For the Love of a Dog (37 page)

Don’t look for this exercise in your next dog training class. We spend a lot of
energy preventing
dogs from staring directly at one another, and the idea of encouraging it is enough to stimulate the amygdalas of professional dog trainers everywhere. Ask two unfamiliar dogs to stare into each other’s eyes for a couple of minutes, and get ready for the fur to fly. Most dogs who know and love their humans are comfortable making direct eye contact with them, but I’m not sure they seek it out the way we do, and many of them avoid eye contact with strangers. Happy dogs may wiggle, squirm, pant, kiss, and lick us all over, but most of them don’t want to get lost looking into our eyes. Speaking of happy dogs, it’s worth taking some time to look at the biology of the emotion, and what biology has to tell us about our shared experience of happiness.

We humans may be special, but it makes no sense for happiness to be an emotion unique to our species. That doesn’t mean animals feel happy in exactly the same way that people do, but “survival of the fittest” suggests that happiness is as primal an emotion as any other. All animals move toward pleasure, because pleasure is about having everything you need to flourish. Does the air feel good on your skin right now? Not too hot, not too cold? Good: that means all the internal processes going on inside your body can do their job at maximum efficiency Feeling not hungry but not too full? Great: that means your body is getting the fuel it needs without being overloaded trying to process it. All animals, even worms, seek out what feels good and avoid what doesn’t. Feeling good can be good for you, pure and simple.

Curiously, we don’t know as much about happiness as about other primal emotions, such as fear and anger, but in the last decade neurobiologists
have done a great job playing catch-up. It might seem strange that scientists spent decades investigating fear long before they turned their attention to happiness, but if you look at emotions from an evolutionary perspective, it’s not surprising. Happiness may be a good thing in the long run, but fear relates to things that can get you killed in an instant—perhaps fear’s primal immediacy accounts for why, in years past, it has gotten more attention from neuroscientists and psychologists than more positive emotions. We can all intuitively relate: studies back up our intuition that we remember bad things better than we remember good ones. That’s probably because the consequence of forgetting about something bad is usually worse than that of forgetting about something good (“Oh, gosh, that’s right—now I remember: last time I tried to play with a grizzly bear it didn’t work out”).

But happily (she says, smiling), happiness is now a hot topic in psychology and neurobiology We now know that, just as in other primal emotions, specific structures and chemicals in the brain are key players in the emotion of happiness. For example, an area in the forebrain called the nucleus accumbens is so central to the emotion of happiness that John Ratey calls it the “principal pleasure center of the brain.” This area has a high level of sensitivity to the stimulating chemical dopamine, and is also receptive to other, more familiar chemicals, like serotonin.

Dopamine, like all neurotransmitters, plays a multitude of roles in the brain and body; one of its many duties is to focus your attention on something that you’ve learned might lead to something good. It’s dopamine that causes that shiver of excitement when your lottery ticket starts looking like a winner, and it’s dopamine that drives the feelings of infatuation when you first meet someone special.
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Remember that flush of energy and excitement you had when you first fell in love? That’s thanks to dopamine, a chemical that’s as important in your dog’s brain as it is in your own.

Both your brain and your dog’s have other “pleasure centers” besides the nucleus accumbens with its high levels of dopamine. One especially important center is in the hypothalamus. Rats will press a lever up to four thousand times an hour, if the lever is hooked up to a tiny
wire that stimulates a specific area within it.
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Not unlike human drug addicts, the rats were so motivated to seek out pleasure that they would allow themselves to starve to death, rather than stop pressing the lever.

On a lighter side, rats have also been found to produce a vocalization during play that for all the world sounds like the equivalent of human laughter. Biologist Jaak Panksepp found that these chirping noises are associated with responses in the brain correlated with pleasure, that they occur only during play, and that they can be elicited, believe it or not, by tickling from human caretakers. The tickled rats even began to seek out their human playmates and became socially bonded to them.

