Patricia McConnell Re-Homes One of Her Dogs

SARDogDad

No it is not.  Sometimes doctors elect to amputate to save a life.  Are they failing?   ...Or, do we need even more science so maybe we might save the next limb and the next life?  I've NEVER seen an example of behavior science failing.  I've only seen it needing to advance...

I agre that science may one day advance to the ability to regenerate human limbs. But I don't think we'll get rid of amputation. Nor would regeneration replace amputation. A patient might be allergic to certain things in a regeneration procedure and still need amputation. And we don't advance science by throwing away the building blocks that got us to where we are. And I would reiterate that while the theoretical standpoint of NDT may or may not have validity, I don't see it replacing the behavioral science we use, thus far. It might explain some of the nuts and bolts but it won't replace the theory.

In fact, the only thing I could say to the dopamine discussion is that finding that dopamine is present in both rewarding and non-rewarding circumstances doesn't invalidate OC. Nor am I defending OC against a "fatal" strike of dopamine discoveries. I still see OC working and that perhaps the previous explanation that dopamine was linked might need to be re-examined. Or examined further. Plus a study is just a study and most studies are half-baked. Preliminary results are released in the hopes of getting more grant money.

Which is not say that the learning is occuring by change in environment, with or without dopamine "reward." In the same breadth, could there still be a reward pathology that is independent of dopamine, or that dopamine is but one of the symptoms of reward, even if it is also present in what we assume are non-rewarding situations. We used to have a member that had a Dogo de Argentino. In his daily travels around the ranch, he would sometimes get into brambles that would leave barbs hanging on his scrotal sac. And he would come trotting back, not a care in the world. If he even felt it, that couldn't have felt pleasant. Which means that there was some other reward or tension-release that was more important sharp, pointy things on one's goodies. Without or without the anesthetic effect of dopamine. In so many words, I don't think the dopamine study invalidates OC and it is, indeed, a shaky hook to hang one's hat on.

You know, for more than a decade, I have asked behaviorist and working dog trainers a simple question; "What is drive?"  the reason I wanted to get a rock soild definition was to explain it to pet dog trainers.  I thought I had known what drive was, what it looked like, and when a dog had it.  The answers I got from the working dog trainers ranged from "The Look:, to "Game", to "The Want To", to "Motivation", etc...  Most of the behaviorist gave me a look and said, "Oh, that word...".  None of this was really good to use in a class or seminar... Kathy Sdao had a seminar in Austin a few years back and I asked her that question.  You guessed it..."Oh that word."  BUT (to her credit), she followed it up with, "There may be something 'Physiological' going on, but I don't know",  That gave me the foundation for this definition; "Drive is the measure of physiological response to instinct.  This is usually described as low, medium, or high."  (I'm a working dog guy so I'm pretty simple.)  The reason why I'm bringing this up is I'm not sure we even know what causes "drive" to kick in.  AND, why it is different in different dogs.  That being said, do we even know what is reinforcing a behavior?  I think we know what key reinforcers are, but as it relates to drive, wouldn't differnt instincts make different things rewarding...or not?  It stands to reason that neuro chemicals can come and go for a multitude of reasons.

 SARDogDad wrote the following post at Thu, Oct 07 2010 5:46 PM: You know, for more than a decade, I have asked behaviorist and working dog trainers a simple question; "What is drive?"  the reason I wanted to get a rock soild definition was to explain it to pet dog trainers.  I thought I had known what drive was, what it looked like, and when a dog had it.  The answers I got from the working dog trainers ranged from "The Look:, to "Game", to "The Want To", to "Motivation", etc... 

Oh you have been asking the same question that i have been asking for a lot of years :) You know that their is a fair bit of hookm going on becuase you have to go to these seminars and shell out dollops of money to get fed even more hokum

 I think i know what drive is now, but if i write it down it will start a brawl. So i will in any case. :) I like Jake Pankseeps model a lot. He understands there are holes, and is a scientist. He would say that there are emotional modes.

I would say that the bite that we see and many talk of as "in prey drive"  is partt of seeking mode. We know that the end bite for at least cats and probably dogs is almost entirely reflex and may be stimulated by probing a certain area of the brain . it is very very different than the "in prey drive" that many think their dog is in when working.

Another beautiful working drive that gives great results is play mode. If we can get our dogs into this mode, they will do great animated work, they will be self reinforced, and my goodness are they fun to work with.

