Coco's Dilemma

Just a few months ago a referring veterinarian called me on an aggression case that involved an elderly couple - the wife was 78 and the husband was 82 years old - and a young, very energetic two year old Springer spaniel neutered dog that their daughter had given them to keep them company in their country home.

My friend, a veterinarian who is well versed on behavioral issues, explained on the phone that this was a high-risk dominance aggression problem, the dog was not really that aggressive, she explained but the husband was on blood thinning medication and could not afford to continue being wounded from a bite or a scratch. On the other hand, the wife was arthritic and fragile, her ankles and knees were very weak and the dog could knock her down plus the fact that they lived relatively far from the nearest hospital made this a very serious situation indeed.

 Regardless of how bad the dog was, the mold had been cast and according to their physician, he had to go. The veterinarian painfully wanted my involvement just to exhaust all possibilities before euthanizing the animal. I understood and of course, said that I would see them and called them. After a lengthy and emotionally charged conversation with both owners on the phone, it became very clear to me that in spite of the problem, they loved their dog very much and that the welfare of the animal was their foremost concern, they would consider giving him up but not euthanize him. After all, they raised him from a tiny pup and were not blind to their health issues and their doctor’s concerns. Their physician even went as far as contacting the veterinarian, urging her to convince them to relinquish the animal and she in turn called me to help accomplish this task. Yikes! Who is going to take an aggressive dog? How am I going to convince them to let go of this dog that has tremendous significance in their lives? It was a tough situation all around. But nevertheless, we set up an appointment and see what happens.

When I arrived at the client’s home with my normal already conditioned “jitters” that I get when visiting cases involving aggression, I was pleasantly surprised to be exuberantly greeted at the door by a very pretty Springer spaniel. The dog looked like a large pup of about 35 pounds; I could not help but want to touch him, he was definitely a cuddling object. The dog’s name was Coco and he wiggled his way into my arms. He had huge expressive eyes and his head and ears were disproportionately larger than his body, a stimulus configuration that made him look like a baby animal. Ethological research indicates that baby or infant features in young animals act as releasing stimuli or triggers that elicit parental or caring behavior and that is what happened to me. Coco’s behavior also matched his looks: he whined and wiggled, smiling all the time in his exuberance while I petted him, he could not get enough of me and would run back and forth between his owners and myself in pure delight. 

While this was going on, I was observing the owners as well and their kind old faces radiated with love and pride in this most beautiful animal and his antics. Remember that I was there to get the dog out of the house for good, so I put on my professional hat and went to work. The initial interview and observations revealed that Coco was not only a very excitable dog but he also had very little education: he would not listen to basic commands unless they had a treat in hand that he had to see before responding; he would also steal stuff from the counters and table tops and the owners had great difficulty chasing him down. If they managed to corner and catch him, he would show his teeth and if they reached for the item, he would snap at them which made them let go and Coco would run off happily with the item and therefore his threats were reinforced: learned dominance/possessive aggression.

Furthermore, if they wanted to, say, groom him and tried to control him and he did not want to be restricted, he would also snap at their hands and arms in protest, not hard, but hard enough to risk a cut or bruise - the risk that we could not take! These, in a nutshell were the unacceptable things about Coco. Lucky for us, his aggressive behavior was not a well-established pattern where a dominant-aggressive dog bites down hard on the owner and truly attempts to do serious damage. Coco’s aggression was relatively mild but bad enough in this case where it was not affordable. He was also very attached, playful and loving: he kept them active and engaged in care-giving behavior. So what could we do?

Under normal circumstances and by following prescribed procedures, these cases are fixable but it takes energy, some minor risks and agility on the part of the owners- abilities that my clients did not have and therefore, not applicable. Simple adoption was also questionable since behavioral intervention and therapy require a great deal of dedication, attachment and love for the animal and new owners, no matter how caring, are not likely to be sufficiently motivated to save the animal who also does not have enough attachment to them to compensate against the often stressful and unpleasant temporary procedures required by the therapy.

So I presented the couple with this dilemma and as could be predicted, they adamantly rejected euthanasia just like they did with the veterinarian and their physician. They also understood that adoption was only going to prolong the suffering. I could not blame them, as they did not have to explain to me, their nonverbal message was loud and clear: Coco was integral to their lives, he kept them going from day to day, they both said to me that they could not imagine not having Coco around, let alone put him to sleep because of their own disabilities. I understood their conundrum perfectly well and did not like it. So what to do? I could not take the dog, fix it and then hand it back: therapy just does not work that way, I could teach the dog not to bite me since dominance aggression is relative to the nature of a relationship but I could not transfer my relationship with the dog to the owners, their relationship has to shift in vivo.

So, toward the end of my visit I was feeling pretty helpless but also realized that I had to make things work for them and Coco, which meant to go somewhere, think deeply of what I know (and don’t know), contemplate my navel, talk to colleagues, friends, gurunoids, angels, other psychologists, old professors and on and on… I had to come up with answers that would fit the situation. I had to engineer a very passive approach with zero-risk procedures, quite a set of requirements to be sure.

After a few days of dissecting things out in my head, the answers began to trickle in slowly but surely: first of all, since the dog was very energetic and we needed him to slow down a bit in the house and be somewhat tired, we hired a neighbor kid to take Coco out after school for long walks in the woods on a 30 ft. check-cord. We also fed him immediately after coming back tired and hungry, and here, since he was most motivated to get fed, we taught Coco to respond to various commands using both verbal and visual signals, in particular “lay down” and “roll over” - the most submissive positions I can think of for a dog to do. I also taught the owners to pay attention to his facial expressions and reward (reinforce) him with their own smiles, baby talk and petting for those expressions associated with submission like ears down and relaxed, tail relaxed, slack jaw, soft eyes and so on. By combining Ethology, which uses muscle contractions as the basic data to indicate internal emotional states and modern behavioristic psychology, which reinforces goal oriented behaviors, we were teaching the dog to give us submissive signals and therefore change his perspective. Also, in order to maintain control of Coco’s resources and be responsive to us, we only gave him 15 minutes to eat. These passive procedures are very helpful in producing dependency and prosocial submission, the logic being that if the animal is aware of its dependency and has to work for his resources and pay attention, it develops a submissive attitude, which counters the possessive tendencies of dominant animals.

Following the feeding, Coco was again taken out by both owners on a long leash to eliminate and was brought back to be placed in the laundry room with a comfortable bed for at least an hour, just to let him relax and be confined rather than running around the house terrorizing them. As in humans, these relaxation periods induce calmness in the animal as long as they are not too long and we took advantage of it by training and socializing quietly right after the animal was let out. Here, I had the owners wear leather gloves and long sleeve shirts, and they were to play-train him with balls, toys and petting - good exercise for them. If Coco jumped on their arms and hands, the gloves and long sleeves would protect them from injury. We also added a short check-cord at this time so that they could handle him without struggling to reach for the collar while the dog was moving around. This not only gave them control over the dog during times of excitement and emotional arousal but it diminished the chances of them getting hurt; this also taught Coco that they had the power to restrict him as well. Most importantly, aggressive bites in dominance issues as well as in cases of panic-triggered aggression are most often elicited when we reach for the collar and the hand is very close to the head. If the hand stays at a safe distance, which is attainable with the short check-cord, the bite is avoided altogether and one gains control.

If they saw that the dog was getting uptight, they were instructed to put Coco back in the laundry room for a time-out using the check-cord to guide him without need for touching or reaching for him and therefore avoiding aggression. So this procedure circumvented the bite and yet gave us control over the animal.

Eventually, the biting disappeared since the intention to bite was not reinforced by the person fearing and moving away or letting go of the animal or by going in the opposite direction with threats or striking the dog.

