Chapter Seven
Household Dogs
Working dogs may enjoy a mutualistic relationship with people. But once evolvedinto a working shape and behavior, these dogs also get adopted as pets. And herelies a dark side to the association of dogs with people. Just what is theecological status of people and household dogs? Household dogs — also known aspets or companion animals — are usually considered to be beneficial for people,providing unquestioned love, constant loyalty, eager companionship, and avariety of what people perceive to be positive additions to their lives. But inthe scheme of biological survival and perpetuation of the species — any species— what counts is not what we perceive to be beneficial, but what really isbeneficial, biologically. For living things, survival depends on a trio ofabsolutely fundamental needs: food, safety, and reproduction. Unless dogsprovide measurable quantities of these essentials, they are not strictlybeneficial to the survival of humans.
At the same time, people are usually considered beneficial for dogs, furnishingtheir food, safety, health care, jobs, and, often, well-arranged opportunitiesto reproduce themselves. However, as a biologist looking closely at dogs, Ibecome more and more uneasy. At the very least, I think the symbioticrelationship of pet dogs with their owners is seriously unclear. Perhaps that isbecause there is more than one association between them. Part of the pet-ownerrelationship is mutual, in the direction of the working dog and its owner. Butsometimes I see the population of pet dogs acting like parasites on people. Andat other times I see humans treating dogs really badly.
Maybe people don't knowingly treat dogs badly. It could easily be that petowners are just not biologically good for their pets, sustaining a relationshipthat ecologists call amensalism.
Amensalism describes the biological relationship in which one species is notaffected by the association, but the other species, by accident, is hurt by it.An ecology book describes the relationship between bison and prairie chickens asamensalism. Prairie chickens live in bison country, not really affecting thebison, but as the bison search for food they step on prairie chicken eggs. Theydon't mean to, but nevertheless they are bad for the birds. Amensalism isusually contrasted with parasitism, in which the parasite purposely lives offthe host and saps the host's strength.
Can I cite an example of amensalism? Easily. Take just one case — that of thebulldog. From active and noteworthy employment as the butcher's working dog, andthen as a sporting dog, the breed has been adopted as a pet and show dog. Inorder to enhance its robust, highly unusual appearance, breeders have selectedfor those traits that emphasize the essence of bulldog — the thick, massivehead and short, pug nose. What they have achieved, probably accidentally, aredogs that often can barely breathe, can barely chew, whose puppies are hard todeliver, and females that have to be artificially inseminated. Such animalscannot be living a comfortable life. Their "enhanced" abnormal shape traps themin a genetic dead end. Being caught and bred as household dogs is detrimental totheir long-term reproductive survival.
Likewise, I can easily cite an example of the dog being a parasite on humans.Parasites do not usually kill their host, but they do decrease the fitness ofthe host, and reduce the energy available to the host for its own survival. Thetwo species live together, and one gets its food at the expense of the other. Inits simplest form, I go to work, earn a salary, and part of my salary is spenton dog food to feed my pet dog. At its worst, my dog has a disease or an injurythat costs me hundreds of dollars to try to cure. Or, it bites someone and I getsued. Or, the dog has behavioral problems and ruins furniture. The dog is adrain on my resources and my energy. The dog takes time and money that I shouldbe investing in my children. It makes me less fit for survival.
The fifty-two million dogs living in households in the United States wereprobably added to those households as the result of a conscious decision by thehouseholder. People ask me, "What kind of dog should we get for a pet?" Whatthey are really saying is "What kind of dog do you think would benefit us themost?" Often the questioners have been thinking purebred dog. It could be thefirst time they have purchased a dog, and many people consult friends,relatives, books, and the occasional dog expert for advice.
I often start my answer with "Whatever you decide, get a pup before it is eightweeks old, and spend a lot of time with it during the next eight weeks." I guessmy assumption is that if they ask the "what kind of dog" question, they think abreed is a package of behaviors that comes prearranged. They are usually unawarethat any and all puppies need an informed and thoughtful owner to shape thepup's course toward well-behaved adulthood. Their assumption is that the rightbreed is all that is needed to effect the perfect dog-human bond.
They hardly ever ask me, "If you were getting a dog, what would you get?"Sometimes when I suggest breed x, they immediately say, "Oh! But we wanted a bigdog." And I ask, "Why would a big dog be more of a benefit?" Are they lookingfor protection? The conversation suggests that big dogs have more of anaesthetic impact. The big dog enhances their image of themselves. When they saybig dog, I just say, "I don't know the answer." I can't fathom a big dog as acompanion. I want something that could go with me everywhere in the car. I'dprefer a small dog with a smooth, dry coat, and no long tail to get slammed inthe door by accident.
On an estate in central England, I once interviewed Lady Richards, whose dogsenjoy expanses of greensward, intriguing woodland copses, and a peaceful pond.She had a lithe and leggy lurcher (hers was a cross between a greyhound and aborder collie) that she was very fond of. She said, "We are fortunate in that wecan afford to entertain such a dog." She had the right idea: What is it that Ias a pet owner possess that will enhance the dog's life?
The relationship should not be a one-way street, where I'll get a dog thatpleases me, and if it continues to please me, I won't turn it in to the localshelter.
My dilemma about which symbiotic relationship operates between pets and peopleis slowly resolving. Especially when I imagine a person purchasing aten-week-old puppy, locking it in his apartment while he goes to work, cominghome to find the apartment trashed, consulting an expensive dog psychologist whoafter many months says it is hopeless, and turning the dog in to the localshelter, which euthanizes it. Bad situation for the person, disaster for thedog.
Household dogs are what I think of as family pets. I understand there are manyvariations on the theme. There is even discussion about whether household dogsshould be called companions rather than pets. Pets, it is argued, are animalslike goldfish or caged birds or snakes. Pets can be exotic or not: the Pet Rockwas fashionable a few years ago. Joshua Slocum, on his single-handed sail aroundthe world, had a pet goat for company. But "for company" doesn't necessarilymean companion. I think of a companion as different from a pet. A companion dogaccompanies me during some of my daily activities, or shares with me some task,like pretending to be a coyote so I can evaluate the response of a guardian dog.
