Should We Ignore or Celebrate the "Wolfiness" in Our Dogs?

I grew up with the phrase "playing possum." It means to act as if you are dead. And to that, opossums even put off the smell of rotting flesh to discourage most prey. I.E., they smell a little to ripe to eat.

As for hunting behavior in dogs, might it be a fixed action pattern? Not so much a stress that must be relieved but a "hard-wired" response to environment that, on average, gets them food to survive? Other responses might be learned over a time. Because of doing electrical work for so long, when I walk in a building, I often look up at the lighting, almost as a matter of "habit." Why? Working on lighting normally makes me money with which to buy food, feeding myself, to live another day.

As opposed to the initial feeling of hunger, which is a signal from the body that more food is needed. Is it stressful? Yes, but I think that is a side-effect, not the primary motivator.

I also agree with others that dogs are more often about avoiding fighting and they have several warning shots they can give off to avoid the confrontation. And like wolves, if left alone, would define their own territories and stay away from each other, for the most, except when environmental pressure cause them to compete for the same resource in a location. Even the behavior of wolves often leads to avoiding fighting.

As for wolves cruising a dump. With such a cornucopia, it is not even necessary that they all eat in the same ten foot radius from each other. Hence, no particular eating order to be established. And in a normal pack, often the "alpha" lets the others eat first, especially pregnant mothers and cubs, though they may leave the richest and choicest bits for him if he is the primary hunter. So, it's not that the wolves don't pack. A true wolf pack is still a pack but the "table manners" are more lax. And the dump won't stop wolves from hunting, per se.

Does an FAP cause stress? Only in the sense that the FAP must occur for survival. How long will the wolves stay around the dump? And is not the cruising of the dump a hunting (by means of scavenging) behavior? And what if they stayed around forever, never needing to hunt large prey? Might their hunting behavior and even some of their social behavior mutate or sublimate?

Liesje

I guess where I fundamentally disagree with the theory is that my dogs are bred selectively FOR strong active aggression and fighting drives.  But aggression is NOT the same thing as being reactive, especially reactivity based in fear.  There is no place for that among working dogs.  

Hi there!

This is an interesting discussion, I must say. It gives me a new perspective on how others look at aggression.

I both agree and disagree with Liesje.

Where I agree is this, a dog who's a candidate for bite work should have a strong temperament. 

Here's where I disagree, and it'll probably end the discussion because I don't see from what you and PoodleOwned have written that we're going to be able to find common ground on the nature of drives and the therapeutic benefits of playing tug-of-war. But let's try, and see what happens...

1) There are many different opinions on what drives are, what a specific drive is designed to do, etc. You'll hear some talk about the dog's "ball drive" or "pack drive." But these labels don't make sense to me. To me a drive is a suite of natural instincts and action patterns, developed over millions of years, that are capable of sustaining the energy they stimulate in an animal, over a period of time, until the purpose of the drive has been achieved. Two clear examples of this are the prey drive and the sex drive. In canines, both of these drives are designed to ensure the continuation of the species' DNA.

If a drive is a natural instinct, which developed over millions of years, than a dog's interest in chasing a ball could not rightly be called a "ball drive;" it would just be part of his prey drive. Since pack formation is a function of prey size, then the so-called pack drive would just be an ancillary function of the wolf's (or coyote's, etc.) prey drive

So the wolf's prey drive, in various forms, is still a part of the dog's emotional make-up, yet dogs don't technically need to hunt anything in order to survive. If a dog were to get lost, he would probably find it very useful. But since he gets his food in a bowl, he can get along fine (in terms of his own day-today survival) without it. But that doesn't mean it's disappeared, hence some dogs are nuts about tennis balls, and most dogs who get lost are driven to find their way home.

2) Hunting and mating have a clear biological purpose. Fighting does too, but its only purpose in nature is as a possible response to danger. And it isn't something that can naturally be sustained over time the way the prey drive and sex drive can. Wolves will spend long hours searching for prey. And a mating session, particularly in dogs, may also take up a lot of time and energy. A dog may spend the entire day following the scent of a female in hear. Other examples of sustaining the amount of energy necessary to keep the dog actively "in drive" would be search-and-rescue dogs, drug and bomb detection dogs, etc.

