Mariam Motamedi Fraser
Search for other papers by Mariam Motamedi Fraser in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
It’s a dog’s life and there’s nothing natural about it

Chapter 1 represents a first step toward the de-naturalisation of dogs’ species story by illustrating the considerable effort that is required, on the parts of both humans and dogs, to produce and secure the ‘dog–human bond’. It opens by briefly situating the elision between dog ‘intelligence’ and dog obedience in the context of a long European history in which the perception of dogs as useful animals had a part to play in colonial ‘civilising’ projects, and in scientific racism in the nineteenth century. The first part of the chapter ends by contesting the significance of the shift from obedience to an ‘affirmative biopolitics’ in contemporary dog training: when it comes to ‘the bond’, it argues, the difference between them is negligible. The second part of the chapter focuses on one topic in particular, as it is understood by canine scientists and canine behavioural professionals: human-controlled dog socialisation and the consequences that follow from inadequate socialisation (‘behavioural problems’). It uses the much-discussed socialisation (or not) of the COVID-19 pandemic puppies to argue not that the experiences of these puppies were exceptional, but rather that they shone an exceptionally bright light on the routine intolerability that characterises the conditions under which many domesticated dogs live in the Global North. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the roles played by canine behavioural professionals in highlighting, mediating and sometimes repairing the gap between the widespread fascination with dogs, and how dogs live in practice.

[I]‌f a dog is deemed untrainable, he may find himself on ‘death row’.

(Włodarczyk 2018: 233)

Everywhere domesticated dogs are found, they are stitched into human hearts. But are humans stitched into dogs’ hearts? Countless celebrations of ‘the dog–human bond’ suggest that they are. Yet ‘the bond’ does not come easily. While the entirety of Dog Politics seeks to denaturalise, in different ways, the kernel of dogs’ species story – which is that being with humans is somehow dogs’ destiny – this chapter focuses specifically on the considerable effort that is required, on the parts of both humans and dogs, to ensure this ‘destiny’ is realised (with greater or lesser success). I set the scene for this discussion in the first part of this chapter, by briefly exploring changes in conceptions of dog–human relations as they are refracted through the lens of dog training. While the direction of change in theories and practices of dog training – from ‘dominating’ a dog, say, to positively ‘encouraging’ a dog – is certainly to be welcomed, my argument here will be that, as far as ‘the bond’ is concerned, there may not be as much difference between them as one first imagines. This is not to deny that ‘bonds’ can be built between some humans and some dogs under some conditions. Nevertheless, the scores and force of stories celebrating the happy naturalisation of the ‘dog–human bond’ can become grating in view of the reality of many dogs’ lives.

Where is evidence of this reality to be found? In the second part of this chapter, I look to research published in scientific journals, and to books, articles, blogs and videos produced by behavioural professionals for each other and for dog owners, for a detailed (but not exhaustive) analysis of how dogs are coping, or not, with contemporary life in the Global North. After offering a methodological comment on my use of these texts, this second part focuses on one key issue in particular, which is human-controlled dog socialisation (from now on, ‘socialisation’) and the consequences that follow from inadequate socialisation (‘behavioural problems’).1 Socialisation has been of keen interest to scientists since at least the 1950s and 1960s, as I will illustrate. It also, however, became a matter of considerable public concern during and following the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023). I close the second part of this chapter, on socialisation, with a discussion of the so-called ‘pandemic puppies’. Although many have argued that this cohort of dogs is uniquely distinguished from pre- (and post-) pandemic dog populations, my own view is that striking similarities can be identified between them. My point, therefore, will not be that some dogs, such as the pandemic puppies, are inadequately socialised (although they often are), but that the pandemic puppy phenomenon illustrates how very few dogs can be socialised ‘enough’ to cope with the demands that are placed upon them today. The chapter concludes with a brief reflection on the insights that canine behavioural professionals, and especially dog trainers, can offer as they navigate between popular and scientific perceptions of dogs and dog–human relations, and the harsh truths of dog despair. In all, the aim of this chapter is to begin to cast doubt on the ‘naturalness’ of the dog–human bond by offering a pragmatic account of the work that is necessary to (try to) secure it, and the price that many dogs pay for living with it.

‘Are we having fun yet?’2

In 1994, the psychologist Stanley Coren wrote a book called The Intelligence of Dogs (Coren 2006). In Chapter 10, he ranked breeds of dogs according to their ‘working or obedience intelligence’. Although the chapter is one of several that measure different dog breeds against different types of intelligence, it is the working or obedience list specifically that has been widely disseminated. Even a most cursory search on Google reveals that, twenty-eight years after the original publication date of the book, numerous ‘petsites’ uncritically reproduce Coren’s order and, moreover, extend working or obedience intelligence to ‘intelligence’ in general. Some established trainers, too, apparently endorse the ranking without qualification (Millan 2020). On Coren’s list, Border Collies assume first position, Afghan Hounds last (Coren 2006: 182–183).

What kind of ‘intelligence’ is working or obedience intelligence? Coren writes:

What [working or obedience intelligence] means is that the dogs are not simply taught tricks; rather, the specific exercises tested in the obedience ring should serve to indicate the trainability of dogs and their willingness to perform under the control of their human masters.(Coren 2006: 186)

The reason Coren refers to the ‘obedience ring’ here is because, having established the impossibility of empirically testing the requisite number of dogs to gain a scientifically valid answer to the question of breed intelligence,3 he turned to data generated by the American Kennel Club (AKC) obedience trials. These data make a reasonable substitute, Coren argued, because the AKC obedience trials ‘test exactly the same behaviors that define working and obedience intelligence’ (Coren 2006: 186). On finding all the various methods of analysing the data to be flawed (186–189), Coren decided instead to base his ranking on the testimony of 199 AKC judges, who filled in a ‘fairly long and complicated’ questionnaire and, in 25 per cent of cases, provided additional notes. He followed this up with twenty-four telephone interviews (189).

One might object at this point that the only claim that Coren can make with confidence is this: Border Collies who are entered into AKC competitions (i.e. Border Collies who share the characteristic of being companion and/or working dogs raised and trained by guardians who hold AKC values), in the opinion of a small number of people, all of whom are guaranteed by their positions as AKC judges to posit a uniform conception of obedience, performed better against other AKC purebred dogs4 in AKC trials when measured within constrained parameters (e.g. heel, sit, lie down, stand, stay, retrieve, high jump, broad jump etc.). The narrowness and specificity of the data on which Coren’s conclusions are based, which includes the narrowness of his definition of ‘intelligence’, is rarely if ever mentioned on the websites that do or do not cite it. I will return to why this might be, and to why the ranking continues to be reproduced, below.

In England, dog breeds have historically served as a mark not only of social rank (Ritvo 1987; Thomas 1984; Worboys et al. 2018), but also of ‘civilisation’. In this context, the utility of dogs has been key to assessments of their ‘intelligence’. For example: in her analysis of the important parts played by animals in the seventeenth-century colonisation of New England and the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland, Virginia DeJohn Anderson describes how English colonists looked down on ‘Indian’ dogs for, among other things, being barely tame, bred with foxes or wolves, and howling rather than barking (Anderson 2004: 34; see also Chaplin 2003: 146). These dogs ‘did not sound like English dogs, and failed to act as colonists thought that dogs should’ (Anderson 2004: 34). Two centuries later, John Campebell, a Scottish missionary in South Africa, would decry Boer dogs for being ‘only useful as watchers’:

A shepherd’s dog from Britain would have assisted us more in driving our spare cattle than a thousand African ones. It would be well if some of these were sent over to instruct African dogs to be more useful to their masters. Perhaps were the people here to witness their sagacity, they would suspect they were rational beings.(Campebell in Van Sittert and Swart 2008: 7)

Campebell’s portrait of African dogs was unusual, Lance van Sittert and Sandra Swart write, only insofar as it was ‘directed against Boers rather than Africans in this instance’ (Van Sittert and Swart 2008: 7). Otherwise, it accurately reflected his more general ‘contempt for the natives’ want of industry, [which was] expressed through disdain for their slothful dogs’ (7). Accounts of slothful if not ‘lawless’ dogs, no less than those of slothful if not ‘lawless’ people, served to rationalise and justify ‘“the white man’s burden” of civilizing and moralizing local “savages”’ (Suen 2015: 104).5 As Ritvo dryly summarises it, ‘the extent of canine servitude was an index of the advance of civilization’ (Ritvo 1987: 20).