My border collie Jane was a companion, not a pet. I bought her and her brotheras pups from Will Wilson in Scotland in 1977. Jane participated in all ourherding-dog experiments, lived in the dorms with my students, and traveled withme everywhere. She was about coyote-sized, and had pricked ears and a sharpmuzzle like a coyote. I would use her as a mock predator. I'd send her into aflock of sheep to test the effectiveness of the livestock-guarding dogs. Morethan once she had to break her outrun and turn tail for me, outracing theguardian dog and at the last minute leaping into my arms, to be cradled andpraised. She was also great fun at lectures and demonstrations. It was easy toget her to show the predatory motor patterns. She could not take her eyes offthe ball waving around in my hand and the audience would be in stitches. If Iput the ball on the floor Jane would eye-stalk it, and if it didn't move shewould do a perfect mouse jump on it to get it to move. She joined me on numeroustelevision programs to herd sheep and show the differences in motor patternsbetween herding and guarding dogs. I used her once in class to demonstratecognitive differences between children and dogs. From a very young age childrenunderstand the pointing finger in ways dogs — even Jane — cannot.
Jane lived in my van, and therefore I spent some part of each day with her. WhenI was on the road during the years of the livestock-guarding-dog project, wespent twenty-four hours a day together, even sleeping in the van in remotepastures. Although we were constant companions, I didn't really like her. Shewas an annoying, high-strung dog; she was driven, absolutely driven to displaythose internally motivated herding-dog motor patterns. She'd stand at the longside window of the van wiping her nose against it as she eye-stalked passingcars. I'd find myself yelling at her to "Git down! Git off my bed!" andmilliseconds later she'd be right back. I built her a padded box but she'd startwailing to get out. She never stopped moving. She was always in my face or myears. It was awful. Would I get a border collie as a pet? Goodness no! It wasbad enough having one as a companion.
If a novice dog owner got Jane as a pet, he'd have taken her to Nick Dodman's(The Dog Who Loved Too Much) office at the School of Veterinary Medicineat Tufts University for a big dose of tranquilizers. I would have staked myreputation that any of the operant-conditioning specialists would have wound upseeking counseling themselves after a week with Jane. At obedience school, aprofessional trainer ended up holding Jane at arm's length (while she chewed onit), yelling, "You leave this dog with me, and I'll have her trained by Monday!"I was tempted, but I liked the guy and wouldn't have let him destroy himselfattempting to modify Jane into a submissive dog.
Jane illustrates the difference between companion and pet. But I'll call themall household dogs, which is more of an ecological definition. The role of pets,I believe, is the muddiest of relationships between human and dog. I think it isalso the least understood in terms of any benefits of the relationship. And,most serious of all, I think the greatest abuses to dogs occur in thishome-dwelling population.
Ecologically speaking, as I noted in the Introduction, the domestic dog is anincredibly successful species. Populations of animals grow from smallbeginnings, colonize the available niche, and at some point reach equilibriumwith their environment. As long as the habitat sustains their ability to findfood, avoid hazards, and reproduce, dogs do very well.
Right now the population of household dogs in the United States seems to befairly level. The pet figure may have stabilized because the human populationhas stabilized, or it may be that people are getting wise and beginning to findout that household dogs are not worth the expense.
Here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, over fifty million householddogs live in the United States. Europe houses an estimated thirty-five million.Dogs in Europe are allowed and routinely appear in restaurants and publicbuildings, on trains and buses. My experience with friends in Europe may not betypical, because I tend to spend time with people who have dogs. All I know is Ihave trouble fitting my legs under the restaurant table because of the dogs. Asa result, I tend to think the thirty-five million figure is low. If I addCanadian dogs to these populations, I get one hundred million household dogs inthe industrial West.
In the United States each year, households produce 3,700,000 puppies. Hobbybreeders produce another two million, and half a million are produced bycommercial breeders for department store and other retail sales. That is aturnover of 6,200,000 dogs a year. If the population is not going up or down,then 6,200,000 dogs die every year. That is a 12 percent annual mortality rate,which for a species with a life span of a little over ten years is a lowmortality rate in the wild.
In the United States, four million of these dogs spend part of a year in animalshelters. For 2,400,000 of them it is the last stop. Almost 5 percent of ourcompanion animals are dogs nobody wants, and they get "put to sleep." Culled.Again, disaster for the individual dog. Some of this culling may be related tocompetition between people and dogs for food resources. People soon decide theycan't afford the dog, and turn them over to humane societies.
What is the biological relationship that fosters the symbiosis between householddogs and people? I'd like to look first at the case for parasitism. If dogs areparasites, and they exist in the United States at the ratio of 1.5 dogs perdog-owning household, then as a human being I am more than a little concernedabout this relationship. Among the costs dogs impose on humans are many directexpenses: food, veterinary care, and management (collars, licenses, fences).Dogs also have an impact on society's budgets in the fields of health care,sanitation and medicine, insurance, legislation, and law and order. They act asvectors for disease and as serious nuisances due to incessant barking ordestruction of property.
Behavioral ecologists almost always start a research investigation withinformation on a species' food supply. Dog food is manufactured by companiesthat purchase the ingredients from the wholesalers of grains and meat productswhich are also used in human food. They buy on the same auction blocks as do theprocessors of human foods. Household-dog food ingredients are not leftovers orwaste products. The companies will aver that the dog food is not the samequality as human food, that the grains are not good enough to be milled forhuman food. Some will claim that the animal products are offal and otherby-products not edible by people. Sometimes they just say it is surplus humanfood.
Dog food companies have one big, limiting problem: they cannot frequently orsubstantially change the formulation of the food. Even tiny changes iningredients or processing give dogs digestive upsets. A dog eating the same foodday after day gets accustomed to that formula. All the little microorganismsliving in their digestive tracts are in ecological balance with the incomingration. Change any of the ratios, and the microbes begin warring with eachother, which shows up as diarrhea. This is the reason why changing brands mustbe done slowly and gradually — so the dog can adapt to the new ration.
Because of this, many people will change brands if their dog's digestion isdisordered. Dog food companies are very sensitive to that, not wanting toalienate a loyal customer from his favorite brand. Thus, every day of every weekof every month of every year, they have to be buying not only the sameingredients, but the same quality of ingredients. They are not searching aroundfor the lowest-quality waste products. They are locked into obtaining aconsistent quality and constant supply. The added cost of buying good rawmaterials is a minor part of the overall cost of finding the tons of ediblematerials, and then the manufacturing and distribution of them. Probably theadvertising costs more than the ingredients.