Another situation that reinforced the possessive and dominance behavior was when the owners unsuccessfully tried to take small items that he stole from counters and tabletops. So we set Coco up on a self-inflicting punishment program where we put specific items that he liked to steal in the past on tabletops with a small mousetrap underneath. When Coco reached, the trap went off and scared the hell out of him. This was very effective because Coco tried it only twice in different places and both times the trap went off (a stroke of luck). He has not tried to reach for things on tables since the second incident: talking about one-trial learning!

I now check with them every few weeks and I am happy to report that there have been no instances of aggression since we started. Coco quit jumping on them, has not stolen things and only play-bites, which is allowed during play when initiated by the owners wearing gloves and long sleeves. The gloves, in fact, have become cues for this kind of play and roughhousing - all necessary behaviors for the dog’s mental stability - and there has been no defense of food.   

So what was wrong with this dog? Nothing really. Simply, he never learned to be anything other than an unruly pup with no contingencies and by biting at them and taking things from the counters he got their attention and was in fact, in control.  Now Coco is still getting the attention he wants and more since the conflict and fear that was generated by anti-social encounters has been eliminated, our approach has infused a good sense of harmony into their relationship serving as fertile ground for developing an even stronger bond.

Cases like this bring home the fact that the real issue and the focus of therapy is always about the interaction between the players, human and animal. The behaviors of all animals have a range with some being typically more fearful, more aggressive, more reclusive, or more intense than the norm and so it takes unusual ameliorative behaviors on the part of the human to get them within the normal range. In Coco’s case, the dog was within this normal range, it was the people whose behavior was dysfunctional, so just by undoing the “harm” their dysfunction produced and getting them to be functional solved the problem.

Like any human being engaged in work that involves problem solving, I have days when nothing goes right. I feel deflated and question my ability, my knowledge, even my worth and usefulness. Then I reflect on events like Coco’s case: we started with an unhappy dog whose days were numbered, an unhappy veterinarian feeling helpless to aid her clients and a very sad older couple facing the reality of having to give up a pet that they truly loved because of problems no one could solve. In the end, my efforts brought harmony to everyone; I not only used my knowledge, my “science” as it were, but I connected with others in a very deep emotional sense as well. Thinking about this, my perception and feelings shift, the emotional gloom lifts and I get a deep sense of understanding that none of us is infallible and this brings me closer not only to my fellow humans, but to all beings. So I am grateful to Coco and his people for giving me this opportunity to grow.

Mike and Bo

    In our last post we described the case of Millie, a cute and lovable little Springer Spaniel who, for the most part, was a great pet but occasionally beyond her control, would become irrationally aggressive toward her people (see "The Mysterious Bites: Ouch!"). I attributed Millie's problem to her genetically predisposed tendency to remain immature, a condition known as neoteny. She was incapable of controlling her emotions: if frustrated, she would lash out at her people and repeatedly bite them until the response was exhausted. This aggression problem has been identified as Springer Rage since it is common in this and related breeds, though not limited to them exclusively.

    For illustrative purposes, we can think of Springer Rage as if dealing with a person who does not grow out of the very infantile stage of throwing temper tantrums and striking out at the parents in frustration for insignificant reasons or just because the kid is in a bad mood. Our theoretical person remains incapable of controlling his temper as an adult thus becoming dangerous to society and a big problem for himself - not a bad or evil person per se, just one that can not control his temper.

   The neoteny hypothesis implies that since we want playful and cute baby-faced dogs as pets, we are breeding animals that stay psychologically immature. This is fine as long as the dog develops the necessary social skills, in particular control of antisocial emotions, to be able to survive and get along in a complex human environment. This does happen most of the times but at other times this fails to occur and creates a big problem: ergo the Springer Rage syndrome.

   So presently, I want to deal with a case of a nine month old yellow Labrador retriever named Bo with this kind of problem whom I was able to help because of what I learned from Millie. Bo only weighed 50 pounds - relatively small for the breed but growing fast. He lived with his owner Mike, a single man, in a large two-story home with lots of room to roam.  Mike had never had a dog, and since he now lived alone, decided that a dog would be good company for him. When I arrived at the home, Bo greeted me well enough, he was excited, playful and very friendly: he seemed fine to me. The problem was that Bo had the habit of picking up things and carrying them in his mouth, which Mike could most of the time take from him without a problem, but occasionally Bo would just lunge at him ferociously and without inhibition, try to bite him in order to protect the item from Mike. As a small puppy this might have been cute, but now, at nine months old, he was getting dangerous to live with.

    Mike had discussed this with the veterinarian who diagnosed it as Springer Rage, meaning that the problem was neurological and that there was no cure: the dog had to be euthanized. As Mike was telling me this, I noticed that he was having a tough time with it –very understandable; he explained that he did not have many friends and that Bo was really his best buddy. Mike was also undergoing psychotherapy for depression and anxiety disorder. The prospect of losing Bo would be devastating for him, he said. As I was taking in this sad narrative, Mike's suffering and conflict were palpable and I also noticed that Bo went over to Mike, put his head on his lap, sighed a deep sigh and looked up at him trying to make eye contact while swishing his tail slowly on the ground: no question in my mind that Bo also picked up on his sadness and was showing great empathy and solidarity with Mike - not an uncommon occurrence with dogs, who are after all biologically destined to be social animals with predisposed potential to develop complex social and therefore psychological skills.

    I pointed out Bo's behavior to Mike and asked him to interpret it: Mike was aware of it and explained that when he was upset, Bo seemed to know it and do that, follow him around and sometimes tried to get him to play by barking and play-bowing to him while carrying a toy in his mouth; Bo was keenly attuned to Mike's moods so I asked him how he responded to Bo at these times and his answer was complex: on the one hand it was very difficult for him to play when depressed but he also felt guilty about not paying attention to the dog, so he would force himself to focus on Bo and for short moments would forget his troubles. 

    At other times, he just could not deal with it and felt emotionally paralyzed and Bo would just hang out by him. I asked Mike again how he felt when this happened and from his answer it was clear that Bo was very helpful in providing comfort by his presence and attention: Bo's demeanor and attentiveness, he explained, was a tonic for him. What blew my mind was that because Bo was so attuned to him, he occasionally was capable of truly coming out of his depression and according to his narrative, a heavy weight would lift from his chest which I assumed to be the physical manifestation of his depression.

     Mike loved to go outside in the yard, play ball or throw a toy for Bo to chase, which they did often. However, it was also at these times that Bo would lose it and attack Mike when he tried to take the toy from him thus making things more conflicting and emotionally wrenching for Mike.

    Nevertheless, it was obvious that these activities were very useful for Mike, so I prodded him to go deeper into this and his relationship with Bo. Through our conversations in the following weeks where we worked on Bo's aggression, Mike gradually became more aware, more conscious, that during those moments with Bo and without aggression, his depression and anxiety would go into abeyance for a while, so we continued with our talks and envisaged Bo's state of mind and how he focused on the present and how he influenced Mike to follow suit and since Mike saw how this focusing-in-the-present business helped him, it gave credibility to the idea that Bo (if we could solve his problem) could teach him that life is to be taken a moment at a time and that by observing himself, he realized that his depression and anxiety are more based on unrealistic and imaginary afflictions: the anxiety would disappear momentarily when engaged with Bo and his needs. We talked about this extensively.

    I asked him to take the concept of time into account when discussing his problems, that is to take the past present and the future into consideration and to place his problems in this perspective. After some time of coaching, he began to see that these were associated with impending fear of the future, which was based on his experiences in the past but that in reality they now presented no heavy and insurmountable problems. He was, after all, a relatively successful commercial artist with a fine home in a beautiful old neighborhood with majestic ancient oaks that he had inherited from his parents and his health was good.

    Therefore, we discovered that Bo was his best medicine, thus if we had to put Bo down, it would be truly catastrophic for him. Now I was anxious because it was up to me not to let this happen. So, given the diagnosis and my thoughts about Millie, Mike and I went to the local hardware store and bought the largest, heaviest and thickest pair of welding gloves we could find and went back to deal with Bo.

