Anthropomorphism and it's impact on our dogs
Anthropomorphism - an·thro·po·mor·phism (noun) the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.
Quite the mouth full of a word there isn’t it? Our entire lives we’ve been steadily fed this idea that animals emotionally feel, think, and communicate in the same way we do. We have been fed anthropomorphism in the form of cartoons like Mickey Mouse, ThunderCats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to all the blockbuster movies starring dogs. I personally grew up on Turner and Hooch, Benji, White Fang, Beethoven, Iron Will, Homeward Bound, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and one of my all-time favorite 80’s films K-9 starring Jim Belushi. Ok, I’m showing my age here…
Did you know there have been retail studies that suggest dog toys should have faces on them? Not for the dogs, they could care less, it’s so us humans will buy the damn thing. Who wants to spend money on some round inanimate object to toss around, but stick a smiley face on there with some kitty cat whiskers and it’s sold at top dollar! Anthropomorphizing dog toys generates higher sales.
Benito (Goldendoodle)
If you’ve never read the book White Fang, I highly recommend it. The movie is much different than the book. In the movie the view point of the story is based on Jack’s perception of events, his rescuing of the dog, and his emotional attachment to the dog. However, the book is based on White Fang’s perception of events, and his view of these good and evil “gods” that are man.
The movie touches on this in one scene. Jack, a young boy that just arrived in Alaska and later saves White Fang becoming his owner, meets Grey Beaver, the Chief of his tribe and first owner of White Fang who he captured as a pup in the wild. Grey Beaver named the pup Mita which translates into White Fang. In the movie Jack meets Grey Beaver and Mita for the very first time and the scene plays out like this:
Jack: “Hey Mita, can I pet you” (Jack reaches out his hand to pet Mita)
Mita: “Barks at Jack” (Grey Beaver jumps forward pulling Jack’s hand Back)
Grey Beaver: ”NO!”
Jack: “I just wanted to pet him”
Grey Beaver: “Dogs are for work”
Jack: “Maybe they’d work a little harder if you were a little more friendly”
Grey Beaver: (pauses to think)“We make fire… Kill with sticks… (Grey Beaver tosses a rock in the river) Cause stone to fly. We are their god. That is why they obey. Not because we are friends.”
This is a profound statement if you really think about it. I believe both sides have valid points here. I personally believe the middle ground is the sweet spot. A balance if you will, between the “god/subject” or “owner/dog” relationship.
I just finished a book called Stumbling on Happiness. No, it’s not a self-help book. Although, it is a great psychological plunge into the human psyche that I highly recommend. In the book, Dr. Daniel Gilbert, the author and American Social Psychologist, talks about how scientists have been studying “rats running mazes and pigeons pecking keys” for the last 30 years. They did this in order to better understand behaviors as they are applied to humans. Dr. Gilbert comments in his book how it’s all been a giant waste of time. I disagree with Dr. Gilbert. These studies have immensely helped trainers such as myself understand how animals think and behave. Dr. Gilbert explains that, “while rats and pigeons may respond to stimuli as they are presented in the world, people respond to stimuli as they are represented in the mind.” The reason Dr. Gilbert calls it a waste of time is because the animal studies give no insight into human behavior. We’re complicated, and animals are not.
For example, a dog may think, “If I bark at this tree a squirrel might appear, and that feels good.” The dog does this because at some point in the past, barking at the tree paid off. At some point there was a squirrel in that tree, and it activated the dogs prey drive. This created a feeling of excitement in the dog that it would like to repeat. Humans on the other hand, look for squirrels in the tree because they have an emotional connection to how cute they are, or how disgusting and rat-like they are. Depending on your life experiences.
Dr. Gilbert explains that, “objective stimuli in the world creates subjective stimuli in the mind, and it’s these subjective stimuli to which people react.” I know, I know, bear with me here. Objective means a judgment not influenced by personal feelings or opinions and representing facts (how dogs react), and Subjective is a judgement based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions (how humans react).
You see, one of the things that sets us apart from all other living creatures on earth, is as humans we have individual subjective responses to stimuli. If I were to say, “I’m going to go break my dog.” What is the first thing you think of?
Well, if you’re not in the dog world, I’m guessing you might think the meaning is that I’m about to go damage my dog in some way. If you are in the dog world, you know that I mean I’m going to go let my dog use the restroom (to go on a bathroom break). Your response to the word break (i.e. stimuli) is all dependent on your influences in life. It’s both the amount of time we spend with a stimulus, and the emotion we feel towards the stimulus that determine how we as humans responses to it. Let me explain further.
If you’re in a work position where you frequently go break, or go on break, or something of this nature, then you may have Subjectively associated the phrase “I’m going to break my dog” in a positive way. However, if your frequency and emotional meaning to the word “break” has recently been associated with a relationship break, a mechanical device you own breaking down, or the fact that you had some physical break in your body such as a bone. Then you may have Subjectively associated the meaning more negatively.
As humans that make subjective judgements, we unfairly take the very thing, objectivity, that makes a dog so special and strip it from them. This is one of the reasons I love dogs so much. Dogs can’t lie, they don’t judge us, they don’t care about our pasts, or mistakes in life that we as humans dwell upon. They don’t care about the emotional Subjective of the stimuli. Dogs live completely and utterly in the moment. Minute by minute, second by second. Any decisions that dogs make in life come from objective (not influenced by personal feelings) stimuli as it is received; live streamed.