Dog food is edible and nutritious for humans, and some people count on it beingperfectly safe to eat. (I am not recommending this.) There are reports that insome city districts, more dog food is sold than could possibly be eaten by theestimated dog population. The assumption is that poor people are feeding it totheir families. Questions about putting antibiotics or antihelminthics and othermedicine in dog foods have to be judged on the probability of its being harmfulto humans, because sooner or later some of the dog food ends up in human mouths.
I understand that farmers don't grow food for people, they grow food for money.They grow wheat or beef because it is saleable, not because it is human food.Farming is the process of people turning sunlight into food on farmland. Butwhat is important here is that we in Western cultures have achieved an advancedform of Neolithism, that is, farming with technically advanced tools. All but atiny fraction of our food is commercially produced by farmers. And our food baseis the same as the pet dog's food base. Dog food is not waste products.Therefore its production does have ecological consequence.
Consider this. A dog's normal body temperature is 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit; ahuman's is 98.6. That three extra degrees means it takes more calories tomaintain each pound of dog. In fact, given certain conditions of size andactivity, and ambient temperature, dog cells can require as much as twice asmany calories as human cells — all other things being equal, which of coursethey never are. Rising body temperature is not a linear progression. It takesmany more calories to raise body temperature from 101 to 102 degrees than ittakes to raise it from 96 to 97 degrees. Reports from the Iditarod indicate thata fifty-pound racing dog ingests up to ten thousand calories a day. SeveralIditarod champions feed their dogs many times a day during the race in order toavoid the physical loading and digesting problems of feeding ten thousandcalories all at once.
Comparing a population of dogs to people would illustrate how expensive dogsare. Assume the average household dog weighs twenty-five pounds, about the sizeof a small beagle or the Pemba hound (the generic dog). Since many of our mostpopular breeds are German shepherds and Labrador and golden retrievers, whichweigh about seventy pounds, twenty-five pounds seems a low estimate for myillustration. But over six million of these dogs are growing pups less than ayear old. So the twenty-five-pound figure might actually be a little high.
I'll assume that the average American weighs one hundred pounds. If dogs needtwice as much food per pound as humans, then fifty pounds of dog eats as much asone hundred pounds of human, or two dogs eat as much as one American. Thus, thefifty-two million pet dogs eat as much as twenty-six million people. Americandogs eat as much farmer-grown food each day as all the people in New York,Chicago, and Los Angeles combined.
Everybody I tell this to — my friends, veterinarians, biologist colleagues —reacts to that figure as a huge exaggeration. "It can't be!" they say. But Idon't think it is much of an exaggeration. It is a tough figure to calculate.The calories needed per pound of dog decrease as the weight of the dogincreases. Great, big, reasonably inactive dogs don't require many more caloriesper pound than a hundred-pound inactive person. But twenty-five-pound inactivedogs require 1.5 times as many. And activity requires more calories. When I addthe requirements of growing puppies or children, the calorie needs jump to twoto three times the resting figures. Keep the dog outside in the winter and thefigures jump again. Even if you wanted to ignore the extra three degrees of adog's temperature, and consider dogs energetically equivalent to humans, theywould still require as much food per day as all the people in New York, Boston,and San Francisco. This for me is still an astronomical figure.
Imagine being responsible for having enough land and growing enough food to feedall the people in three major American cities every day. No wonder the dog foodbusiness is such a great idea. Using the back of the bag of my favorite dog foodto figure the costs involved, I find that it recommends I feed mytwenty-five-pound dog 225 pounds of food a year. At 40 cents a pound, the costfor all the dogs in the United States is in the billions of dollars.
There are other ways of calculating the costs of feeding fifty-two million dogs.I once visited a communal farm in China where the claim was that four hundredpeople were getting all the food they needed from 150 acres of land. (They werelater severely criticized for exaggerating.) That is more than a third of anacre per person, to meet all their nutritional requirements. (In the UnitedStates we farm 3.5 acres for every person, but a huge amount gets sold out ofthe country and we stockpile surpluses, so I don't know how many acres itactually takes to feed us.) The Chinese brigade was growing enough food to feedeight hundred American dogs, or about five dogs per acre. Translate thatstatistic to feeding American dogs, and it takes fifteen thousand square milesof farmland to feed our fifty-two million pet dogs. (That, by the way, is "only"one percent of our farmland). That is an area as big as Massachusetts,Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined. An area approximately the size ofDenmark or Switzerland or Taiwan.
That is also an area four times the size of Yellowstone National Park. Ofcourse, Yellowstone is not prime agricultural land. If we took the fifteenthousand square miles of prime farmland and turned it into national park, wecould have the greatest wildlife sanctuary in the world. Imagine the number ofwild things and wild habitat that are displaced by the necessity of growing dogfood.
So far all we've done in this discussion is feed the household dogs. We haven'tconsidered the pollution from their feces, which has to be equal to or worsethan twenty-six million people eliminating al fresco. Neither have I added themedical cost of dog bites, which some experts think are in epidemic proportions.My home state of Massachusetts averages twenty-one thousand dog bites per yearthat need medical attention. The post office runs a course for employees on hownot to get bitten. Society often demands that dangerous dogs be culled. Englandhas dangerous-dog laws, which appear as an almost desperate attempt to protectpeople from dog bites. And, of course, some few people do get killed by a dogthat purposely sets out to kill them. I talked to a man who hated dogs becauseone pulled his daughter off a bicycle, and when she hit her head she lost aneye.
Some costs are incalculable. How do you compute the cost of lost sleep from thedog barking next door, the cost of running animal shelters, the cost to policeforces of finding and returning lost dogs? Most towns have a dog officer whospends all or part of his time on dog problems. Humane societies sponsorconferences for experts who try to establish policy and write intelligent lawsabout how to protect ourselves from dogs.
Where does all this fit on our symbiotic scale? Is this an example ofcommensalism or mutualism? The commensal village dogs scrounge the wastes ofhuman foraging. Like rats, they eat what the humans cannot. But they also carrydiseases and bark at night. It doesn't matter much to people that they arethere, because they exert neither major benefit nor major cost. The mutualworking dog performs a service for its food. But household dogs are not onlyeating at the same table as people, but from the same plate.
