For the Love of a Dog (52 page)

Lindsay, Steven. 2000.
Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training Vol. 1: Adaptation and Learning
. Ames: Iowa State University Press.

London, Karen B., and Patricia B. McConnell. 2001
. Feeling Outnumbered? How to Manage and Enjoy Your Multi-Dog Household
. Black Earth, Wisc.: Dog’s Best Friend.

Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff 1997.
Dogs Never Lie About Love
. New York: Three Rivers Press.

McAuliffe, Claudeen E. 2001.
Lucy Won’t Sit: How to Use Your Body, Mind and Voice for a Well-behaved Dog
. Neosho, Wisc.: Kindness K9 Dog Behavior and Training.

McConnell, Patricia B. 1996.
Beginning Family Dog Training
. Black Earth, Wisc.: Dog’s Best Friend.

——. 1996.
How to Be Leader of the Pack and Have Your Dog Love You for It
. Black Earth, Wisc.: Dog’s Best Friend.

——. 2002.
The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs
. New York: Ballantine.

Myers, David G. 2004.
Psychology
. New York: Worth.

Overall, Karen. 1997.
Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Small Animals
. St. Louis: Mosby.

Panksepp, Jaak. 1998.
Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions
. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ratey John J. 2001.
A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
. New York: Vintage.

Reid, Pamela. 1996.
Excel-erated Learning: Explaining in Plain English How Dogs Learn and How Best to Teach Them
. Oakland, Calif.: James and Kenneth Publishers.

Ryan, Terry. 1998.
The Toolbox for Remodeling Your Problem Dog
. New York: Howell Book House.

Schnurr, R. 1972. “Localization of the Septal Rage Syndrome in Long-Evans
Rats.” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology
81, no. 2, pp. 291-96.

Schwartz, Carl E., et al. 2003. “Inhibited and Unihibited Infants ‘Grown Up’: Adult Amygdalar Response to Novelty.”
Science
300 (June 20). pp. 1952-53.

Smith, Douglas W., and Gary Ferguson. 2005.
Decade of the Wolf Returning the Wild to Yellowstone
. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press.

Sternberg, Sue. 2003.
Successful Dog Adoption
. New York: Howell Book House.

Strum, Shirley C. 1987.
Almost Human: A Journey into the World of Baboons
. New York: Random House.

Weiss, Emily. Video:
The SAFER Test
.
www.emilyweiss.com
.

Wright, John C, and Judi Wright Lashnits. 1999.
The Dog Who Would Be King
Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press.

For a delightful and informative discussion on joy, playfulness, and how to tickle rats, see Jaak Panksepp’s book
Affective Neuroscience
. Panksepp is probably the world’s expert on “seeking circuits,” and you can read about them in depth in this book. Readers interested in play, and not intimidated by science, will enjoy reading
Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative and Ecological Perspectives
, by Marc Bekoff and John Myers. In
The Other End of the Leash
, I talk about the rarity of play in adult mammals, and about how dogs and people share a sense of joyful playfulness seen in few other animals. (If you’re interested in the topic, Google “river otters” and “Kea parrots” for descriptions of other animals appearing to have a grand time while playing.)

I learned about our innate reactions to the essence of smiles (a curved line under two dots) in Myers’s
Psychology
(also the source for remembering more bad memories than good ones); also see Paul Ekman’s work about the universality of responses to open-mouth smiles. See Roger Abrantes’s
Dog Language
and Sue Sternberg’s
Successful Dog Adoption
for descriptions of crinkled versus rounded eyes. Patricia Simonet did the research on canine vocalizations that she equates with human laughter; you can listen to a short recording by going to
www.petalk.org/DogLaughSpect.html
. David Watson has done lots of work on
emotion and mood; the study on mood and time of day is discussed in his book, cited below. Sigal Barsade is the researcher who embedded a cheerful colleague in groups working on business-related projects.