    It was obvious that Bo’s aggression was triggered by uninhibited possessive tendencies, not unusual in very young pups. Puppies play and compete with each other all the time and when very young, the aggression is not inhibited. Inhibition or control of aggression develops later on with the advent of maturation and socialization; in fact we can describe socialization as the ability to handle and control antisocial emotions and behaviors, which is after all the most significant skill that a social animal has to learn. So the neoteny hypothesis states that some dogs do not grow up emotionally enough to be able to inhibit these tendencies as a matter of maturation but that does not mean that these tendencies can not be modified or eliminated, which is what I was going to do with Bo.

   The method I chose to drastically reduce or eliminate this biting behavior is a combination of a well-established procedure in the behavior modification literature known as simple extinction and a not so-well known behavioral nuance called massed trials.

   The extinction procedure basically involves the repetitive presentation of the stimulus configuration that triggers the undesirable behavior without reinforcing it and the massed trial process involves the presentation of these trials one after the other without pause. The logic behind these methods is that if a behavior is not reinforced, it will disappear, or go into extinction and if it is repeated without pause, the response will become temporarily exhausted. Therefore, the combination of non-reinforcement and exhaustion should work together and eliminate the inappropriate response and set up new non-competitive and non-aggressive associations and experiences or learning.  In our situation: a) we wear the gloves to protect our hands from the bite, b) do not let go of the item, c) do not get uptight about it d) let Bo bite until he quits and e) do it all over again immediately.

    So I put on the gloves, which, in spite of having relatively large hands, were huge on me; I had plenty of wiggle room and could move my fingers out of the way when Bo bit down on the gloves. Given that Bo was a retriever and fiercely attached to whatever he carried in his mouth, the thwarting of his desire to possess the object was the immediate trigger for the attacks, I went to work.

    Like with Millie, I threw his favorite toy for him and prepared myself for the bite. The bite came as predicted and he lunged for the gloved hand where I was holding the toy, wiggled my fingers away and Bo continued to bite: I was fine, I did not get hurt. I let him bite to his heart content and after four consecutive bites, he quit, did not get the toy and no one took him up on the challenge (non-reinforcement) and right away threw the toy again (massed trial) for him to chase. 

    He responded well enough, chased it but his enthusiasm was diminished due to the previous tense experience and conflicting emotions. He nevertheless brought it back with some degree of uncertainty, which was good: we were engaging his emotions. I took it from him without incident, threw it again and Bo brought it back; he bit at my gloved hand again but this time he only bit twice and not as intensely as the first time: the energy of the bite was being exhausted, the result of massed trials. I threw again; he chased and crashed it, his enthusiasm improved. He let me throw it about seven or eight times, then bit into my gloved hand again but the bite had very little energy by then. I threw it again; he jumped on it and was happy (the uptightness was disappearing), brought it back and seemed to have forgotten about the bite. All aggression had disappeared for the moment and we did this a few more times without incidents and Bo was all smiles and wagging his tail happily. So was I.

   We waited for about a half hour while Mike and I talked and then I had him do the same thing. We counted the number of times that he could take the toy from Bo before he would bite: on the first set Bo bit at Mike's gloved hand after the fifth trial. The bite was a bit more intense than the last incident with me but still much less than the first trial. It was light enough that if Mike had not been wearing the gloves, it would not have penetrated his skin. We continued to do this a few more times and Bo just got into the retrieving game without getting uptight or biting at all, we praised the hell out of him and went out into the yard just to cool down. Mike chased Bo around a bit and played tug-of war with the gloves: the gloves were being associated with play and social excitement. 

   So we discovered that the aggressive response could be exhausted with these massed trials and developed a data sheet where we could record the number of trials and Bo's responses. I also set up obedience exercises for Bo where he would have to respond to a set of commands before he was fed, taken out, cuddled, or played with. These are very useful exercises for creating pro-social submissive behaviors or appropriate social skills necessary for domestic dogs living inside the home.

   We analyzed the data in the next few weeks and to my delight, Mike was enthused about the results. The dependency exercises were going great, Bo was more attentive to Mike; he would wait eagerly to be told what to do in order to receive his rewards and the gloved exercises were also going well and although he still occasionally attacked the gloved hand, we estimated that the intensity and frequency had diminished significantly. This trend continued and by the second month of this, all serious and uncontrollable attacks stopped altogether. The only remaining aggression was now associated with play where Bo and Mike played tug of war with the gloves but the seriousness had stopped.

   In conclusion, even though Bo remains a very immature animal, we were able through our procedures to train him to shift his behavior from fear of loss of a desirable item to a playful understanding that this is only a game. Furthermore, Mike, by becoming more observant of Bo and his focus on the moment, had developed a new and more enlightened perspective about his own problems: he is now reasonably capable of observing himself, is more accepting of his state of mind at the moment and more at ease with it when it does occur.

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The Mysterious Bites: Ouch!

Early in my career I came across a case where, on my initial diagnostic visit, I was repeatedly bitten by a small female Springer Spaniel named Millie. The owners, a young couple with no children had explained on the phone to me that Millie was a wonderful, loving and sweet dog. They acquired her when she was a  pup and they were very attached to her but if they could not solve her biting problem, they were very seriously and regrettably considering euthanasia because she was too dangerous to have around; they were planning to have children soon as well. They were very upset, and told me that I was their last resort.  

 Millie, they explained, would very unpredictably lash out at them; her mood would suddenly shift and just attack them ferociously for no rhyme or reason and she had already laid some nasty bites on them.  This was serious stuff, I thought, and they had been putting up with it for some time. Millie was two years old when I was called on the case and she had been doing this for at least a year. They had consulted with their veterinarian who identified the problem as "Springer Rage" and recommended euthanasia. Since I had already heard of this behavioral diagnosis from other veterinarians but could not make sense of it, I did not buy it. This diagnosis basically maintains that the dog suddenly attacks for no apparent reason, the behavior is unpredictable and that the problem is rooted in an unknown neurological dysfunction that can not be treated. Although I was excited to finally see a case of this nature, I was also keenly aware of the people's anxiety on the phone. So I went to see them for the initial diagnostic visit not really knowing what I would find there or if I could be of any help.

The attack came relatively late into the interview when we were playing catch: Millie would bring her squeaky toy, drop it at my feet and then I would throw it for her. She went chasing after the toy happily enough and returned it to me to throw again. It was all normal play and we did this a few times. This interaction, which, in my experience, always made things better by inducing friendliness and relaxation, in this case backfired: it went the other way! Although the toy was still on the ground, Millie's demeanor suddenly changed and ferociously growled and attacked my hand before I could reach for the toy. Even though I intellectually expected a problem due to the description by her owners, I never expected this violence. My previous experiences with dogs, my formal training and my gut told me that there could be no danger at that point since we were at play and relaxed. I also had not challenged or inhibited her control of the toy at all and any changes in Millie's attitude would have made themselves evident long before the bite. Sudden shifts in mood of this magnitude are not normal and I ruefully concluded that the veterinarians were right on this point.

The first bite was hard and penetrated my hand, definitely a serious bite and it hurt big time but I did not jerk my hand away, I just left it there. Millie continued to bite while I watched the attack. She bit me five times in less than two seconds but with each consecutive bite, the intensity lessened and by the fifth bite she barely touched me. Of course the whole episode was exceedingly intense and my hand was bleeding profusely from the first and only penetrating bite. One can ask why would I leave my hand there and not protect myself? The answer to that is somewhat of a mystery even to me but I intuitively knew that I needed to let the behavior follow its own course without interference from my own erratic reaction to the attack, which would confound the results.