Household dogs are competitive for our food and other resources. Their numbersmay not have reached the point where this competition seriously collides withour ability to feed ourselves, but that is no reason to ignore the facts. Inaddition to being well fed, dogs get treated like family members in many otherrespects. At the same time, they can be in direct competition with humanchildren for the time and resources of the parents. They can inflict substantialharm. If I were a brave ecologist I'd say the household dog sounds like aparasite.
The only argument that would convince an ecologist that household dogs are notparasites would be to show benefits to people for investing the level ofresources we do into that population. The benefits would have to outweigh thecosts. And I doubt that anybody could do that.
MEASURING THE BENEFIT TO HUMANS OF THE HOUSEHOLD DOG
The purported benefits of dogs usually fall into two categories: 1) they workfor people, providing a tangible service, and 2) they make people feel better insome meaningful way. The category here is household dogs. The subject is petsand companions, not working dogs. The fact that generations ago individuals of abreed were sheepdogs, hunting dogs, or police dogs does not mean that thisparticular household dog could, even if trained, perform those tasks. Neitherdoes it mean any of those tasks would be useful around the house. In fact, manyof the phone calls I get about dogs are from people complaining about anoverzealous working dog. And this is absolutely true: while writing this veryparagraph, someone called offering me a well-bred Queensland blue heeler —overactive in its breed-typical motor pattern displays, and unbearably obnoxiouswith its heel-nipping. It was driving its owner nuts.
Among the tangible benefits commonly claimed for household dogs isprotectiveness — they are watchdogs. Such dogs supposedly react appropriatelyto hazards, thereby increasing the hazard-avoidance abilities of the owners. Asfar as I know there are no data that people with dogs survive more fires, havefewer burglaries, get mugged less, or are more often alerted to other householdcatastrophes than people without dogs. But the anecdotal evidence always favorsthe dog. The stories of heroic feats by dogs attract human interest. Cynics callthem "Lassie stories." They are stories of dogs that find their way home overhundreds of miles, or perform some insightful act requiring cognitive skills onthe order of human intelligence. It is always unpopular to question suchmiracles. We all want to amplify our relationship with dogs.
But in my experience the average dog can barely find its way home from nextdoor. My cousin Barry's retriever, Rosie, got lost daily chasing cars. She'dstart out in front of the house, chase the car to the corner, and becomedisoriented. I've searched for so many lost dogs I vow each time I do it that Iwill never do it again. Police blotters have columns of lost dogs and columns offound dogs, and there is seldom a match. Our local radio station has dailylost-dog reports, which they run as a community service.
Dogs don't run into burning buildings, nor are they capable of pullingunconscious people out of one. More likely, the dog knocks a lamp over andstarts the fire. The one firsthand experience I ever had with a "heroic" dog wasa few months ago when my fishing buddy and I rescued a fellow whose boat hadcapsized in a fast-running tidal river. He would have been fine clinging to hisboat, except his dog panicked and, in trying to scramble up onto the overturnedboat, she kept scrambling up her master's back, pushing him underneath the waterrepeatedly. By the time we got there he was so exhausted he was going down, onthe way to being drowned by his own dog. The "heroic" part of the story is thathis calls for help were so weak, I'd never have seen him in the dim light exceptI kept seeing his dog's head come high out of the water, and went to investigatethe phenomenon. The dog turned out to be of a breed uncommon in New England, aCatahoula leopard cow-hog dog, which we also rescued.
For me to be cynical about dogs would be incongruous. Of course there are true,unaugmented stories of lifesaving by household dogs. For anyone who hasexperienced a dog's ability to avert disaster, there is no question whatsoeverabout the value of the dog in society. And naturally I am well aware of theaccomplishments of guide dogs for the blind, of dogs that assist physicallychallenged people in their daily lives, of dogs used in search-and-rescue andpolice work. The sight of a well-trained dog performing a task that would bedifficult if not impossible for a human is special in the animal world.
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, the status of dogs in relationto people attracted scholarly study and led to the documentation of certainbenefits of dogs to the psychological and medical well-being of people. There ismuch more to this category than buying a dog for a child in order to teachempathy and to care for other living things. I must admit, however, that mymotive in acquiring a Chesapeake Bay retriever for our eleven-year-old son wasto develop a career opportunity for him. Tim wanted to be a baseball player whenhe grew up, but since he lacked baseball-playing siblings or friends who wouldplay out of season, he needed dogs to play the outfield. Scoter and my companiondog, Jane, used to retrieve fly balls for him all afternoon. The benefit was notTim's, perhaps, but mine, since without the dogs I would have had to performthat function. Another benefit for me was that Jane would be so tired at the endthat her obnoxious behaviors would subside for a short while.
The psychological benefits dogs can impart to people are measured in bothprecise and imprecise terms. Psychologists, biologists, and doctors have beenmeasuring vital signs such as blood pressure, documenting longevity, andrecording personal perceptions of people in critical circumstances — both withand without a dog. The results in favor of dogs are clear in many cases. Bloodpressures in a wide array of social situations, among children as well asadults, are lower. Children are less apprehensive of doctors if there is a dogin the office. People who have a dog to return to after their first heart attackhave a better life expectancy than the dogless controls. People with dogs havemore access to certain social encounters. It is easier to talk to a stranger whohas a dog. Strangers are more likely to talk to you if you have a dog. Walkingthe dog is a good way to meet other people who are also walking their dog.People confined to wheelchairs find the presence of a dog gains them positiveattention from non-wheelchair-bound passersby, which has a positive socialeffect.
There are good data that say people in wheelchairs with a trained dog feel morelike traveling in public. The dog enables them to engage in activities theyotherwise would avoid. Blind people often specifically request German shepherddogs as guides because they feel the dog would confer protection as well asguidance. Even if there isn't a ghost of a chance the dog could cope with awrongdoer, the mere presence of the "police" dog enables these people tocomfortably sally forth. Many people get a specific breed of dog for the home,or to jog with, that they feel would protect them. And if they sleep betterbecause they think the dog is on duty, the dog must be construed as a benefit.
For the behavioral ecologist, however, the problem is to balance the equation.How do you measure the value of these benefits in terms of increasing thefitness of the human population? Old people living longer in a nursing home mayperhaps be competing for their grandchildren's funds and their children's time.Spending time taking care of an aging parent past reproductive age at theexpense of children at the beginning of theirs may not be to the species'biological benefit.
