Читать книгу Wag - Zazie Todd - Страница 8

1

HAPPY DOGS

GHOST LOVED THE snow and his thick fur coat was built for it. He would bound, jump, and roll in it, eat the fresh snow, and carefully sniff the yellow snow, nose twitching delicately as he took in every detail. There’s a photo of him lying in deep snow in our backyard, looking long and lean as always. He’s staring at the camera and his mouth is closed as if to say, “Why are you pointing that thing at me?” But either side of that moment, when the camera was away, he was ecstatic in his element.

Bodger loves to chase snowballs. When I kick snow into the air he tries to catch it, and as the excitement builds he goes boing! boing! boing! just watching my feet crunch on the snow. And at any time of year, he loves to be chased, especially if he has a stick. He will let me get quite close and then suddenly bound away across the lawn, stick firmly in his mouth as he does a victory lap before settling down to tempt me to come close again.

But happiness isn’t just about these moments of delight; it’s also about everyday contentment. There are several ingredients to having a happy dog: a happy dog must have their welfare needs met, which can only be done when we have a good knowledge of canine behavior and an understanding of what our individual dog needs; a happy dog of course must be happy, something we need to be able to recognize; and a happy dog must have a good relationship with their owner, because otherwise they are at risk of being rehomed or euthanized.

People want their dogs to be happy. We spend more on our pets than ever before. The American Pet Products Association estimates that Americans will spend more than $75 billion on pets in 2019 (a huge increase from twenty years ago when the amount was only $23 billion).¹ It is estimated that there are 89.7 million dogs in the United States, 8.2 million in Canada, and 9 million in the United Kingdom.² That’s a lot of dogs to keep happy.

SPOTTING A HAPPY DOG

IT’S EASY TO spot a happy dog in the moment. The eyes are relaxed and the mouth is open in a relaxed way. Some teeth and part of the tongue are visible, but the lips are not pulled back to show off all the teeth in a snarl. Maybe the tail is wagging a lovely, loose wag that makes the whole body wiggle. The posture is normal, not lowered in fear, and the ears are relaxed.

Recognizing fear in dogs is harder, something people with professional experience are better at than regular dog owners.³ Even in situations where people might reasonably expect their dog to be afraid, such as at the vet or when there are fireworks, a sizeable number of people miss the signs.⁴ There are many ways dogs telegraph fear, anxiety, and stress: tucking the tail, holding the ears back, licking the lips or nose, making whale eyes (wide eyes showing the whites of the eyes), looking away, lifting a paw, trembling or shaking, having a low body posture, yawning, panting, grooming, sniffing, seeking out people (looking for comfort from their owner), hiding, not moving (often mistaken for being calm), having a stiff or frozen posture, urinating, and defecating. When people fail to spot these signs, they are not able to help their dog be less stressed.

This dog’s relaxed eyes and open mouth show she is happy. BAD MONKEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Although you can see teeth, the mouth is open in a relaxed way. BAD MONKEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Gemma does not like the camera, so she looks away. CHRISTINE MICHAUD

Signs of stress. The dog is looking away, the mouth is closed, you can see whale eye, and the ears are pinned back. KRISTY FRANCIS

Not all wags are friendly; a short, rapid wag with a high tail is a threat signal. However, some dogs are bred to have only a stubby or corkscrew tail, while cosmetic procedures are sometimes used to dock the tails and/or crop the ears. These breeding and cosmetic changes can interfere with our (and other dogs’) ability to read canine body language. Some jurisdictions, such as British Columbia and Nova Scotia in Canada, have banned ear cropping and tail docking, but they are still permissible in many locations. Even other dogs get confused by stubby tails. When researchers made a robot dog that could have either a short stubby tail or a long (normal) tail, they found the tail made a difference to how other dogs behaved.⁵ With the long tail, other dogs approached the robot when it wagged in a friendly way and stayed away when its tail was still and upright (a threat signal). But when the robot dog had a stubby tail, dogs approached cautiously as if they were not sure whether or not its intentions were friendly, regardless of what the tail did.

We take it for granted that dogs experience happiness and fear. Charles Darwin believed that human and non-human animals evolved the ability to experience emotions, but over the years many scientists have been skeptical, in part due to our inability to know the subjective experience of animals (and perhaps also because of historical beliefs about humans being unique and special compared with other animals).⁶ But increasingly we have evidence of non-human animals experiencing emotion, and scientists are placing a greater emphasis on researching positive emotions instead of only negative ones like pain. And this means emotion needs to be part of our models of animal welfare.