Now that we’re starting to look, laughter—or something like it— has been found in a variety of species. We’ve known for years that chimpanzees have a “play pant” that closely resembles laughter, and a recent study suggests that playful dogs sometimes make a breathy vocalization that may be the equivalent of laughter. The animal behaviorist Patricia Simonet recorded dogs during play and discovered a “long, loud” panting sound that she thinks is the equivalent of human laughter. She’s even tried playing it over loudspeakers at a shelter and swears it quiets barking dogs within minutes.
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Not everyone is convinced that these sounds should be categorized as “laughter,” but the examples in rats and chimps support its existence. It seems more than reasonable to me that social animals like dogs might make a similar noise. I just hope we never figure out that they’re laughing at us.

Laughter in other animals may be controversial, but there’s no question in anyone’s mind that an individual’s ability to experience happiness is influenced by his or her genetics. People who are born with a low density of dopamine receptors in their nucleus accumbens have a reduced ability to feel satisifed by anything (and often suffer from addictive behavior). People whose brains have naturally low levels of dopamine have trouble feeling that anything is “enough” to satisfy them, and often
indulge in high-risk behavior in a desperate attempt to feel contentment. However, excessive levels of dopamine, if unregulated by other neurotransmitters, can lead to aggression and violent impulses. But at normal levels, dopamine plays a vital role in the everyday happiness of you and your dog.

It’s no surprise to any of us that some individuals seem to be inherently happy, while others view the glass as always half empty. Research supports this perception—the psychologist Nathan A. Fox found that “exuberant” four-month-old human babies (babies who became especially happy and excited by novel events; about 10 percent of the ones studied) had the same level of joyfulness at seven years of age as in infancy. Studies like this suggest that there’s a kind of “set point” for happiness that comes along with your biological background. A raft of studies supports that theory. For example, lottery winners don’t tend to be any happier six to twelve months after their win than they were before it, and victims of permanent injuries tend to rise to their previous level of happiness after a similar period of adjustment. Our perception of happiness even seems to be affected by the biology of sleep/wake cycles. In most people, happiness is highest between four and ten hours after getting up, and lowest at the beginning and end of our day. I find myself thinking of all the dogs I’ve met who snapped or bit late in the evening, after being “fine” all day, and wonder if these cycles could exist in dogs as well.

If we could do the same types of studies on dogs as we do on people, I suspect we’d find that genetics influence how happy a dog can be as much as it does a person. And if we could do a survey, my guess is we’d find a higher percentage of “very happy” dogs than of “very happy” people. But dogs seem to exhibit the same range of happiness that people do; there are “exuberant” fourteen-year-old dogs, and there are quiet, mopey puppies who don’t seem to derive pleasure from much of anything. This does not mean, by the way, that we are all helpless victims of our genetics. In people, and most probably in dogs, a genetic influence on one’s ability to be happy is simply that: an influence. It’s not written in stone, it just means one has a particular predisposition. There is lots of research that suggests people can have a great deal of influence on their own levels of happiness no matter what their genetic baggage, and there’s no question that you can have a profound effect on
your own dog’s level of happiness. We’ll talk about how to make your dog happy (or happier) later in the chapter, but first it’s instructive to talk more about the biology of happiness in both people and dogs.

As Rosie the puppy illustrated in the story that opened this chapter, happiness is contagious. Unless you’re feeling spiteful and envious, it’s hard to see the happiness of others and not feel your spirits lifted. Cool Hand Luke loved life so much that he lifted my own spirits every single day of the twelve and a half years we had together. His love of life was like food and water to me. Luke loved working sheep and eating chicken and sitting beside me on soft summer evenings on top of our hill, but more than anything, he loved to run. When he was running, his face looked so happy I couldn’t help but smile. Not so when I try to run myself—I’m designed as a sturdy hiker type, and when I try to run I feel clumsy and clunky, as if someone put weights on my feet. But when I watched Luke run, it was as though I was running with him, running like him, and somehow I became free and fluid and expansive. His happiness became my happiness, and all I had to do was stand still and watch him.