Again, however the benefit to an individual is construed, it has to be balancedagainst the costs to the society. The fact that less than one percent of blindpeople have a guide dog does little to offset the thousands of people each yearwho get bitten by household dogs.
From the dog's point of view, is this a good relationship to be in with humans?
My own belief is that the dog is not an ecological parasite in the true sense,even if the equation doesn't balance. A parasite evolves to the niche. Aparasite benefits from its relationship with its host. Just as a cow is adaptedto eating grass, a parasite is adapted to eating its host. Even though the dogmay cost the human population, it isn't gaining much biological benefit from itshousehold association with people. In fact, the system people use to propagatedogs may doom those dogs trapped in that system.
Therefore, I think the relationship that fosters the symbiosis between householddogs and people is amensal. Like the prairie chickens whose eggs are stepped oninadvertently by the bison, dogs are stepped on and hurt by people. Althoughpeople may believe they are caring for and "improving" their dogs, I'd like toapproach their situation from the dog's point of view.
Dogs may appear childlike to some people, releasing caregiving behaviors. It hasbeen postulated that one of the reasons dogs' heads appear more rounded andshorter-nosed than those of wolves is because people selected dogs to lookpuppylike, which is innately cute to people. Infant qualities also reduceaggressive interactions. But if short, rounded, puppylike dog faces benefithumans by giving them a release for child-rearing motivations, it is ourpreference that is being imposed on dogs. It is people who breed the householddog with the short face for their own benefit, without regard for the effect onthe dog. Just because the human gets immense pleasure from dispensing care andaffection on a dog does not mean that the permanently juvenile dog gets anypleasure or benefit from the short muzzle.
In the literature I read on human-animal relationships, the analysis of benefitis almost exclusively in human terms. Dogs make people happy, lower people'sheart rates, help people survive heart attacks, increase the quality of life innursing homes, help disabled and interned people have a better quality of life.Because dogs benefit people does not mean that people benefit dogs, however.
Just because dogs make "ideal" pets does not mean we should make them pets. Justbecause they have lovely, adaptable social natures does not mean we can exploitthem with impunity. And just because they have infinitely malleable shapes doesnot give us the right to select for any deformation of the basic shape justbecause a different shape pleases us.
I think dog ownership has reached the point where humans have imposed on thegood nature of dogs a little too much. I think that although those interested indog welfare have done well to focus on the plight of dogs used in biomedicalresearch — the so-called laboratory dogs — and to some extent the workingdogs, they are ignoring a far greater and more insidious danger. I think farworse cruelty takes place with purebred dogs, adopted into the pet-class world,and in far greater numbers. I think the household-dog industry has taken toolittle responsibility for the consequences of present breeding policies and dogownership.
The production and distribution of household dogs follows fairly standardmethods. First of all, household pets are captured animals. "What kind of dogshould I get?" says it all. These are not animals that adopt us, as the Pembandogs do. Household fish in an aquarium are collected from the wild. The parentstock continues to breed in the wild. If the system works well, collectors takeonly a few "surplus" animals for the pet trade and basically the wild stockcontinues to reproduce on its own. The beautiful colors and the interestingshapes that we enjoy in our fish tanks are products of natural selection andsubject to all the Darwinian rules of survival of the fittest. The stockremaining in the wild stays genetically fit.
It must be remembered, however, that the individual fish removed to aquariumsare deprived of their reproductive rights and their genetic potential by ourdesire to enjoy viewing them. They are effectively reproductively removed fromever leaving offspring — they are genetically dead.
Household dogs are similarly captured. But they come from three differentsources. Originally, over the millennia, people captured pups for pets from the(wild) village dogs. Like the aquarium fish, the parental scavenging stockcontinued to survive and reproduce in its original form. The farmyard dog and mydog Smoky's mother still have reproductive access to a large population of dogs,and are, like the reef fish, giving up a few surplus animals for human benefit.Similarly, capturing a livestock-guarding dog from the "wild" population on anannual transhumance also leaves the wild population intact and with access to alarge population of dogs. This situation continuously maintains the genetichealth of the individuals. In each of these cases the dogs are still responsiblefor reproduction, and their normal breeding habits and competition for limitedresources will assure healthy offspring.
The second source of household dogs is retired working dogs. Jane was a workingdog for me. She got old, and we thought she would be cold in the van at nightand brought her in. She became a household dog in her old age. One could imaginehundreds of different scenarios of how a truly good working dog might end up ina home. In fact, the home might just be the most convenient place to keep thedog while it is not working. Many a hunter keeps his bird dog in the house, andon occasion I would bring a sled dog in. There might be advantages to havingdogs inside. There's always the possibility of warmth: I've read that Eskimosand Australian Aborigines measure how cold it is by how many dogs it takes tokeep them warm overnight.
But the breeding of these dogs is by artificial selection, and perhaps theproblem starts here. The modern working-dog breeder breeds dogs that are goodperformers. I bred Jane just once. She was an awful mother who couldn't tell thedifference between her pups and rats. She would eye-stalk them and forefoot-stabthem to death if they moved. Here, selection for the eye-stalk behavior hadcreated a biological monster. And I'm afraid that is the risk we run every timewe start practicing canine eugenics.
The third source of household dogs is where the problems begin to mount. This iswhere the householder captures a working dog (breed) for a pet. And then theabsolutely worst-case scenario, the breeding of working dogs for thehousehold-pet market. Working dogs should not be pets. Working dogs should notbe sold or purchased as pets. And working dogs should not be bred for the petclass of dogs.
If a dog is bred for exaggerated behavioral conformation and is expected todisplay it in a working environment, it is hard to imagine that the householdenvironment is going to provide the proper stimulation for such displays. Oftenthe person raising the dog has no idea of the critical period of socialdevelopment or the specific requirements necessary to evoke the proper behavior.This results in dogs that have motor pattern displays not only inappropriate inthe household environment, but that also can turn into compulsive disorders. Ahighly bred working dog raised in a nonworking household environment will stillshow the working behaviors it has been selected to display, but it will displaythem abnormally. Worse, it will display those behaviors in bizarre and obnoxiousways. My Queensland blue heeler would nip the heels of joggers. My best lead dogwas a border collie that chased cars all day on a suburban street — which waswhy I got him.