These emotional states are all based on brian circuits and chemistry.

I know that you will see that i have mini poodles. You might notice the letters Tch which in OZ stands for Tracking Champ. My oldest mini is a VST freak, and after some more obedience we will look at doing some more work.

I have a great interest in SAR. In my younger days i did quite a lot of bush SAR work (but not with dogs ). No i wouldn't work my oldest girl as a SAR dog , she has a couple of things that should preclude her. But she certainly can do all of the tasks expected of a DSD dog  and has greta endurance . I am out before she is :)  I hope in  a few years to get another more traditional SAR breed though.

Denis

I'm glad it is not just me.  I think in the complexity of drive, lies the complexity of science.  The neuro chemicals, and the pathways they travel, are important.  The other factor that causes animal response is the emotional response to stimuli that squahes drive.  In the working dog world, we say, "stress deminishes drive".  I know there is a scientifc equivelent.  This is what I want to understand, because, conversly I HAVE SEEN the use of science based training methods to reduce stress, thus allowing drive to increase.  This is done with pet dogs all the time...I.E. "Behavior Modification".  The harsh reality is we don't do this a lot with working dogs.  We get new dogs.  If the dog doesn't have the "drive" or the "nerve strength" (I know, another one of "Those Words"...That part of the psychological make up that allows the dog to deal with or rebound from stress.)  We don't use the dog or we wash it out.  Time is money and worse yet, somebody can get killed if the wrong dog is doing the job.  What I have learned from pet dogs, is you can use science to make a difference in drive, which opens up our ability to train and continue to modify behavior. (Come to think of it, I have learned a lot more from pets than I have from my working dogs...Please don't tell my working dogs that!.  ;) I think we could do this in working dogs to a large degree, if our undertanding of science was better.  That brings me full circle to my orignal point...We need to get better at the science.  That is the future of our success.  I think as science looks more to solving working dog problems and working dog trainers embrace the help, then we will really move forward.

SARDogDad

I'm glad it is not just me.  I think in the complexity of drive, lies the complexity of science.  The neuro chemicals, and the pathways they travel, are important.  The other factor that causes animal response is the emotional response to stimuli that squahes drive.  In the working dog world, we say, "stress deminishes drive".  I know there is a scientifc equivelent.  This is what I want to understand, because, conversly I HAVE SEEN the use of science based training methods to reduce stress, thus allowing drive to increase.  This is done with pet dogs all the time...I.E. "Behavior Modification".  The harsh reality is we don't do this a lot with working dogs.  We get new dogs.  If the dog doesn't have the "drive" or the "nerve strength" (I know, another one of "Those Words"...That part of the psychological make up that allows the dog to deal with or rebound from stress.)  We don't use the dog or we wash it out.  Time is money and worse yet, somebody can get killed if the wrong dog is doing the job.  What I have learned from pet dogs, is you can use science to make a difference in drive, which opens up our ability to train and continue to modify behavior. (Come to think of it, I have learned a lot more from pets than I have from my working dogs...Please don't tell my working dogs that!.  ;) I think we could do this in working dogs to a large degree, if our undertanding of science was better.  That brings me full circle to my orignal point...We need to get better at the science.  That is the future of our success.  I think as science looks more to solving working dog problems and working dog trainers embrace the help, then we will really move forward.

Very well said, and I hope that your ideas begin to "infect" more people in the working dog community.  That way, all us behavior freaks will not have to say "oh, that word" any more (I never do say that).  It really IS beneficial to understand, and to seek new understanding of, the science of behavior, both for dogs and for ourselves.  Many times, I have thought that the treatment of addiction disorders would be better if we understood more of the science and just applied it.  But, as with dogs, who either get punished or washed out, we either disregard or imprison the humans who don't make the societal grade.  Interesting parallels...  

SARDogDad

In the working dog world, we say, "stress deminishes drive".  I know there is a scientifc equivelent.  This is what I want to understand, because, conversly I HAVE SEEN the use of science based training methods to reduce stress, thus allowing drive to increase.  This is done with pet dogs all the time...I.E. "Behavior Modification".  The harsh reality is we don't do this a lot with working dogs.  We get new dogs.  If the dog doesn't have the "drive" or the "nerve strength" (I know, another one of "Those Words"...That part of the psychological make up that allows the dog to deal with or rebound from stress.)  We don't use the dog or we wash it out.