The issue of utility also played an important role in nineteenth-century debates about which animals were closest to humans (who were irremovably lodged at the apex of the natural kingdom). Dogs, among other animals, offered an alternative animal–human ‘alliance’ that served to ‘displace apes from their awkward proximity’ (Ritvo 2000: 849). ‘[T]‌he issue was not simply taxonomical’, Ritvo argues: ‘[i]n question was the more fundamental principle of whether animals should be ranked according to their utility to humankind, as literal servants or as instructive analogues, or according to some other standard’ (Ritvo 1987: 35). Apes, who had been assaulting the human–animal boundary since at least 1699 (Ritvo 2000: 849), were possessed of an intelligence that was of use only to themselves (Ritvo 1987: 35). By contrast, ‘[a] somewhat circular calculation made the most sagacious animals the best servants. So dogs might not only rival apes in the mental competition, but surpass them – closest to their masters in mind as well as in domicile’ (Ritvo 2000: 850). As I will be discussing in Chapter 6, dogs were not the central players in the development of nineteenth-century racist science, but they nonetheless cast as bright a light on the traffic among ‘race’, class and species as did chimpanzees and apes.

In view of this history, one might consider the most significant aspect of Coren’s ranking to be not the particular breeds that populate it, and in what order, but the criteria that inform it. It is notable that six of the ‘least intelligent’ breeds – Afghan Hounds, Basenjis, Borzois, Bloodhounds, Beagles and Basset Hounds – are bred to work independently. If servitude – or some metaphor for it – undergirds the definition of intelligence, these dogs never had an AKC chance. Unlike Coren’s report on the breeds that make the best guard dogs (Coren 2006: 142–143), to take just one example of his other rankings, the working or obedience rank describes and speaks most explicitly and directly to an established conception of dog–human relations: of a conception, indeed, that is entrenched historically. Of all the skills dogs have, it is their skills with humans, sometimes translated as servitude, sometimes utility, sometimes obedience, that define an ‘intelligent’ dog.

And yet, as Justyna Włodarczyk argues in her book Genealogy of Obedience, contemporary companion dog training ‘bears witness to the death of obedience’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 230). Behaviourism can take much of the credit for this, Włodarczyk writes, for in place of ‘obedience to a human’s will or the dog’s natural submission’, post-behaviourist trainers ‘would speak of generalization of a cue; history of reinforcement, etc.’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 230). In Włodarczyk’s Foucauldian analysis of the genealogy of dog training in North America, B. F. Skinner’s behaviourism marks the turning point between disciplinary techniques that ‘mold and shape the body’, and postdisciplinary ‘techniques of control’ that ‘focus on creating motivation for the subject to behave in particular ways and not others’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 155; on behaviourism, see Chapter 3 in this book). Somewhat counterintuitively – but nevertheless persuasively – Włodarczyk argues further that radical behaviourism, now largely rejected in the North American companion dog world, made possible a new, twenty-first century, ‘affirmative biopolitics’, in which reinforcement, the bedrock of behaviourism, is now deployed not as ‘motivation for the subject to behave in particular ways’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 155; my emphasis) but as motivation for the subject to feel in particular ways. Radical behaviourism, in other words, was the midwife of the change ‘from discipline’s focus on affecting the individual body to the postdisciplinary techniques of modulating affects’ (155).

Central to this affirmative biopolitics – to ‘the relocation of the activity of training from the paradigm of utility to that of affect’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 207) – are two connected ideas, often portrayed as an ethics: ‘fun’, and the importance of dog ‘happiness’ (202), which is to be achieved by way of ‘letting the dog be a dog’ (Donaldson in Włodarczyk 2018: 200). Translated, this means not controlling a dog’s instincts (as behaviourists sought to do), but rather ‘understanding’ and ‘harnessing’ them to enjoyable ends. This explains why, Włodarczyk continues, affirmative biopolitics is ‘[c]‌haracteristically … accompanied by the emergence of numerous canine-related leisure and sports activities’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 24–25). ‘Play’ transforms the dog–human relation from one of servitude and mastery into, apparently, a relationship of mutual engagement or ‘co-becoming’. Włodarczyk cites Donna Haraway by way of example: ‘both players make each other up in the flesh. Their principal task is to learn to be in the same game [agility], to learn to see each other, to move as someone new of whom neither can be alone’ (Haraway in Włodarczyk 2018: 25).

But there is more to it than this. Rather than train a dog to be more ‘civilized’ (as discussed above) – rather than train him ‘to become a bit less zoë and a bit more bios’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 210) – the aim of this biopolitics is to erase ‘[the human/animal] boundary altogether through the affirmation of zoë as constitutive for bios’ (211). Now, owning a dog is way to own dogness itself, to ‘be more dog’ oneself, as Włodarczyk puts it (24). Agility is exemplary ‘fun’ (or zoë) because it captures the very essence of ‘dogness’: ‘enthusiasm, exuberance, energy, sociability’ (215). The human who participates in agility participates ‘in an activity that oozes dogness’ (215).

One might be somewhat suspicious of this ethics of ‘fun’, given that a key purpose of play in a lot of dog training literature, even while couched in the language of bonding and relationship enrichment, seems to be to introduce or further reinforce socialisation to humans (see below on socialisation) and training. Or more accurately: to introduce relationship enrichment as socialisation and training. Karen London and Patricia McConnell’s (2008) book on play, Play Together, Stay Together: Happy and Healthy Play between People and Dogs, is aptly named in this regard. Clearly, ‘fun’ does not leave much room for thinking about how ‘relations of communication are not external but immanent to relations of power’ (Patton 2003: 91). It also does not leave much room for thinking about – indeed it seems to actively mitigate against thinking about – an arguably more engrained and enduring power relation that is expressed not solely in the power of humans over dogs (e.g. the power to define what is a game, and what is and is not positive play), but in the assumption that it is a dog’s preference, under almost any circumstances, to be with humans. As Włodarczyk notes, ‘[t]‌he empirical research carried out on humans’ motivation for participating in these events [agility etc.] reveals that humans take the dog’s personal preferences into account while choosing the training activity they will both engage in’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 25). Listed dog preferences are for digging holes, say, or catching balls; they are not the preference for dog–human participation itself, which is not in question.

But what if a dog’s preference is not to participate? Or to rephrase that: does agility ooze dogness for dogs? The answer is: not always. Turid Rugaas, a Norwegian dog trainer best known for her work on canine body language and especially dogs’ ‘calming signals’, offers the following painful example of Shiba, ‘a Border Collie agility dog, [who] became slower and slower on the agility course. The owner ran around, jumped up and down, waved her arms and yelled a lot to encourage the dog. In the end, Shiba hardly moved around the agility field because she was trying so hard to calm her owner’ (Rugaas 2006: 34). And this from a Border Collie who, as we know from Coren’s ranking, is the most intelligent dog (the dog, that is, who is most responsive to humans). Arguably, the ‘death of obedience’ explains in part why the details of Coren’s study are rarely referenced. The idea that intelligence is defined, to quote again, by dogs’ ‘willingness to perform under the control of their human masters’, recalls an unflattering relation between dogs and humans. Yet the ranking itself continues to be reproduced, passing virtually into folklore. I conjecture that this is because, in the end, it does not matter whether the relation is one of servitude, obedience or fun, or whether its purpose is utility or affect: what matters is the so-called dog–human bond, which can be naturalised as well by ‘fun’ as it can by obedience.