So while it's possible to train a dog to sustain what you call his "fighting drive" over time, that's not what the fight instinct was originally designed for. Since you're immersed in this field, and one of your tasks may be to teach dogs to sustain their fighting drive over time, I'm sure you'll vehemently disagree. That's fine. I have no interest in changing your mind about anything you're doing. I'm primarily objecting to what I see as the wrong use of terminology. (Wrong? Different? Whatever.)

3) I'm sure you'll disagree with me here too, but from the dog's pov, there's no difference between active and reactive aggression, just there's no way to tell the difference between  a behavior that's learned because something was added (a reward, or +R) or because something was subtracted (internal tension or stress, or -R). (See footnote.)

Aggression is, first and foremost, a response to fear. If you're training your dogs to have "active aggression" I would assume that you're seeing the result you're looking for, and, therefore, my definition of aggression makes no sense to you. And Kevin Behan has some amazing stories in his new book, about K-9 dogs he's trained who go far beyond what's expected of them, how they're always on alert, and how they can pick out shady characters when their police handler sees nothing wrong. That would certainly seem like "active" rather than "reactive" aggression.

Is that in the general ball park of what you're talking about? Is so, I think this brings up another interesting discussion about the dog/handler relationship:

4) In nature, aggression is primarily a solo activity. Sometimes a pack will act together to threaten and chase away intruders, but they generally use little energy as possible. Sometimes, as in the case of the Slough Creek Pack in Yellowstone, they go too far, and continue attacking their opponents after it's no longer necessary, or thermodynamically prudent. ("Siege at Druid Peak.";)

In the PBS documentary, In the Valley of the Wolves (shown 2 years ago), the Druid Peak Pack, of about 10 - 12 wolves, demonstrated great restraint and strict obedience to the laws of thermodynamics when dealing with interlopers, wolf or coyote. The Slough Creek Pack, which had grown much too large - about 30 wolves - didn't.

They "came into the valley, launching an all-out attack on everyone in it. In a period of just a few days they had killed the mama and papa wolf, scattered the rest of the pack, slaughtered more elk than they could eat, and instead of just chasing the coyote couple away from their latest kill, they systematically chased down the husband and ripped him to shreds while his helpless, now-pregnant wife watched, terrified, from a distance. Then, their thirst for blood still not satisfied, they came after her too. Luckily, she was able to scramble safely away." ("Siege at Druid Peak," LCK, PsychologyToday.com, 1/18/2010.)

This is another example of how pent-up aggression creates behavioral problems. (If the Slough Creek Pack had split up and found new territories, instead of growing far beyond a sustainable pack size, this disaster wouldn't have happened, and they wouldn't have suffered the subsequent repercussions.)

So, it seems to me that what you call "fighting drive" is at bottom, just one facet of the canine prey drive, since it involves acting in accordance with a group purpose (eg. you couldn't train a cougar to do protection work.)

Again, I'm sure you'll disagree.

poodleOwned

I flat out disagree in theory and in practice that playing tug does anything at all about aggression except in the observers mind. There is a pretty strong body of work that would back up my contention.

I strongly suggest that the 90% of dogs that are showing fear aggression are NOT put into play mode unless they are a whole lot more secure. In fact my experience would suggest that many of these dogs are stressed beyond belief with attempts to get them to play. That is why they don't.

Hi, PoodleOwned,

What body of work do mean that back up your contention? Because in my experience, the harder a dog bites a toy in play, the less aggressive he becomes. I've seen it happen too often, and to too much a degree of accuracy to back down on this.

As for your idea that 90% of dogs showing fear aggression are not able to feel relaxed enough to play until they feel a whole lot more secure, I agree. That's why I stated that most dogs with aggression problems won't play tug-of-war. 

Max Von Stephanitz, in laying out the principles of SchutzHund, said, "Before we teach a dog to obey, we must teach him how to play." And as someone who's been using a play-oriented (or I should say, "playful";) model of training for over 18 years, I see my first job, whenever dealing with behavioral problems, is to figure out how to get the dog to play with me and his owners. And the last thing I want to do is add more stress to the poor dog's life. So I have quite a bag of tricks to facilitate the dog's therapy, and bring the "wolfiness" out in him.

