The role of empathy and humanising in understanding dogs.

ORIGINAL: sillysally

ORIGINAL: Angelique

ORIGINAL: espencer

I know is hard for some people to control their emotions, even harder if you are a girl

I completely agree with you...and I am a girl. []

"Nurturing" is part of female "psychology". Study any social mammal group, and you will see this. Nurturing is very self rewarding to the female nature. This includes the feeding (nursing) of the very young. Yet, the mothers in the wild also teach the young ones social boundaries at the same time.

I've seen plenty of spoiled little "mommy's darlings" dogs, to know when displaced female nurturing has gone very wrong and created a spoiled brat.

Men are not exempt from spoiling dogs, but it seems to come from a different place. I man will indulge his emotions and feel comfortable with a dog, while ignoring his wife, because a dog is not as emotionally draining as a human relationship. Not neccessarily "heathy" either, but just as understandable as where females tend to mess up based on their own "gender" programming.

Human empathy can sometimes crossover into an "over-nurturing" relm with women when their dogs become their little psuedo-children (fur babies) and they begin self-fullfilling their nurturing needs.

Empathy in the relm of self-fulfillment and the projections of human emotions upon dogs may be self-rewarding for the humans, but honoring another species, is to treat them and respect them as the species they were designed by nature to be, understanding them, and fulfilling their needs, first.

In a dog's mind, the lending of comfort may simply be seen as a behavior by a nervous, unstable packmember (who is reinforcing by there own behavior) that there is something in the current situation to fear, and by their actions convey to the dog they they are looking for comfort, rather than lending it.

Our comforting  and epathetic behaviors are sometimes lost on a dog and do the opposite of lend comfort.

IMO

I have to whole-heartedly agree with this.  Coddling a frightened dog is NOT doing the dog any favors, it really, really isn't.  I ahve read just about every piece of literature on fearful dogs that I can get my hands on and EVERY single one has underscored the improtance of not comforting a fearful dog.  A frightened dog is not a crying baby.

 
I'm not disagreeing with this, it's how I treat my own animals.  But I'm tentatively suggesting that perhaps we could open our minds to the possibility that what we see presented as fact in literature is in fact guesswork because we can't see into a dogs mind.  I'm also tentatively suggesting that flexibility is called for.... sometimes you have to act calm and supremely unbothered and let the dog see you are unafraid so that he is reassured that, well if you aren't scared then it must be OK.  But maybe at other times he genuinely does need comfort and we have a duty of care to meet his needs.....  ??

ORIGINAL: sillysally

.....  Coddling a frightened dog is NOT doing the dog any favors, it really, really isn't.  I ahve read just about every piece of literature on fearful dogs that I can get my hands on and EVERY single one has underscored the improtance of not comforting a fearful dog.  A frightened dog is not a crying baby.

In my recent experience, my dog Petro is afraid of going down the stairs.  I correctly identified the fear to be a memory of taking a tumble down the stairs.  My approach to fix this is make the memory of going down the stair to be a pleasant memory.  So I share Petro's experience by being at his side going down the stairs.  With the pleasant memory being most recent and strongest and the ghost memory fading but still present causing the dog to be more cautious going down the stair, Petro is fully recovering.  I do have the responsibility to keep the ghost memory present but diminished, for the dog's safety.  Being calm, being assertive, coddling, sweet talking, feeling sorry, touching, petting, massaging…all of these help make the experience leasant. 

I don't see how you can determine your approach to the dog without know the true source of the behavior.

BTW, for those that read the CM and Fear thread and are curious about Petro...
Petro comes downs the stairs on his own.  Sometimes he hesitates and his behavior is to bark at the top of the stairs.  My approach is being calm and assertive attitude and from the bottom of the stairs I say come, wave and then Petro starts his descent.  This opportunity allows me to remind Petro to exercise caution in coming down the stair.