Hi SAR,

I enjoyed your thoughts on this. (And you have put a lot of thought into the subject.)

While I agree that too much stress diminishes drive, without a certain level of frustration (which also causes a certain amount of stress), you don't get enough of a dog's emotional juices flowing to get him to bite the toy, or chase the helper, etc.

Also, the problem you're discussing of working dogs who "wash out" because they don't have the necessary "nerves of steel" (or whatever the reason), is one of the starting points for Kevin Behan's ideas on how to use drive training to solve behavioral problems in pet dogs. In fact, Kevin spent most of his adult life training working dogs. He also grew up around this kind of training since his father, Jack Behan trained dogs for WWII, and later built a multi-million dollar business of training and providing working dogs for business, police departments, etc. all over the Northeast. Kevin split from his father over the alpha theory (which his father firmly believed in), and went out on his own. He gained a reputation for being able to get dogs who would've normally washed out of a training regimen to to onto become even better at their jobs than some of the dogs who seemed more suited for such work.

I go into what I think is the primary psychological component of drives (in terms of dog training) in my PsychologyToday.com article, "Why Dogs Pull on the Leash: Canine Cathexis + Chemistry + The Joy of Sex."

The problem with my article (for most people) is that it discusses the issue in terms of a Freudian dynamic. However, since Jaak Panksepp's name has come up here, and since Panksepp started out as an evolutionary psychiatrist, I think there are parallels to be found.

When Freud proposed the pleasure principle (which was the starting point for Thorndike's and later Skinner's views on positive reinforcement), he didn't define pleasure as only being about seeking experiences that are, in and of themselves, pleasurable. He said that pleasure could also be defined as the reduction of internal emotional tension or stress.

So when Panksepp talks about SEEKING behaviors, I don't see the topic in the same way others have interpreted it. I see it as first and foremost seeking a reduction of internal tension and stress.

Going back to the alpha theory, we now know that most (if not all) of the supposedly hierarchical behaviors seen in captive wolves don't actually exist in wild wolves. Why not? To me the answer is very clear. The hierarchical behaviors are not natural, they're the result of stress. If this is so, why don't wild wolves exhibit the same stress-related behaviors?

They do, but only when the pack has grown too big to sustain itself.

So what is the difference between the non-hierarchical behaviors we see (or Mech has seen) in the usual, small pack set-up, as opposed to stress-based behaviors seen in captive wolves, and the wolves whose pack has grown too big?

The answer is pretty clear. There must something that the animals in the smaller pack are doing, or are able to do more often, than the other wolves have the opportunity to do. And it has to be something that naturally reduces their stress.

So what is it? It seems to me that if you're a predator, particularly the kind who targets larger, dangerous prey, you have to have a lot of pent-up aggression ready at all times to do your job. The ultimate act of aggression is chasing, biting, and killing a large prey animal. Wolves in a smaller pack get more of an opportunity to release their aggression/tension by biting large prey animals than captive wolves (who never get the chance), or wolves in a pack that's too big (some of whom get the chance to release their tension while others don't).

So, like it or not, it all comes back to Freud's definition of pleasure as the release of pent-up emotion.

Anyway, that's how I see it,

LCK

I almost semi-agree with your point, LCK, about wolves in captivity. They normally have an outlet for energy in the wild. In a kennel, however, those normal activities are reduced or obliterated. What I think was missing, however, was the initial conditions of early wolf studies in captivity. They didn't capture intact "packs" and place them in a pen. They capture wolves that were strangers to each other and normally would avoid competition in the wild by having their own, divergent territories. Placed in a pen of less than a quarter acre, the stress is nearly unbearable, at times. However, I don't necessarily view the hunting as aggression, per se.

As for drive, one could say that the treat training I have done with my dog exercises his "gathering resources" drive. Or, we just so closely matched, each of us being capitalists.

An animal gathers resources for survival, whether that is grazing the fields for vegetation or hunting those that eat vegetation. Rule number one, you have to eat to survive. Rule number two, you need to procreate to continue the species. Anything that facilitates those two things is rewarded by survival. All else could possibly qualify as rhetoric, amphigory, or even a reflection of our gestalts. And most any life, aside from humans, is proficient in find the most efficient way to do those two things. A dog on his own could hunt and become very good at it. Or listen to his human, which nominally takes less physical energy (not counting Schutzhund or agility or whatever) than having to hunt. Most pet dogs get rewarded for sitting or downing. Other working dogs can be rewarding for working in a certain way or doing their "natural" job at the direction of a human.