By then I had been thinking about the origins and triggers of this kind of aggression for some time and how it is maintained, so this was it! As a scientist I was thrilled though as a person my hand was throbbing. Millie was small enough - she only weighed around 30 pounds – “how much damage can she do?” I thought.  So I risked it, observed it and got my answer: the attack was definitely intense and without hesitation, which is not the norm; it was also paradoxically inappropriate to the situation and it was self-terminating. The behavior seemed to be stereotypical and rigid as if driven by genetically bound triggers in front of a specific releasing stimulus as in a fixed action pattern. All very different from the well-organized patterns and complexities associated with either defensive or offensive aggression and it did not make any sense given the situation under which it occurred. Very weird indeed and the veterinarians were once again correct: this was unpredictable and dangerous.  

At any rate, we cleaned up my wounds: 4 punctures from the first bite where the canine teeth penetrated and some bruising from the incisors. The subsequent bites did not penetrate; the second bite hurt and the third hurt a bit less. The fifth bite barely touched my skin and the dog quit on its own volition. My heart was beating madly but it was over and I got a lot of information out of it. Subsequently, Millie went away to sulk and one could tell that she was upset by the whole incident.

Well, we were all pretty upset, that was for sure. We continued with the interview after we took care of my hand and I found no other behavioral issues that would allow me to make sense of the aggression. Now I fully understood the description of the behavior if not its function. I finally left after spending three hours asking questions trying to figure this out during which time Millie remained upset. I was stumped and discouraged, I could not hang the incident onto any theory of behavior that addressed the issues of function and adaptation, control and development, but nevertheless we set up an appointment for the week after to give myself some time to mull it over, talk to some people and maybe figure it out.

Unfortunately, two days later Millie's mom called to inform me that they had discussed the issue in great depth and had decided that they could not take it anymore and Millie was euthanized that day. She was crying and I expressed my condolences to her but kept some distance from her suffering. I was both personally and professionally upset by the news since I had put a lot into it: my hand was still swollen from the bite and I wanted some pay off from that which was to continue to study the case. After we hung up I just sat quietly for a while thinking of my loss of opportunity but as I was observing myself in this state, something shifted inside which made me focus on poor dead Millie and how her mom was crying inconsolably when she informed me of their decision. I began to think not of my loss but of their personal loss, which after all was much greater. So I called them back and I listened more deeply to their words - their suffering.

I listened with my heart this time which made all of us feel better. I had a sense at that time of having come together with them and eventually spoke of finding them another puppy when they were ready for it. When I hung up, my turmoil was gone, I was still sad but now a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest. A few months later I helped them find a new puppy, a Staffordshire terrier, which they named Eli and he was a hoot. This dog wanted nothing to do with anything if it was not fun, my kind of dog. We became good friends, visited and went for many walks with Eli; sometimes we would speak of Millie and the things we could have done for her if I had known at the time what I know now; but that could not be helped. A few years later they moved out west but we still speak on the phone once in a while. Eli lived to be an old dog and now they have two children and a mutt named Oscar that they adopted from a shelter, they are all well.

From Millie and from other similar cases that I subsequently treated, I developed the hypothesis that due to selective breeding, some dogs are genetically over-bred to retrieve game which often produces animals that must carry something in their mouths at all times or most of the times and they become compulsively and neurotically attached to this habit and even though their competitive play behaviors are intact, the compulsive "holding behavior" short-circuits the social play and triggers the described rage response through an acute panic attack. Another factor that I suspect to be associated with the syndrome is known as the neoteny hypothesis which is described in the literature as the human propensity to selectively breed dogs to produce very docile and infantilized animals and I suspect that Springer Rage is highly associated with the lack of inhibitory mechanisms exhibited in the behavior of very young animals, who still do not have the capacity to learn complex social skills that require the inhibition of aggression. Clearly, the case of Millie has to be counted as "a failure" since I was not able to come up with a way to rectify the dog's dangerous behavior but it did start me down the path of new knowledge that was helpful to others in the future. 

On the next post, I will discuss these issues and some solutions to these "unprovoked" aggression problems.

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Dancing with Bob

Several years into my practice, I saw a case of a lady who lived alone with her 14 month old male Great Dane named Bob. Bob had bitten her seriously enough on the face to require emergency treatment and plastic surgery. This was a bad bite and she was lucky enough not to have lost an eye. The bite occurred in a situation where she had struggled with the dog over his grabbing her shoe in his mouth and not relinquishing it. The authorities deemed the animal dangerous and wanted to have him euthanized, her ex-husband agreed as well. This would seem a reasonable conclusion to draw but she said no, she loved that dog; did not know what she was going to do, but euthanasia was out of the question as far as she was concerned. She would not allow anyone to touch Bob and called her veterinarian for advice.

The veterinarian then called me and expressed how surprised he was by the incident. He had been taking care of Bob since he was a small pup and had always been a pleasant animal to treat. However, given the extent of the injury, he thought that for some unknown reason Bob had become dangerous and he had, obviously. I told him that I would talk to the owner but based on his description of the situation, I too had my doubts about the animal. When I first spoke to her on the phone, I expressed my fears on how dangerous her situation was simply because of Bob's size and strength but she still insisted that Bob not be put down. I listened and decided to suspend my judgment at that time. Perhaps there was more here than meets the eye, I thought. Why would an animal described by the vet as pleasant and obviously in a very strong bonding situation with its owner turn violent and attack like that? I was still skeptical if truth be told, but agreed to come see them if only to try to help her see the problem as the rest of us saw it. This conversation also told me a lot about her love for her animal. Her attachment was great, the bond she had with Bob was deeply felt and I was more than curious to learn about it.

So I visited the home early one afternoon and met her outside the house. She still had stitches on one side of her face: there were two long jagged cuts running from just below the eye down to the corner of her mouth where the upper canine teeth had ripped as she pulled away from the bite. I was already apprehensive and the sight of the injury kicked up my "freak-out" gauge a couple of notches (big aggressive dogs give me the willies, but again, no one promised me a rose garden in this business).

To my surprise, when Bob was brought out, he greeted me wagging and wiggling, smiling from ear to ear and whining like a puppy. He was exuberant! Simply put, the dog was delighted to see me. No fear here, biting me was definitely the last thing on his mind; I began to breath again. I expected to see at least an apprehensive animal if not downright an Attila the Hun. We released Bob from his leash and he came bounding up to me in the most playful demeanor; a big baby and I laughed but he was big and rough. He kept jumping up on me for attention, grabbing my hands and arms since I used them to protect my face from his paws. He was just a silly and unruly pup,  but too big! I gently pushed him away but still welcome him into me, my face all smiles and goofy talk, always signaling friendliness and excitement. We were communicating our good intentions and states of mind (at least my mind as I know it), but his expressions and mine danced in unison and there was trust and friendship, therefore there was common mindfulness.

So I just followed suit and plunged into the spirit of his game.  This play allowed me to be very conscious of his demeanor for any changes in emotion and I also kept my balance at all times, dancing with Bob. There was no need for tests of emotionality as the Open Field Test (see previous post)  or test for fear of strangers and all that. I felt safe but watchful, because as long as there is play, the probability of aggression is extremely low but that does not mean that it can not change and a good observer can generally predict when that is going to happen. (However, and to my misfortune, on a few occasions I have accidentally pushed the envelope a bit too far when playing with aggressive dogs and have been bitten as I will describe in future posts; at other times I have done this purposefully while ready for the attack to find out the point at which the dog's demeanor changes. Finding this threshold is very useful information because it gives us a starting point  for behavioral intervention where the trigger stimulus is to be manipulated.)

Since Bob  was very strong and unruly, there was no way that I could control him physically without exerting lots of muscle which I did not want to do anyway, I just wanted to observe the natural behavioral patterns as they occurred. I also did not want to get into a match of wills with him as long as we were making body contact. So I played, giving him some leeway in his unruliness; but in reality I was having a good time anyway and did not want to stop either, especially since my trepidation was not met. Then I changed the game to tug-of-war with a short piece of heavy rope and he was fine with that also. He grabbed that rope with his teeth and we tugged and growled playfully which gave me a break from wrestling.