Pause for a methodological observation

The second part of this chapter will be dedicated to exploring some of the demanding work that is required, on the parts of both dogs and humans, to produce ‘the bond’, and to some of the practical implications, for dogs, when their lives are shaped by expectations regarding it. As I noted in the introduction to this chapter, I draw here primarily on scientific research, and on texts produced by behavioural professionals. A word is in order, therefore, with regard to how I am approaching this material, especially given that, in the rest of this book, it will be subject to extensive critique.

Although Dog Politics focuses on how this body of work mostly, usually, promotes a constrained and limited ‘order of becoming’ to which dogs are obliged to conform, there are plenty of other reasons for criticising it: for its scientisation of knowledges of dogs, for its medicalisation of dogs’ experiences, for the disingenuity of its protestations of ‘care’. Moreover, as both Harlan Weaver (2021) and Katja Guenther (2020) illustrate, the ‘problems’ with ‘problem’ dogs cannot be separated from the racist, classist and heteronormative prejudices that shape perceptions of the humans with whom such dogs are often associated, as well as perceptions of their ability, or not, to provide normative standards and types of ‘care’ (such as socialisation), ‘home’ and ‘family’.

Nevertheless, while this literature must rightly be criticised, especially for its endorsement of narrow and hegemonic conceptions of humans, of dogs and of human–dog relationships, when read for the ‘wrong’ reasons, it offers rich insight into how dogs are currently living with humans, by what means and at what price (for dogs). In other words, I do not believe that one has to accept the terms within which the arguments are framed, or even their diagnoses of and conclusions with regard to dogs’ behaviours, to recognise the dog distress that is being documented here. This is why this material convincingly – if mostly inadvertently – illustrates the three points that I want to make in what follows. These are: that the dog–human relationship, the relationship that is deemed almost to be given in nature, in fact depends on an enormous amount of labour, especially during the early part of a dog’s life; that, despite this early labour, the ability of dogs to live with or alongside humans is never fully achieved and thus requires on-going investment; and finally, that even with these efforts, many dogs still cannot ‘adapt’ themselves to human social and physical arrangements.

Socialisation

As Dinesh Wadiwel argues, ‘biopolitical forms of violence’ apply as much to companion animals as they do to agricultural animals. He writes:

While companion animals are not routinely exposed to the life and death scenario of food production, the overt domination directed toward companion animals in urban societies is suggestive of different conflict zones: these sites of friction include routine controls over reproduction and sexuality; the use of forced bodily modification (such as microchipping), discipline, and training; total controls over diet, movement, living spaces, and sociality; and quite arbitrary regimes of disposability that accompany the politics of pet industries.(Wadiwel 2018: 541)

The experiential dimensions of this regime, for dogs, are multiple and overlapping. Lack of control over movement, for example, means that dogs are often not in a position to reject enforced modes and moments of sociality, whether with humans or dogs and other animals. Consider a most banal scenario: two women are walking at a brisk pace down a street, each with a dog on leash. The street is busy, there is a lot of activity, and the dogs are jostled by obstacles and passing people. The women are talking to each other, changing the hand in which they hold the leash as the dogs move behind them, in front of them, and then finally between them, in an attempt to find some security. Between the womens’ legs, the two dogs cannot help but bump into each other. As they move along, one of them tries repeatedly to put his paw and then his jaws around the neck of the other. The other dog turns his head away, turns again, turns again, until eventually he stiffens and freezes. His owner feels his resistance through the leash and, without looking down, jerks him along.

Although it would be possible to write at length about any one of the conflict zones that Wadiwel identifies, I choose to focus on processes of socialisation (which I assume comes under Wadiwel’s category ‘discipline’), for two reasons. First, because socialisation plays a major role – if not the major role – in facilitating (or rather attempting to facilitate) the modes of living that characterise the biopolitical governance of companion and/or working dogs in the Global North. Socialisation is a demand that few dogs are in a position – biologically, behaviourally, physically or socially – to refuse and, for those who do, the consequences are likely to be deathly. Socialisation creates dependence in dogs and then offers them tools, often inadequate, to try to navigate it. Second, while the socialisation of dogs must rightly be criticised for being intrinsic to a broader scheme of violence, lack of socialisation has serious implications for individual dogs not only in terms of relinquishment and death, but also in terms of a life lived, among other things, in fear, anxiety and frustration.

Wadiwel’s observation regarding biopolitical forms of violence is relevant to many kinds of companion animals. Dogs, however, bear the additional burden of the narrative of ‘the bond’, which not only naturalises dog–human relationships, but also transforms dogs who have justifiable problems with humans into problem dogs (‘fearful dogs’, ‘aggressive dogs’ etc.). Scientists and behavioural professionals recognise this, noting that ‘problem’ behaviours are often ‘coping mechanisms’ (Polgár et al. 2019: 9), not ‘truly aberrant’, but rather ‘an adaptive response to an aberrant environment’ (Lindsay 2001: 134; see also Lindsay 2001: 39–43). As the welfare scientists Robert Hubrecht and his colleagues argue: ‘despite the dog’s special status, and remarkable new research on its cognitive abilities, and genetics, the dog is still under-represented in welfare research when compared with farm animals and other species such as rodents used in research’ (Hubrecht et al. 2017: 293). This should perhaps not be surprising. Just being with humans is often understood to be welfare enough (see also Chapter 7 of this book). If it isn’t, the answer today is found not in the transformation of the dog–human relationship, but in more socialisation to it. Socialisation is often perceived both as the cause of ‘problem’ dog behaviours (bad socialisation) and the solution (good socialisation).

Dogs may or may not be born with a disposition toward humans. This is a matter of debate, which I will address in Chapters 2 and 4. Regardless of whether they are or not, the first few weeks and months of dogs’ lives are seen to be crucial with regard to the socialisation of dogs to other dogs, to humans and other animals, and to some of the environments and experiences to which they will be obliged to become accustomed. Over this period, Steven Lindsay (author of the monumental three-volume Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training) writes: ‘an average puppy will probably learn more than during the remaining course of its lifetime, forming a lasting emotional and cognitive schemata of the social and physical environment’ (Lindsay 2000: 35). Although there is research on conspecific socialisation – for instance: what happens if puppies are removed from the dam and the litter too soon? (Pierantoni et al. 2011); what happens if they are removed too late? (Jokinen et al. 2017) – socialisation to humans has been the subject of extensive and meticulous research.

The notion of a ‘sensitive period’ – or sensitive periods – can be traced to John Scott and John Fuller’s (1965) classic study Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog.6 Like other studies conducted during the 1950s and 1960s, Scott and Fuller ‘sought to determine the upper and lower boundaries of early socialisation and so define the ideal period during which puppies were most sensitive to external stimuli’ (McEvoy et al. 2022: 19). Most socialisation protocols today are based on this early research, which usually took the form of isolation experiments. This is just one reason why the ‘deity status’ (Overall 1997: 13) ascribed to socialisation periods is problematic: Scott and Fuller are probably the only scientists to achieve comparability across different dogs and groups of dogs on account of the conditions under which they kept their research dogs (in confinement) (Fugazza and Miklósi 2014: 184). Or, as McEvoy et al. explain: ‘[t]‌his means that their value in telling us what is necessary for normal development is limited as we cannot distinguish the trauma caused by isolation, from the positive effects of human exposure’ (McEvoy et al. 2022: 21). Nevertheless, even if these developmental periods are not, after all, ‘a genetically programmed timetable’ (Lindsay 2000: 35), they are widely believed to provide a rough roadmap for socialisation. Today, the time frame for primary socialisation is generally considered to be between three and twelve weeks of age (McEvoy et al. 2022: 19) (although see below for more detail).