There are many excellent resources for readers interested in learning more about “clicker training.” This type of training was originally brought from the laboratory to marine mammal training by Karen Pryor, and then to dog training by Karen Pryor and Gary Wilkes. See
www.clickertraining.com
and
Clicker Training for Dogs
(Pryor) and
www.clickandtreat.com
and
On Target!
(Wilkes). For those interested in the research behind our understanding of the biology of the “seeking circuit,” see below for Christopher D. Fiorillo’s work on reinforcement schedules and dopamine production, and Wolfram Schultz for some of the early studies highlighting dopamine production being highest when animals expect a reward, not when they’ve gotten it.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of petting and therapeutic touch, see Charnetski et al. for the research on an increase in IgA while petting both live and stuffed dogs. See Tiffany Field’s article for more information about how massage can increase the amount of serotonin in the brain, and then go out and get yourself a massage. For even more information about the health effects of petting your dog, see the early work of Beck and Katcher, and, more recently, “Proof of Power Petting” by Brad Kollus and “Dogs Are Good for People, and Vice Versa” by Marcella Durand. Linda Tellington Jones is the originator of Tellington Touch, a process of therapeutic touch that has a solid biological basis and that can be very helpful for both healthy animals and those with physical or emotional difficulties.

Abrantes, Roger. 1997.
Dog Language: An Encyclopedia of Canine Behaviour
. Naperville, Ill.: Wakan Tanka.

Barsade, Sigal. 2002. “The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior.”
Administration Science Quarterly
, December 2002.

Beck, Alan, and Aaron Katcher. 1983.
Between Pets and People: The Importance of Animal Companionship
. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Bekoff, Marc, and John A. Byers. 1998.
Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative and Ecological Perspectives
. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Charnetski, Carl, et al. 2004. “Effect of Petting a Dog on Immune System Function.”
Psychological Reports
95, pp. 1087-91.

Darwin, Charles. 1998.
The Expression of the Emotions in Animals and Man
. Paul Ekman, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Durand, Marcella. 2004. “Dogs Are Good for People, and Vice Versa.” Nov. 2004.

Ekman, Paul. 1973. “Cross-cultural Studies of Facial Expression.” In
Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review
. Paul Ekman, ed. New York: Academic Press.

——. 1987. “Universals and Cultural Differences in the Judgement of Facial Expressions of Emotion.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
53, no. 4, pp. 712-17.

Field, Tiffany. 2002. “Preterm Infant Massage Therapy Studies: an American Approach.”
Seminars in Neonatology
,” 7, no. 6, pp. 487-94.

Fiorillo, Christopher D., et al. 2003. “Discrete Coding of Reward Probability and Uncertainty by Dopamine Neurons.”
Science
299, no. 5614, pp. 1898-1902.

Kollus, Brad. 2005. “Proof of Power Petting.”
Cat Fancy
, March 2005.

London, Karen. 2005. “Coping with Loss.”
The Bark
no. 32 (Fall 2005), pp. 46-48.

McConnell, Patricia B. 2002.
The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs
. New York: Ballantine.

Myers, David G. 2004.
Psychology
. New York: Worth.

Panksepp, Jaak. 1998.
Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions
. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pryor, Karen. 2005.
Clicker Training for Dogs
. Waltham, Mass.: Sunshine Books.

Schultz, Wolfram. 1992. “Activity of Dopamine Neurons in the Behaving Primate.”
Seminars in Neuroscience 4
, pp. 129-38.

Sternberg, Sue. 2003.
Successful Dog Adoption
. New York: Howell Book House.

Watson, David. 2000.
Mood and Temperament
. New York: Guilford.

Wilkes, Gary.
On Target!
Tucson: Click! And Treat Products.

Wilson, E. O. 1978.
On Human Nature
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Given our profound emotional connection to dogs, it is no surprise that there are a vast number of books written about our relationship with them. I can only list
a few here, but these are some of my current favorites:
Dog Is My Co-Pilot
, edited by
The Bark
magazine;
Adam’s Task
, by Vicki Hearne;
A Dog Year
and
The New Work of Dogs
, by Jon Katz; the exquisitely written
Pack of Two
, by Caroline Knapp;
Dogs Never Lie About Love
, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson;
The Rosetta Bone
, by Cheryl Smith;
What the Dog Did
, by Emily Yoffe; and the classic
My Dog Tulip
, by J. R. Ackerley Karen London’s beautiful remark about how our love for dogs spills outside of species boundaries appeared in
The Bark
magazine, noted below. For more about pending legislation that requires disaster shelters to accommodate pets, go to the website of the ASPCA at
www.aspca.org
.