Many trainers believe that we should not play tug-of war or wrestle with our dogs because it is competitive and that, it is. However, competitive behavior is not only a very important variable to investigate as a way of assessing and understanding a dog, but competitive play is also a form of therapy to socially channel potentially dangerous behavioral patterns, provided that we keep it in check. Competitive play is very useful in that playfulness in the animal is a very powerful and utilitarian reinforcer; in my professional experience, I have found tug-of-war to be a very convenient and powerful reinforcer when training energetic dogs.

I definitely got my exercise playing tug-of-war with Bob and finally tired, so I changed the game to throwing a ball for him and that made it easier for me. Bob stayed just as enthusiastic with that. We must have played hard for about 15 minutes and his energy remained high. So what did I learn from this? I learned at least that the aggression could not have been triggered by some well organized set of learned dominance driven responses or by a well established fear motivated reaction and that it must have been triggered by something that the human did that freaked out the dog. In other words, I suspected a novel external stimulus configuration which produced intense alarm in the animal: alarm-triggered aggression.

Bob's mom said to me: "See how sweet he is, how can I put this dog down? He is my daily companion, sleeps with me, follows me around and I talk to him all the time. I love this dog, he is my family! Is he sick, mentally imbalanced, is he a lost case?" These questions kept coming at me like machine gun fire, all charged with anxiety and fear for the animal; she was not concerned about her own safety so much as she was about the life of her pet. This was a happy dog, no question in my mind. He too loved his owner, he ran to her to be petted, jumped on her smiling his happiness for having me around to play with and so on: not your typical nasty animal that bites. It was obvious that these two had a very deep and loving relationship, they were strongly attached to each other. She was right, no way I could recommend to put this dog down without at least gaining some insight into the problem and try to solve it.

So what happened? Why did Bob bite her? The answer was not difficult to arrive at once we went deep into the incident and gathered some history: Bob came to her as an eight week old pup weighing only a few pounds, he was always playful  and very energetic but grew in size and strength very quickly, he had a free run of the house and very little obedience training. He would sit for treats and that is all and came when he felt like it. His owner managed him gently, manipulating him softly to bring him back into the house from the yard. He was difficult to walk on a leash, dragged her around and got worse as he grew. If she tried to restrain him, he just muscled his way out (I suspected this by the way he played with me), pant-smile and go on with what he was doing. Bob had also learned about his own strength during a very critical period when many domestic pet dogs seek independence which is around six to eight months of age, coinciding with the onset of sexual maturity.

           

Occasionally, Bob would pick up something like a shoe and not give it up. If his owner insisted, he would turn his head away from her and growl a low guttural growl of warning while still smiling and holding his body in a playful pose but eventually give up the item and forget the whole episode - the beginnings of possessive aggression. She realized that she had very little control over this very large animal and that the situation could get out of hand, so she called a trainer for help.

The trainer correctly diagnosed the situation as a a case of hierarchical/dominance issues and unruliness. He called Bob an "alpha dog". So he went to work: after playing a bit with Bob, the trainer let him have a shoe that in the past lead to the possessiveness and eventual warning growl. When Bob took it and happily ran off with it, the trainer  approached him and tried to take the object from him which, as expected, lead Bob to resist and growl. The trainer then took the dog by the collar and wrestled him to the ground, pinned him there and took the shoe away from him. The dog, as the owner told me,  put his tail between his legs and slunk away in alarm when he was released and went to her for comfort which she gave. So there, his recommendation was that she had to dominate and show the dog who is boss, or alpha, as he referred to it. The trainer tried to coax Bob into taking the item again, but the dog refused to participate, he simply laid down by his owner's side while  apprehensively looking at the trainer. He was very subdued after that. The lady was impressed, she had never seen Bob in such a docile state before.

The bite took place a few days later on the first occasion that she tried to wrestle and pin Bob to the ground as she was instructed to do. As she was telling me the story, I cringed since I would have put my bottom dollar on the bite. The bite took place because Bob's owner acted in a very atypical and unpredictable way, she violated the established order between them. In the dog's mind, if you will, his past experience and learning told him that he could take anything he wanted and his owner was to coax him into letting it go. They had an understanding of the nature of their relationship and how they did things and her unexpected violence alarmed Bob which then triggered the bite. The trainer got away with alarming the animal by pinning him aggressively because they had no history. The dog had no expectations of the trainer and immediately saw him as someone "you don't mess around with". Plus the trainer was relatively large and strong, certainly more formidable visually and physically than the owner. Bob was bullied by a stranger who inspired fear and a defensive retreat.

Therefore, what the trainer dangerously did not take into account was the nature of the relationship between the dog and its owner and the differences between her and him. It is within this relationship, this matrix of social patterns that the dog learned who it was in relation to its owner who very wisely paid attention to Bob's warning growls. They understood and predicted each other's behavior; not necessarily satisfying to the human but it had flow and predictable continuity and everyone was civil. The bite took place because something was done to alarmingly rupture this continuity with all its emotional components. The dog was certainly alarmed by his owner's aggression but not afraid of her as was the case with the trainer as a stranger - they were qualitatively different. Bob knew his owner and had a sense of being confident in relation to her, so the lack of fear toward her and the emotional alarm triggered the bite. Simple.

I thought about the details of the case and decided that in order to solve the problem it was necessary to understand and manipulate this relationship where hierarchical issues were not well established by the players and define it where the person is positively accepted as dominant and discard all violent attempts at control. I needed to produce a dependent dog and did this by setting up contingencies for him in which he had to respond to a set of commands from the owner (work for reinforcers) in order to have his daily needs met: food, let outside, play, petting, attention and so on. The more commands, the better.

The logic behind this program is based on the fact that social and select physiological dependency like food and shelter leads to submission where authority is not challenged. Although dominance is sometimes acquired through being the toughest individual in the group, most often dominance is maintained through social consent and tradition where violence and threats do not play a defining role. When dominance is acquired through violence, it is generally short lived: by definition, violence produces fear, inhibition and resentment; these factors are effective for short term control of another but in the long run it fails since it produces a very weak, unstable and non-harmonious social matrix which can be disrupted and even dismantled easily since the members of the group are not strongly bonded to each other. There are many examples of this problem, both on the popular and scientific literature, where trainers and keepers of large animals have been injured and killed by their charges. These incidents always take place either immediately following a bout of aggression on the part of the human or when the trainer puts himself in a vulnerable position and the animal charges, fueled by pent up resentment and fear.

Following a systematic protocol, Bob's behavior changed dramatically: the unruliness fell off in time and he became more manageable. He smiled as much as he did before. The growling became a game and he was more attentive to his owner - from a behavioral point of view, the owner became a very powerful higher order reinforcer and from an ethological perspective, Bob accepted his owner as dominant. So in reality, this was a case of misunderstanding, not one where the dog is inherently aggressive and nasty or a maverick with evil intentions toward its owner. We rearranged the social canvas with the materials we had: the social need of the animal and the human to be connected to each other, to have a relationship. It is this need for sociability that is at the heart of the matter, what its final nature will be is totally dependent on experience, the physical and psychological limitations of both, their developmental histories and emotional constrains.  To be clear, not all dogs are the same, there are breed and individual differences for sure and I suppose the same can be said for humans. In Bob's case, I am very happy to say that all we had to do was establish a social matrix where everyone got what they wanted in a harmonious and civilized fashion. I was very happy with the results and kept my friendship with these two for a long time until Bob died when he was 8 years old. Unfortunately, these giant breeds rarely live past this age. I miss Bob.

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Your input is welcome and appreciated, just click on the comments tab below and if you need help you may contact me via e mail at humananimalharmony@gmail.com or by phone at (810) 338-9232. Thank you.

