Dog Sense (49 page)

Companionship traits may be difficult to select for, but certain other type-specific behavioral traits need to be
reduced
in companion dogs. Most of the genetic selection imposed upon dogs during their long association with man has been directed toward useful traits such as ability in herding, hunting, and guarding. But now that most dogs in the West are no longer required to carry out such tasks, we need to reduce these links; otherwise, frustration will ensue. I have lost count of the times that I've been asked for advice on whether a cute sheepdog puppy will make a good pet. I always say No, these dogs are bred to work and will probably find living in a town intolerable. Yet most of the people I've advised in this way have gone ahead and gotten sheepdogs anyway, and most have regretted doing so—though not as much as would the dogs concerned, if regret was in their emotional armory. If such dogs are to fit the companion niche, we need to reconfigure the breed so that they no longer feel this way.

Finally, although the extent to which we can breed dogs for companionship roles is limited, we must also be careful about going too far in the opposite direction—by increasing our dogs' capacity for affection to the point where it becomes a burden to them. There is already an epidemic of separation disorders among companion dogs; those who are overwhelmingly motivated to be with people would presumably also suffer disproportionately if left alone. Most owners don't want their dog to be too “clingy.” (Or, for that matter, too bouncy: Companion dogs are required to be inactive an average of three-quarters of their lives.)

There is no reason why more dogs cannot be better fitted to the companion role that many clearly already fulfill today. Hopefully, the pressure now placed upon breed clubs to produce happier, healthier dogs will not only succeed but also spark a reappraisal of what the show-ring is intended to produce: greater emphasis on dogs' role as companions
and less on their largely outmoded role as working animals. Furthermore, dogs not only need to be bred as companions, they need to be
raised
as companions—and the most efficient way for this to happen is for puppies to be born in domestic environments, not in barren outdoor kennels or sterile commercial production units. There are considerable challenges to be faced before rearing methods improve, not only because many breeders still underestimate puppies' need for socialization but also because there is no obvious mechanism whereby best practice will become widespread, given the sheer number of people involved. The information that breeders need in order to produce well-socialized puppies is now widely available—and hopefully its universal adoption is just a matter of time.

Even if this information is thoroughly disseminated, however, irresponsible breeding is unlikely to go away. The rehoming charities will inevitably take the brunt of coping with the unwanted dogs that result. But fortunately they increasingly have available to them the information necessary to adopt more science-based methods for rehabilitating such dogs, and for raising understanding among adopting owners of what makes dogs behave the way they do.

Looking into the future, I predict that dogs will need all the help they can get, from scientists and enthusiasts alike. Dogs were first domesticated to live in small villages and rural communities, and there is no doubt that tensions arise, both between dog and owner and between owner and non-owner, when dogs live in modern cities. As the globe becomes progressively more urbanized, such unease may spread.

Dogs in the West will never be able to return to the freedoms they enjoyed in the first half of the twentieth century, when many were allowed to roam city streets during the day, meeting (or avoiding) other dogs as and when they chose, before returning to their owners in the evening. Society requires much more of dogs, and dog owners, than it did then. The public's attitudes toward hygiene in particular have hardened in the past twenty years, with poop-scoop laws becoming almost universally adopted and more people openly expressing a dislike of touching or being licked by a dog. More people also seem to be allergic to dogs than ever before (although, paradoxically, many scientists now
think that contact with dog allergens in infancy is actually
protective
against the development of this allergy). Dogs are now expected to behave well at all times, especially when in public, and the number of places where owners can exercise dogs off-leash has been considerably reduced. If this trend continues, pet dogs could potentially turn into a barely tolerated minority interest, especially in cities.

There was a time in the early years of this century when it looked as though dog populations in the United Kingdom and the United States were beginning to shrink, as though every dog had indeed had its day; the best estimates now suggest that the dog population may be leveling off. Cats are now at least as numerous as dogs in both countries, mainly because they suit modern lifestyles whereby all members of a household work and the time and space for exercising a dog are restricted. How popular will dogs be at the end of the twenty-first century? Addressing the twin pressures of misguided breeding and poor understanding of canine psychology is crucial to ensuring that dogs remain as significant a part of human life as they have been for the past ten millennia. My hope is that this book will make some contribution toward that goal.

Introduction

1
. Including, I have to confess, by myself: An article I wrote for a Waltham Symposium in 1990 takes this approach. At that time, there was no research contradicting it. The situation is very different today.

Chapter 1

1
. Carles Vilà, Peter Savolainen, Jesús Maldonado, Isabel Amorim, John Rice, Rodney Honeycutt, Keith Crandall, Joakim Lundeberg, and Robert Wayne, “Multiple and ancient origins of the domestic dog,”
Science
276 (June 13, 1997): 1687–1689.

2
. Biologists often name whole groups of animals after their best-known member. Hence the Roman name for the domestic dog—canis—is used to refer to all the domestic dog's relatives:
Canis
for the closest ones, canid for the extended family. The confusion that this causes isn't deliberate, honest.

3
. Michael Fox, one of the pioneers of dog behavior in the 1960s, thought that for each species there was a distinct limit on how large and complex a pack could become, with the wolf at the pinnacle. His theories linger on even today in books about dogs, but in the time since he formulated his ideas a great deal more has been discovered about the behavior of many of these species.

4
. This term appears in Hungarian expert Dr. Ádám Miklósi's
Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

5
. Randall Lockwood, “Dominance in wolves: Useful construct or bad habit?” in
Behaviour and Ecology of Wolves
, ed. Erich Klinghammer (New York: Garland STPM Press, 1979), pp. 225–243.

