The Emotional Life of Dogs and Recommended Reading

This topic might sound arcane to many, especially since I often joke that my Golden Retriever “Calliope” has just two names for me: “Food Source” and “Sucker” (whereas I call her “My Blonde Girlfriend”). However, in preparation to write this little piece, I have been reading in the recent explosion of books and articles on the topic, and observing my own interaction with dogs more

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closely.

The temporary conclusion from these investigations— hardly scientific or scholarly though they may be—is that a chief difference between humans and our oldest non-human companions lies not so much in intelligence or intellect as in the use of language. We humans communicate orally through manipulation of words as well as analysis of body language. A Golden “speaks” as well, both by barking and by making other sounds (Calliope does a great deal of “talking” and physical expression), but unless you have achieved native-speaker fluency in “Dog” (as I claim for myself) it is easy to assert that all they want is attention and food. But I say, “Learn to read their body language.”

On an early March weekend, we went down from rural western Maine to the immediate neighborhood of our old Massachusetts residence, where Calliope had spent her first six years. Once in her old haunts, just 100 feet from our former house, Calliope had quite an agenda which involved studiously avoiding the house we had owned, relieving herself at the very spot in the woods where her first boyfriend, Makena, showed her how to vacate her bowels outside, and sniffing her way around her old favorite field. Then we came back to our home in Maine, and once here she displayed powerful emotions way beyond any search for attention and food. She raced around in a crazy-dog manner, bringing me toys and playing affectionately and excitedly with me for a full 15 minutes. I think it was very clear that she was saying that she had been worried that we were going to resume our lives in Massachusetts, or worse, leave her there alone, and that she much preferred to be with us both in her “real” and much preferred home in Maine. Just in case this was accidental or random behavior, a mere seven days later (on another visit to my mother-in-law), she repeated these clearly unusual and purposely communicative actions, in detail. But back in Maine, she was very clearly much less ecstatic, and I presume it was because this time she “knew” she was coming back home with us.

So, rejecting senility, sentimentality, and projection on my part as obvious rebuttals for my pro-pet behaviors and theories, I wish to suggest that it is actually true that at least some humans (as well as most dogs) have enough sensitivity to get across the voice-

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woof barrier. (In my case, I have learned eight European and one Asian language as part of my professional work; so perhaps I have had to become more intuitive than literal when in the presence of non-English-speakers?) Each of our three Goldens has had a “passive” vocabulary of perhaps 100 or more words. If a dog can understand English passively but not answer in English, how different is the consequent interaction going to be than the one I experienced when lost on the streets of Xian, China? In that instance, a friendly Chinese man and I eventually discovered that we both could use German!

I distinctly remember once sitting in an outdoor public place with an earlier Golden (Momoko-chan—“Little Peach Girl” in Japanese) as my wife shopped and I watched tourists and browsers stream by. At a distance of at least 30 feet, Momoko could (and did) unerringly pick out the one out of 15 passersby who wanted to stop, chat, admire, and interact with her. Intrigued, I tried it, too, but never got anywhere near her accuracy, distance, or speed. Surely this unscientific description would not convince skeptics, but to them I would reply, “How did she know so instantly and accurately who would want to come over to her?”

Thus, I have vastly enjoyed (and recommend) the following books and articles, casually selected from the vast array of recent publications on this subject of the emotional lives and communications of dogs.

Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (2007), might seem like a strange place to start, except that for us to look at fellow species objectively, we need to shed the conceit (present in most religious explanations for early human history) that this planet and universe were created expressly for us Homo sapiens, a species that seems to evolutionists to be only the latest in an ongoing series of evolutionary lines of latter-day apes. In the Wall Street Journal for March 24-25, 2012, page C-6, Brian Switek has reviewed two books that pertain to this evolutionary tale, suggestively titled Masters of the Planet and Lone Survivors.

Mark Derr, How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends (2011), has been getting a lot of attention, both because it is a fascinating up-to-date tour of the topic of the title

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(and recent evolutionary trends), and because it argues for some strong communicability between wolf-dogs and early humans. Derr posits that wolves and humans co-evolved, interacting with each other to the mutual benefit of both species. Though his argument is necessarily somewhat speculative, there are numerous evidences he can cite which seem to bolster his thesis. Lest we over claim for our type of ape-descendants, consider how extensively we have denigrated Neanderthals; it is sobering to realize that recent research suggests we all have some Neanderthal genetic material in us. Derr has a summary piece in the Wall Street Journal for October 29-30, 2011 (starting on page C-1), under the title, “From the Cave to the Kennel.”

Mark Doty, Dog Years: A Memoir (2007), struck me as trying to do a number of tasks, and perhaps muddying the waters somewhat as the author skated around his sometimes painful emotional history of attachment to fellow humans, but the book does certainly also show a strong willingness to consider that dogs have emotional lives and communication skills.

Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel (2008), struck me as utterly charming and resonated with my own experiences in many ways. Narrated by a dog and based on the (presumably human) observations of the title-page author, this tale drew me in so intensely that I read it all in one day (321 pages).

Roland Smith, The Captain’s Dog: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe (1999), is perhaps a model for Stein’s book. Narrated by Seaman (an actual historical dog), and written by a “former wolf biologist and canine expert,” this book anticipates many of the more recent assertions and claims about wolf-dog-human interactions and collaborative evolution.

A long analytical article from The New York Times of March 20, 2007, written by Nicholas Wade, considers the work of Frans de Waal, especially as presented in his 2009 book, Primates and Philosophers. De Waal is looking for the roots of moral actions and thinks he has found some of the roots of human morality in “certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey society.” There is, of course, a significant gap between chimpanzees and Golden Retrievers, but he argues that

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“notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions [begin]… in concern for others and the understanding of social rules.” So it seems very likely, by extension, that many dogs have complex understandings and insights into appropriate and beneficial behaviors as they interact with humans. Some interesting angles on this issue find development in another Times article from March 6, 2012 (D-1), on “Australia’s Changing View of the Dingo” by James Gorman and Christine Kenneally.

These notions and distinctions might help to explain the very moving story, “Wonder Dog” by Melissa Fay Greene, published in The New York Times Magazine on February 5, 2012. This is a description of the amazingly therapeutic relationship between a Golden and a profoundly damaged and distressed young boy. Read it with Kleenex handy, as the dog figures out how to “read” the child and counteract destructive behaviors.

Finally, the February 2012 issue of National Geographic has an intriguing cover article, summarizing some of the points made above, “What Dogs Tell Us: The ABCs of DNA.”

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