A veritable industry now supports and investigates these complex and fragile sensitive periods – fragile, perhaps, on account of their complexity. For example: drawing on Scott and Fuller, the veterinarian and applied animal behaviourist Karen Overall suggests that unless dogs are introduced to humans between week 5 and weeks 7–12, they are likely to be fearful of people in later life (Overall 1997: 13). This is not to suggest that dogs should not be exposed to humans before that time, only that ‘[t]‌he specified time frame … implies that dogs are not sufficiently neurologically and behaviorally focused on people in initiate interaction with people before 5 to 7 weeks’ (Overall 1997: 13). The point Overall is making here, about socialisation, is that development and growth are simultaneously biological and behavioural: the puppy needs to be exposed to stimuli at a time when it is meaningful in both these respects. This is why so much research on dogs attempts to address the question as to what constitutes too early, too late, too little or too much exposure to novel stimuli. Exposing puppies to severe fear can, during the developmental stage, enhance it (Overall 1997: 212). Socialisation programmes offer guidelines with regard to the timing of the introduction of stimuli (and what kinds of stimuli), but breeders, owners and trainers are also advised to go at the pace set by the puppy themself. Signs of hesitancy or negativity on the puppy’s part indicate that a socialisation programme may need to be adapted (e.g. to go more cautiously). But then again, it is also important not to overprotect puppies, since underexposure can have seriously damaging consequences later in life, which cannot necessarily be undone (Vaterlaws-Whiteside and Hartmann 2017: 56).

The painstaking attention to detail that characterises investigations into maximally effective dog socialisation cannot be overestimated. Table 1.1, to take just one example, describes a five-week socialisation programme devised by Helen Vaterlaws-Whiteside and Amandine Hartmann (2017), who are based at the Guide Dogs National Breeding Centre in Warwickshire, England. According to this schedule, socialisation begins from week 0. Since the puppy’s eyes and ears will be closed, the programme seeks to accustom puppies to the touch and smell of human contact by either holding puppies’ bodies close to different materials (wool, nylon, fleece) – for thirty seconds – or stroking them gently with them (with a soft towel, a rubber glove, a child’s toothbrush). Over the next four weeks, the puppy is exposed to some of the most common sounds in the human household. Visual stimulation and ‘interactions with people’ begin in week 2. Such interactions include restraint, which is possibly stressful. Yet stress, and its role in the socialisation process, is itself the topic of sizeable research. In her research on the socialisation of military dogs, Carmen Battaglia conducted experiments that she claims illustrate that puppies who are removed from the nest for three minutes each day during the first five to ten days of life are ‘better able to withstand stress’ as adults (Battaglia 2009: 203). Battaglia is building on the work of Michael Fox and others, who claim that early stress leads to ‘resistance [to stress], emotional stability and improved learning ability’ (Fox in Lindsay 2000: 39). Others, including Lindsay, suggest that such conclusions are conjectural (Lindsay 2000: 39).

Theme Stimulation activity Weeks
0 1 2 3 4 5
Tactile stimuli Velcro collar worn during socialisation session X X X X X X
Puppy picked up X X
Puppy stroked gently with fingers X X
Puppy’s body touched (head, body, tail, legs and paws) X X X X X X
Puppy held close to a woollen jumper for 30 s X X
Puppy held close to a nylon T-shirt for 30 s X X
Puppy held close to fleece material for 30 s X X
Puppy’s body gently stroked with a soft towel X X
Puppy’s body gently stroked with a rubber glove X X
Puppy’s body gently stroked with a soft child’s toothbrush X X
Puppy encouraged to move over carpet X X X X
Puppy encouraged to move over rubber matting X X X X
Puppy encouraged to move over a reusable shopping bag X X X
 
Auditory stimuli Paper bag rustled gently near puppy X
Plastic bag rustled gently near puppy X
Keys jangled gently near puppy X
Mobile ring (on lowest volume) near puppy X X
Gentle clapping near puppy X X
Mobile phone ring (on medium volume) near puppy X
Rolling noisy items (e.g. filled toy) within puppy’s reach, i.e. in the pen X X
Rolling noisy items out of puppy’s reach, i.e. outside the pen X X
Mobile ring (on standard volume) near the puppy X
 
Visual stimuli Puppy put in front of a television screen X
Rolling items (e.g. ball) within puppy’s reach, i.e. in the pen X X
Rolling items out of puppy’s reach, i.e. outside the pen X X
Items hung above stimulation area (e.g. tinsel) X X X X
Slowly opening and closing an umbrella in view of the puppy X
Introduction of a mirror X
Opening and closing an umbrella in view of the puppy X
Encourage exploration of mirror X
 
Interaction with people Puppy picked up and carried around kennel X
Puppy stroked by hand X
Puppy’s ears and teeth gently examined X X X X
One-to-one play session (soft toy and squeaky toy for a total of 3 min) X
Puppy picked up and carried to stimulation kennel X X X
Puppy gently restrained for 5 s X
One-to-one play session (soft toy, squeaky toy and tug toy for 3 min) X X X
Researcher wears a hat/sunglasses/back pack X X X
Puppy gently restrained for 15 s X
Hiding a toy and encouraging the puppy to find it X X
Puppy gently restrained for 20 s X
 
Interaction with the environment Puppy carried around outside (block run) X
Experience concrete surface outside X X
Experience grass surface outside X X
Experience rubber surface outside X X
Encourage puppy to climb over an obstacle X X
Encourage puppy to move in and out of doorways X
Gently place a towel over the puppy and let it find its way out X

Source: Vaterlaws-Whiteside and Hartmann (2017: 56).

Reading between the lines, a good part of socialisation programmes is designed to help a dog to manage their emotions, especially in the face of competing emotional demands upon them. As the veterinarian and ethologist Iben Meyer and his colleagues note, ‘[t]‌he “ideal dog” is expected to be social and friendly, both calm and energetic, and easy to train’ (Meyer et al. 2022: 2). Above all, however, they must never be angry. In Mine!, a training book on resource guarding, trainer Jean Donaldson begins by reminding her reader that ‘[o]ur expectations of dogs are very high … The standard we have set for them is one we would consider absurd for any other species of animal, including ourselves. We want no aggressive behavior directed at humans, of even the most ritualized sort, at any time, over the entire course of the dog’s life’ (Donaldson 2002: 2, emphasis in the original). And in case her reader hasn’t quite grasped the point: this is ‘exactly like you … [n]ever once losing your temper’ (2).

Donaldson is not suggesting that resource-guarding is not a problem. After all, it may be a symptom of a deeper unhappiness in a dog, of a mistrustful relationship between a dog and their handler, and it is also a serious welfare insult for dogs, since ‘aggression’ is one of the main reasons given for relinquishment. Nevertheless, what Donaldson is intimating here is that resource-guarding is perceived as a behavioural problem in part because dogs are not permitted to express anger (except when guarding something of value to humans that is under human threat). Given how often, during the day, an average dog experiences ‘hassle’ from which they cannot escape (from children; from other dogs; from owners obstructing, yanking, shouting, petting etc.), and how much time they spend in suspended dependence (waiting for food, for company, for attention, to go out, to go home, to play, to evacuate), and how curbed are their pleasures (running, sniffing, eating shit, splashing in mud, rolling in whatever-whatever etc.), it is perhaps surprising how rarely dogs react with anger (McConnell 2017: para. 4). Dogs are obliged to be ‘happy’, zoologist and dog trainer Patricia McConnell argues (critically), unless they are ‘sad … [because] they are missing us’ (McConnell 2017: para. 6).

‘[B]‌eing left alone for many hours is something that has to be learned’ (Meyer et al. 2022: 2). Like other things that must be learned, this is a learning that obliges dogs to reconcile at least two antithetical emotional dispositions: dependence upon humans, and the ability to tolerate potentially extensive periods of isolation from them. This gives (or should give) pause for reflection: a dog’s warm welcome on the owner’s return, often cited as one of the key rewards of human dog ownership, comes at a potentially high cost for the dog. A reported 5–30 per cent of dogs suffer separation anxiety, Meyer et al. write, but that figure, they also propose, is probably much higher, given that separation anxiety may not leave any evidence of itself, or because owners don’t recognise evidence of it, or because owners don’t consider it to be something that needs to be addressed (Meyer et al. 2022: 2).7 As the behaviourist Suzanne Clothier notes, owners are more likely to identify and attend to a dog’s physical discomfort and pain than they are to their cognitive and emotional distress (Clothier 2018; Young 2003: 76). Similarly, Hubrecht, Wickens and Kirkwood argue that ‘[p]eople are far more likely to see behaviors that directly affect humans, such as aggression, as severe and problematic compared to those that primarily affect the dog, such as fearfulness’ (Hubrecht et al. 2017: 279). Fearful dogs receive less help (Hubrecht et al. 2017: 279).

