By Patricia B. McConnell, Ph.D.
Ballantine Books, 2002
FROM THE DUST JACKET
The Other End of the Leash shares a revolutionary, new perspective on our
relationship with dogs, focusing on our behavior in comparison with that of
dogs. An Applied Animal Behaviorist and dog trainer with more than twenty
years' experience, Dr. Patricia McConnell looks at humans as just another
interesting species, and muses about why we behave the way we do around our
dogs, how dogs might interpret our behavior, and how to interact with dogs
in ways that bring out the best in our four-legged friends.
After all, although humans and dogs share a remarkable relationship that is
unique in the animal world, we are still two entirely different species,
each shaped by our individual evolutionary heritage. Quite simply, humans
are primates and dogs are canids (as are wolves, coyotes, and foxes). Since
we each speak a different native tongue, a lot gets lost in the translation.
The Other End of the Leash demonstrates how even the slightest changes in
your voice and in the way you stand can help your dog understand what you
want. Once you start to think about your behavior from your dog's
perspective, you'll understand why much of what appears to be doggy
disobedience is simply a case of miscommunication. Inside you will learn
o How you can get your dog to come when called by acting less like a
primate and more like a dog.
o Why the advice to "get dominance" over your dog can lead to trouble.
o Why "rough and tumble primate play" can lead to trouble-and how to play
with your dog in ways that are fun and keep him out of trouble.
o How dogs and humans share personality types- and why most dogs want to
live with benevolent leaders rather than "alpha wanna-bes"!
In her own insightful, compelling style, Patricia McConnell combines
wonderful true stories about people and dogs with a new, accessible
scientific perspective on how they should behave around each other. This is
a book that strives to help you make the most of life with your dog and to
prevent problems that might arise in that most rewarding of relationships.
Patricia B. McConnell, Ph.D., is an adjunct assistant professor of zoology
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a certified Applied Animal
Behaviorist. Her company, Dog's Best Friend Ltd., specializes in family dog
training and treating aggression in dogs, and she is immensely popular as a
speaker around the country. She is the cohost of Calling All Pets, an
animal behavior advice show syndicated to one hundred public radio
stations, and was the animal behaviorist on Animal Planet's Petline. She
works daily with four dogs (three Border collies and a Great Pyrenees) on
her sheep farm outside of Madison. Her Web site is
www.dogsbestfriendtraining.com.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI
INTRODUCTION XV
1. MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO 1
2. TRANSLATING PRIMATE TO CANINE 20
3. TALKING TO EACH OTHER 38
4. PLANET SMELL 65
5. FUN AND PLAY 84
6. PACKMATES 105
7. THE TRUTH ABOUT DOMINANCE 132
8. PATIENT DOGS AND WISE HUMANS 159
9. PERSONALITIES 185
10. LOVE AND LOSS 209
AFTERWORD 223
REFERENCES 226
INDEX 241
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
All dogs are brilliant at perceiving the slightest movement that we make,
and they assume that each tiny motion has meaning. So do we humans, if you
think about it. Remember that minuscule turn of the head that caught your
attention when you were dating? Think about how little someone's lips have
to move to change a sweet smile into a smirk. How far does an eyebrow have
to rise to change the message we read from the face it's on-a tenth of an inch?
You'd think that we would automatically generalize this common knowledge to
our interactions with our dogs. But we don't. We are often oblivious to how
we're moving around our dogs. It seems to be very human not to know what
we're doing with our body, unconscious of where our hands are or that we
just tilted our head. We radiate random signals like some crazed semaphore
flag, while our dogs watch in confusion, their eyes rolling around in
circles like cartoon dogs.
These visual signals, like all the rest of our actions, have a profound
influence on what our dogs do. Who dogs are and how they behave are partly
defined by who we humans are and how we ourselves behave. Domestic dogs, by
definition, share their lives with another species: us. And so this is a
book for dog lovers, but it's not only a book about dogs. It's also a book
about people. It's a book about how we're the same as our dogs and how
we're different from them.