The late neuroscientist Prof. Jaak Panksepp—perhaps best known for his research on tickling rats—identified seven primary emotion systems in the brain of animals (and people).⁷ Four of these are positive: SEEKING (includes curiosity, anticipation, and enthusiasm), PLAY, LUST, and CARE (such as taking care of young). The other three systems are negative: RAGE (anger), FEAR, and PANIC (loneliness or sadness). They are written in capital letters because they refer to specific systems in the brain, not to the everyday sense of the words. In case you’re wondering about the rat tickling, it involves the PLAY system. Panksepp’s research in affective neuroscience shows that we have to take the idea of animal consciousness and animal emotions seriously.

GOOD ANIMAL WELFARE

EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS IN animal welfare science apply to our pet dogs. Since the 1960s, animal welfare has been framed in terms of preventing cruelty. The framework for how we think about dogs’ welfare comes from the Five Freedoms, proposed in the UK’s 1965 Brambell Report on farm animal welfare.⁸ The phrase was borrowed from a 1941 speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt who referred to Four Freedoms for US citizens. The Five Freedoms (see text box) were originally designed for farm animals and are seen as applying to companion animals too.⁹

The Five Freedoms

•Freedom from thirst, hunger, and malnutrition—by ready access to a diet to maintain full health and vigor.

•Freedom from thermal and physical discomfort—by providing a suitable environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.

•Freedom from pain, injury, and disease—by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.

•Freedom from fear and distress—by ensuring conditions that avoid mental suffering.

•Freedom to express (most) normal behaviors—by providing sufficient space, proper facilities, and company of the animal’s own kind.

Of these five things, the freedom to express most normal behaviors is the least well known. In a British survey, only 18 percent of people recognized it as a welfare need.¹⁰ The other four needs were identified by a majority, and only 4 percent of pet owners said they were not interested in knowing more about how to provide good animal welfare.

More recently, the Five Domains Model (see figure) was proposed by Prof. David Mellor of Massey University in New Zealand.¹¹ The two approaches are complementary. One of the key differences is the idea that we should not just think about preventing harm, but also about providing good experiences. In other words, for good welfare, animals (including pet dogs) should get to do things that make them happy.

Overview of the Five Domains Model

Source: Based on Mellor (2017)¹²

Prof. Mellor told me, “If you’re talking about good nutrition, good environment, good health and appropriate behavior, what we need to make a distinction between is what we need in order to get animals to survive, and what we need in order not just to have them survive but to have them thrive.”

Negative states cannot be removed entirely, Mellor said. Take thirst: without feeling thirst, animals (including us) would not drink; as we drink, the sensation of thirst goes away and we are no longer motivated to find water. Similarly, without hunger, animals would not eat. Although we cannot remove these experiences entirely, we can minimize them, and we can create positive experiences, for example with different types of food.

There’s another kind of negative internal state to consider. The animal’s perception of its environment and what is happening in it may cause negative emotions like fear, anxiety, depression, boredom, and loneliness. We are often responsible for the situations that cause these emotions, but that also means we can change them, for example by enriching the environment to prevent boredom. This is, Mellor said, “where we can have quite a profound influence on whether or not the animals can have positive experiences.”

Mellor told me about the behavioral opportunities that dogs like to have. “We control a lot of these things,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean that a dog, to have a contented and happy and fulfilling life, needs to have access to all of those positive experiences. But the more that the dog can be given, appropriate to the circumstances, the better its life is going to be.”

Negative welfare states such as fear or pain can stop dogs from experiencing positive states. For example, a dog in pain will not play, may withdraw from other animals and people, and may not eat. This is why it’s important to minimize negative states as much as possible, not just in and of themselves, but also so the dog can experience pleasures. “And how do we know that they may be having positive experiences?” said Mellor. “It’s because they are engaging in the behaviors that those opportunities enable them to do.”

So to have a happy dog, we need to provide good nutrition, good health, a good environment, companionship, the ability to express appropriate behavior, and opportunities to experience positive emotions. A sense of well-being is not just about psychological welfare. Amongst orangutans living in zoos, those considered by their keepers to be “happy” lived longer lives.¹³ And for both captive brown capuchins and chimpanzees, their keepers’ ratings of their subjective “happiness” tie in with assessments of their positive and negative welfare.¹⁴ While we don’t have the same studies for dogs, we know the converse is true: stressed dogs live shorter lives.¹⁵ So making our dogs happy may help them have longer, healthier lives. In the intricate balance between physical and emotional wellness, anything we can do to improve welfare may bring added benefits.

There are many welfare problems for pet dogs: confrontational dog training methods that risk fear, stress, and aggression; breeding practices that reduce genetic diversity and increase the risks of inherited disease; changes in working lives and living spaces that mean dogs may be left home alone for longer and have to meet many other dogs when on walks; tail docking, ear cropping, and debarking (where these procedures are legal) that cause pain and reduce communicative abilities; and people’s failure to recognize signs of fear, anxiety, and stress in their pooch—or even people finding these signs funny. Some of these issues are caused by a failure to understand dogs.