I would love to be your friend but I can't

On our last post we discussed some important factors about fear motivated aggression. Now I would like to turn to the same issue where fear, instead of triggering aggression, elicits escape behavior. Obviously the same underlying problem but with a totally opposite response.

Rudy was a small  three year old female shepherd cross of about 35 pounds. She was very sweet at home and tolerant of a toddler who literally climbed all over her. She loved her people and was very attached to them; the model pet. However, she was petrified of strangers, be them dogs or humans.

The owners had consulted with their veterinarian who correctly diagnosed Rudy as shy, fearful and poorly socialized. He recommended to enroll Rudy in obedience school, take her to dog parks and in general expose her to a lot of social situations - a procedure commonly known as socialization. They did all that but instead of improving, Rudy became more fearful. Now predicting where they were going, she shook in the car  and began to snap at other dogs if they got too close to her in the park or school. Rudy's people stopped all procedures and called their veterinarian back who then referred the case to me.

We spoke on the phone and they conveyed the above information to me. My first response was that since Rudy was very happy at home, they could easily solve the problem by just letting her be the way she was and not expose her to anxiety provoking situations, why rock the boat? After a short silence and considering my suggestion, they replied that they would be OK with that if it wasn't that Rudy seemed to be suffering: if she saw a dog from the distance, she would get very excited and cry wanting to go out there and interact but if they let her go, she would become frightened and immediately run back, cry some more and show intense anxiety which took a while to settle. We went a bit deeper into that and I sensed their own suffering over Rudy's conflict, they wanted to help her overcome her fears and be truly happy. I got it, they were deeply connected to Rudy and they wanted to help her.

We then set up an appointment in my office in the next few days so I could run some standardized tests there. I did not have much hope for change and told them so since these problems are usually associated with a genetic predisposition described as the animal having a low threshold for emotional reactivity. Simply stated, this means that each one of us will spook with different intensities to the same fear producing stimulus, it is built in: emotionally reactive dogs spook more easily than the average dog and the same for people or any other animal for that matter. In my experience, these animals were very resistant to change. But I could at least listen and maybe ease the human's discomfort through understanding of the problem; also I might be able to learn something from the interview that we could use to help Rudy.

When they came into my office, I asked the owners to sit on the couch and to let Rudy move about the room freely and investigate bones and toys strewn on the floor. This is a modification of a standard laboratory procedure to test for emotionality in small animals -the Open Field Test. The average well adjusted dogs will explore the room openly and manipulate the objects as soon as they come into the Open Field, they are relaxed and their attention is focused on the activity of exploration. On the other hand, shy and emotionally reactive dogs will either not move at all or will hesitantly move about on the edges of the field: the body is tucked up, mouth closed and  demonstrate alertness to danger (more on this in future posts).

The test indeed showed Rudy to be very emotional - she froze in place. When I tried to interact with her  (as her test behavior would predict) her arousal level increased and she tried to hide behind her owners (escape). "Fine, she is very emotional", I thought, "but at least she chooses to leave rather than get nasty when freaked out like Thor". Then I laid down on the ground in order to make myself smaller, vulnerable and less threatening to see if by doing this I could reduce the intensity of the emotional response. I also talked sweetly to her - baby talk - in an attempt to demonstrate caring behavior and slowly her demeanor began to change: after a couple of minutes of this, while watching me from behind the couch, she took a couple of steps toward me. Her ears were pinned back and her mouth was retracted backwards, in a submissive and fearful smile. Her body was tucked up as well as her tail, but the tip of the tail was wagging and she tried to approach me indicating the desire to interact but in conflict (her owners were right, she wanted to be social).

 Her message to me was: "I would love to meet you and be your friend but I am so afraid that I really can't". So I continued with the baby talk,  coaxing her to me. Eventually she let me pet her, which I did softly for a few seconds (maternal behavior?) and then stopped to see what effect this had on her. She reacted by getting a bit more excited and nudged me for more! Her tail came up a bit and the wagging increased, the submissive facial expression shifted and became more relaxed. Then she shook herself as if getting rid of a heavy burden and began to move around freely, exploring the environment like a typically well adjusted dog would do when first entering the Open Field. I, of course, was pleasantly surprised. No, I was elated since I expected Rudy to be more recalcitrant because of the powerful pull of the genetic component in fearful behavior. I was just intuitively and in a very human way using baby-talk and  trying to show Rudy that I was not a threat and she understood. At this point I learned about a new (to me anyway) and very powerful tool in psychotherapy by sincerely showing empathy to this poor little animal.

I got up and  began to move around the room as well, threw a toy for her and she pounced on it in play/predation mode, then I playfully chased her around the room. All fear toward me had disappeared. She got into the spirit of the game and if I ran away from her she would chase me! We had a great time. I was now a non-threatening known playmate. I liked this little dog and we became friends. I now saw the problem as the owners saw it. When I went back to my professional psychologist mode and discussed the case further with them, she would not leave me alone. She was so enthralled by the experience that she could not have enough of it. Obviously, Rudy was starving for social contact outside the family but her fear kept her locked inside.

Then I exposed her to Cleo - a very clever female basset hound from my pack - to observe Rudy's reaction to dogs. Cleo  was the smartest and most independent dog I had. She was a trip and knew how to read my therapy dogs. She was so aware of my work that she would not even come into the open field if she sensed that the other dog was dangerous, commands from me be damned - a good thing for me to know, I could use her behavior as a guide. So Cleo walked in, did not pay attention to Rudy and came over by me and just hung out while I talked to her.

When Rudy realized that Cleo was not going after her, she approached us cautiously,  sniffed Cleo's anogenital area (her butt). Cleo was fine with that. She knew the ritual and sure enough, when Rudy saw that Cleo was neutral and friendly, her shyness diminished significantly; at first she was tentative in showing displays of sociability, then she allowed Cleo to investigate her too. They both began to wag their tails and their bodies relaxed - Rudy's emotions had shifted from fear to sociability. I picked up a toy again and played with both dogs, they competed for the toy and my attention but there was no seriousness to the competition, it was all play motivated: we had a good time of course but I also learned that Rudy did not have problems with hierarchical and dominance issues, her cognition of a harmonious social matrix was intact - she knew how to be social - but was blocked by her fear of strangers.

Of course, socialize the dog and solve the problem, the veterinarian was right. Yes, but that's what they attempted to do before and it failed! "Ah" thought I "the problem is not in the definition but in the application": it has been demonstrated in the laboratory that if the feared stimulus is too intense - as in a room full of strange dogs and people or a dog park - it is likely to trigger the fear response and continuous exposures will only increase the intensity of the undesirable response. If, on the other hand, the feared stimulus is presented below what is known as response threshold (small enough so that it barely triggers the emotion but not the external response), then other competing social responses can begin to take over and the approach/avoidance conflict in a dog like Rudy can be resolved or at least ameliorated in time with an observant eye, patience and lots of love. Our job was then so socialize Rudy but in small increments and to observe how she reacted.

Again, it would be impossible to solve these problems if the animal in question does not perceive friendliness and good intentions from the humans. So it is back to emphasizing the importance of establishing a relationship with the dog and interacting harmoniously. If during the exposures the dog becomes more emotional, we are in effect "anti-socializing" and reinforcing the fear. When we are observant of this fact, we become very sensitive and realize that the exposure can only be as intense as the dog can handle. We want to trigger curiosity and attraction to counter the fear and not increase it (systematic desensitization and counter-conditioning). If we slowly build up the intensity of that stimulation in accordance to the dog's behavior and what the dog has learned through its experiences, then socialization can take place.

I explained this to Rudy's people and we developed a systematic procedure for exposures to people and dogs, watching Rudy's reactions and increasing or decreasing the intensity of that exposure in order to let the pro-social tendencies surface and backing off when they did not. This did the trick: the therapy was long and tedious but after a few months of well thought out exposures, Rudy was capable of going out, interact with others and have a good time. She remained shy (the genetic component) and approached things slowly. The veterinarian could treat her now without traumatizing her as long as they too went slowly and lovingly. I believe that this kind of success is not only dependent on what I recommended from a scientific perspective but on the level of dedication and love that the owners put into it. The science and the caring had to come together, ergo the concept of harmony that is the ethos of this blog.