What is the purpose of the science of socialisation? For humans, one of the main aims of this body of research appears to be predictive: how can we predict which puppies are likely to grow into adult dogs who will meet the criteria for, say, laboratory research (Boxall et al. 2004), military work (Battaglia 2009), assistance work (Mai et al. 2021) or companion work (Dietz et al. 2018)? Economic considerations are at least as important as, if not more important than, the welfare of the dog (e.g. Berns et al. 2017). In the domestic setting, the purpose is largely to avoid owner-assessed ‘intolerable’ dog behaviours that potentially lead to relinquishment and euthanasia. On-going ‘canine behaviour problems’ are one of the main reasons why 3.3 million dogs in the USA are relinquished each year, nearly one-quarter of whom (670,000 dogs) are euthanised (Dinwoodie et al. 2019: 63). Yet what dog, Meyer et al. ask, can tolerate the conditions under which they are required to live? (Meyer et al. 2022: 3).

What indeed becomes of the dog who is not ‘socialised’ (enough)? Fear looms large (Puurunen 2020). In evolutionary terms, fear is understood to have ‘direct fitness consequences’ (Wheat et al. 2019). Which is to say that an animal (including a human) who does not experience fear may not be able to anticipate or recognise danger and risk. Becoming less afraid of humans is often seen as a marker of domestication; it is itself an ‘evolutionary pressure’ (Meyer et al. 2022: 2; see Chapter 2 of this book). Yet it appears that a lot of dogs are afraid a lot of the time. In her book on treating fear in dogs, canine behaviour specialist Nicole Wilde begins by establishing a spectrum of fears. She classifies object-specific fear, for example, as ‘moderate’. What does object-specific fear include? Among other fears, it may include fear of objects (e.g. sunglasses) and individuals (e.g. children), of a particular kind of motion (e.g. the car), of a particular environment (e.g. the vet), of strangers, of dogs, of separation or of touch (e.g. brushing and grooming); and non-social fears (e.g. fear of loud noises such as thunder, or fear of novel objects, surfaces, heights etc.). What does fear in a dog look like? Wilde provides a chart (Table 1.2).

Common audible signals Common visible signals Miscellaneous subtle signals
whining dilated pupils sweaty paw pads
whimpering tensed muscles shedding fur/dandruff
growling trembling ‘clingy’/leaning on owner
barking pacing restlessness/hyperactivity
howling extreme salivation/ vigilantly scans environment
screaming drooling or shallow breathing or panting
decreased salivation ‘shaking off’ (as if wet)
rapid or very slow stretching
blinking moving very slowly
yawning
Extreme anal sac expression, loss of bladder/sphincter control, vomiting

Source: Wilde (2006: 17).

Positive exposure to an enriched environment is not in itself a guarantee that a dog will not become fearful either when they are a puppy or later in life. As well as lack of adequate socialisation and/or lack of on-going socialisation, other causes of fear include abuse, trauma and medical illness. Fear can also be idiopathic. Or it may be genetic (i.e. it may be heritable). Since the genomic sequencing of a purebred Boxer, Tasha, in 2004, the evolutionary convergence between dogs and humans has been understood to pertain not solely to behaviours (see Chapters 2, 4 and 5), but also to physiology, disease, disease presentation and clinical response.8 So it is that fearful Pointers have been bred as a model for human anxiety disorders (Serpell et al. 2017: 107). Fear is reinforcing: a successful coping strategy (successful from the dog’s point of view) is likely to be repeated. A behaviour that was once performed defensively, such as a posture or bark, can morph and even escalate into something that looks like ‘aggression’ (Wilde 2006: Chapter 1; Bradshaw and Rooney 2017: 139).

In a recent study, behaviour ‘problems’ were identified by Finnish owners in more than 85 per cent of 4,114 dogs (Dinwoodie et al. 2019: 67).9 This study explicitly excluded owners who were motivated to participate because they believed their dog had a behaviour problem (63). The ‘problem’ behaviours identified were: ‘fear/anxiety, aggression, jumping, excessive barking, coprophagia, obsessive-compulsive/compulsive behaviors, house soiling, rolling in repulsive materials, overactivity/hyperactivity, destructive behavior, running away/escaping, and mounting/humping’ (Dinwoodie et al. 2019: 64).10 The study is interesting because its aim was to investigate comorbidity, and startling because nearly every behaviour on the list was associated with fear and/or anxiety. One routine scientific response to this is to insist on more socialisation. Socialisation, recognised to be of singular importance during a puppy’s developmental period, is now considered to be significant throughout a dog’s life:

The term ‘enrichment’ has come to mean the positive sum of experiences that have a cumulative effect on the individual. Enrichment experiences typically involve exposure to a wide variety of interesting, novel and exciting experiences with regular opportunities to freely investigate, manipulate, and interact with humans and other species. In many respects enrichment is an extension of socialization and lasts a lifetime.(Battaglia 2009: 209)

Socialisation, in short, is never finished, as studies exploring the negative effects of kennelling on already socialised dogs demonstrate especially well (e.g. Polgár et al. 2019). (See also below on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on adult dogs.)

The ‘need’ for on-going socialisation and training is revealing at a more prosaic level. Clothier writes:

When I let quick drops and steady stays slip, they let it slip as well not because they are lazy or resistant dogs but because it does not matter to them. It only matters to me, and thus it is my responsibility to maintain a high level of awareness about this, and my obligation to remain invested in maintenance of the behavior. If I am unaware of my responsibility and blame the dogs, who do not understand the importance of the behavior as one way to keep them safe in their world, then I might slip over the edge and justify using force, placing the blame on the dogs and not on myself where it belongs.(Clothier 2005: 232, emphasis in the original)

In other words, don’t blame the dog, who probably gives not a fig about sitting or downing or returning on cue, if you haven’t insisted on reminding her that you do. Clothier is making an important point here. On-going socialisation matters to humans rather than to dogs, but the consequences that follow from its failure are borne by dogs. One of the reasons continued socialisation, enrichment and training are of concern to behavioural professionals – and why they should also be of concern to owners and handlers – is that, as Clothier says here, it keeps dogs safe. Safe from what? Principally, safe from humans: from human expectations, prejudices and aggressive behaviours toward dogs, many of which are consolidated in law. In the UK, a dog can be seized on the grounds that ‘it causes fear or apprehension to a person’ (DEFRA 2009: 2). A dog may live their life in fear of a human, humans or a human environment, as long as this fear has no consequences for humans. A human may fear a dog, perhaps for only a moment, and there will be consequences in law for the dog.

Pandemic puppies

In this final part of my discussion of socialisation, I explore what might be learned from the ‘pandemic puppy’ phenomenon, which brought the issue (of dog socialisation) to public attention. More than 3 million animals were bought as pets during lockdown in the UK, with a particular demand for puppies (BBC 2021). This huge escalation in demand transformed breeding into an even more profitable business. Individual dogs could sell, for example, for as much as £9,000 (Munke 2023). Unsurprisingly, the number of puppies imported into the UK increased by more than 100 per cent (Brand et al. 2022: 20). Research suggests that people who bought a puppy during the pandemic ‘were more likely to be first-time dog owners’ (Packer et al. 2021: 1; see also PDSA 2021: 5);11 that 10 per cent of pandemic puppy owners bought on impulse; and that 40 per cent bought a dog for how they look, rather than what they need (Menke 2023). At the same time, routine supports for puppy owners and their puppies, and especially for puppy socialisation, were withdrawn or compromised. These were the conditions that defined, and will probably continue to define, the lives of the pandemic puppies. What to me is especially disquieting, however, is that many of the problems faced by this cohort are widely shared by pre- (and post-) pandemic dog populations. This suggests that the pandemic did not create wholly new problems, so much as intensify and spotlight long-standing ones. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic illuminated how much work is required to pull a dog ‘up’ onto the dog–human ‘bond wagon’, and how easy it is for any dog to fall from or to be pushed off it.