Hardworking biologists Bernd Heinrich and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy have written highly enjoyable accounts of animal behavior; see
Mind of the Raven
, by Heinrich, and
Mother Nature
, by Hrdy (no, that’s not a typo; it really is how she spells her name). No list would be complete without Goodall’s
Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe
. Michael Kosfeld and colleagues were the scientists who introduced oxytocin into people’s noses and found that they became more trusting. If you’re interested in reading about social systems and voles, there is a surprising amount of literature on the behavior of these mouselike creatures; a good place to start is the work by Steve Gaulin. See the study by Fries et al., if you’re interested in oxytocin production and children raised in neglectful orphanages. David Tuber did the study on the attachment of kennel dogs to people they had met only a few times. E. O. Wilson’s book
On Human Nature
recounts the story of the chimpanzee Washoe being potty mouthed to her keepers.

I read about the emotional connection between female vet students and their dogs in Jon Katz’s book
The New Work of Dogs
. Brian Hare is the scientist who looked at dogs’ responses to human pointing gestures. There is a rich and growing literature of studies on communication between people and dogs. Look at the work of Csányi, Miklosi, Pongracz, Povinelli, and Hare if you’d like to learn more.

Csányi, Vilmos. 2000.
If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind
. New York: North Point Press.

Editors of
The Bark. Dog Is My Co-pilot: Great Writers on the World’s Oldest Friendship
. New York: Crown.

Fries, A., et al. 2005. “Early Experience in Humans Associated with Changes in Neuropeptides Critical for Regulating Social Behavior.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
102, no. 47, pp. 17237-40.

Gaulin, Steven J. C, and R. W. Fitzgerald. 1986. “Sex Differences and Spatial Ability: An Evolutionary Hypothesis and Test.”
American Naturalist
127, no. 1, pp. 74-88.

Hare, B., et al. 2002. “The Domestication of Social Cognition in Dogs.”
Science
298, no. 5598, pp. 1634-36.

Hearne, Vicki. 1986.
Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name
. New York: Knopf.

Heinrich, Bernd. 2005. “Talk to the Animals.”
The New York Times
, August 26.

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. 2000.
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species
. New York: Ballantine.

Katz, Jon. 2004.
The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love and Family
. New York: Villard.

Knapp, Caroline. 1995.
Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs
. New York: Dial Press.

Kosfeld, Michael, et al. 2005. “Oxytocin Increases Trust in Humans.”
Nature
435, no. 2, pp. 673-76.

London, Karen B. “Coping with Loss.”
The Bark
no. 32 (Fall 2005), pp. 46-48.

Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff 1997.
Dogs Never Lie About Love
. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Miklosi, A. R., et al. 1998. “Intentional Behavior in Dog-Human Communication: Experimental Analysis of ‘Showing’ Behavior in the Dog.”
Animal Cognition
3, pp. 159-66.

Pongracz, Peter, et al. 2001. “Social Learning in Dogs I: The Effect of a Human Demonstrator on the Performance of Dogs
(Canis familiaris)
in a Detour Task.”
Animal Behaviour
62, no. 6, pp. 1109-1117.

Povinelli, D. J., et al. 1990. “Inferences About Guessing and Knowing by Chimpanzees.”
Journal of Comparative Psychology
104, no. 3, pp. 203-210.

Smith, Cheryl. 2004.
The Rosetta Bone
. New York: Howell Book House.

Tuber, David S., et al. 1996. “Behavioral and Glucocorticoid Responses of Adult Domestic Dogs
(Canis familiaris)
to Companionship and Social Separation.”
Journal of Comparative Psychology
110, no. 1, pp. 103-108.

Wilson, E. O. 1978.
On Human Nature
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Yoffe, Emily. 2005.
What the Dog Did: Tales from a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner
. New York: Bloomsbury.

As I note in the introduction, rafts of stimulating new books have been published recently about the thought processes of nonhuman animals. Many have been
mentioned already, but I repeat them here because they are so integral to this chapter. I recommend
How Dogs Think
, by Stanley Coren;
If Dogs Could Talk
, by Vilmos Csányi; and
The Truth About Dogs
, by Stephen Budiansky as good sources on canine cognition. I encourage interested readers to pick up books on animal cognition in general, including Marc Hauser’s
Wild Minds
, Donald Griffin’s
Animal Minds
, and the more technical
Primate Cognition
, by Tomasello and Call.