ORIGINAL: Chuffy

ORIGINAL: sillysally

ORIGINAL: Angelique

ORIGINAL: espencer

I know is hard for some people to control their emotions, even harder if you are a girl

I completely agree with you...and I am a girl. []

"Nurturing" is part of female "psychology". Study any social mammal group, and you will see this. Nurturing is very self rewarding to the female nature. This includes the feeding (nursing) of the very young. Yet, the mothers in the wild also teach the young ones social boundaries at the same time.

I've seen plenty of spoiled little "mommy's darlings" dogs, to know when displaced female nurturing has gone very wrong and created a spoiled brat.

Men are not exempt from spoiling dogs, but it seems to come from a different place. I man will indulge his emotions and feel comfortable with a dog, while ignoring his wife, because a dog is not as emotionally draining as a human relationship. Not neccessarily "heathy" either, but just as understandable as where females tend to mess up based on their own "gender" programming.

Human empathy can sometimes crossover into an "over-nurturing" relm with women when their dogs become their little psuedo-children (fur babies) and they begin self-fullfilling their nurturing needs.

Empathy in the relm of self-fulfillment and the projections of human emotions upon dogs may be self-rewarding for the humans, but honoring another species, is to treat them and respect them as the species they were designed by nature to be, understanding them, and fulfilling their needs, first.

In a dog's mind, the lending of comfort may simply be seen as a behavior by a nervous, unstable packmember (who is reinforcing by there own behavior) that there is something in the current situation to fear, and by their actions convey to the dog they they are looking for comfort, rather than lending it.

Our comforting  and epathetic behaviors are sometimes lost on a dog and do the opposite of lend comfort.

IMO

I have to whole-heartedly agree with this.  Coddling a frightened dog is NOT doing the dog any favors, it really, really isn't.  I ahve read just about every piece of literature on fearful dogs that I can get my hands on and EVERY single one has underscored the improtance of not comforting a fearful dog.  A frightened dog is not a crying baby.

I'm not disagreeing with this, it's how I treat my own animals.  But I'm tentatively suggesting that perhaps we could open our minds to the possibility that what we see presented as fact in literature is in fact guesswork because we can't see into a dogs mind.  I'm also tentatively suggesting that flexibility is called for.... sometimes you have to act calm and supremely unbothered and let the dog see you are unafraid so that he is reassured that, well if you aren't scared then it must be OK.  But maybe at other times he genuinely does need comfort and we have a duty of care to meet his needs.....  ??

In my dog's case we are not talking about a fear of stairs or thunder.  We are talking about a fear of strangers.  I would GLADLY trade stranger fear for stair fear any day.  I walk by otherwise suspicious looking people without batting an eye.  I ignore fearful behavior to a point, and if I feel that she has approaching  her "line" we take it down a notch.  I reward social behaviors, and ignore fearful ones (just so we are clear, she's not fear aggressive at all, just timid).  We do NILIF at home, I put myself in between her and something VERY scarey (tall loud man on porch shaking out a garbage bag, for example) as we pass by to give her added confidence and if she gets through a scarey situation with confidence intact she gets a reward. 

This IS meeting my dog's needs.  She NEEDS me to be her pilot, not her nanny.

There's nothing wrong with that approach, I'm just saying that with dogs, the more flexible and open minded you can be the better.  My view is that putting yourself between the dog and the "scary" thing is a form of comfort and is more comforting to the dog than petting, it also sends a clear signal which its hard to see how the dog could misinterpret, so it looks like we are very much on the same page.  But - since reading this thread I will be more open to the idea in future that a soft voice or a light touch, might in some situations also be a "legitimate" form of comfort without necessarily nurturing an unwanted fear. 

Right but I think we'll have to agree that different dogs have different needs. A naturally fearful dog is different than a very self-confident dog. A self-confident dog who is afraid generally has a very good reason to be and if they seek comfort I see no reason to not give it. I said before that I have a naturally anxious dog and his anxiety has improved 100% over the years but I am very careful to not encourage his anxieties by coddling him. However, I also have an extremely self-confident, bold, courageous dog and when he comes to me for comfort, I give it because he only asks when the situation is serious. I don't think you can make a blanket statement on this issue for all dogs. I treat mine quite differently in this regard.