Happiness isn’t the only emotion that’s contagious; a spouse or partner in a bad mood can tarnish a previously good day. A nervous owner can transfer his fear to his dog as easily as water flows downstream. But, luckily for us, happiness is one of the easiest emotions to pass around. A brief interaction with a lighthearted stranger can cheer us up immeasurably. Those happy people and dogs we see on television commercials are chosen because just watching someone else be happy can make us happy ourselves, and cause us to link feeling good with a product. Research in business management has even found that groups working together were strongly influenced by the cheerfulness of an embedded “colleague.” The addition of just one enthusiastic team member resulted in groups that perceived themselves as more competent and more cooperative than groups with a depressed infiltrator. Interestingly, the “cheerful” group attributed their success to their skill level, not to the general mood of the group (which was, in truth, the only difference).

I know of no studies on moods being transferred between individuals of a different species, but its occurrence seems blindingly obvious to those of us who have dogs. Surely there’s no better cure for sadness than watching puppies play, because their pure, uncluttered happiness is catching. We’re cheered by the enthusiastic greeting of our dogs, not just because it feels good to know someone is glad to see us, but also because their happiness is contagious. You can watch a video of a dog greeting someone you’ve never met, and feel almost as good as if it were your own dog. There’s good, solid science behind those feelings: when you watch something as heartwarming as a happy dog, your brain chemistry changes in ways that promote feelings of love and attachment. If we’re lucky, our dogs radiate the warmth of happiness day after day, year after year, from the day we get them to the day they die. Because we share the external expressions of happiness, the joy that emanates from our dogs’ wiggling bodies warms us like bright white sunshine on a winter day. No wonder we love them so much.

If happiness can be transferred from dog to human, can it go in the other direction? Dog trainers strongly believe that, just as we can be influenced by the emotions of our dogs, dogs can be influenced by ours. Surely the happiness of an owner can have an influence on her dog. However, more negative emotions like fear and anxiety can also be transferred from person to dog, and it’s important to be aware of that when you’re relating to your dog. I see lots of people and dogs who are locked into a pattern of anxiety together; perhaps the dog once snapped at a dog in the neighborhood, the owner gets nervous when the same dog begins to approach, the dog senses the owner’s fear and becomes nervous himself, and thus is more likely to snap …
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Another common example of not-so-helpful emotional contagion occurs when agitated people try to calm down an overexcited dog. A small percentage of people automatically get quieter and calmer as their dog gets more and more excited, but they are in the minority. Most of us, before we learn to consciously calm ourselves, can become as emotionally aroused as our dogs. Ironically, this usually happens while we’re trying to calm them down. “No! No! No!” we say, our voices and bodies as stressed and excited as our dogs.

It’s no fun trying to control the emotions of a dog (or better yet, of a group of dogs) when your own emotions are out of control. You can avoid that by learning to stay quiet and calm yourself when you want to settle your dogs down. Use as few words as you can, be thoughtful about how you’re moving your body, and take a couple of deep breaths. Once you learn to stop and quiet yourself, the effects can be amazing, but it takes conscious thought and a bit of practice. I recently watched a videotape of a client trying to calm her dog down as someone approached the house. In about three minutes she said “no” more than fifty-four times. I didn’t count the number of “woofs,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was equal to the number of nos from the owner. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It’s difficult to act calm when you’re feeling panicked yourself. Remember that just as your dog’s emotions can influence you, you can influence those of your dog. Try to behave as you want your dog to behave, not as an expression of how you’re feeling inside.

If we want to make dogs happy, I think the most useful emotion that we can convey to them is a sense of calm, peaceful benevolence, interspersed with our own version of joyful exuberance during play I realize peacefulness isn’t the easiest emotion to convey when your three sixty-pound dogs are barking out the window, but if you’re the one with the key to the house, and you’re the one who can get out the dog food, then you’re the one your dog counts on to keep the world safe and secure. If you’re overwhelmed with agitation and angst, how’s your dog going to feel? We do dogs no favors when we overload them with our own emotions, often over issues they can’t possibly understand. Think of being lost in the woods with a group of people and one individual who all agree is the group’s leader. Wouldn’t you want that person to be calm and quietly confident? That’s what your dog wants, too. To some extent, all dogs are lost in the woods of an alien world, and are counting on you to lead the way.