Most working dogs are corrupted, if not ruined, for their job if kept as pets.How can a livestock-guarding dog protect livestock if it is in the house? Manyworking dogs transfer their socially developed protective behaviors in ways thatmake them dangerous to people. I avoided passing my guardian dogs on to peoplewho didn't have livestock and wanted them for pets. I succumbed a few times, andI always thought it turned out badly, especially for the dog.
What is the difference between adopting a village dog or a working dog as a pet?The village dog is selected to have a low profile around humans. The village dogtries to maintain contact with the human, which is the source of food. Thevillage dog is selected to solicit care from humans and not to threaten them.Thus, the difference between a village dog that grows up naturally as ascavenger of human resources, and one that is captured as a puppy and raised asa household pet is not all that great. In some cases, as in Pemba, I couldn'ttell if a dog was a pet or not, and was totally surprised to find that the vastmajority of them were not pets. "Is that your dog?" I asked the girl on Pemba,and it was difficult to discern from the answer what kind of relationship shehad with this yard dog. Was it a pet, or was it just a cute scavenger that wasprotecting her yard from other scavengers? In these societies the differencebetween casting aside the waste and feeding the dog is a state of mind, anintention, rather than different behaviors.
Adopting an occasional village dog as a pet probably doesn't change theevolutionary dynamics of the wild population very much. The individual dog, ofcourse, loses its place in the wild population and therefore may lose somereproductive opportunities. But it's more complicated for the working dog thatis adopted away from its working environment.
The village dog is preadapted behaviorally to be a good pet. The purebredworking dog is selected to show a variety of motor patterns that are oftenobnoxious in a household. Jane wiping her nose on my van window as sheeye-stalked passing cars is a perfect example. Her internally motivated patterns(compulsive behavior) are also internally rewarded, and thus practicallyimpossible to extinguish.
The question might be posed as to why one would want a working dog as a pet.Dogs like Jane are limited in their ability to adapt as perfect pets because oftheir innate behaviors, and thus perhaps they are sought because of the way theylook. Something about the way the dog looks benefits the person. Perhaps a sleddog, even though it never pulls a sled, suggests that the owner is associatedwith the historical legacy or reputation of sled dogs. Perhaps the image evokedby the working dog enhances the owner's status or enables an association withother people who identify with the dog's heritage. Owning a hunting breedsuggests that the owner might be a hunter, or might know about hunting and be aself-reliant outdoors person. I often wonder if I had lived in the suburbswhether I would have acquired racing sled dogs. It's hard to imagine they wouldhave been welcome for very long, what with their daily howling and overwhelmingcacophony whenever I arrived with the harnesses to hitch up for a training run.
Here is the big shift for dogs: no longer are they chosen for the way theybehave, but for the way they look. Selection in the Darwinian sense is for theirappearance. The benefit to the human is not in the innate behavioral abilities,but in the coat color, ear carriage, and size. But these are superficial traits,related to survival only cosmetically. It is ironic that the village dog, wellsuited to survive, is rejected as "just a mutt" for those same traits.
"What kind of dog should I get?" (to enhance my status...round out myimage...amuse me...) does not consider the needs of the dog. It is based on thefaulty assumption that any breed of dog is adaptable to the householdenvironment.
During the past one hundred years, hobby breeders have taken theworking-sporting breeds and bred them specifically for the household market. Iunderstand that throughout history breeders have bred miniature and gargantuanforms of dogs simply for display: the bonsai-garden type of breeding. But few ofour modern household breeds are much older than a hundred years. The"perfection" of breeds is coincidental with the interest in expositions in whichowners or trainers submit their dogs to judges who decide which dogs aresuperior in looks. Over the past hundred years, the hobby breeding program hassucceeded quite well in isolating subpopulations of working-sporting breeds fromtheir greater populations for the specific purpose of public display and salesto the household market.
This is an important concept to understand. The modern hobby breeder specializesin a breed. A breed is a population of dogs that is mechanically isolated fromall other dogs. Only those dogs registered in the breed stud book can beofficial members of the breed.
When I contrast this policy and process with those of working-dog breeders, whocreated the breed in the first place, I am horrified at what the hobby breederhas achieved. Breeders of working dogs did not attend dog shows to have theirdogs judged on how they looked. They selected the best performers to breed dogsthat were good workers. Most of them were not interested in "perfecting" abreed. As a sled dog driver I wanted to win races. What the dog looked like wasimportant only for how that shape could run. Ancestry was important only forwhat it could indicate about a dog's potential to run.
Actually, of course, I did care how they looked. I wanted them to look like aCoppinger dog. It is a feather in the cap of any breeder of working dogs if hisdogs develop a characteristic appearance, along with superior ability, whichdistinguishes them as being from a particular kennel. Breeds often are named fortheir breeder, for instance, the Reverend Jack Russell, or Ludwig Dobermann.Hound breeders, especially, strive for distinctive packs. Occasionally, andusually accidentally, a pup with a novel marker appears. A breeder might take afancy to it and preserve it. The history of the golden retriever, as related inChapter 3, illustrates this principle very well.
It also points up a very different process than the one producing pet or showdogs. A dog purchased from inbred stock (closed stud book), untested in thefield for many generations, is the product of a breeding program (maybe) thathas little to do with its working behavior. The expectation of the new owner isthat the dog will be good because it is a purebred golden retriever. "What kindof dog shall I get?" "Get a golden retriever because they have a 'friendlynature and disposition, athletic ability, love of water, and natural instinctfor hunting and retrieving.'"
What?! That sounds ridiculous to a working-dog person, or to a populationgeneticist. Friendly disposition is genetic? Love of water is genetic? Athleticability has something to do with golden color? Is the implication that allgoldens have this same set of genes, and all these traits? Is there no variationin golden retrievers? Lord Tweedmouth had good dogs because he had a goodbreeding program that included a high percentage of crossbreeding and because hehired people to work those dogs from their youngest days and develop the bestdogs. He liked to hunt, he liked to have the best hunting dogs, and he was proudof his eye for working dogs. And he culled the bad ones. Anybody who evercreated a breed did so by culling the ones they didn't want.
Today's household golden retriever is a caricature of Lord Tweedmouth's dogs.