Theory and analysis:

Common wisdom has it that socialization is a method and after checking out the Web, magazine articles on the subject, speaking to dog trainers, veterinarians and so on, I gathered that the standard definition for socialization is that we should  take our shy animal to dog parks, enter it into some obedience classes and in general expose it to as many social situations as possible. This seems reasonable and makes intuitive sense. The missing part here is that it does not consider the emotional idiosyncrasies of the dog, the problem is not thought out deeply enough. As an analogy, this is like bending wood, all wood are capable of bending but if we do it too rapidly and intensely, it will break instead: "pay attention to  the wood" says the old artisan!

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The Case of The Big Bad Wolf

At the beginning of my practice I was called on a case where a family with three teenage children had an eight month old male Great Dane named Thor, he already weighed over 100 pounds. The referring veterinarian explained that he was acting aggressively toward strangers coming to the house. He had not bitten anyone, not yet anyway. We set up an appointment.

When I pulled up to the driveway, I heard the dog already barking in alarm. Big bark- big dog- my heart began to race, and braced myself for some intense moments, part of my job. I knocked on the door which made the dog bark even more. While waiting to be let in, I listened carefully to the quality of the bark and noticed that it carried a high pitch indicative of youth and uncertainty. So he wasn't convinced of his own ferocity, I thought. I also heard the people inside scrambling and yelling and at the same time trying to calm the dog down with endearments. Total chaos, and they finally let me in. My fear increased but I managed to keep my composure. The father was holding on to the dog and I simply sat down, made myself as small and nonthreatening as possible while averting my eyes: I did not want to make direct eye contact with Thor since that would increase his emotional state.

I saw confusion in every one and the history that I gathered after things calmed down a bit also pointed to fear as the major motivator underlying the problem: the dog was shy as a puppy and extremely attached to its owners. He let the veterinarian that took care of him at an early age handle him but would struggle, urinate and try to escape from anyone else’s control as long as they were strangers.

Before my visit, they had consulted with a local dog trainer who concluded that the dog was territorial and dangerous. He recommended using a shock collar to punish the barking. Territorial aggression is offensive where the animal tries to make itself bigger, puffs up with piloerection (raised hackles), ears forward, lips retracted up, and the growl/bark is low pitched and threatening, and the animal lunges toward the target in an attempt to bite. Thor's demeanor didn't have any of these elements. The behavior that I saw, the actual movements and vocalizations, were certainly associated with fear: ears pinned, lips retracted toward the back of the head, body and tail tucked up, this together with the high pitch of the voice made it easy to diagnose. Therefore, the territorial hypothesis did not make sense to me. Fortunately the owners intuitively knew that shocking the dog was not the answer, they agreed with me that Thor was shy and spooky.

So I went for the fear-motivated hypothesis: the dog is afraid of strangers and acts up, the owners are afraid that the dog is going to bite and they panic, but the dog has no way of knowing this. So it interprets the humans’ reaction as them being afraid of the stranger as well- which further reinforces his fear. But at the same time the humans are acting abnormally in that they are yelling, pulling on him and petting, all at the same time and creating more confusion in the animal making him freak out even more. The whole thing is like a scene straight out of a Three Stooges movie, but no one is laughing.

Now for the therapeutic plan: If my fear hypothesis was correct, I had to show Thor that strangers are not a threat. The best approach was to counter the fear with another opposite emotion when encountering strangers and this had to be done systematically. I chose play specifically since it is very difficult to be playful and at the same time fearful and aggressive. When there is play, fear and aggression are diminished both in animals and humans.

Thor, like most dogs his age, loved to run after his favorite ball so we went outside into the fenced-in yard and turned him lose. He was still afraid of me- the feeling was mutual- but our reaction had diminished significantly by then. He kept a respectful distance from me but was a bit calmer now. I began to throw his favorite ball and play catch with the family and as if by magic, the dog engaged in the play with some caution. That was fine, the emotions had begun to shift. By the end of the session I was petting him, we ran around together and had a great time. Thor was a lot of fun, all fear toward me had disappeared. He now saw me as a friend and playmate, and not as the big bad wolf. Cool, now I have a potential method.

So the plan was to reintroduce the dog to strangers in a neutral environment- outside where it did not feel confined or protected- to associate strangers with play.This circumvented the aggressive barking (more on this on future posts). The role of the stranger was to throw the ball for him.

Thanksgiving was coming up in a few days and they were having friends and family over for the event. I took this opportunity and set up an appointment for that date. The guests were called ahead of time and informed that we were going to do some therapy that day where they would be involved. Everyone was amenable to the plan which was to flood the dog with ball playing- massed trials.

I arrived early, Thor remembered me and was happy to see me and so was I. I was also very nervous, I did not know whether my plan was going to work and thus ruin everybody's day. We went outside and when the guests arrived, they were given the ball to throw for the dog to chase and play catch with the rest of us. I, of course, kept a sharp eye on Thor.

The first few trials took some time to produce play behavior - he was apprehensive and kept his distance form them - but by the fifth or sixth trial , he began to look forward to the next arrival. As I was hoping, the massed trials had a cumulative positive effect on his mood. We had such a good time: we were all smiling and laughing at Thor's antics, the owners were radiating with joy. Thor was going to be OK. I felt so relieved and fulfilled that I could not believe this was actually working - it was after all an experiment based on theory on how the brain is organized. Thor's fear had completely disappeared ( at least for now) and was replaced by expectation of the new arrival with tail wagging and play. I stayed for a couple of hours, had my first and great Thanksgiving dinner for that day and met some wonderful people to boot. Thor was turned loose in the house making a nuisance of himself, insisting to be played with and fed. He was enjoying the company of strangers for the first time in his life, he did not hesitate to demand attention from all. He was the star of the show and I could barely fit in my clothes, I was so pumped. I had made a magical connection within myself, with my science and with the world, I loved everyone and everything at that moment.

I instructed the owners to continue with these play set-ups; not to let strangers touch or reach for the dog, just to let him come to them and then walk into the house together. This procedure allowed us to get around the immediate environmental triggers that lead to the emotional reaction at the door.

Follow ups indicated that, although Thor remained shy (probably genetically predisposed), the negative responses were curtailed and slowly replaced with social playful responses.

On the occasions in which the dog barked in alarm when someone came to the door unexpectedly, the owners were not to freak out and yell, simply give him a time-out. If the visitor could wait outside until the time-out was effective in quieting him down, then he was taken outside on a leash to meet, play and throw the ball with the stranger - Thor knew the routine by now. It is important to notice here that by the owners keeping calm and guiding the dog into social isolation (time-out), the dog learned what to expect when he became alarmed or when he was being social - discrimination learning. The social matrix of the family stayed intact: no trauma in spite of the punishment. Harmony in the family was maintained and chaos was avoided. In conclusion, we learned that only when the dog developed simple playful responses to strangers that his perception changed and the problem could be solved.


Analysis and theory:

Aggression/threatening behavior toward strangers in the home is a fairly common problem situation for dog owners. Sometimes we try to counteract this kind of problem with food, but food is a poor substitute for play as a countermeasure to fear motivated aggression: the emotions associated with food intake have nothing to do with the emotional circuitry associated with fear and aggression. The dog can take food from a stranger’s hand and still be fearful but it can not play and remain fearful at the same time. It does not fit into the emotional organization of the brain. Play is a change in mood. The organism relaxes and bonds with others and this relationship creates a pleasant internal state in each one of us. It is this very pleasant internal state that opens us up to others. It is the basis for the social bond where there is harmony and if that feeling were not mutual, it would not be possible. Therefore, mutuality of experience is essential. So I ask how can we question whether these animals that we relate to on a day to day basis have feelings and consciousness? This issue of animal consciousness has been a thorny and perennial one for psychologists for a long time; we will return to this question in many forms as our future discussions unfold.