But we have to remember that dog is a separate species from wolf and other wild canids, Robert K. Wayne aside. Dogs do something that wolves do not, chimps do not, for the most part cats do not. Dogs follow the cues of humans. I don't want that to be lost. If we are to look at what the most basic processes of a dog are in their actions, motivations, etc., it must include the fact that they are a species that is symbiotic with man more than they are with other species, including other canids. This, I think, was the valuable perspective of the work by the Coppingers. They studied dogs in their natural habitat, which is with man, not alone on the savannah or in the forest.

And I will mention again the tests that showed how wolves ignored human cues in problem solving but dogs would often wait for cues and clues. And before that gets readily dismissed, I would like to remember that we're being asked to discard or "de-construct" OC because of some dopamine levels. And it's possible that there are other chemicals involved that were not in the study. It reminds me of Wayne's study of wolves and dogs. He studied one singular locus of mtDNA and found a less than 2 percent difference between grey wolves and dogs and a whole slew of people then decided that dogs were really barely domesticated wolves. Too bad that actual structure, including skeletal structure and and social behavior actually makes dogs closer to coyotes than wolves. Talk about a big vest made out of one button.

I read the article. It was expressed earlier by such people as Spiritdogs and other trainers and some psychologists who specialize in animal behavior. You have to compete with the dog's environment. That is, it is given that the dog finds things in the environment interesting. Heck, I live by the Siberian Husky code. You never, ever walk a Sibe off leash. So, you become the link to what is rewarding. Even ole premack. I have used that. Shadow wanted to greet another dog. I commanded a sit and he sat and then we greeted the other dog. It was a way to get what he wants. Whatever is rewarding about meeting that other dog, even if it's the drive to procreate, which some might describe as tension-release by biological imperative. I'm not certain that dogs view sex from the pleasure principle state of mind as humans do. I think, for them, it is an urge similar to hunting. It's just something you do.

So, therein lies my quandry with trying to accept your freudian spin on dog desires in the environment. I fear you may have anthropromorphized a bit, even if it was to explain a principle in terms humans might understand. And though humans seem to enjoy sex, is that what really drives the urge to procreate? Or, as I like to state, Nature's last cruel joke on a man is female menopause, where many women no longer produce an array of hormones that often support sexual desire and urges. Most especially if they had other psychological problems with sexual activities.That is, aren't humans also following biological imperatives that our particular psychology and neurology has interepreted as pleasure in order to ensure continued activity until we procreate? Which might have been where you were leading, I'm not sure.

So, if it can be said that such things as jumping into new smells and encounters is part of a dog's raison d'etre, then, is it possible that the dog has evolved to find these things "rewarding" and we become associated by leading to that reward? I know my argument is weak because it is largely rhetorical, but, at least, I think, from a logical standpoint.

SARDogDad

"nerve strength" (I know, another one of "Those Words"...That part of the psychological make up that allows the dog to deal with or rebound from stress.)

This one really really gets me. I know what it is meant to be, my first dog on the list Cadbury a lab had the drive and the nerve strength of a Mac truck. Nothing got im his way. Nothing much bothered him in terms of physical pain. BUTwhen i turned to being an R+ trainer after a while  if i deared utter a word of dispproval he would crumble....

Now Luci (the second dog) is your standard princess poodle "out of drive". Everything bothers her. She doesn't like anything enroaching on her body space. She has had a history of noise phobias. But she is a gutsy reliable tracker that will go over any surface any time.In awful conditions. I have so counter conditioned her, that she thinks traffic means fun, that diesel trucks could be fun to run over, and that she should run pulling me into a dog trial. Today i was working her at quite high jump heights (900mm about 30 inches) to show that she could easily jump them. She did. She clipped on quite badly though, and stumbled, but carried on as if nothing had happened. It must have hurt.

If i showed her working her tug toys, and you could imagine that for one minute  she had a flat coat and she wasn't just less than 14 inches, you would say that is a good working dog .. but every inch of that drive has been fought for.

Sam my third dog, well he physically doesn't bother about much at all... except me. His bounce back is enormous, stand on his toes and he his heeling gain in 3-5 seconds. If you wanted to physically correct him, well good luck to you it aint going to work. His breeder hopes to continue lines like his. Form a showing point of view shows didn't bother him much at all. What did bother him ws doing nothing..Now if i showed him working a tuggy and you imagined he wasn't 14 inches, you would think he as a potenial wonder dog with a ton fo drive and you would be right. He is very athletic, and even has a good strong bite.