If a dog is joyful about a stimulus, it’s because the stimulus has proven to be joyful and continues to be joyful, at least more often than it is not. If a dog is fearful or anxious about a stimulus, it’s because there has been reason for the dog to be fearful or anxious of that stimuli more often than not. If something’s happened at least once in a dog’s life, then the dog has “hope” (whether good or bad) that it will/can happen again. If it’s never happened or never been experienced, then the dog has no concept of it as an option.
So, here’s the cool thing about dogs objectivity; If a stimulus has in the past been associated as a thing to be fearful of, anxious about, or aggressive towards, this can be changed. Whereas subjective humans have very personal opinions, tastes, and feelings towards stimuli. It is much harder for us to make those changes.
If you have a subjective fear of spiders for instance. It would be difficult to bring you to the point of allowing a spider to crawl on you. While we could get you to this point, through tons of counter conditioning, you most likely will never be completely cured of your fear based on past traumatic emotion. If a dog has an Objective fear of something, let’s use fans for instance. We can counter condition this fear a lot faster as it’s based in fact, not feeling. The fan blew air on the dog and made a weird sound, nothing good came from it, so factually (objectively) the dog is scared of the fan.
Quick Side Note: For dog trainers out there reading this, just know that I’m going to be using the words “good” and “bad” for the sake of the regular dog owners. You can substitute in Negative and Positive Reinforcement and Punishment here for Operant Conditioning as we continue.
It’s basically a breakdown like this. If the dog has a “bad” association to the stimuli, then all you have to do is create a “good” association to the stimuli. Because the dog is objective, it’s all just a matter of duration at this point. So, if a stimuli has had a “bad” association once, you may be able to create the “good” association in a couple of sessions. If the stimuli has had a “bad” association for a few years, this process could take much longer, but not always.
We’ll use the fan again as an example, and I use this example due to experiences I’ve found that fans can be scary. Let’s say you walk your pup past a fan and the dog has a ‘fear’ reaction. You can stop right there and start feeding the pup several feet away from the fan. Slowly move the pup closer and closer to the fan and, depending on the dog, you may be able to get the puppy eating kibble, off the floor, right next to the noisy fan, with air being blown right in its face. Some puppies may have to come back for several visits to the fan to achieve a “good” association.
The dog objectively had a “bad” experience at first with the fan. Noise + Fast Air Flow + No Reward = Bad. Simple math! We then change the scenario for the dog to be Noise + Fast Air Flow + High Value Food Reward = Good. It’s a matter of Greater Than or Less Than to a dog.
Bad > Good = Bad & Bad < Good = Good
If the dog has far more “good” experiences with the stimuli, then it’s “good.” For example, let’s say if the dogs had 30 “bad” experiences to the stimuli and 40 “good” experiences to the stimuli, then it’s still associated as “good”.
Of course, this is all also relative to the value of the experiences had. For example, you can feed your dog regular kibble around the fan 15 times and associate the fan stimuli with “good” things fairly easily. However, if the fan has a faulty wire and electrocutes the dog with 120 volts once, well… that’s pretty “bad.” So, the experience value of the “bad” just surpassed the 15 kibble feedings of the “good” experience value. Now you can fix the faulty and wire so that the puppy never gets electrocuted again, and then start building back the “good” association to the fan. It will take some time and work, but it can be done.
On the flip side, your fan could have had a faulty wire and electrocute your dog at 10 volts, but you fed high value food reward treats next to the fan multiple times prior. In this case the pup is most likely going to not care about the faulty wire even if it’s electrocuted every time it accesses its reward. The value of the “bad” is not greater than the value of the “good.”
As humans we tend to strip this simple factual matter away from the dog and place our subjective reaction to the stimuli on them. A typical human reaction when the puppy passes the fan for the first time and has a fear reaction is as follows: The human picks up and coddles the puppy. They attempt to make it feel more safe and secure from the big scary monster that the human is imaging and projecting through the puppy’s eyes. In reality, what the human is doing here is justifying the dog’s feelings of fear to the dog. They are communicating clearly and precisely to the dog that it is completely justified in its fear state, and in fact, should be afraid of the fan. This is all completely counterproductive to the dog.
If you’re still with me, congrats for not falling asleep! As humans we put unrealistic expectations on dogs. We expect dogs to understand on a human level, understand how to live in our homes properly, understand good from bad behavior, and right from wrong without guidance. Above all we try and place our subjective stimuli reactions on them. Flat out, this is an impossibility for our dogs. We are setting our dogs up for failure, constantly!
I’m not saying you should never dress your dog up in cute clothes or costumes, talk to them, spoil them a little bit, call them your kids or babies, or any of these anthropomorphic behaviors. I only want you to realize that it is completely one sided in emotional fulfillment, and means absolutely nothing to your dog. However, keep in mind that some of this behavior, depending on the circumstances, can even be destructive to your dog behaviorally, and/or destructive to your relationship with your dog.
Sure, dogs are sentient beings. They have biological needs and desires, but they are animals. Most of those desires, at the very least, manifest into behaviors we don’t care for if not redirected into something more of our liking. Especially in our homes, and in the worse case, it’s destructive. Yes, I said it. Animals are destructive. Dogs need control, boundaries, and leadership to thrive in our human world, and more specifically in our homes.
So be a leader, set those boundaries, and consider that your dog does not understand things in the same way you do. Remember that it is impossible for your dog to think or communicate like you think and communicate. Therefore, it is your responsibility to train yourself to think and communicate on your dog’s level, and not the other way around.
