For the Love of a Dog (16 page)

I immediately called Esther Rasmussen, a friend and animal control officer who loves dogs, especially Pit Bulls. Smart, brave, and able to stay calm in a crisis, Esther leaped to the challenge. She knew as well as I that there are thousands of sweet, loving Pit Bulls in the world, but that an aggressive one, because of the breed’s stamina and power, is not to be taken lightly. We met each other after midnight on the street in front of Karen’s house, armed with a dart gun, a syringe full of tranquilizer, and a rabies pole.
³
We could talk to Karen by cell phone, and see her frightened face in the second-story window. We pounded on the font door to lure Frisco away from her, and sure enough, he charged down the stairs and attacked the front door. As he barked and lunged, I opened the door just enough for him to get his head out, and then instantly shut it to stop his shoulders from coming through. Esther snagged him with the loop on the rabies pole, and then handed it to me while she prepared the dart gun. Frisco stood still, sides heaving drooling and snarling. I silently prayed my weak back would hold up long enough to keep him from pulling the pole out of my hands. Esther fiddled with the dart gun, to no avail; finally, she said, “Don’t let him get me,” moved directly to his hindquarters, and jammed the syringe into his hip. I held on for dear life, appalled at the thought that I might not be able to stop him from turning and biting her. Frisco tried his best to bite Esther, but to our mutual relief, she got away in time
.

Esther’s aim had been true, and in just minutes Frisco’s eyes went soft. We removed the loop restraining him, and cradled his sagging body in our laps. We gently carried him into the van, and, at Karen’s request, drove him to an emergency vet clinic to be euthanized. Overwhelmed with both
adrenaline and sadness, Karen, Esther, and I stroked Frisco while he slipped off to his final rest. Karen had done all she could to give him a good life, but I told her then, and I’ll repeat it now: Frisco’s first owners had killed him long ago, when they fried his poor young brain. It just took him a long time to die
.

This true story, as tragic as it is dramatic, speaks to the terrible harm that can be done to the developing brain of a young dog. Once Frisco became emotionally aroused, the arousal increased until he became physiologically out of control. Arousal, like many other aspects of physiology in mammals, is regulated by mechanisms much like the thermostat on the furnace in your home. It’s the thermostat that keeps your furnace from staying on all the time: once the temperature rises to a certain level, a feedback system kicks in, and the heat is turned off. As the air in the house cools, then becomes too cold, the furnace kicks in again. In a healthy dog, emotional arousal is regulated in a similar way, with what are called the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems acting like thermostats to keep the body and brain functioning at optimal levels. But the body and brain can spiral out of control, if the circuits that control this kind of feedback don’t have a chance to develop normally.

Of course, most stories aren’t as extreme as Frisco’s, but I’ve seen too many dogs whose emotional health has been permanently damaged because their developing brains didn’t have the right environment in which to grow. Illegal drugs are not the only means of compromising a dog’s developing brain. Sterile, unstimulating environments can stunt a dog’s emotional growth so that he is never able to cope with stress of any kind. Harsh, abusive situations in puppyhood can hardwire a dog to be emotionally overreactive as an adult. Of course, there are many reasons besides early development for the behavioral problems described above, but it’s important to include development as one piece of the puzzle.

Many people know something about the importance of environmental stimulation for young children, but often we fail to apply that knowledge
in picking or raising a puppy.
⁴
I’ve seen any number of clients who raved about the cleanliness of the kennel where they got their pup, but who had no idea of what the pup experienced after birth. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” in America, and I’ve learned that clean and neat is what people look for when they’re choosing a place to buy a pup. Clean is good, I’m all for it, but it’s not enough to ensure that your pup has really had a good start in life. The extreme of “clean” is “sterile,” and sterility, it turns out, is a good thing only if you’re doing surgery. Sterility can equal environmental deprivation, and that can cause no end of trouble to a developing pup.