You know, it's a good thing we're having this conversation, because I had it set clearly in my mind that tug-of-war was the key to reducing aggression in dogs: no bones about it. But since, as we've just discussed, in order to get such a dog to play tug you have to first get him to feel secure, it's probably a combination of both. I still see the final straw that the dissipates aggression (as stated above, i.e., the harder a dog bites in play, etc.) is a good hard game of tug, but certainly all the work I do beforehand, to make the dog feel secure, has to be a part of the picture.

This would make an interesting topic for a study!

LCK

1) "Some stimulus changes associated with an increase in behavior are difficult to classify as [positive versus negative reinforcement], and the use of either description may be nothing more than an arbitrary and incomplete abbreviation for the ‘pre-change' and ‘post-change' stimulus conditions as well as for what transpires in between. For example, is a change in temperature more accurately characterized as the presentation of cold (heat) or the removal of heat (cold)?" ("Negative Reinforcement in Applied Behavior Analysis: an Emerging Technology," Brian A. Iwata, University of Florida, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Winter, 1987.)

JackieG

Lee Charles Kelley

Certainly,at least in the broadest terms, survival is obviously a factor. But unless wolves are aware of their own mortality, or understand what "survival" means, etc., then they can't really be said to act in the interest of their own survival.

Nope, I just don't agree with the above statement.  

And dogs are mating to reduce stress?  Not to reproduce as part of survival of the species?   Again, I disagree.

Hi Jackie,

I'm trying to look at the behavior specifically from the dog's perspective, and to illustrate how drives operate. 

So of course, from the wider perspective of evolution, etc., the purpose of the mating behavior is to reproduce. But I don't think anyone who's ever seen an intact male intent on connecting to a female in heat, could deny that he seems to under a great deal of stress. His breathing is rapid and shallow, his eyes have a glazed look. Some dogs actually tremble from it. But once he's finished the act, his stress levels slowly return to normal, where if he's prevented from mating it takes much longer for his body to reach that normal stae.

My point is that Nature designed the sex drive to motivate dogs (and all other animals) to reproduce. And the way She's done that is through mechanisms of hormones, pheromones, and how they increase or decrease an animal's stress. 

So from the dog's point of view, he's not thinking about passing on his DNA, he's not thinking about the survival of the canine species, he's just thinking, "I'm going nuts here! I need to get rid of this feeling!" And he's not satisfied -- he's not able to rid himself of the feeling -- until he's either completed the sex act, or has completely worn himself out trying.

LCK

ron2

As opposed to the initial feeling of hunger, which is a signal from the body that more food is needed. Is it stressful? Yes, but I think that is a side-effect, not the primary motivator. 

Hi Ron,

You raise some interesting questions, as usual.

Feeling hungry is the product of a hormonal mechanism that motivates us to eat. People whose bodies don't produce the hormone, or who've overriden its effects because of a psychological disorder, are at risk of dying. 

Now I could be wrong, but since the idea of tension and stress as a motivator for behavior comes directly from Sigmund Freud, and since Freud studied originally as a neurologist, and since he was ahead of his time in many ways (he was the first to suggest that the body must have its own form of opium, eg.), I don't think I'm out on too big of a limb here.

Sorry I don't have time to reply to some of your other points. They're good ones, though, so they don't need my "help"

LCK

JackieG

rwbeagles

You are overanalyzing something that is one of the very basic tenant of Nature.

 

Yep. 

Yep

In your previous example, LCK, of a sire trying to mate with a dam, I don't think it's from an emotional stress standpoint. I think it's hormonally driven. Specifically, at certain times, because the dam is  in heat, giving off pheromones in a prodigious amount. The dog smells these pheromones and it triggers hormonal responses in him. The overall effect might seem like stress. I also know of dogs that continue to try and mate again, even after they have just successfully completed a mating, which would lower the chances that it was all about stress reduction and more likely it would be that the pheromones and hormones are still driving this crazy dance.

 LCK's error is in conflating the various distinct emotions with what he assumes is the only response to canine experience, his 'prey drive'.  He should read Darwin's book on animal emotion.

Like our dogs, we have emotional responses to experiences, but I don't see anyone presuming otherwise, saying we are singly motivated by an inherited trait, like loving bananas.

Or, hey, maybe that's what Freud was getting at when he talked so much about his cigar! 

Burl

LCK's error is in conflating the various distinct emotions with what he assumes is the only response to canine experience, his 'prey drive'.  He should read Darwin's book on animal emotion.