In their review of canine socialisation, Victoria McEvoy et al. write that:

[t]‌here are currently six defined sensitive periods in early canine development: (1) the prenatal period (9 week gestation period) (2) the neonatal period (birth to 2 weeks of age) (3) the transition period (2–3 weeks of age) (4) the socialisation period (3–12 weeks of age) (5) the juvenile period (12 weeks to 6 months of age), and (6) the pubertal period (7–24 months).(McEvoy et al. 2022: 2)

One of the implications that follows from this understanding of dogs’ developmental periods is that ‘[r]‌esponsibility for proper exposure to age-appropriate socialisation … starts with the breeder’ (McEvoy et al. 2022: 2). Many European countries, including the UK, oblige breeders to socialise their puppies, and indeed to ‘prove’ to potential buyers that they have done so by showing them the puppy interacting with their mother, in their place of birth. The socialisation of puppies is not, however, often enforced in law and, as McEvoy et al. note, ‘the largest puppy trade network in western Europe imports puppies from Hungary and Slovakia, which have no guidelines regarding dog breeding or socialisation’ (McEvoy et al. 2022: 2).

Prior to the pandemic, a report by the Kennel Club indicated that, out of the 9 million UK dog population, 1 million had been bought by owners who had not seen the puppy in advance, and that 630,000 puppies had been delivered to the door (Kennel Club 2018: para. 7). This means that buyers had had no opportunity to see the environment in which the puppy was born and raised, or to see the puppy with their dam and litter. In short, they had no opportunity to learn anything about the puppy’s early socialisation. It was hoped that such practices would be brought to an end by Lucy’s Law, which was published on 6 April 2020. Lucy’s law – named after a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who was rescued from a puppy farm – banned the commercial third-party sale of puppies and kittens in an effort to ensure that potential owners buy puppies directly from a licensed breeder or adopt from a rescue shelter.

Lucy’s Law commenced twelve days after lockdown measures in the UK came legally into force. But in the confusion surrounding these emergency measures, especially with regard to travel restrictions, puppy buyers found themselves able to meet sellers half-way, or to have puppies delivered to their homes. Claire Brand and her colleagues at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) describe the consequences:

[D]‌uring the pandemic, puppies were more likely to be viewed virtually (e.g., online video calls or pre-recorded videos/photos), and to be collected from outside their breeder’s property, at a meeting place between the breeder’s and new owner’s properties or delivered directly to their new owner. [This] puppy-buying process risked prospective owners purchasing puppies from breeders who may have been using pandemic restrictions as a ‘smokescreen’ to either hide the unsuitable environments that puppies were raised in, or as a cover-up for the illegal importation of puppies from outside the UK to meet demand.(Brand et al. 2022: 2)

‘“Click and collect” type purchases’, as Ed Hayes, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the Kennel Club puts it (Kennel Club 2021: para. 10), are often associated with intensive dog breeding (IDB) – also called ‘puppy mills’, ‘puppy farms’ or commercial breeding establishments (CBEs). Puppy farmers raise puppies as cheaply as possible, and dispatch them from their litters as quickly as possible. The detriments to dog welfare are manifold. To take just two examples: first, as has been extensively documented, the in-breeding of pedigree dogs has led the diversity of their gene pools to become diminished, leading in turn to ‘genetically based deformities, diseases and disadvantages’ (Bradshaw 2012: xxi) that can shape the entirety of a dog’s life. Although it is poor compensation, mandatory screening – both phenotypic and genetic – is at least intended to ‘weed out’ ‘genetically-caused behavioural and medical issues’ (Wauthier and Williams 2018: 76). Such screening is unlikely to occur on a puppy farm. Second, quality of maternal care – considered by some to be more important than any other kind of socialisation (Dietz et al. 2018; Pierantoni et al. 2011) – can be severely compromised in puppy farms. Breeding bitches are forced to breed continuously, which causes physiological and emotional stress in the dam, creates stress sensitivity in her infants, and affects the amount and quality of care that infants receive in the neonatal period (Wauthier and Williams 2018: 76). When breeding bitches are no longer able to breed, they are ‘discarded’.

Puppies born into CBEs unquestionably endure one of the worst starts in life. Regardless of whether one laughs at, weeps over, or decries scientific preoccupation with socialisation, an impoverished environment during the period when puppies are open to new stimuli, coupled with distressing transportation experiences while puppies are likely to be especially fearful – from eastern Europe, puppies might often travel ‘several days, by road’ (Brand et al. 2022: 2) – can only make it more difficult for a puppy to transition into human social life. Research suggests that dogs sourced from CBEs, on account of their ‘inadequate socialisation’, ‘express more adverse behaviours as adults’, and that the main behavioural disorders displayed are ‘increased fear, aggression, anxiety, and separation-related behaviours, as well as attention-seeking behaviours and heightened sensitivity to touch’ (McEvoy et al. 2022: 2). It is noteworthy, however, that dogs who emerge from these extreme conditions have characteristics in common not only with pandemic puppies who were not bought through ‘click and collect’, but also with already established (i.e. pre-pandemic) dog populations.

For example: during the pandemic, routine supports – such as conspecific socialisation, training classes, veterinary care and habituation to visits to the vet – were jeopardised for all new puppies. Although, as noted by Brand et al., ‘[d]‌ata on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on puppy development are sparse’ (Brand et al. 2022: 2), the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA)’s Animal Wellbeing report (PAW) of 2021 indicated that 27 per cent of the dogs acquired after March 2020 – without discrimination as to how they were obtained – were ‘showing behaviours that could be related to lack of socialisation’ (PDSA 2021: 5), while 18 per cent ‘show[ed] signs of distress when … left alone’ (11). With regard to the commonalities between companion dogs procured prior to and during the pandemic, the PDSA reports here that 22 per cent of dogs acquired before March 2020 ‘have shown new behaviours’ (11), and that these behaviours include: ‘barking or vocalising for more than one minute at someone out the window’, ‘new signs of distress when left alone’, ‘new signs of fear’ and ‘new growling, snapping, or biting towards unfamiliar dogs’ (11). In their article entitled ‘Changes to adult dog social behaviour during and after COVID-19 lockdowns in England’, Holly Boardman and Mark Farnworth ascribe such new behaviours to lack of socialisation for adult dogs during the pandemic, leading to ‘an increase in aggression and fear-related behaviours’ (Boardman and Farnworth 2022: 10). In keeping with my claim that the pandemic did not create new problems but rather highlighted long-standing ones, the authors further suggest that such behaviours would have come about anyway, if only more slowly (10).

‘[W]‌e’ve got a whole cohort of dogs’, writes the Dogs Trust operations director Adam Clowes, ‘that started life in not the real world, and as life starts to return to normal those dogs and their owners are struggling to cope’ (Clowes in Wollaston 2021: para. 7). But Clowes’s protest could be read backwards: ‘the real world’ for dogs is normally a tough one, which requires a huge amount of on-going human regulation, structural organisation and professional support to make it possible. This is why the troubles I have been describing are not solely the troubles of those puppies whose early developmental periods were disrupted, for one reason or another, by the COVID-19 pandemic. Consider, for instance, separation anxiety: to be sure, pandemic puppies – whether they were born and raised in CBEs or not – are in an especially difficult position with regard to the issue of separation because they have been obliged to make the transition from rarely, if ever, being alone to often being alone. ‘Post’-pandemic, the RVC called urgently for ‘enhanced support mechanisms’ (Packer et al. 2021: 23) that might prevent pandemic puppy owners from relinquishing their dogs. These support mechanisms include, notably, dog care and dog walkers, so that dogs are not ‘left alone for long periods of time’, and training for dogs so that they can be ‘left alone without distress’ (Packer et al. 2021: 23).12 Nevertheless, these dogs are joining vast numbers of dogs who share their anxiety: the RVC suggests that pre-pandemic figures regarding the numbers of dogs suffering from separation-related behaviours could be anywhere between one-fifth (Packer et al. 2021: 23) and one half (Brand et al. 2022: 2) of the total UK dog population, while the RSPCA puts that figure closer to 80 per cent (RSPCA 2023: para. 2).