Environmental deprivation can happen anywhere. It can disable puppies born in filthy puppy mills as well as those raised in spotless kennels. Clean or dirty, if dogs grow up with little environmental stimulation they can turn into adults who are lacking in the ability to handle even minor stress. Stress is just change, after all, and if a pup has matured in an environment that never changes, she doesn’t develop a brain that is wired to cope with it. Numerous studies on rats and non-human primates show that barren environments create individuals who are unable to cope with stress as adults, because the stress-related pathways in their brains aren’t able to develop normally. Rats who were taken away from their mothers for fifteen minutes a day turn out to be
less
reactive to stressful events than those that weren’t. (In an interesting link to our earlier discussion on the importance of touch, that result appears to be related to the amount of intensive licking that the mother rats do when the baby rats are returned.) Rats raised in the standard, sterile boxes used in most laboratories have fewer connections between their brains’ cells, and thinner cerebral cortexes, than rats raised in “enriched” boxes.
⁵

This is so important, and yet so often ignored, that I had to sneak toys into the kennels when I was doing research on dogs and their responses to different types of sound. I had four litters of puppies growing up in kennels in the middle of the University of Wisconsin campus, and was committed to raising healthy, normal dogs. That was important to me not just for their sake, which would have been important
enough, but also for my research. Research on the behavior of abnormal dogs wouldn’t be meaningful, so I wanted to ensure that the pups had plenty to feel, hear, and see as they grew. As it should, the university has strict regulations on the care of animals in research, but at that time the rules were all about cleanliness and physical safety. The kennels had to be spotless, but heaven forbid we should bring in a germ-laden toy or chew stick that would facilitate normal development. As a lowly graduate student, I knew that my chances of getting the regulations changed were negligible. I’d already pushed the envelope by creating a legal document that allowed my pups to be the first research dogs at the university to be adopted out into private homes instead of being euthanized at the end of the research project. There are just so many battles you can fight at one time, so I picked up the toys whenever I thought the lab might be inspected, and put them down when I thought the coast was clear.

That was a long time ago, and I’m happy to say that even at that time some people were acknowledging, and acting on, the importance of an enriched environment to captive animals. Although I’d argue that we have much to do to improve the lives of many research animals, some of the most impressive advances in creating enriched environments for developing animals have actually come from laboratories and zoological parks. Ironically, the general public, responsible for the lives of over sixty million dogs a year in just the United States alone, is often less aware of enrichment’s importance. My associates and I often see dogs who were raised in conditions designed to handicap the development of their minds, not encourage it.

These poor dogs can’t handle change of any kind, and depending on their genetics, they either slink into the office in terror or roar in like freight trains off the tracks. There’s always a lot that can be done to help dogs like this—brains are amazing things and some rewiring is possible if you have the time and the patience—but just like a house built on a shaky foundation, the result is never as solid as it would be if you’d started out right from the beginning.

I don’t want to discount the importance of genetics here; it plays a big role in who a dog is and how his or her brain reacts to the environment. You can usefully compare genetics with the ingredients in a recipe, and the effect of the environment with the method of putting
them all together. The best eggs in the world aren’t going to make a good omelet if you hard-boil them before you mix them with the other ingredients.

Good breeders know about the importance of environmental enrichment and work hard to stimulate their puppies daily from birth. That includes ensuring that the puppies get lots of handling from the day they’re born. Although pups are born deaf and blind, their sense of touch is fully developed at birth, and if their brains are to develop normally, their bodies must receive lots of physical contact. I’ve always suspected that’s why single pups, with no littermates to poke into and push against, sometimes grow into adults who are more touch sensitive than pups with littermates. The impact of gentle handling can be seen even if it occurs before birth: puppies born to mothers who were petted during pregnancy tend to be more receptive to handling after birth.

