For the Love of a Dog (32 page)

The question, of course, for both dogs and people, is how much of the difference in behavior is due to genetics, and how much to learning and early environment. As usual, the answer is clear: nature and nurture both play important roles in the likelihood that your blind date will throw his plate across the room if he doesn’t like his pasta, or that
your dog will go after your arm when you take away his bone. Just as with fear, genes matter when it comes to the emotional expression of anger. The delicate balance of molecules that powers our brains—a little serotonin here, a pinch of dopamine and adrenaline there—plays a big role in our temperaments, and much of that balance is inherited. Although our brains are like ongoing chemistry experiments, to which we can always make some adjustments, we’re still stuck with the ingredients with which we started.

We know that babies born with uninhibited temperaments (the opposite of the cautious children we talked about in the last chapter) are likelier to have problems with anger management in adolescence. People with short tempers often have underactive frontal lobes, which normally act to inhibit impulsiveness, and it looks as though they were born that way
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The examples of the links between brain chemistry and anger-related aggression are endless. An imbalance of the neurotransmitter serotonin can result in aggressive behavior, which is why SSRIs like Prozac are sometimes effective in aggression-related cases. Individuals whose thyroid glands are underactive owing to inheritance or disease can have serious problems with anger and aggression until the imbalance is corrected. All these conditions are influenced by the customized set of genes that makes every individual unique. Some code for mellow, some code for prickly. You’d be wise to keep that in mind when you meet the family of your potential partner. (I would, however, avoid rolling Uncle Harry over onto his back the first time you’re invited to a family dinner.)

This relationship between genetics and anger is not unique to people. For example, everyone who works with common chimpanzees knows that the species is relatively aggressive, but they also know that every individual is different. In the book
Chimpanzee Politics
, Frans de Waal describes each of his research chimps as having vastly different personalities. The researchers on the study team had a range of opinions about
who should win the “Miss Congeniality” title, but everyone agreed that one female, Puist, was the grumpiest. Described as “two-faced and mean,” she terrified subordinate chimps, who never knew when she’d turn on them in a rage. The temper tantrums of common chimpanzees can be so dramatic they become funny, unless you happen to be anywhere nearby, at which point they become terrifying. One of the most important social roles of high-status female chimps is to calm and soothe agitated individuals (especially males) before they do something they’re going to regret. It seems they need to do this much more often with some individuals than with others. Sound familiar?

Even pigs differ in how often and how intensely they behave in ways that we might call angry. We may think of being “piggy” as being greedy, but some pigs could have their own World Wrestling Entertainment show and get prime-time ratings. Researchers have found, after gently restraining pigs on their backs, that some pigs use aggression only when they have no other choice. Other individuals are less flexible, using aggression as a “one size fits all” solution to a variety of problems. Apparently, some are grumpier than others, in that they are quicker to respond aggressively to events that other pigs let slide.

I’ve seen the same personality differences in my sheep. My dear old ewe Harriet was quick to defend her lambs if she felt they were being threatened, but she’d graciously sniff noses with any of my Border Collies when they were “off duty.” Not so with a younger ewe named Crystal. Long after her lamb was weaned, Crystal took any chance she could get to try to smash Lassie into the fence. Recently she barged through the flock to come after Lassie as she and I were leaving the pen. We had brought grain, water, and yummy alfalfa hay to the flock, and I had every reason to believe the sheep were chowing down with gusto as we walked back into the barn. I remember feeling the sweet glow of satisfaction that all farmers have when the chores are done and the sky is turning navy blue and the lights glow golden from the house.
Thwump
. I heard it before I saw it, a flash of white, Crystal’s anvil head smashing low and fast into Lassie before my brain could make any sense of it.