 

Like our dogs, we have emotional responses to experiences, but I don't see anyone presuming otherwise, saying we are singly motivated by an inherited trait, like loving bananas.

I think problems come with the use of the word "emotion" which suggests some kind of lovey dove experience rather than a sub concious mode as explained by Panksepp. Now i use Panksepp a lot becuase he wrote a book that i can understand, that seems well organised and supported, and is scientificly based. I am not going to suggest that he is the be all and end all, but he is a good place to start. As a lay person it is baffling to work with so much rubbish without any kind of index of what is and isn't possible. i am hampered by my own lack of education in these areas.

Another misnomer is Prey Drive . It should be called Predatory Aggression which is not a nice cuddly phrase at all. True Predatory aggression is an end play a very final act which can be shown to be caused by electrical  stimulation only. There is no change of emotional state, it would be too slow.

Now form an outside point of view, i use many "drive" elements in my training. I use the phrase so others can talk and work with me, but i don't see it that way at all. Again, i am playing with my dogs, something that dogs do amongst themselves, and that we should do with them. It is an emotional thing for me and them. We both seem to love it and it works.

ron2

In your previous example, LCK, of a sire trying to mate with a dam, I don't think it's from an emotional stress standpoint. I think it's hormonally driven. Specifically, at certain times, because the dam is  in heat, giving off pheromones in a prodigious amount. The dog smells these pheromones and it triggers hormonal responses in him. The overall effect might seem like stress. I also know of dogs that continue to try and mate again, even after they have just successfully completed a mating, which would lower the chances that it was all about stress reduction and more likely it would be that the pheromones and hormones are still driving this crazy dance.

Hi Ron,

Thanks for your response.

I'm not denying that the process involves hormones and pheromones. In fact I've said (in respect to the wolf's social instincts) that oxytocin (which acts both as a hormone and pheromone) may be the key factor in the development of the pack instinct.

And even considering the idea that dogs will sometimes mate again, that doesn't negate the very visible evidence of stress in the dog's breathing, glazed eyes, etc. It can sometimes take a while for the hormones causing those behaviors to dissipate from the dog's body.

LCK

poodleOwned

I think problems come with the use of the word "emotion" which suggests some kind of lovey dove experience rather than a sub concious mode as explained by Panksepp. Now i use Panksepp a lot becuase he wrote a book that i can understand, that seems well organised and supported, and is scientificly based. I am not going to suggest that he is the be all and end all, but he is a good place to start. As a lay person it is baffling to work with so much rubbish without any kind of index of what is and isn't possible. i am hampered by my own lack of education in these areas.

Another misnomer is Prey Drive . It should be called Predatory Aggression which is not a nice cuddly phrase at all. True Predatory aggression is an end play a very final act which can be shown to be caused by electrical  stimulation only. There is no change of emotional state, it would be too slow.

Now form an outside point of view, i use many "drive" elements in my training. I use the phrase so others can talk and work with me, but i don't see it that way at all. Again, i am playing with my dogs, something that dogs do amongst themselves, and that we should do with them. It is an emotional thing for me and them. We both seem to love it and it works.

Hi PoodleOwned,

I agree about Panksepp. His stuff on play, and how it increases production of neurological growth factors, is especially important. At least that's how I feel about it. Play, and playfulness, is I think, the most important aspect of dog training.

However, I'm not sure what you're talking about in reference to predatory aggression and electrical stimulation, or how this shows that predatory aggression can't be an emotional state. It seems to me that Panksepp has done a great deal of work on showing that direct electrical stimulation creates all sorts of emotional responses (in rats). This is one of his primary ideas, that emotions are found in the brain. (I disagree; I would say that the brain is only where the emotions are processed.)

However, if we categorize fear as something other than an emotion (which it probably is; it's probably a much older form of cognition), then we're on the same page. I don't know if you remember my description of the final stage of the wolf pack's hunt (which I described in an earlier post), but to me, when I've seen footage of a hunt, the wolves seem to just be having fun during the chase, like dogs at a dog run. But that al changes once they get in close enough to be gored or maimed by the prey's hooves and horns. That moment is when the wolf's teeth finally "come out" and they go in for the kill. It sounds backwards, but wolves only kill large prey when they feel they're being attacked. (I think there's some interesting footage from "The Valley of the Wolves" nature film I referenced earlier that shows this quite clearly.)