You are so right about needing to work with science .I can not reiterate this 

SARDogDad

I think as science looks more to solving working dog problems and working dog trainers embrace the help, then we will really move forward.

 I sometimes think in my more cynical moments, that drive and nerve are just statements that we use to justify giving up on a dog that we did a bad job of training. :(

ron2

I would like to remember that we're being asked to discard or "de-construct" OC because of some dopamine levels. And it's possible that there are other chemicals involved that were not in the study.

Here i agree with you totally. It is unwise to discard a belief or method of working in favour of the unknown. The science is very imcomplete and tends to reinforce much of what we know already. I know that Karen Pryor quotes Panksepp in support of OC...

Lee Charles Kelley

o when Panksepp talks about SEEKING behaviors, I don't see the topic in the same way others have interpreted it. I see it as first and foremost seeking a reduction of internal tension and stress.

Actually that is miles away from how  Panksepp talks about it. One thing that is often forgotten is that dogs Seek for many reasons such as getitng to know the environment, scavenging, and hunting for small creatures. I think sometimes we make up this Londonish delusion about dogs going out for the big hunt which with our dogs is so far from the truth. I think Panksepp buries Predatory Agression which is what many know as Prey Drive with in Seeking as Neuro Chemically it appears to be non remarkable. He also goes out of his way to suggest that SEEKING is rewarding in itself, and the final reward whatever it may be somewhat of an anti climax, even a little depressing.

Many of us that track can tell you of these kinds of anecdotes.

 I know our dogs will get bored with changeless routine.  Like us, they are curious and always seeking to experience something new - adventure,  Each walk is an opportunity for learning some new gossip on the pee-mail network.

poodleOwned

Lee Charles Kelley

so when Panksepp talks about SEEKING behaviors, I don't see the topic in the same way others have interpreted it. I see it as first and foremost seeking a reduction of internal tension and stress.

 

Actually that is miles away from how  Panksepp talks about it. One thing that is often forgotten is that dogs Seek for many reasons such as getitng to know the environment, scavenging, and hunting for small creatures. I think sometimes we make up this Londonish delusion about dogs going out for the big hunt which with our dogs is so far from the truth. I think Panksepp buries Predatory Agression which is what many know as Prey Drive with in Seeking as Neuro Chemically it appears to be non remarkable. He also goes out of his way to suggest that SEEKING is rewarding in itself, and the final reward whatever it may be somewhat of an anti climax, even a little depressing.

Many of us that track can tell you of these kinds of anecdotes.

Hi poodleOwned,

Thanks for your comment. It's very helpful. (Although, I'm not familiar with the term "Londonish...";)

I'm sure you're right that there's a distinct difference in how Panksepp and I define SEEKING. However, from my observations of canine behavior over the past 20 years or so, I think it starts out as a more generalized impulse to find something in the environment for the dog to "plug" its energy into; a deep-seated need to connect to something.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "Panksepp buries predatory aggression" or what, exactly, you're saying is non-remarkable. Are you saying that the prey drive seems to be non-remarkable "neurochemically?" That wasn't clear to me.

You mentioned anecdotes about how when your dogs track they seem to feel let down when they actually find what they're looking for. I'm sure you're right about that. However, if I had more information I would probably be able to give you an alternative explanation for why the dogs seem to feel let down other than that the act of seeking is, in and of itself, rewarding (though I'm not saying it's not).

For me the germ of my idea that dogs are always looking for something to connect to goes back to an anecdote of my own, something that happened in 1993, which relates to my own dog Freddie's scavenging behavior. (For those of you who've already heard this story, I apologize for the re-telling, but there's no getting around it!)

Freddie and I were in Central Park one sunny, spring day, and he found an uneaten half of a chicken breast lying on the grass near a park bench. It was a little before noon, and Fred had already eaten a full breakfast before we left on our walk. So he wasn't hungry. But he scooped up the tasty treat anyway, dug in, as if to run away from me (probably because I had been in the habit of correcting him for, or trying to prevent him from scavenging).

At the time I was testing all the "known truth" about dogs by occasionally doing the exact opposite of what I felt the common wisdom would say to do. So before Freddie could run away with his prize, I praised him in a very energetic way. "Good boy! Oh, I bet that's tasty! What a good boy you are! Good doggie, Fred!"