I am not being insensitive and I love you said it, but I would gladly trade stranger, stairs, thunder fear in exchange for the current thinking of SA.  I don't know if SA is fear based or the ultimate want of dog to maintain its happiest feeling (another thread).   I would definitely have a different approach if I knew for sure.

I don't see that much difference in your approach to my approach.  You are in the dog's space and you are sharing the dog's experience as the dog gets through the situation. You are providing a measure of comfort just by doing that.  I start off by being very sensitive to the dog's situation and gradually with each occurrence become nonchalant about it.  I think its best to think that dog needs to work through this fear internally and need time to do so.  I see nothing wrong with providing this support as long as the behavior associate with the human support is not consistent and applied over multiple occurrences of the same situation.

I do see from your post that you have applied your human experiences (empathy) to measure the dog's level of distress.  I saw this when you distinguished trade fear from stair and thunder.  What say you to that and how would your approach differ to the lesser forms of fear as defined by your empathy? 

I think that stranger fear is such a bad fear to have becuase of how often it leads to fear aggression.  I have seen dogs afraid of stairs (Jack was at first) and thunder and I have never seen fear aggression spring from it, although I don't know for sure that it wouldn't.  Also, you can predict what stairs are going to do, you cannot predict what strangers are going to do.  You can take a dog with a fear of stairs to a crowded event, while I really don't think I'll ever be able to take Sally to something like that.  Dealing with stairs just seems to me to be so much easier than dealing with a dog that is afraid of strangers.

I don't want to make it sound like I have no feelings for my dog.  It breaks my heart to see a dog that is happy and confident with her own family curl into that "OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG" stance and there is nothing I want to do more in the world than pull her into my lap and talk to her and rock her but I know that will only help me, not her. 

She has gotten much more confident since we've owned her and I haven't seen her in that stance for a long time, but I firmly believe that the progress we have made is due largely to the fact that I have learned to check coddling at the door and try my best to read her body language and communicate to her that I am her leader, there is nothing to worry about.

Now I feel like we're getting somewhere.

Now, to bring this thread back on topic a little bit, I believe that flexibility in our approaches to our dogs is best developed through empathy, and, sometimes a little humanising. For example, whether I decide if Penny is afraid or just sooking and wants attention is based on my reading of her. My reading of her is based on both empathy and previous experience. I know how she behaves and looks when she's afraid because her state of mind matters a lot to me. It matters to me because I can imagine what it would be like if I were a dog and my people failed to understand me. My response to my reading of her, though, is pretty much exactly how I would treat a small child. When I was very small, I was also afraid of thunderstorms (which I believe, incidentally, is largely responsible for Penny's current chronic fear; I was only 13 when I got her, and still anxious when loud noises were about). When I heard thunder, I was allowed to sleep in my parent's bed, but if it was very, very far away and quiet and I tried to get in bed with them, they'd tell me to go back to my own bed. They'd relent if I seemed truly afraid, but otherwise, back to bed I went, just like Penny if she's not really afraid.

I learnt from my hare how desperately animals want us to hear them. My hare has developed some totally unnatural behaviours specifically for telling me important things, like his water bottle being empty. It blew me away when I learnt this, but also made me feel a little ashamed for how I'd been treating my dog. I decided when to listen to her, and she accepted, but at what cost to our relationship? I didn't know, but I knew that my hare and I were communicating back and forth in subtleties well beyond what I had with my dog, and she's a particularly cluey dog. It saddened me to discover that I had a better relationship with an animal I'd only lived with for 18 months than my best buddy of 9 years. My conclusion: I've not done right by my dog. I've chosen when to listen to her and often ignored or poorly misunderstood what she was trying to tell me because I thought I knew how dogs think. And now I realise my wild hare has a more healthy trust in me than my dog does. I would never have known if it had just been me and her forever. Now I'm trying to improve on what we have - which is a good relationship, but not an amazing relationship - by listening and being more empathetic and open-minded.