When a wolf hunts a rabbit you don't really see the snarliness -- the lips curling back to show the teeth -- that you do when he's in combat with an elk or moose. That lip curl -- showing the teeth -- is a fear reflex, so yes, that final moment isn't controlled by emotion, it's an older form of cognition entirely.

I agree that the term "prey drive" isn't very clearly defined. It's used in various ways by various people. However, since you say you use a playful approach to training, what sorts of games do you play? And do any of them mimic any aspect of the wolf's prey drive?

LCK

Hi

Harking back to Panksepp, he suggests on pge 198 of his bok "Affective Neuroscience" that the quiet bite (end bite) is simply one Behavourial product  of the seeking system. Predatory Aggression is just one facet of an overall mode. It in my opinion tends to either get hyped up or played down depending on the points that people wish to raise.

Play for dogs is very indidvidualistic but has some themes. My older dog likes to run and shake a toy (like a kill) a lot. She also is a real demon at playing tug. These are somewhat taught responses. She is also handy at the two toy game.

My younger dog likes to be very close to me. He likes to play tug very close to me prefably with a soft toy in my hand. He finds it hard to get comfortable with most tug toys out there.  I think that many manufacturers of toys forget about smaller dogs like mine. He likes shoving and pushing games. He is not interested in going away from me much at all. If i throw i toy his response is to go and get it, and try to get me to play with it.

poodleOwned

Harking back to Panksepp, he suggests on pge 198 of his bok "Affective Neuroscience" that the quiet bite (end bite) is simply one Behavourial product  of the seeking system.

Right, and I would say that the SEEKING mode is about seeking to reduce internal tension or stress.

LCK

I see it, (and have been too lazy to re check with the original) that the Blue ribbon emotions are straight out survivial stratergies, if you like evoutionary. In humans we don't get to work without it, in dogs they don't go looking for things (we need to remember that Wolves, Village Dogs are Omnivores). I will often try and get people to understand that the SEEKING state is experienced as a positive affective state, quite the opposite of what you are saying. We have dogs that will continue to track rather than take a reward for example, my dogs heel out of the rig, and it is definitely done under this state. There is no reason to do so other than it is pleasuable for them.

For humans and some dogs the end of the SEEKING state is sometimes viewed as a let down , an aversive.  We need to watch this in our training.

One of th few ways that i part company with traditional R+ trainers is in this aspect. I have found that using this philosophy results is better endurance training for stuff like heeling.

(********It seems weird writing "traditional R+ trainers. We struggled for so long to get acceptance. I picked up this phrase

"Training dogs has changed a lot in recent years, with a huge emphasis on positive methods through which the dog learns by being placed in a situation where it will succeed and receives a reward of some sort – play, toys, food, pats - for its efforts. More traditional methods of training by unpleasant correction have been replaced because we have realised that the end product of positive teaching is a much happier, more willing dog who keeps asking for more, more, more."

on the web site of our state wide canine control body and dam neat wept. If only you knew the crap that we got and our dogs got even a decade ago ******)

I tend to believe that rather being a system of stress and release that it is a system that is bounded for survival. We can't seek all the time because we would run out of energy or we would not take notice of danger, or we would not spend enough time making socal bonds. My poor poodles would never get to the local grooming parlour for their nail polish and gossip for exampe :) These bounds in crude terms act as inhibotors of the seeking state, or of other states.

We can't seek all the time because we would run out of energy ... or we would not spend enough time making social bonds. My poor poodles would never get to the local grooming parlour for their nail polish and gossip :)

 Uh-uhh, child!  Don't you even think about goin' there.  Uh-uhhhh.  No no no no no!

JackieG

Lee Charles Kelley

Certainly,at least in the broadest terms, survival is obviously a factor. But unless wolves are aware of their own mortality, or understand what "survival" means, etc., then they can't really be said to act in the interest of their own survival.

 

Nope, I just don't agree with the above statement.  

And dogs are mating to reduce stress?  Not to reproduce as part of survival of the species?   Again, I disagree.

 

 

Wolves have been known to bring food to older wolves which can no longer hunt.  What does that say about their lack of understanding about survival or mortality?  One would think that to perform that simple act means that they not only understand it, they understand the ramifications of starvation on others.