He dropped the chicken breast and came running over to me, wagging his tail and looking "submissive."

I picked up a stick, teased him with it, and ran away. He chase me and I threw the stick for him to chase and bite.

Over the next three days, whether on-lead or off, I paid very close attention to Freddie's behavior on all our walks, and praised him the moment he showed any interest in moving toward a bit of garbage on the street or in the park. (And in New York City, I had plenty of chances to do it.) By the end of that three days I had successfully extinguished Fred's scavenging behavior entirely, simply by praising him every time he showed any interest in "seeking" to make a connection to NYC's sidewalk buffet. I never offered him an alternative behavior (like chasing me or biting a stick). And yet he never showed any interest in scavenging after those first three days.

The next step, of course, was to test what had become a dual hypothesis: that a) dogs don't scavenge because they're hungry (but because they're looking to connect to something in the environment that will reduce their internal tension or stress), and b) that there are certain behaviors in dogs that can't be explained via learning theory. I did this by applying the same basic technique I'd used with Freddie to a number of other dogs. And I found that as long as the praise was strong enough to make the dog re-direct his desire to connect away from the chicken bones or pizza crusts and back to me, I was able to extinguish the dog's scavenging behavior within a few days.

Now, back to your comment about dogs seeking for many reasons, exploring the environment, etc. I would still say that behind whatever motivation or rationale we give to dogs for these seeking behaviors there is still an underlying relationship to the prey drive, inherited from the wolf, just in a more generalized, or rather, a more universal sense. For instance, we tend to think of ungulates as prey animals only. However, we could also see their behaviors -- seeking out rich pasture lands, etc. -- as a form of hunting. And we could say that the grass they eat is their prey. Even in human behavior -- which is much more complex than the behaviors of most other animals -- we get a satisfaction in seeking and hunting for things that are unrelated to our dietary needs. So there is a universal quality underlying all of these behaviors.

This (unfortunately) brings us back to Sigmund Freud. (Again I apologize, but there's no getting around it.)

Here's a section from the article I posted a link to (about why dogs pull):

I don't think dogs pull on the leash so much as they feel pulled on by things in the environment that stimulate and attract their instincts and emotions. That is, it feels more natural for a dog to move toward something that exerts a force of attraction than it does to walk next to you, unless walking next to you holds a stronger level of that force.

It might help if we examined what this force actually is, and where it comes from.

Personally, I think it's similar to the elementary force that binds atoms together into molecular structures. (It's interesting to note that when two people fall in love we often say it's a matter of "chemistry.";) Sigmund Freud saw this force as a pristine, undifferentiated form of Eros, a kind of pre-sexual, sexual energy, which, in simplest terms, could be called the drive to connect, and which Freud thought was also related to the forward thrust of evolution ...

I know that describing this force of nature in Freudian terms, as if it were a form of sexual energy, is going to create problems for some people, but I think it's important to consider Freud's idea, at least for the moment, and see where it takes us.

In "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1924), Freud writes, "Even though it is certain that sexuality and the distinction between the sexes did not exist when life [on earth] began, the possibility remains that the instincts which were later to be described as sexual may have been in operation from the very first." He then goes on to draw a comparison between human sexual energy and the energy in living cells. "We might suppose that the ... sexual instincts which are active in each cell take the other cells as their object ... and thus preserve their life; while the other cells do the same." (The Freud Reader, 615, 618)

I'm no expert in evolution, but it seems to me that, at heart, the process of evolution is driven by this need to make connections. Atoms need to connect to one another in order to form molecules. Molecules form connections so as to evolve into living organisms. Living organisms are vitally driven to connect to sources of energy: air, water, sunlight, food, etc. The human body and brain operate together through myriads of connections: we couldn't sustain life without them. It makes sense that the body's connectors and connectees would need to have some form of attraction to one another in order to "hook up."[4]

When we look at puppies we find that, even when sleeping[5], they seem to be driven to connect to nearly everything around them. In fact, puppies are in an almost constant state of cathexis, projecting their energy onto their toys, dinner bowls, the furniture, the rugs and carpets, their owners' hands, shoes, feet, socks, pajama bottoms, etc.