It took three months of vet visits and rehabilitation for Lassie to recover, blindsided as she’d been with no chance to protect herself. There was simply no reason for the attack, except that Crystal hates dogs,
even though they’ve never abused her in any way. Crystal is still at the farm, although I must confess her future is uncertain. I have my own anger issues to deal with now: I can’t find it in myself to forgive her for her unprovoked attack on Lassie. The image of Lassie—sociable and loving to people, fair and patient to sheep—flying through the air like some furry, twisted pretzel will never leave my mind. I love Lassie with all my heart. She’s willing and sweet and hardworking. She’s beautiful and needy and vulnerable, and when Luke, her father, was dying, I promised him I’d take care of her. It doesn’t matter if he understood what I meant, I said I would. I know that forgiveness is healthy, and I presume that, in terms of my own contentment, harboring anger toward a ewe is no better than being angry at another person. I’m working on it, but Crystal would be wise to mind her manners.

It’s no surprise to dog owners that other canines, such as wolves, have their own anger management issues. Wolf researchers, rigorously trained in science, talk freely about wolves with tolerant personalities versus those with short fuses. Douglas Smith, in
Decade of the Wolf
, writes about Number 40 of Yellowstone’s famous Druid pack, who became known among wolf lovers far and wide as the country’s meanest wolf. She was so quick to lose her temper and take it out on others that the other members of the pack lived in constant fear of attack. In an unprecedented occurrence, she was eventually killed by a coalition of lower-status females who had had enough and weren’t going to take it anymore.
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The pack was taken over by her sister, Number 42, who was as benevolent as Number 40 was intolerant.

There’s no reason why dogs would be different from wolves, pigs, and people and not vary in their tendency to beome angry. Frankie, the puppy who flew into a grown-up-like rage when I restrained her, isn’t the only dog I’ve met who’s lost her temper easily. Reactions as extreme as hers are rare, but differences in a tendency to lose one’s temper occur within almost every litter. You can see them early in life, sometimes as early as three weeks of age. It’s hard to imagine that experience alone accounts for such early differences. Surely much of the same brain
chemistry that makes some people mellow and others quick to anger also exists in dogs.

The influence of genetics on anger doesn’t mean we’re helpless victims of a dog’s parentage. Far from it. In a way, it’s a good thing that there’s a relationship between genetics and anger. It means we can breed for docility over irritability, and select new dogs with some hope of predicting what we’re going to get. Of course, the best anyone can do is play the odds—canine behavior is far more complicated than something like black or yellow coat color, and there’s virtually nothing that can predict, with perfect accuracy, a dog’s behavior a year down the road. We can’t do that even with our own species, as should be patently obvious from a glance at the divorce rate. Predictions are particularly tricky if the dog’s environment will change substantially, because, just like people, dogs behave differently in different circumstances. However, you can do a lot to get the odds on your side, and if you have the opportunity, why not take it?

If you’re buying a pup from a breeder, the first step is to learn how tolerant the pup’s relatives are when they’re frustrated. Will Dad let you take away his bone? What does Mom do if you gently take hold of her front paw and don’t let it go? Does she squint her eyes and lick your hand (good girl), or stiffen, ever so briefly, with a hard, cold stare directly at your hand or face (uh-oh)?
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If you or the breeder is concerned about your safety if you pick up the paw of one of the pup’s parents, your job is already done. Why go any further? Run, don’t walk, to the car, and drive home congratulating yourself on your wisdom and maturity.

If possible, don’t confine your questions to the behavior of the parents. The dam and sire of a litter can pass on genes that they don’t themselves express, so their behavior isn’t always enough to tell you what genes might be passed on to the pups. If you can, learn about the behavior of the pup’s grandparents, aunts and uncles, and siblings from
another litter. Inheritance in dogs works very much as it does in people, so if you’d like an easygoing family dog who can put up with a five-year-old, you’d be wise to choose a pup from an entire line of easygoing dogs.

Family histories are helpful, but we all know that every individual is unique. That, too, is as true of dogs as it is of people. That’s why, along with checking up on his family, you’d be wise to test the individual puppy that you’re thinking of taking home. There are myriad ways to assess a dog for frustration tolerance, and I want to be clear from the outset (again!) that these “tests” can give you a probability statement, not a guarantee. Think of them as weather predictions. They’re based on good information and lots of experience, but, just as the weather is too complicated to predict with perfect accuracy, the behavior of a dog later in life can only be estimated, not guaranteed.