The COVID-19 pandemic was significant on two counts: it illuminated the consequences of the partial withdrawal of socialisation mechanisms for dogs, and it also showed those consequences to be relevant not only to dogs born during the pandemic, but also to dogs born before the pandemic began, i.e. to many adult dogs. In other words, it made visible the on-going necessity of socialisation throughout a dog’s life and, as can be identified in the problems shared across different dog populations, how inadequate that socialisation often is. If there is one area, however, where the pandemic puppies are arguably distinctive, it is the young age at which they are being euthanised. In a sobering presentation at a meeting on dangerous dogs organised by the Public Policy Exchange, Sara Munke, who has been rehoming dogs for forty-six years and who is currently manager of the Chilterns Dog Rescue Society, reported that vets are saying that, as a result of the pandemic, ‘a generation of dogs has been lost’ (Munke 2023). By this vets mean that a generation of young dogs are being euthanised because they cannot adapt to life with humans at all, never mind to a life of ‘the bond’.13

Keeping it real

In the UK, behavioural professionals often find themselves operating in the space between dog owners, scientists, dog welfare stakeholders, social services and the police. They may of course occupy more than one of these roles themselves and, like everyone else, they contribute to and shape debates about dogs. Having said that, behavioural professionals are arguably uniquely positioned as the group principally tasked with transforming changing ideas about dogs, and changing ideas about how a dog–human relationship ‘should be’, into material practice. As such, they are well positioned to witness the discrepancies between what people say and/or believe about their relationships with dogs, and the reality of dogs’ lives on the ground.

In the present moment, as Justyna Włodarczyk argues, and as I illustrated earlier, ‘the guiding principle of so much contemporary thought and practice’ is characterised by a generalised ‘fascination with animality’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 231). With regard to dogs, Włodarczyk continues, this fascination manifests itself – in canine science, in the popular media and among dog owners – as a ‘belief in canine genius’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 231). It is notable that Włodarczyk excludes behavioural professionals, and especially dog trainers, from this list. Far from being ‘fascinated’, dog trainers, she writes, ‘“keep it real”’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 231). ‘Keeping it real’ does not necessarily mean taking a strong, public, ‘political’ stance on dogs, however. Dog trainers ‘are not (and most likely will never be) at the forefront of a revolution. Any revolution, really. They have dogs to take care of’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 227). Nevertheless, Włodarczyk is not arguing that dog trainers are apolitical. On the contrary, she conceives of this group as Foucauldian ‘truth-tellers’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 227), and it is because ‘they are committed to the truth’ that they ‘shine a critical lens on mainstream discourses about dogs’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 227). Critical, and deflating. By way of example, Włodarczyk notes that ‘genius’ behaviours can be taught using fairly mechanical tools that draw on basic models of stimulus/response (see Chapter 3 of this book).

In my own experience, ‘keeping it real’ is less likely to involve the use of basic models of stimulus/response to disestablish a mistaken belief in canine genius, and more likely to involve these and other similar techniques to address the behavioural problems that often follow from dog despair. Separation anxiety, for example, might be mitigated using systematic desensitisation and relaxation protocols. Fear might be addressed with operant conditioning (teaching the dog to do something else in the presence of the stimulus they fear) or counter-conditioning (changing the dog’s emotional response to the stimulus). Just as importantly, ‘keeping it real’ means working with owners and handlers who, while extolling the dog–human bond, often prefer to consider a problem – such as ‘my dog barks at every moving object that passes the living room window’ – atomistically, rather than as testimony to the myriad difficulties a dog might be struggling with on account of how their life as a whole is organised. I will return to this point below.

Of course, it is unrealistic to expect all dog trainers to be ‘truth-tellers’, especially given that dog training, which is unregulated in the UK, is a potentially lucrative business. For example: in keeping with an affirmative biopolitics (which seeks to ‘manipulate affects’), Włodarczyk argues that the shift toward positive reinforcement training in the 1990s and early 2000s was and continues to be motivated in large part by what Nicole Shukin calls ‘feeling power’: ‘a fantasy of mutual human–canine interspecies love and devotion’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 19). Positive reinforcement training, at its most basic, refers to training that rewards a dog for what she does ‘right’, rather than punishing her for what she does ‘wrong’, and in the process strengthens the dog–owner relationship. The fantasy of mutual human–canine interspecies love and devotion has led many owners to seek out trainers who adopt what is sometimes called ‘purely positive’ training methods, and for some dog trainers, consequently, to identify themselves in this way, even though ‘purely positive’ is an almost unintelligible concept.14

To explain: operant conditioning is a theory that claims to be able to account for how behaviours are strengthened or extinguished. Operant conditioning is usually based on four quadrants, two positive, two negative. ‘Positive’, in this context, means that something is given; ‘negative’, that something is taken away. Where most conscientious professional trainers recognise and make explicit the inevitability of the use of negative punishment (withholding something the dog wants, like a treat) alongside positive reinforcement when training,15 it is politic not to draw attention to the fact that, outside the classroom, owners themselves regularly use not only positive reinforcement and negative punishment, but also positive punishment and negative reinforcement, the two quadrants of operant conditioning that are commonly associated with aversive-based training (Casey et al. 2021: 12).

My discussion here is intended to be pragmatic. I am not addressing difficult questions regarding the philosophical ‘honesty’ or ‘dishonesty’ of operant conditioning;16 what ethical issues are raised by different training methods; and what they tell, explicitly or implicitly, about the politics of dog–human relations. Rather, I am using operant conditioning instrumentally, as a lens through which to draw attention to the discrepancies between discourses of ‘feeling power’, which trainers may exploit, and routine handler/owner interactions with dogs, which are likely to invoke plenty of ‘unpleasant stimuli’ over the course of a single day (bearing in mind that what constitutes a ‘positive’ or ‘aversive’ stimulus will vary from one dog to another). Positive punishment tends to call to mind physically disciplinary techniques, such as hitting a dog, or using a prong or electric shock collar. Yet (to take a common example), simply applying leash pressure to a dog would also be an example of positive punishment, relieving leash pressure an example of negative reinforcement. What is significant, here, is that the unpalatable realities of many dogs’ lives are set to the tune of positive reinforcement that, in the spirit of affirmative biopolitics, operates as a ‘technology of love’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 231). This makes ‘resistance to power’ more difficult for a dog, and more difficult for a human to recognise (Włodarczyk 2018: 145).

Owners often approach behavioural professionals for help with a single behavioural ‘problem’. In response, nearly all behavioural professionals will conduct a full review of a dog’s medical and behavioural history, and also ask detailed questions – often several times, from different angles – about the routines and relationships that characterise a dog’s life. Why? Because, usually, it is this holistic picture that gives insight into the so-called ‘isolated’ issue. But as a canine behavioural specialist recently commented to me: owners generally want a quick fix. Yet even the quick fix can be tricky for owners, and for this professionals pay a heavy price in terms of their own welfare. ‘One of the factors implicated in trainer burnout’, trainer Jean Donaldson writes, is the ‘steady stream of cases that would be routine fixes if only the owner were up to the program’ (Donaldson 2002: 19). Some owners, of course, are up to ‘the program’, although it is striking that descriptions of such challenges sustain ‘an entire genre of narratives written by owners of dogs deemed “unsavable”’ (Włodarczyk 2018: 233). This suggests that so exceptional and remarkable is the event of an owner doing the work to ‘save’ a dog, that, when it occurs, it merits a book.

