For the Love of a Dog (47 page)

One day I heard that Virginia was in the hospital; weeks later she was diagnosed with cancer. She died shockingly quick, her death coming hard and fast, leaving a hole in Joe’s life that must have seemed too big to ever be filled. But Joe wasn’t alone. Like millions of others, Joe had his dog and he told me later that he couldn’t imagine having made it through without him. Bear licked away his tears and cuddled against him, providing the warmth and comfort that Joe so desperately needed. Joe believes in his heart that somehow Bear knew Virginia was dying and that Joe needed him then more than ever. Joe felt a sense of sympathy and love from him that was as strong as any he could’ve gotten from a person
.

Surely all of us who live with dogs have had a time in our lives when a special dog came to us and provided comfort. I remember curling up on the floor with my dogs when my ex-husband left me, desperate for the touch of their fur, the sound of their hearts beating. He left in late November, and I remember the winter that followed as if it were one, long endless night, dark, cold, and devoid of comfort except for the touch of my dogs and the love of my friends. It seemed as though the dogs stayed closer to me than usual. When I cried, as I often did, they came to me with worried eyes and moved around me as if in slow motion. They were especially obedient, the way children are when they realize that something is very wrong though they might not know what it is
.

————

Millions of us have been comforted by our dogs, there’s no doubt about it. Just petting a dog lowers your blood pressure and decreases your heart rate. No one doubts that dogs can influence our emotions just by being there. Even people who don’t believe that dogs can have emotions themselves concede that the presence of dogs can alter our own. But what’s going on inside the head of a dog when he licks the tears off your face, cuddles against you, and looks deep into your eyes? Beyond a vague sense of anxiety because something is wrong, do our dogs feel true sympathy for us? To many of us, it seems impossible that they don’t, but some scientists and philosophers disagree. Sympathy turns out to be an emotion that requires a lot of brainpower, and some argue that dogs don’t have what it takes to experience it. Because this is a deeply felt topic to dog lovers, it’s worth looking at what sympathy really is, and what kind of brainpower it requires.

Sympathy may not seem like a complicated concept—you feel bad, so I feel bad for you—but it brings up a white-hot controversy in science and philosophy about the minds of animals. Sympathy requires that an individual understand that others have minds just like her own, and that she is able to imagine the world from another’s perspective. This ability to put oneself in the place of others is inconveniently known as theory of mind, although it isn’t a “theory” as nonscientists use the term. It refers to something that all normal people can do, which is to be aware that other individuals have a mind that works much like their own, and to plan accordingly. When you see a dog with a broken leg, you know that her leg is like your leg, and you can imagine how she felt inside when the bones snapped. When you’re in a conversation, you know that the person you’re talking to is not just talking to you—he’s having an internal mental conversation with himself, just as you are. But does your dog have similar powers of imagination? Does she sense that you have a mind something like her own? Your dog may be aware of how your actions predict other actions (“She got the leash, so we’re going on a walk!”), but is she aware that you have an internal mental life, as she does? If not, how could she consciously know that you are suffering?

It’s instructive to recognize that before the age of four or five (at the earliest), children cannot imagine the world from another’s point of
view. Ask a two-year-old to “show Daddy your picture,” and he’ll hold it up facing himself, but away from Daddy. Three-year-olds play hide-and-seek by covering their own eyes, not understanding that although
they
can’t see,
you
still can. Compare that with a Standard Poodle named Luath, who plays “hide-and-seek” with his owner by running to the couch and burying his head under the pillows.

Children don’t become aware until at least four years of age that others have minds just like their own. I clearly remember the moment this realization came to me; it’s one of my earliest memories. I was riding in a car, looking out the window at people on the sidewalk, and I remember being dumbstruck by the insight that they had mental lives similar to my own. I was stunned at this discovery: each person I saw had his or her own version of the rich experiences inside my head. That night I lay on the floor and wondered about the mind of our family’s dog, Fudge. Could she be thinking the same things that I was?

