I’ve always wondered whenever a new scientific study crops
up in the news about dogs whether the scientists involved just spend their
working days just playing with dogs. Then I rethink my life choices.
The conclusion after reading In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw, is yes the scientists who
conduct such studies entitled “Can dogs read human emotions?” do spend their waking
hours with man’s (or woman’s) best friend. In Chapter Seven alone Bradshaw
describes at least twenty separate case studies, a couple including litters of
puppies.
While the scientists have to remain objective watching collies,
springers and spaniels work out contraptions with levers and pullies and
quantifying how tug-of-war games occur, my brain would explode with the urge to
cuddle them all. Then I conclude that my life is better spent watching funny
dog videos and walking my Labrador.
In Defence of Dogs succeeds
in what it aims to do: dispel the myths surrounding the origins of our
favourite companions and dismiss harmful training methods which are grounded in
those myths.
The domestic dog is not…not, Bradshaw repeats, the ancestor
of the modern day wolf. This assumption has led to the prevalent theory of the
“top dog” and that your pet dog seeks to take control of your household. The
training principles that follow this premise can cause anxiety and hinder
Bradshaw’s own hypothesis, that your dog sees you, its owner, as its family.
There were parts of the book which had me nodding in heavy agreement.
In particular, the sentence that dogs are “expected to be simultaneously better
behaved than the average human child and as self-reliant as an adult”. The idea
of punishment as a method of training is done away with as well as my own personal
favourite, “shock-collars”.
The letter I have included at the beginning of this review mentions “devices on the market
that can be used to silence a dog.” I
acquired this letter from a previous job at a newspaper. It is a Letter to the
Editor from one reader who did not want to have their name published in the
paper. As a consequence his vent about his neighbour’s “pampered brutes” could
not be published. Instead it has served as a suitable bookmark for this book.
On page 118 Bradshaw refers
to one such device arguing that it will result in aggressive behaviour which
could lead to euthanasia. The noisy neighbour’s dog is suffering from ‘separation
anxiety’, a condition which is explained in the case of Bruno, an emotionally
dependent Labrador on page 164.
As a dog lover I was promised I would love this book and I
do, mainly because it allows me to have an informed opinion when defending the
honour of my pampered brute and it is written by a scientist who I can tell was
fighting the urge to play with his furry workmates.