From: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvo1912cjjY

Curiously, there are many reported cases of prosocial interactions between individuals of many species- predators such as polar bears and dogs, gorillas and kittens and so on, all domestic animals at one time or another interact socially with one another. The Internet is full of documented cases where unusual relationships are established between individuals of different species. The interesting point here is that all these crosspecific relationships are mediated through play behaviors and are driven in most cases through play motivated responses and to a lesser extent through maternal behaviors. So play behavior is really a bridge to friendship, which in a human environment is very adaptive for dogs. Therefore, play-training (play as a reinforcer and for counteracting negative emotional states) is a powerful tool but can only be effective when the human and the animal develop a positive relationship which in turn creates a sweet and rhythmic feeling in both. It is this harmonic movement that form the base and the feelings of love between us. I believe that this is the magical, the "je ne sais quois", the satori state or whatever we want to call it that we are trying to attain when dealing with any kind of psychological therapy be it human or animal.

Again, your comments are appreciated and I can be contacted personally at: humananimalharmony@gmail.com 

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The Beginning: background, intro, philosophy

As an applied animal behaviorist, I have often been called on to solve problems for people and their animals, mainly dogs and in particular dogs as pets rather than as working animals.

 I hold a Ph.D. in Ethology and Psychology, have treated hundreds of cases, did research and taught for many years in the areas of animal learning, emotional reactivity and the neurological bases of behavior. I also pioneered certification procedures in Applied Animal Behavior through the Animal Behavior Society. Now I still see the occasional case and do some forensic consulting, but most of the time just write and go fishing when I can.

How it all started:

Back in 1980 I went to visit a veterinarian friend at his office where I found him talking to a client about euthanizing her young bulldog because it was biting. It was a very sad and painful situation: my friend knew that it had to be done and the client was inconsolable. Since I was a psychologist and a good friend he asked if I could stay while they talked about the impending procedure. I listened and lightly played with the dog. The dog was spunky and goofy, and of course he had no idea that they were discussing his death- but I did and my feelings were not pretty. The owner was one of those people who radiated warmth and caring: my heart went out to them all.

 While listening it occurred to me that with all the scientific knowledge we have accumulated on Animal Behavior in the last 100 years, certainly there should be something that I could do, so very tentatively I interrupted and asked them a few questions. I wanted to know when the biting took place, the situation that triggered it, what was going on just before the bite, how they lived together and so on; just standard questions that are asked in a clinical setting.

The answers created a base for me to think about the mechanisms of the problem, its development, the social context, possible internal brain processes, neural mechanisms and what the dog’s motivation might be for biting. This led me to think of a few things that I could possibly do if my theories were correct. I thought the dog was just too confident and self-improtant so I asked them to postpone the euthanasia for a few days, and to control resources such as food, play, access to toys and his freedom in an attempt to make him more dependent and therefore submissive to the owner. I also prescribed some contingency training (giving the dog a “job” to do in order to earn these rewards).

Now the conversation shifted and took a different direction; the mood was elevated as I was offering some degree of hope. I told the owner to keep track by producing a daily record of what she observed, what she felt, and so on. We tweaked the procedures as we went along based on the reports that the dog owner gave me. The story had a happy ending, things improved dramatically within days, the biting stopped and the dog lived!

This was very heavy for me, I had saved a dog that I liked, and made someone very happy. I was so gratified with this experience that it marked the path of my professional calling. I engaged in this practice actively for over 30 years. Of course, not all cases were so idyllic. Yes, I have been bitten many times, had to regretfully conclude in certain cases that the dog be euthanized and had very sad and scary times, but overall my choice has given me so much and has to a great extent made me the person I am today and enriched me beyond measure. This blog is the reflection of that story as I have lived it.

The Blog:  Reflections on Humans and Animals Living in Harmony     

I started this blog because clients, referring veterinarians, and friends have asked me to share some of my impressions and accumulated knowledge from my thirty years of practice. When I first set out to be a “dog shrink” by applying principles in Animal Behavior and Psychology, I said “no problem, this should be easy, just plug in scientific information, go through procedures and report data and go for it”. Well, that didn’t work out for me. It was just too mechanical and left out the most important component which was the personal and most intimate feelings that reveal themselves to me on a daily basis.

I began to realize that people not only want to solve problems but that there is a deeper more pressing reason: they want to be happy and enjoy the relationship with their pets in a more profound way; they do not just want to get rid of pet hassles.  This realization came slowly. As I worked as an applied scientist and observed the changes in not only the dogs but in the people themselves, it slowly dawned on me that the people also change, that their dogs became their teachers, revealing to them how much richer their lives can be.

 I realized that our relationship with our pets, when harmonious and loving, allows us to unfold as more enlightened human beings:  we grow. Living in harmony with your dog also means that you begin to live in harmony with yourself. Establishing the relationship we want with our pets, and in particular our dogs, is as much about ourselves as it is about them. This will be our emphasis.

Let us consider the big picture: as pets these dogs live in the home with all its complexities of available space, children of various ages, often other dogs in the home, other family members, comings and goings, etc. The dog has to figure out how to survive in this complexity and of course the humans have to adapt as well. How they do this, how they all interact can be seen as an interconnecting matrix. If this matrix is a harmonious one then all involved live happily enjoying each other’s company and enriching each other’s lives. The dogs wag their tails, smile [yes, dogs do smile] the owners are happy to have the company of their dog and if asked how they like living with the dog, the response is usually “I love it, I love this dog so much that he is like a loving family member to me” and that is what it is all about.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Having the dog in the house very often present problems, extra problems, problems that people initially think are not necessary because, after all, they can get rid of the animal and that’s that. But there is this other element to it, in spite of it all, they love and care for that animal and the decision to simply get rid of the problem pet is in most cases not really an option they wish to choose. This is where I have come in, to figure out initially why the people are unhappy with their dog, not why the dog is unhappy, and try to sort through their history, the nature and expectations of the owners and the specific characteristics of the animal, the characteristics of the environment and put it all together so that the people can be happy with their dog. So the formula goes that if the people are happy or at least satisfied, my job is done, and at the beginning I thought that was all there is to it. Well, it doesn’t really work that way.

I have learned throughout the years that if the dog is not happy also, sooner or later, no matter how much control we exert on the situation, things are going to fall apart. In this case, we can see that behavioral control simply means inhibiting or blocking whatever the dog does that irritates us and like any blockage sooner or later the barrier is going to come down and crash on everyone in a massive avalanche of bad behaviors and often dangerous results. So ultimately my job is to make sure that the lives of all involved run smoothly with few hitches; if hitches arise a simple rethinking and manipulation is in order so as to get back to a normal and happy flow.

This flow is a matrix of changing and interacting factors, what scientists call variables. This matrix is never static and behavioral science, when applied wisely helps establish and maintain this harmonious flow as in a dance when just knowing the steps is not enough, maintaining the rhythm between the partners is essential.

In future posts, I will present case histories and try to relate the details of how we thought about them and how we attempted to create harmony with ourselves and our pets. I will also consider the ways in which observing animals and our relationships with them can be self-illuminating and trigger personal growth: it can be a window through which to look inward and gain better awareness of ourselves. My hope is that via this blog I can help the readers- by sharing what I am learning- attain their own harmony and deeper understanding of how rich and rewarding their lives can be through their relation with their beloved pets.

I, of course, also hope that this blog will be as interactive as possible. It is reasonable to think that through conversation and dialogue, not just monologue, that communication occurs. Thus all readers are invited to submit questions, offer comments and perspectives from their own lives and experiences that they care to share with the rest of us. You are also invited to contact me personally at humananimalharmony@gmail.com 

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