What’s important in this story is that, like all children, I went for years with no awareness that others had minds like my own. The fact that young children can live and learn for so long without this awareness adds fuel to the fire that one doesn’t have to have theory of mind in order to function. It also makes it especially difficult to determine what animals, like our dogs, understand about the minds of others, and the questions that raises are causing no small amount of academic fur to fly.

A flurry of clever experiments has tried to address this question by asking whether an animal appears to be able to put itself in another’s place, showing some comprehension that another individual has thoughts, desires, and intentions like his own. In one study, a chimpanzee named Sarah was shown videotapes of a human actor in different problematic circumstances—shivering inside a cage; jumping to reach a banana dangling overhead—and was asked to pick a photograph that “fit” the situation. Sarah clearly understood something about what the actor was experiencing: she chose a picture of a blanket for the shivering man, and a box for him to step up onto to reach the banana. However, three-and-a-half-year-old children, too young to have theory of mind, did not. They chose pictures of things that physically related to the video they saw: a yellow flower that matched the color of the banana, for example.

In other studies, even chimpanzees have not done so well. Chimps
begged at equally high rates in front of people who could and couldn’t see them, which they shouldn’t have done if they could imagine the world from the perspective of the people. However, studies like this are always tricky, because we’re only indirectly getting evidence of what’s going on in their minds—perhaps the chimps were simply unable to contain themselves, and couldn’t resist begging from anyone holding tasty snacks, just as we press the elevator button multiple times when we’re in a hurry, even though we know it won’t help.

So far, the results of such experiments are inconsistent, so we don’t know whether our dogs have theory of mind. It’s a hot topic right now, so we’ll undoubtedly learn a lot more in the years to come. At present, the mixed results of the studies act as a litmus test on which way a person tends to lean—is it better to mistakenly give animals credit for more brain power than they deserve, or less? In general, most dog lovers tend to vote for the former, and most scientists the latter, but we are all still just guessing. I wonder if, like consciousness, theory of mind is a capacity that can exist in a continuum, especially in highly social animals like dogs. Look at all the times that our dogs come to comfort us—would they do that if they didn’t understand we were suffering in
some
way? It is undoubtedly true that some of the kisses our dogs give us when we’re sad are evoked by “emotional contagion,” the emotions of one individual spilling over onto the emotions of others. Emotional contagion doesn’t require that either animal understand what the other is experiencing; it happens because emotions are catching, as we’ve talked about in earlier chapters. It offers one explanation for those sloppy kisses that our dogs tend to give in response to our tears or sad faces, but I don’t think it adequately accounts for all of their actions.

Look at Marley, the out-of-control Labrador in John Grogan’s
Marley and Me
, who flunked out of obedience school and systematically chewed John and Jenny’s house into bite-size pieces. And yet, when the young couple returned from learning they’d had a miscarriage, Marley greeted them with none of his usual hysteria. He stood still, resting his head against Jenny’s belly, until she broke down and sobbed while he stood quietly beside her. This is the dog who was oblivious to their emotions in other circumstances, no matter how strongly held or expressed. Their anger, frustration, and exhaustion seemed to bounce off
him like rocks skipping across the water, with no effect on his frenetic exuberance. If emotional contagion accounted fully for his empathy, then why wasn’t he equally influenced by their other emotions?

There’s a recent discovery in neurobiology that might help us understand empathy in our dogs. We’ve learned that special brain cells called “mirror neurons” play a key role in our species’ tendency to imitate others and in our ability to be emphathetic. These cells are not active only when we move one way or another, but the
same
cells fire up when we watch someone else move the same way. These cells aren’t restricted to humans; they were first discovered by Italian researchers Vittorio Gallese and Leonardo Fogassi, during research on how the brain controls movement in monkeys. They recorded brain cell activity as the monkeys reached for objects, and to the researchers’ surprise, found that the monkeys’ brain cells activated when one of the researchers reached for a raisin, just as the brain cells had when the monkeys themselves reached for the same object. Amazing.

