sits’ and ‘downs’ with the rest of the class. She couldn’t yet cope with playing or walking on the lead in the middle of the room, but she wagged her tail and looked more relaxed than I could have hoped for. By week five, she was offering play bows to the Cairn Terrier and had made a friend in a Bichon Frise puppy who was also a little shy. Everyone could see her progress now.

On the final night of the puppy course, Amber’s owner arrived with her pup on a new pink collar and lead. She walked into the room with confidence, sat down and watched as her puppy was happy to be petted by the little girl and a friend who had come to watch the puppy ‘graduation’ ceremony, in which I say a few words about how each puppy has developed during the six-week course and comment on their achievements. When it was Amber’s turn, I hardly needed to remind the class how much more confident Amber had become. They burst into a spontaneous round of applause in their genuine desire to congratulate her owner for all her efforts. They too could see that a crisis had been averted.

Packing up that evening, I was surprised to hear a voice behind me. Amber’s owner held out a brown paper bag.

‘I just wanted to give you something,’ she said. ‘You know, for the teacher, from Amber and me.’

I opened the bag. It contained a round and shiny apple. It was undoubtedly the best I’ve ever eaten.