I'm a huge fan of Temple Grandin. I can't even remember how many years ago I heard her on NPR being interviewed about her research into animal behavior and how she was consulting with slaughter yards across the U.S., helping them to evaluate their environments and practices in order to create a fear-free environment for our food animals. The interview itself was interesting, and without knowing her story I could tell by the way she spoke that there was something a little different about her. As it turns out, Grandin is autistic. I suppose its not suprising that there are highly functioning persons with autism in our world, I have family and friends with kids on the autism spectrum who function so well that people don't understand they have the disorder. What is remarkable, to me at least, is just how high-functioning she is. She holds a Ph.D. in animals sciences, is a tenured professor at Colorado State University, and has authored four books. This in addition to her consulting work. She is passionate and articulate, and she was influential enough to convince the CEO's of five of the biggest fast-food chains to visit their own slaughter vendors, which had (and will continue to have) enormous and lasting changes on how these companies produce meat.
Its an interesting discussion for me, this question of animal happiness and quality of life. And no, its not just because I'm an animal lover (NO, you say? REALLY? YOU LOVE ANIMALS? I hadn't a CLUE!), its the awakening somewhere in my cerebral cortex in recent years that there really are people who fall in between "HUNTS TO KILL SHIT" and "PETA" on the spectrum. I've at times in my life gone vegetarian, was a member of PETA for about three seconds when I was in my 20's and still naive and impetuous. Eventually, as happens to many people, my craving for steak overrode my desire to see animals die for my consumption. I understand intellectually that meat comes from animals; I can see the plastic-wrapped packages of beef in the grocery coolers and I know the process whereby that meat is derived - I've lived in the country for long enough and seen my dad butcher enough deer, elk and other game to not have the need to mentally separate the end result from its origins. I mean, when we bought two yearling steers from our black-angus-raising neighbor, we named them "Chuck" and "Strip." I know where meat comes from and I'm no longer ashamed to admit I eat it. AND ENJOY IT.
So anyway, big fan of Temple Grandin's. And I'm two chapters into her newest book, Animals Make us Human. The book delves into available research and Grandin's own hypotheses around what emotions animals actually feel, how they are similar to the reactions of humans to similar stimuli, and what various kinds of animals in our lives require in order to be "happy." I've just finished the chapter on dogs. God, I love my dogs. Grandin has some interesting and potentially controversial things to say about how dogs interact with one another in various situations - she talks a lot about Cesar Milan (also a huge fan of his) and his theories on dog behavior. I guess I was surprised when she parted company in her interpretation of the necessity of dominance structure. She agrees that with a pack like Cesar's, where he has 40-50 dogs in his center at any given time, that like captive wolves, who are often put in groups far larger than they comprise in the wild, a dominant leader is necessary to keep equilibrium in the group. But she offers that in smaller groups, family-sized groups of dogs, that a more reasonable and necessary function of the human is to act as a parent, much as wolf family groups in the wild function. As with our human children, Grandin promulgates the idea that we serve our dogs better when we teach them to handle frustration with equanimity, since much of dog life with humans involves the frustration of natural dog behavior. Now, as a woman whose life is partially ruled by three very large, friendly dogs, I agree that its important for dogs to tolerate frustration well. God knows it has to be frustrating as hell when my children dress them up in hats and coats, or tie all three of them together with winter scarves to make a driving team...and its remarkable to me almost daily that my dogs don't just finally say "Done" and take off a limb. So yes - I see how frustration tolerance is a key element of dog behavior. She believes this is more important than the concept Cesar teaches about teaching your dog to be submissive to a dominant alpha. Applying my approach with my own dogs, I can see how I do a little bit of both. My dogs know who I'm boss...although they don't always choose to listen. Hercules, he talks back a lot, but he usually complies. Roscoe? I can give him a sideways look and he immediately rolls over on his back and does his best imitation of a pathetic little love-starved puppy (yes, all 70 pounds of him. Puppy. Heh.) Lady is a being unto herself. I have never met a dog more stubborn and willful and yet at the same time completely dopey and loving. She is the most single-minded dog I've ever seen, fortunately her mind is mostly set on sleeping. And eating. And having her belly rubbed. Lucky, fortunate, because even at a small-for-a-bullmastiff size of 93 pounds, she is a formidable enough dog that if what she *really* wanted were to make you not be in her way any more? Not hard to accomplish.
I read after I adopted Lady that the bullmastiff was originally bred to control poachers on the large game estates of very wealthy Lords in old Britain. They are very quiet dogs, not big on barking. Their job was to locate a poacher, sneak up on them, and restrain them physically until the Game Warden could some slap the cuffs on and throw the miscreant in the pokey. Watching Lady sometimes this doesn't surprise me at all. She doesn't move a lot, but when she wants to, she can move FAST. When she plays with Roscoe I wince. He is all legs and he's whip-fast. He can outrun her any day of the week, but she knows this. All she does is wait for him to come flying at her, then she drops her shoulder and takes him OUT. She doesn't even have to try...she's so big and solid that he just hits her, WHAM!, and goes rolling.
Grandin suggests that the newer theory about never letting your dog win in games of tug-of-war, because they might learn they are dominant over you, is rubbish. She cited a study in her last book Animals in Translation that collected data on Golden Retrievers playing Tug of War. Essentially, the dogs' submission to the human leader was unchanged regardless of whether they always lost, always won, or were allowed to win half the games. In fact, what would happen when the dogs *always* lost was that they eventually lost interest in playing. Apparently dogs don't like to lose all the time, who knew? So anway, when it comes to things like playing games with your dog, or even letting them up on the furniture, Grandin says "Beating a person at tug of war didn't make the dogs more dominant. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw the same thing in a study of dogs getting up on furniture and beds." OH THANK GOD. And here I've been worried that someone was going to tell Cesar that my dogs were sleeping with me and he was going to show up and revoke my dog-ownership rights for being a lousy alpha.
Oh, and there's actually a chapter in this book on Chickens. Which I cannot wait to read. Because I am intensely curious as to how it is I will be able to recognize when the chickens are happy. I will become the best chicken momma EVER.