As noted earlier, my favorite exercise with a young pup is to
gently
roll her over onto her back and then lightly restrain her with a hand on her chest. Spend some time with the pup first, so that this isn’t her introduction to you. I will usually play with a pup for a good five to ten minutes before beginning this exercise. Then I’ll gently roll her, first onto her side and then over onto her back, and place one hand on her chest. I’ll let my hand rest lightly on her until she begins to try to get up, and then I’ll use just enough pressure to keep her from doing so.

There are a lot of different ways she can respond once she’s over on her back and figures out that she can’t get up when she wants to. She could replicate Frankie’s response—and spiral into a primal rage so powerful it seems too big to fit inside a tiny body. The good news is that such a response is rare: I’ve probably seen it five or six times in seventeen years. It’s also hard to miss, no matter how little experience you’ve had with dogs. If you see it, I suggest you move on to the next pup (or better, the next litter) as fast as you can, unless you’d like to write your own book on canine behavioral problems.

Far more common are subtle differences in behavior, and the more experienced you are at reading dogs the better you’ll get at interpreting them. Some puppies will squirm a bit and mouth your hand lightly, a perfectly reasonable response that wouldn’t concern me in the least.
But ask yourself: do the puppy’s nips get harder, while the corners of his mouth go forward into an offensive pucker? Hmmmm—time to start paying attention if you have a house full of children. Does the pup never stop trying to get up, while his littermate gives up quickly and passively waits for you to let him up? Which pup you pick depends on what you want. If you want a search-and-rescue dog or a nationally competitive performance dog, you want one who never gives up, so you might choose the former. However, the latter might be a better choice for a family who wants a buddy to hang around with the kids in the backyard.

Pay attention to what the pup does when you let him go. I’ve seen puppies who have rolled over, nailed me with one of those “looks could kill” expressions, and refused to come near me again. That’s not the dog I want, because I love dogs (and people) who don’t take life too seriously. Neither do I want a dog who is so stressed by the procedure that his eyes round in terror and his body goes stiff, while his commissure retracts in fear. My favorite dog is the one who takes the whole thing as a silly game, and comes back for more when he gets up.

This is just one method for assessing frustration tolerance. Although these kinds of behavioral evaluations are somewhat controversial, there is an increasing amount of evidence suggesting that they can be helpful at predicting certain types of behavior. Trainer Sue Sternberg was the first to develop a test to evaluate the potential for aggression in shelter dogs. Others, like veterinarian/behaviorist Amy Marder and animal behaviorists Emily Weiss and Rebecca Ledger have developed their own tests and followed up with research that suggests some aspects of these evaluations can indeed be predictive. For example, Marder’s research found that dogs who are aggressive around objects in a shelter environment (“resource guarders”) are likely to behave the same way in someone’s home up to six months later. She also found that dogs who are rated as being not particularly friendly in the shelter are equally aloof in their new homes. This is just the tip of the iceberg—see the References section for more sources on evaluating adolescent or adult dogs, and for ways to evaluate puppies.
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As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve found these assessments to be valuable if you understand that they are just probability statements, like a weather forecast. They are often called
temperament
tests, although that is not the best designation, because what is being tested is how a dog will react at any given moment to a particular event, not a long-term tendency to behave in certain ways over long periods of time (which is the definition of “temperament”). Nonetheless, it is one of many ways to gather information that can help you make predictions about a dog’s behavior. Keep in mind that the further away a dog is (in both age and environment) from what you’re trying to predict, the less accurate you’ll be. It’s useful to go back to our analogy with weather forecasts. Meteorologists are pretty darn good at predicting the weather a few hours from now, not bad with predictions for the next day, and much less accurate if asked to predict what’s going to happen a month from now.