We’ve since learned that humans have a vast number of these “mirror neurons,” not surprising given our “monkey see, monkey do” tendency to imitate the actions of others. The other primates studied have a significantly smaller number of them, but they have them nonetheless. In humans these cells appear to play an important role in understanding the intentions of others and in feeling empathy toward them. We don’t know anything yet about mirror neurons in dogs, but studies on them will no doubt provide us with a lot more information in the future.

There’s another behavior that sheds light on the mental processes of other animals, and that’s the phenomenon of deception. We don’t tend to think of deceit as a good thing, but examples of it in nonhuman animals are interesting and instructive. It’s relevant here because what’s called “tactical deception” could occur only if an individual has some understanding of the thought processes of another.

There are numerous reports of animals behaving as if to deceive other animals: in one well-known example, a beleaguered Arctic fox barked out a bogus alarm call after her young had repeatedly snatched up all the food for themselves. The alarm bark sent her young scurrying for the den, which allowed the fox to get a good meal for herself for the first time in weeks. Examples of tactical deception are most common, not surprisingly, in our closest relative, the chimpanzee. Chimps
not only change their behavior to keep illicit affairs quiet, they pretend to search for food in places that they know have no food. This allows them to fool dominant chimps into going away from the sites that
do
have hidden food, so the subordinate chimps can have it all to themselves.

Although deception is probably not as common in dogs, there are credible stories of dogs running to the door and barking as if visitors had arrived, causing the other dogs in the house to stop what they were doing and join in the barking. While the others continue to bark at the visitor that isn’t there, the first dog quietly slips back into the living room and takes over the bone that his higher-status compatriot previously had all to himself. My own Pip has groveled and whined her way up to Tulip while Tulip chewed on a tasty bone, and licked Tulip’s face so vigorously that Tulip shook her head and walked away, giving Pip exactly what she wanted: free access to the best bone in the house. These examples, although not conclusive, underscore the belief that theory of mind isn’t necessarily an ability that one either has or doesn’t have, but, like other mental processes, could exist in a continuum.

Earlier, I mentioned the time Luke leaped over a high wooden stall and held off a rampaging ewe until I could get out to safety. How could he have known I was in danger if he hadn’t been able to put himself in my place, understanding in some way that what I was experiencing was similar to what he had experienced? I’d never been imperiled by my sheep before, but he had. Like all working sheepdogs, Luke had been trapped in tight quarters, and been in danger from flying horns and battering heads. In order to understand that I was in danger, he had to be able to put himself in my place, and imagine the world from my perspective.

To be fair, it’s possible that Luke didn’t leap into the pen to rescue me. Perhaps he was merely trying to get in on the action—heaven knows Luke loved drama, and he loved telling the sheep what to do. Of course, I want it to be true that Luke was consciously trying to save me. It makes me feel safe and full of the warmth that comes with feeling loved and protected. The fact that the more complicated explanation makes me feel good is a reason to be skeptical, but it’s not reason enough to dismiss the possibility that Luke understood I was in danger. As I said earlier, just because an explanation makes us feel good doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

It’s true that we’ll never know exactly what goes on in the minds of our dogs, whether they’re rescuing us or licking the tears from our faces. It’s also true that we have much to learn about their thought processes, and how they compare with ours. However, we already know a lot. We know that we share with dogs much of the biology that creates our own emotions, and we know that we express emotions in similar ways. We know that dogs have a portion of all the components we believe make up emotions—from internal and external physical changes, to some form of the mental abstractions that go along with them.

Here’s what else we know: it’s time to stop apologizing for the belief that animals, like our dogs, have emotions.
Of course
, our dogs can experience emotions like fear, anger, happiness, and jealousy. And yes, as far as we can tell, their experience of those emotions is comparable in many ways to ours. People who argue otherwise might as well argue that the earth is flat.