The research on the effects of environmental stimulation and the ability to handle stress got a lot of attention a few years back from the U.S. military. In search of dogs who could perform difficult tasks under stressful conditions, the military developed a method of early sensory stimulation that they believe created adult dogs with superior problem-solving abilities and more tolerance of stress. The process takes only a few minutes a day, and involves five simple exercises, to be done on each pup in the litter, from birth to thirteen days old. The pup should be picked up in one hand and be tickled between the toes of one foot for just three to five seconds. Next, use both hands to hold the pup, again for three to five seconds, so that his head is directly above his tail. Carefully cupping the puppy in both hands, reverse his direction so that his head is pointing straight down, and hold again for three to five seconds. (Dropping the puppy is not advisable for optimum brain development, so do this carefully!) Next, hold the pup so that he is parallel to the floor, belly up, for the same amount of time as the other exercises. Last, put the pup on a cold, damp towel for three to five seconds; and then return him to the litter.

Carmen Battaglia, a Ph.D. scientist and American Kennel Club
judge who has written extensively about this plan, cautions that breeders should follow it exactly: he suggests that repeating the exercises more than once a day, or doing them for more than five seconds each, can potentially cause harm. This does not mean that you should restrict the normal cuddling and handling that every puppy needs (and most of us can’t resist giving). The exercises described involve stimulation that pups would normally never get, and possibly act to kick-start some aspects of neurological development. Because too much stress can backfire, if you’re going to try this out, I’d suggest doing it exactly as described. I used the plan on one litter, and the pups did grow into calm, resilient dogs—but that doesn’t tell us much, because who knows how the litter might have turned out otherwise. Maybe they would have been the same, or maybe they’d have been better if I
hadn’t
done the exercises. However, the research suggests that the exercises do have value, and they are an important reminder to us of the effect of the environment on your pup’s brain.

The exercises are designed to stimulate the senses that are fully functioning at birth: the sense of touch, another sense called proprioception, which involves the brain knowing where the body is in space, and the ability to sense warmth or cold. Once the eyes and ears of puppies are functioning, starting around fourteen days or so, they need stimulation in the areas that process sound and vision. That doesn’t mean a pup should be bombarded with constant noise and handling. Pups, like babies, need lots of time to be left alone to sleep. But when they’re awake, they need enough stimulation to encourage connections to form among neurons in different parts of their brains.

Keep in mind that environmental enrichment is different from “socialization,” in which pups are introduced to animals with whom they are expected to form social relationships. We know from extensive research, first done by John Paul Scott and John L. Fuller in a groundbreaking twenty-year study, that pups are hardwired to learn, between the ages of about five weeks and thirteen weeks, what their social partners are supposed to look like and how they are supposed to behave. This time period is called a “critical” or “sensitive” period, because if you miss it you’ll never quite get the same effect later on. That’s one of the reasons good trainers and behaviorists encourage well-managed puppy socialization classes, so your dog’s brain can record
what his playmates should look and act like. This is especially important for dogs, given that they come in a dazzling array of shapes and sizes. You can hardly blame a Teacup Poodle for not knowing how to react to a Newfoundland if she’s never met any dogs besides other poodles.

Lots of people are aware of the importance of early socialization for dogs, thanks to the efforts of people like Ian Dunbar, a veterinary behaviorist who spent the better part of twenty-five years encouraging people to create and attend puppy socialization classes. But fewer know about the important effects of environmental enrichment on behavior. The good news is that you don’t need to go too far out of your way to provide an enriched environment for a growing pup. Puppies raised in most homes hear a variety of noises, from the phone ringing, to the kids coming home from school, to advertisements on television. They are picked up and handled often and are more likely than kennel-raised pups to be put on a variety of surfaces, amid a variety of smells. However, pups raised outside or in kennels can also get a tremendous amount of stimulation. When I was breeding Border Collies, the pups and their mom lived inside for three to four weeks, and then moved into the old milk house in the barn. Lost in puppy rapture, I’d spend hours outside with them; I brought each one into the house daily, took them waddling through tall grasses, and allowed them to experience all the sounds, sights, and smells of the Wisconsin countryside. What matters, whether a pup is raised inside or out, is whether he spends long days in the same place listening to the same sounds and seeing the same things, or whether he experiences a bigger range of life’s experiences.