The idea that there is something intrinsically desirable in the members of abreed is false. It is the same faulty notion as thinking there is somethingsuperior about "royal" blood. It is not only false, but it is bad genetics. Itis not only bad genetics, but it dooms any breed that gets caught in thatphysically isolating trap.
The advantage for pet owners is that in a few generations of selecting forspecific size, color, or other superficial reminders of the ancestral workingdogs, any of the innate predispositions for the ancestral work almost certainlydeteriorate. The rules of genetics say any character that isn't continuouslyselected for (say, working behavior) will begin to drift because of randomevents — disease, founder's principles, nongenetic calamities. In fact, whathappens in the household world is that owners will quickly start selectingagainst many of the innate dispositions of a breed because of theirobnoxiousness. The innate behaviors will begin to be described as compulsivebehavioral disorders. Thus, dogs selected for their superficial traits mighteventually make better household dogs because they lose their workingdispositions.
But, however, and nevertheless, there is one other genetic mechanism operating.Closing the stud book on a population, in order to promote specific traits,inadvertently and dangerously starts a process of inbreeding. Inbreedingdecreases the amount of genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is a source ofgenetic vitality. This genetic (phenotypic) vitality is good genetic healthshown by an animal due to normal actions and interactions of the genes,uncomplicated by any deleterious effects that can be expressed when mutant geneproducts are paired. The chances of deleterious pairings are increased in inbredanimals.
The first rule for all working dogs is they have to have stamina. Stamina is oneresult of genetic vitality. But stamina plus working behavior make for obnoxiouspets. It is rare that any household can tolerate for very long an obsessive dogwith stamina. Such a dog is usually much too active to be comfortable in thehouse. I am certainly not advocating this mechanism for selecting pets, butsimply pointing out that sexual isolation and the inbreeding system of producinghousehold dogs are certain over time to produce lethargic, i.e., peaceful dogs.Their personalities are amenable to the needs of their owners, even if theirgenotypes are in trouble.
There is an even more severe problem occurring in the genetics of the householddog. The working dog was selected to behave in a certain way. The sled dog, forexample, was selected to run fast in harness with other dogs. In being selectedfor that behavior, the dogs evolved a unique shape. This shape allows the dog tobehave fast, with stamina. The relationship between shape and behavior isomnipresent.
Therefore, if we want to change the behavior of a dog — make it more peacefuland less vital — we must also change its shape. Herein lies the dilemma for thebreeder. The audience wants household dogs that are a historical representationof the working-breed shapes, and at the same time they do not want them todisplay working-breed behaviors. Trying to select for an acceptable householdbehavior while holding the working shape constant cannot be done. The dog willcome apart. It will show genetic diseases. Its hips won't fit together right.The joints will show weaknesses, and the dog will twitch and bleed and eachgeneration will become increasingly miserable.
Belyaev selected for tame foxes (Chapter 1), i.e., foxes with tame householdpersonalities. And his foxes came apart. He couldn't select for tame and holdthe wild-fox shape.
That is exactly what is happening to our household dogs.
Increasingly, the modern household dog becomes a genetic prisoner trapped in anisolated population. With each succeeding generation the behavioral and physicalmisfits get eliminated from the gene pool while breeders try to hold on to theancestral form. But in each new generation we see a host of new geneticproblems. Lists of breed-specific genetic diseases are now part of theprofessional and popular literature.
And it is worse than that. Breeders and owners forget what the historical doglooked like. They select for the exaggerated form. They select for the reallybig ones. They select for the flattest face. They select for the longest face.The breeds end up with weird conformations. Each breed takes on an unnaturalshape, becoming a freak of nature. They are loved the way the hunchbackQuasimodo was loved — a dichotomy between the grotesque form and the honorablepersonality.
As the decades go by, every part of the household dog's life is increasinglymanipulated for the human host's benefit. The dog is capriciously manipulatedfor human pleasure. The more bizarre and exaggerated the animal is, the morebenefit it seems to confer. This recent breeding fad for the purebred dog isbadly out of control. It appears that selection for the exotic is the goal,probably to increase interest and sales. We are producing unhealthy freaks tosatisfy human whims. This is terribly unfair to dogs.
The bulldog is perhaps the epitome of what I find alarming and unethical. Takethe feisty and useful butchers' dogs of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, and turn them into sporting dogs. By the early eighteenth century,determine that tormenting a bull and risking the dog's life just for sport areunethical. The dog then is adopted as a pet-class dog. Over time each of thetraits that made it a good cattle-catch dog for the neighborhood butcher getsblown so far out of proportion that the dog now resembles something out of ahorror movie.
Their faces are so deformed they can't get their teeth to line up to chew. Withsome of the miniaturized forms there is no room for their teeth and they fallout upon erupting from the gums. Their faces are so squashed that the turbinatebones in their nostrils are tiny. Turbinate bones are covered with respiratoryepithelial tissue, which helps the dog to breathe and cools its brain. As aresult of the tiny turbinates, bulldogs and the other flat-facers have poorbrain cooling, poor breathing, and low oxygen tension in their blood. Of thebulldogs that have been tested by the Orthopedic Foundation of America, 70percent have hip dysplasia. None (zero percent) was reported with excellenthips.
Show-quality bulldogs often can't deliver puppies naturally. In fact, the dogscan't even breed, and have to be artificially inseminated. All of which causespain. I once asked a woman at a dog show what her Boston terrier was good for.Without hesitation she said, "He is really good at snoring."
Obviously the original bull-baiting dogs didn't have any of these physicalcharacters. And yet someone is always willing to tell the story that the modernbulldog has the turned-up nose so that it might breathe while clinging to thebull's neck. It is fiction. It is rationalizing the purposeful selection for thebizarre. But at the same time I hear people brag how their bulldogs can't evenmate anymore. They are amused by these oddities.
The rationalizations for developing freaks are often as bizarre as the traitsthat result. Breeders propound far-fetched factoids: The komondor has hairhanging down over its eyes so that it can withstand the ultraviolet lightbouncing off the snow on winter pastures; shepherds want that forty pounds ofcorded coat on their komondors to protect against wolf attacks; the great foldsof skin on a shar-pei are to prevent serious injury to the underlying muscle ina fight; achondroplasia in dachshunds helps them go into holes after otters orminks; the great bulk of the Saint Bernard is needed to adapt them to trackinglost or hurt people in the Alps.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. These are made-up stories.Komondors and the other livestock-guarding dogs rarely have to fight wolves, andborzois and Scottish collies have such weak jaws and ill-formed mouths that theycan hardly suck when they are born. There are lots of ways to get dogs intoholes other than make achondroplastic dwarfs out of them.