Our species shares so much with dogs. If you look across the vast range of
all animal life, from beetles to bears, humans and dogs are more alike than
we are different. Like dogs, we make milk for our young and raise them in a
pack. Our babies have lots to learn while growing up; we hunt
cooperatively; we play silly games even as adults; we snore; we scratch and
blink and yawn on sunny afternoons. Look at what Pam Brown, a New Zealand
poet, had to say about people and dogs in the book Bond for Life:
Humankind is drawn to dogs because they are so like ourselves- bumbling,
affectionate, confused, easily disappointed, eager to be amused, grateful
for kindness and the least attention.
These similarities allow the members of two different species to live
together intimately, sharing food, recreation, and even bearing young
together. Lots of animals live closely linked to others, but our level of
connection with dogs is profound. Most of us exercise with our dogs, play
with our dogs, eat at the same time as our dogs (and sometimes the same
food), and sleep with our dogs. Some of us still depend on our dogs for our
work. Sheep ranchers in Wyoming and dairy farmers in Wisconsin need their
dogs as much as or more than they do machinery or high-tech feeding
systems. We know that dogs enrich the lives of many of us, providing
comfort and joy to millions around the world. Studies even show that they
decrease the probability of a second heart attack. We don't put up with
shedding and barking and carrying pooper-scoopers on walks for nothing.
And look what we've done for dogs. Cants lupus familiaris, the domestic
dog, is now one of the most successful mammals on earth, thanks to hitching
his star to ours. It's been estimated that there are about four hundred
million dogs in the world. Many American dogs are eating organic food,
going to canine chiropractors and doggy day-care centers, and chewing on
millions of dollars a year in toys. Now that's a successful species.
But we also have our differences. We humans don't relish rolling in cow
pies. Nor do we, for the most part, eat the placentas of our newborns. We
don't greet one another, thank heaven, by sniffing one another's rumps.
While dogs live in a world of scents, we think of ourselves as chemically
illiterate. Partly because of those differences, humans and dogs often
miscommunicate, and the consequences range from mildly irritating to life
threatening. Some of this miscommunication stems from an owner's not
understanding dog behavior and how animals learn, and I encourage all dog
lovers to read lots of good books about dog training. Training dogs turns
out not to be intuitively obvious, and the more you learn, the easier and
more fun it will be.
Some of this miscommunication, though, results not just from ignorance
about how to train a dog but from fundamental differences between the
behavior of two species. After all, dogs aren't the only animal in the
relationship. We humans at the other end of the leash are animals, too,
with our own biological baggage of behavior that came along on our
evolutionary train ride. We don't come to dog training as blank slates, any
more than dogs do. Dogs and dog lovers alike have been shaped by our
separate evolutionary backgrounds, and what each of us bring to the
relationship starts with the heritage of our natural history. Although our
similarities create a bond that's remarkable, we are each speaking our own
native "language," and a lot gets lost in the translation.
*******************************
Every year several students come to see me at the university and ask how
they can become an Applied Animal Behaviorist. Some of them tell me they
are interested primarily because they love animals so much and work
themselves up to confessing that they don't really like people much at all.
But we humans are an integral part of the lives of domestic dogs, and we
can't fully relate to a domestic dog without taking our own species into
account. The more you love your dog, the more you need to understand human
behavior. The good news, speaking as a biologist, is that our species is as
fascinating as any other. I find myself just as enamored of Homo sapiens as
I am of Canis lupus familiaris, because even when we humans are idiots,
we're interesting ones. So I invite all of you to show our own species the
same patience and compassion that we show dogs. After all, dogs seem to
like us a lot, and I have the utmost respect for their opinion.
WHERE TO ORDER:
Random House, Inc.
400 Hahn Road
Westminster, MD 21157 USA
Toll-Free Phone: 1-800-733-3000
Email: bfi@randomhouse.com
Web site: http://www.randomhouse.com
Price: $25.95 (USD) ISBN: 0345446798 (Cloth)
$13.95 (USD) ISBN: 034544678X (Paper)
Posted Date: 6/2/2003
URL: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/review/leash.html
Page last modified:
June 2, 2003
Maintained by the WPRC Library