6
. See Dr. David Mech's illuminating article on the new conception of wolf biology at
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/mammals/alstat/alpst.htm
(accessed on August 25, 2010).

7
. There is some controversy about just how many kinds of wolf occur in the wild in North America today, but only the grey wolf is sufficiently widespread for its social behavior to have been studied. The number of types of grey wolf on the American continent is constantly being reappraised; there may be five (Northwestern, Plains, Eastern, Mexican, and Arctic), but I've referred to the first two generically as the “timber” wolf. A sixth, the red wolf, is often considered a separate species. Although it is sometimes called the “Texas” red wolf, in the early part of the last century its range centered on North Carolina. Some people maintain that it is a unique and endangered animal, and a great deal of effort is being put into captive breeding and conservation. Bear in mind, however, that the red wolf looks suspiciously like a mixture between a grey wolf and a coyote—and its DNA appears to back the idea that it is a hybrid. Wolves and coyotes can mate and produce offspring, certainly in zoos and probably also in the wild; the Eastern or Algonquin wolf that occurs in Ontario and Quebec is probably such a hybrid, although it has also been posited as a third true species of wolf. To further confuse the picture, the DNA of red wolves suggests that they may have hybridized with coyotes for a second time in the nineteenth century, as changing agriculture and ranching practices began to favor coyotes over wolves in the southeastern United States. And given that many apparently purebred coyotes also contain wolf (as well as domestic dog) DNA, interbreeding between wolves and coyotes appears to have been going on for thousands of years—leading to the coining of the tongue-in-cheek term
“Canis soupus”
to describe coyote, eastern wolf, and red wolf alike.

8
. As is most likely the story for the domestic cat; see
Science
296 (April 5, 2002): 15 for a summary of my research group's study into this.

Chapter 2

1
. The members of this international team, led by Carles Vilà at the University of California in Los Angeles, published their findings in volume 276 of the journal
Science
(June 13, 1997, pp. 1687–1689).

2
. With the notable exception of the Egyptians, who mummified a wide range of animals, including vast numbers of domestic cats.

3
. Indeed, such long-distance commutes were rare until comparatively recently, when European dogs were introduced as part of colonialization. However, it turns out that in most areas, pet dogs who escape, as well as hybrids between pets and local dogs, tend not to prosper; evidently they are less effective
than local street dogs at exploiting local conditions. The DNA of many local populations is thus largely preserved in its original form.

4
. See Peter Savolainen, Ya-ping Zhang, Jing Luo, Joakim Lundeberg, and Thomas Leitner, “Genetic evidence for an East Asian origin of domestic dogs,”
Science
298 (November 22, 2002): 1610–1613; and Adam Boyko et al., “Complex population structure in African village dogs and its implications for inferring dog domestication history,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(August 19, 2009): 13903–13908.

5
. See, for example, Nicholas Wade, “New Finding Puts Origins of Dogs in Middle East,”
New York Times
, March 18, 2010.

6
. More gruesome still is the Zoroastrian practice of allowing dogs, regarded as sacred animals, to dispose of human corpses.

7
. This scenario, conveniently, would also explain why the mitochondrial DNA sequences of dogs and wolves appear to have diverged at an unfeasibly early date. The divergence would have to predate the genetic changes that split the “normal” wolves from the “socializable” wolves, because today there are no survivors of the latter, apart from the few that changed into dogs. Matings between “socializable” females and “normal” males might well have continued for many millennia after the split, but would be undetectable in the (maternally inherited) mtDNA of modern dogs.

8
. Ludmilla Trut, “Early canid domestication: The farm-fox experiment,”
American Scientist
87 (1999): 160–169.

9
. A few anthropologists have toyed with the rather romantic notion of man-wolf coevolution, suggesting that wolves taught us how to hunt in groups, even how to form complex societies. However, it seems highly unlikely that any two-legged human could ever have “adopted” the wolf's lifestyle. The wolves would have outrun him before he had time to blink. When he finally caught up with them after they had made their kill, why would they have let him share it with them? The primitive spears and knives that he had at his disposal would hardly have been adequate to drive off a pack of hungry wolves. Moreover, depictions of men hunting with dogs do not feature in cave paintings until five thousand to six thousand years ago, almost halfway through the history of domestic dogs as revealed by the archaeological record. It is certainly true that wolves feature prominently in the symbolism of recent hunter-gatherer societies, but myths do not recapitulate origins; indeed, they merely invent a framework for explaining the uncontrollable.

Chapter 3

1
. Here I am indebted to biologist Dr. Sunil Kumar Pal and his colleagues, who have been studying the urban feral dogs of West Bengal for over ten years.

2
. The sanctuary is run by the rehoming charity Dogs Trust, to whom I am very grateful for providing this opportunity.

3
. See
http://www.inch.com/~dogs/taming.html
(accessed September 28, 2010).

4
. See
http://drsophiayin.com/philosophy/dominance
(accessed December 16, 2009).

5
. These RHP-related ideas were first developed with my colleague Dr. Stephen Wickens; see my chapter in James Serpell's
The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

6
. See, for example, John Bradshaw and Amanda Lea, “Dyadic interactions between domestic dogs,”
Anthrozoös
5 (1992): 245–253. The results of this study were confirmed by additional analysis of the data presented in Carri Westgarth, Robert Christley, Gina Pinchbeck, Rosalind Gaskell, Susan Dawson, and John Bradshaw, “Dog behaviour on walks and the effect of use of the leash,”
Applied Animal Behaviour Science
125 (2010): 38–46.