It seems to me that this need to connect is pervasive throughout nature as well as in all forms of human behavior. In sports, the quarterback tries to make a connection to his receiver via the football. The pitcher tries to connect the ball to the catcher's mitt, while the hitter tries to connect to the ball through his bat. Actors, writers, and directors, try to make a connection with their audiences. You can't be successful in business if you can't connect to your customers. And here we all are, at our computers, trying to make connections to one another's ideas about dogs via the internet and Dog.com. In fact, it's not just the internet or cell phones. All of human technology -- from the invention of the obsidian knife to the space shuttle -- is, on some level, about making connections. Going back to nature, Wolves seek a connection to elk through their teeth. Elk make connections to the leaves of aspen trees (also through their teeth). Aspen trees seek connections to the soil via their roots and to the sun's energy via their leaves. This need to connect goes on and on in multiplying fractals of behaviors from sub-atomic particles on up the ladder of creation.

So I think that when we start to see dogs as lovable, furry organic search engines with tails, looking to make connections of one kind or another -- with other dogs, with the urine marks of other dogs, with their toys and bones, with their owners, with squirrels, with pizza crusts -- it may give us a clearer window into all aspects of their behavior than when we bifurcate, separate, and isolate their behaviors into discrete scientific clumps.

Anyway, that's how I see it,

LCK

I must say, LCK, if humans thought of dogs as needing to connect with things in the environment, it might improve their relations to a dog, even though I think it's anthropromorphising, again. Dogs scavenge because that is how one gathers resources. And often they will scavenge something to bury and save for later. This is echoed in the behavior of coyotes that will scavenge a kill and bury it and come back to it later. And that's not something I made up but real evidence observed by a field researcher in the Adirondacks. That coyote didn't need to connect to the carcass. It need to gather and conserve that resource so that if further hunting in the next couple of days turned up dry, there was still his secret cache of now chewy bones and interesting meat.

Your dog turned to you, which shows just how different he is from the coyote or wolf. They might have looked at you as any creature turns to identify the source of a noise but they would have either sauntered off or growled in return (to protect the resource by getting you to disengage so that they don't have to engage.) That difference in the psychology of a dog to find interest in the hootings of a simian is something that needs investigation, as well. Now, of course, I must ask, if your dog was not just recently fed, would he have come to you as quickly or would he have been torn between the sure and easy meal of leftover chicken and whatever is behind "door #2" that you have? My dog would have looked at me with "yeah, I hear you..." (chomp, chomp.) He who gets the resources survives. And perhaps the dog thought you had a greater resource than the lucky treasure he found. Because it is rewarding to follow the resource that leads to survival. Survival of the fittest is not just who is the fastest or strongest. It is also who is smartest and the dog that finds the easiest, quickest way to resources lives. Modern evolutionary theory says as much as that about how dogs came to be domesticated. They were once wild canids that noticed that these ape-like creatures (humans) seemed to be astoundingly good at getting resources. So good, that these apes could afford to throw out uneaten food. Hanging around humans led to increased food supply for them. And then, through random mutation, dogs became more adept at working with humans, which often led to direct feeding of whatever was handy. Holy moly, the mother lode! And those dogs survived more often and longer than the other, more aloof ones.

So, I don't think dogs have an expressed need to connect, as one might describe in humans. But if we describe it that way and it gives humans a better way to relate to and treat their pet dogs, then I could overlook it. I just don't think it's accurate. To suggest that dogs have this human like emotion of needing to connect, and yet, in the next breath, do everything possible to deny they have ToM or that they can communicate and other "human"-like characteristics is also an interesting dichotomy. Or, it could be salad bar theory. Pick out some leaves and carrots and leave what you don't want. (I recommend any of the dressings by Paul Newman.)

Oh hell i guess i am a case in point, a human paralell. Pretty much regardless of the country there is a fair bit of consequence and not a lot of reward in addiction treatments. Often times the background of the people involved is awful. I am one of the "lucky ones" , got clean and sober early on in life (27)  and stayed that way (24 years)  which has become a modern paridigm.I am a double degree and work in a responsible professional job, and of course take an active part in community. I can tell you that the very succesful rehab that i went to got shut down because it took to long. The government didn't want to put 8 weeks in to the likes of me any more :(

I often joke with a friend of mine that good trainers often have backgrounds a bit like poets . You don't quite get entry unless something really cruel happened to you as a child.. Now what about the dogs?

The most humourous part of it all is that i present such a straight persona, and seem so steady to most that they have difficulty believing in it when i self disclose.