All these traits are genetic deformations found to occur infrequently in allpopulations. The same genes for achondroplasia found in dachshunds and bassethounds are found in human beings. When the deformation shows up in people,nobody would have the audacity to say these people were selected to go intoholes and kill badgers.
People who spend their lives working or hunting with dogs want dogs that looklike dogs. There is a basic plan to dogs, and any dog that doesn't have thatbasic plan shouldn't be bred. The first statement out of any working-dogperson's mouth is he wants stamina in his dogs. Certainly a dog with low oxygentension, or fifty pounds of saggy coat, isn't going to show stamina. I certainlydon't want my livestock-guarding dogs with hair hanging all over their eyes sothey can't see. Neither do my sled dogs need blue eyes in order to run fast.
It is a terrible joke. Humans take total control of every aspect of thehousehold-dog's life. They are bred capriciously to any shape, size, or colorhumans think is interesting or aesthetic. Their looks are conversation pieces. Arare breed takes on value for the sake of its novelty. Hobby breeders select forthe visual impact of a dog in the show ring. That means amplifying orembellishing an existing trait. Magnify the size, the coat, the nose. Preservethe extra dewclaw, which supposedly helps a Pyrenean mountain dog stay on top ofthe deep snow in the mountains, but which I always clipped off my day-old huskypups so that as adults they would not tear their skin when they break through asnow crust. I once wrote a book where I designed dog freaks, like flounderhounders, a breed with both eyes on the same side of its head, and then Iinvented a job for this monster helping fishermen spot fish underwater. If Icould figure out how to bioengineer that dog, I could make a lot of money.
A show champion in the household trade is not required to do anything except notbite the judge. Dog shows are comparable to human beauty-queen pageants. Compareeach individual with the others in the show and see which one comes closest tosome arbitrarily designated, idealistically "perfect" form. At least in thepresent human version of beauty contests, contestants have to say a few words,or play the clarinet, or recite a poem — to show a behavioral skill.
The difference between these competitions is that the human show has a minoreffect on the population's genetics. The dog-show winner, however, becomes thefavored breeding dog, and the tiny population that qualifies for inclusion inthe breed's stud book is now funneled through these few "best" individuals. Tobreed heavily to champions is to substantially reduce the effective populationsize. It channels the available genes through a few individuals. If every ownerof a female only bred his dog to this year's champion, then the next generationof dogs would all have the same father. Then the generation after that would allbe brother-sister crosses. Thus, the breeding to champions increases theinbreeding coefficient very rapidly. On the surface some popular breeds mayappear to have a large population, but their genealogies — their pedigrees —indicate that most of them share close ancestors and therefore also geneticalleles.
The household-dog world is not the only guilty party here. The same problems arenow evident in the working-dog world. In the late 1970s I was buying bordercollies in Scotland, and looked far and wide to find a dog that did not have thechampion herder Wiston Cap in its genealogy. (The dogs I found, by the way, weremy pseudocompanion, Jane, and her brother Will.) Trialing border collies is amajor sport in Scotland, complete with prime-time television coverage of the toptrials, and also in the United States, with often generous prize money for thewinners. Contestants are eager to succeed, and therefore seek to breed theirdogs with the trial winners. Dogs from famous handlers and dogs that win commandpremium prices for stud services and puppies. But the genetic problems areincreasing.
The same reduction in gene diversity takes place when a breed club tries toselect against hip dysplasia, retinal atrophy, or some other so-called geneticdisease. Every time an animal is culled for a genetic problem, the geneticvariation in the closed population is further reduced. It's not just the badgenes that are affected, it is all the animal's genes. Any time there isselection for or against single characters, i.e., "tame" or "hip dysplasia,"then one must be prepared for the appearance of new or altered charactersbecause of what Darwin called "the mysterious laws of correlation." Today thephenomenon is called pleiotropy, or saltation — the fact that more than onecharacteristic can be controlled by a single gene, and selection can result inunintended and unpredictable changes.
When I look at the benefits for the dog in this symbiotic relationship withhumans, it looks well-nigh hopeless. Many breeds are living to pay a terribleprice for the temporal increase in population or the luxury of expensive foodand care. It is not simply that the dogs have access to the kind of medical carethat is given to humans, but that they have been bred so they need such care tosurvive. Breeds like the bulldog are in a dead-end trap. There probably is notenough variation left to get them out of their genetic pickle. Unless the breedclubs open their stud books and allow outside breedings, bulldogs and the otherbreeds caught in these eugenic breeding practices are headed for extinction. Theproblem here is that unlike the wild counterpart becoming extinct because ofhabitat loss, these purebred individuals will increasingly suffer ill health.
What is troublesome is that modern society seems to have little realization ofwhat it is doing to dogs. Owners don't seem to be disturbed about deformation,or even that their dogs are overweight. They are pleased that this is theirthird Great Dane in ten years and appear proud of the fact that they can copewith its short longevity, giant size, and structural problems. Many, many peoplelove their dogs right into obesity, having no idea of the discomfort from excessheat load caused by the fat.
I believe the modern household dog is bred to satisfy human psychological needs,with little or no consideration of the consequences for the dog. These dogs fillthe court-jester model of pet ownership.
From the behavioral ecologist's point of view, I don't know what to call thissymbiotic relationship. It may be a new category called reciprocal amensalism.It is bad for humans because of the economic and health problems created bylarge populations of dogs, and at the same time it is bad for dogs. Individualpeople may get some psychological benefit, and I suppose there is always achance for some dog to have a life of true luxury. Nevertheless, for purebreddogs the scope of their existence is to be chosen (or not) according toprinciples of eugenics — of the worst kind. The breeding programs are notconcerned with adapting the dog to the household environment. Rather, the dog isbeing bred for its showplace value, a not-so-mere-bagatelle of form, with littleconcern for what's inside, or even if the animal inside that aesthetic shapehurts.
It's a bestial way to treat your best friend.
Copyright © 2001 Raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger. All rights reserved.