UNDERSTANDING CANINE BEHAVIOR

UNDERSTANDING PET DOGS—WHO they are and why they behave the way they do—is also central to giving dogs a happy life. This idea was highlighted by Dr. Sam Gaines, head of the Companion Animals Department at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in the UK. “A lot of the problems that we see or hear about,” she said, “wouldn’t necessarily come to light if people had a much better understanding of the dog that they’ve actually got in their house. So, for example, people go and impulse-purchase a puppy without doing any research, and then suddenly end up with this little creature in their house which they have no or very little understanding about, which then means it’s very difficult for them to provide for their welfare needs.”

And unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation too, which means people’s folk knowledge about dogs is often wrong. Gaines said, “In an ideal world what I would really like to do . . . is sort of like wipe the slate clean when it comes to [what people know about] dogs. Like in Men in Black they press that pen and every memory or anything associated disappears, and you can then give them a new knowledge and understanding of what a dog is.”

One of the great things about canine science is that researchers are investigating topics that are important for the everyday lives of dogs. However long you have known dogs, there is something new and exciting to learn.

THE NEEDS OF THE INDIVIDUAL DOG

JUST LIKE PEOPLE, every dog is an individual. Some dogs are sociable and friendly; they love to meet new people and other dogs, and so we should try to give them more of these experiences. On the other hand, some dogs are shy and timid and would hate to be forced to meet other people and dogs every day. That’s okay, because the important thing is that we recognize the needs of the dog we have and cater to them.

Individual differences were apparent with Ghost and Bodger. While Ghost was calm, sometimes aloof with other people, Bodger is desperate to become their friend. Having learned that sitting is required before he is patted, he secretly waits for just the right moment to leap up and lick the unsuspecting person on the face. And while Ghost was always so happy to meet other dogs, Bodger is choosy about who is allowed in his space.

There are two sides to considering the needs of an individual dog. The first is to do with minimizing experiences the dog finds negative, such as preventing situations where the dog is fearful (which may include avoiding the situation, teaching the dog to like the situation instead, and/or using medication under the guidance of a veterinarian). The second is to do with knowing what that particular dog enjoys. Do they love to play fetch or do they prefer to go for a swim? Do they love agility class or do they prefer to mooch about on a forest trail? It’s up to us to know what our dog likes and give them the opportunities to experience it.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMAN–ANIMAL BOND

WHEN WE GET a dog, we imagine a long, beautiful friendship, kind of like a canine equivalent of walking off into the sunset to live happily ever after. But although we think of dogs as our best friends, the relationship often breaks down. We know that:

•The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) says 670,000 dogs are euthanized every year in American shelters because they do not have a home.¹⁶

•The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior says behavior problems are the leading cause of death in dogs under 3 years old in the US.¹⁷ In the UK, behavioral issues are responsible for 14.7 percent of deaths in dogs under three (compared with 14.5% from gastrointestinal issues and 12.7% from accidents involving cars) according to the Veterinary Journal.¹⁸

•The American Humane Association found 10 percent of newly adopted dogs and cats in the US are no longer in the new home six months later (either returned to the shelter, lost, dead, or given to someone else), while the BBC reports 19 percent of people in the UK who buy a puppy no longer have them two years later.¹⁹

Clearly, for many people who start out with high hopes for a relationship with a dog, things go badly wrong. In part, this may be due to a lack of preparation. Between 18 and 39 percent of dog owners do no research at all before getting a dog.²⁰ Of course other issues, such as a lack of pet-friendly rental housing or people becoming sick and no longer being able to care for their pet, may also play a role. Helping to prevent relationships with our pets from breaking down will make us happier as well as our dogs.

I think we all want to make our dogs happy, even if along the way we show it in different ways and sometimes do the wrong thing. We love to see a happy look on our dog’s face, and let’s face it, the bounding, bouncing joy of a dog is enough to make us happy too. As guardians, we are responsible for everything in our dog’s life, and it’s an understatement to say we are important from our dog’s perspective. So this book is not just about your dog—it’s about you and your dog, the human–canine partnership, and what canine happiness means.

“THINK DOG! DESPITE a wealth of research into the domestic dog and a greater understanding of how they behave, think, feel, and interact with us and their peers, many owners/guardians continue to treat dogs either as wolves or little people and/or fail to understand and acknowledge what dogs actually are. This can have a huge impact on their physical and mental health. For example, decades of thinking of dogs as wolves has contributed to a widespread use of management and training techniques that place dogs at serious risk of poor welfare. Similarly our failure to understand what it is to be a dog and what constitutes normal behavior can mean a poor quality of life through a lack of outlets for strongly motivated behavior such as playing, sniffing, and investigating. If dogs really are our best friends and we want them to be truly happy, then we have to think dog.”

—SAM GAINES, PhD, head, Companion Animals Department, RSPCA