While there is an extensive literature documenting the high levels of stress, depression, anxiety and suicide in the veterinary profession (e.g. Platt et al. 2012), especially among vets who work with companion animals in the USA (Tomasi et al. 2019: 106), as Tamsin Durston notes in her book Emotional Well-Being for Animal Professionals, ‘other professional groups, such as the dog training instructor community, simply haven’t been studied’ (Durston 2022: 4–5). People who work in animal protection and welfare are witness to much human and animal suffering, and can themselves, in turn, suffer intense psychological trauma. Thus it is that Rochelle Stevenson and Celeste Morales recommend that trauma-informed practices be implemented in this sector (Stevenson and Morales 2022). Behavioural professionals, particularly those whose work is not confined to the private sphere, are similarly placed with regard to the organisational, operational and emotional pressures of their work. Key among those pressures is the knowledge that, on account of how they have been bred, raised and/or treated, many dogs ‘can be rescued’ but cannot, ‘ultimately, be saved’ (Munke 2023).

Conclusion

In 2022, a rather technical article on the balance of disease predispositions and disease protections in Pugs, published in the scientific journal Canine Medicine and Genetics, hit the media headlines. Devised by Dan O’Neill, who is based at the RVC, the study sought to plug the ‘information gaps about the health of Pugs relative to the general population of dogs’ (O’Neill et al. 2022: 3). To this end, the researchers collected clinical data on 16,218 Pugs and 889,326 non-Pugs under primary veterinary care during the year 2016. They concluded, shockingly, that the health differences between Pugs and all other dogs have diverged so greatly that ‘the Pug breed can no longer be considered as a typical dog from the perspective of its disorder profile’ (O’Neill et al. 2022: 9).

The welfare crisis that is affecting Pugs and other brachycephalic breeds is called extreme conformation. As the British Veterinary Association (BVA) explains (rather understatedly): ‘[a]‌nimals with extremes of conformation have an exaggerated body shape, structure, or appearance which can negatively affect their health and welfare’ (BVA 2023: para. 1). The O’Neill et al. study illustrated that Pugs’ conformation is so extreme, and so extreme are the disorder consequences of that conformation, that they can no longer be considered a typical dog.

It is probably the use of this word ‘typical’ that ensured that the study reached the headlines (e.g. BBC 2022). Problematically however, in my view, the word – or rather, the description ‘not typical’ serves to cordon off the brachycephalic breeds, and to imply that the problems they are obliged to contend with are uniquely different from the problems of all other domesticated dogs. Is this so? Rather than claim that Pugs are extremely exceptional and therefore not typical, I would alternatively argue that they are extreme in their typicality, i.e. that they are extremely typical.17 By this I mean that the breed typifies the extremity that often characterises the relationship between domesticated dogs and humans, whether this is recognised across other areas of dogs’ lives or not. This is the face of ‘the bond’.

My aim in this chapter has been to gesture toward how much work is involved in creating the dog–human ‘bond’, and how difficult that work mostly is, for dogs. My argument is not that the lives of the domesticated dogs in the Global North, that population of companion and working dogs that constitute the main subjects of canine scientific research, would be improved if, say, all dogs were well socialised, dogs were left alone less often, dogs were not seen to be discardable consumer objects, owners’ limitations were more explicitly recognised, dogs were enabled to be more ‘doggy’, dogs were not expected always to be ‘under control’, there were fewer restrictions on dogs in public spaces etc. Although ‘the contemporary emergency’ (Rich 1986: 259) demands that all these issues, and many further issues, be urgently addressed, the more fundamental point of Dog Politics is that the notion of a ‘special relationship’ between dogs and humans, authorised and justified by dogs’ species story, contributes substantially not only to creating these conditions in the first place, but also to finding them to be in some way par for the dog–human course. It may take a ‘quantum leap’ (Rich 1986: 259) to undo this.

The problems facing domesticated dogs are complex, and dogs’ species story could not begin to account for them. Nevertheless, this story carries significant weight as a broad framework that informs the politics of dogs’ lives with humans. It gives shape to and impacts on, for example, policy decisions regarding dog welfare; the topics that canine scientists consider important or unimportant to research; owner conceptions of what constitutes ‘normal’ dog–human relations; and, relatedly, what quality of life it is necessary to provide for dogs. This book continues to address these kinds of issues. Its primary focus, however, lies on the ‘frame’ itself, i.e. the story. It is to the story, to dogs’ species story, that I turn next.

Notes

1 Although human-controlled socialisation is the focus of this chapter, I am not suggesting that dogs do not socialise themselves. Street dogs, clearly, are largely responsible for their own socialisation, but it is also the case that the socialisation of companion animals could not succeed without the participation of the dogs themselves, however unequal the terms of their engagement with that process.
2 Włodarczyk (2018: 207).
3 A problem that Dognition.com, which is connected to Duke University’s Canine Cognition Centre, believes it has resolved through citizen science. I will return to Dognition.com in Chapter 4.
4 Mixed-breed dogs were not registered with the AKC until 2009, and were not allowed to compete in trials until 2010.
5 On the co-option of dogs in colonial and postcolonial projects – and on the often deathly consequences of this co-option for ‘native’ dogs – see for example Doble (2020) and Van Sittert and Swart (2008).
6 In fact, Scott and Fuller referred to these as ‘critical’ periods of development (see especially Scott and Fuller (1965: Chapter 5)). Today, they are more commonly described as ‘sensitive’, on account of the perceived ‘plasticity of behaviour and preferences’ (McEvoy et al. 2022: 2).
7 I also think this figure is likely to be higher. I will return to figures for separation anxiety and separation-related behaviours below.
8 Dogs have more diseases ‘than any other species, with the exception of man’ (Starkey et al. 2005: 112). More than half of canine genetic diseases (numbering about 350) have an equivalent human disease (Hayward et al. 2016: 2). As a result, dogs have been marked out as an especially significant model for human disease (Lindblad-Toh 2012: 256).
9 This figure roughly matches that given by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff for the number of dogs with ‘behavioral problems’ in the United States – 80 per cent (Pierce and Bekoff 2021: 150).
10 Not all these behaviours are necessarily problematic from a dog’s point of view. Current research suggests, for example, that coprophagia is ‘a normal dog behaviour’ (Case 2022: 30).
11 See Packer et al.’s (2021) well-publicised research report on the characteristics that defined pandemic puppy purchasers during the period 23 March–31 December 2020, as compared with puppy purchasers over the same period in 2019.
12 It is worth noting that, during the pandemic in the UK, 5 per cent of dogs acquired before March 2020 were said by their owners to be ‘spending more time in quiet areas of the home’ (PDSA 2021: 11). One wonders what was the experience of the pandemic puppies in this regard, even if the lockdown conditions in which they were raised ultimately lent themselves to separation anxiety.
13 See also Brand et al. (2022: 2) on the euthanasia of pandemic dogs under three years old on the grounds of ‘undesirable behaviours’ such as the display of non-social fear, social fearfulness and aggression.
14 There can be good reason to deploy solely positive reinforcement training, for example when working with extremely traumatised dogs. Training programmes that seek to do this, however, have to be devised with great care and executed with exacting attention to detail.
15 See for example Alexander (2006) on the Karen Pryor clicker training website, or the celebrity dog trainer Victoria Stilwell’s (2017) blog ‘Why I’m not (and never have been) a purely positive dog trainer’.
16 See Włodarczyk’s excellent discussion of Vicki Hearne and B. F. Skinner by way of example (Włodarczyk 2018: 183–191).
17 This is not in any way to diminish the very serious problems that Pugs and other brachycephalic breeds suffer. So serious are the health consequences of these breeds (which include, for instance, French Bulldogs, English Bulldogs, Shih Tzus, Chow Chows, Pekingeses, Boxers, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels), they have rightly become a matter of considerable professional concern, as illustrated, for example, by the British Veterinary Association’s #BreedtoBreathe campaign. In the UK, a Brachycephalic Working Group (BWG) has been established, which brings together a significant number of major UK dog welfare stakeholders, such as the British Veterinary Association, the Dogs Trust, the RVC, DEFRA, the RSPCA etc. The BWG have a simple message for the public: ‘stop and think before buying a flat-faced dog’ (BWG 2022: 1).
  • Collapse
  • Expand

All of MUP's digital content including Open Access books and journals is now available on manchesterhive.

 

Dog politics

Species stories and the animal sciences

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 0 0 0
Full Text Views 260 260 5
PDF Downloads 237 237 4