I want to comment on empathy versus sympathy.  Sympathy has the added element of reliving emotional memories of the situation while empathy is the understanding but keeping emotions in check.  Sympathy is self serving and when put in the dog situations, serves no good.  Where empathy allows control over happenings within the situation. 

I think Sillysally has awareness of the impact on the dog in applying sympathy and empathy.  Sillysally clearly defined sympathy and the actions that would indulge that sympathy when the post stated

"It breaks my heart to see a dog that is happy and confident with her own family curl into that "OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG" stance and there is nothing I want to do more in the world than pull her into my lap and talk to her and rock her but I know that will only help me, not her."

I think this is self serving and does no good for the dog because it takes the dog out of the situation and does not directly deal with the situation.  It may reinforce the behavior for this situation and the dog may also figure out to use this behavior in other situations to solicit the human response.  Sillysally understood the strength of the dog's distress and her action of being in between the dog and the stranger to give the dog confidence added a splash of pleasure to the experience.  If Sillysally misunderstood the strength of dog's feeling then the dog would struggle to go in the opposite direction and then Sillysally would have been in a force situation to get the dog through the situation, which I think causes trauma to dogs.

My Petro took a tumble going down the stairs while I coaxed him to move beyond the 3rd step.  I made a mistake by not understanding the strength of the dog's distress and because panic was still high, the dog took a tumble.  The dog trusted me and moved forward.  I approached the dog with the attitude of calm, assertiveness, and the attitude of 'its no big deal'. 

From Corvus's posts I do not see a sharp distinction between empathy and sympathy.  I see a gray area created with a mixture of the empathy, sympathy, and value judgments.  I make that comment because of the use of the word "imagining” or "have a mental image of a like situation” which can conjure up human emotions.  In the statement "If I wouldn't like it, then I shouldn't do it to my dog.  Of course, I can't tell if the things I don't like are equally unpleasant for my dog, but what I don't see is why I would risk that they weren't?”, that's a human value judgment forced on the dog. 

"I'm justified in treating my dog in a manner that I would want to be treated, at least as a small child. In that way, I'm guilty of the apparent sin of treating my dog as a little human.”  This is where we part.  I use my human understanding of the situation to determine the strength of the dog's emotional response and develop my approach from that.  If I treat the dog as I would want to be treated I would be asking for sympathy and not empathy. 

I agree with most that a dog is a dog.  I am human and I possess greater awareness ability.  I want to use that ability to understand the thinking of the dog, control the happenings around the dog, and support the dog through its memory ghosts.  I am an accountant so I have an excuse for goobledygooking.  For those that make animals their career, I think understanding the human relationship to dogs has huge implications to a dog's life value and that being a direct correlation to its concern and care.

I want to comment on empathy versus sympathy. Sympathy has the added element of reliving emotional memories of the situation while empathy is the understanding but keeping emotions in check. Sympathy is self serving and when put in the dog situations, serves no good. Where empathy allows control over happenings within the situation.

 
Interesting, I'm glad you brought up this distinction David. Being a bit of a word geek, and rigorously trained for writing clarity in college (you wouldn't know it now though huh []), I think it's important to clarify our terminology in order to have a productive discussion... we can't very well have a conversation if we're using the same words to mean different things.
 
As psychology terms, (my understanding is) empathy is the ability to identify with another's feelings - to understand and feel what another is feeling. Sympathy is more akin to pity or compassion - feeling affected by another's feelings and/or wishing to help relieve another's suffering or pain. You can be empathetic w/out being sympathetic (I understand how you're feeling but I don't feel pity toward you), sympathetic w/out being empathetic (I feel bad for you and want to help even though I can't relate to what you're experiencing). And of course you can be both at the same time. If I've understood you correctly David, I think I have basically just restated your descriptions in a slightly different way.
 
I also think it's worthwhile to parse out humanizing and anthropomorphizing. Humanizing may be being used incorrectly here... it means to make something human or humane. So you can "humanize" a hospital health care system for example. Anthropomorphism is assigning human characteristics to non-human things or beings. I think that's what we're really talking about. But I'm not just being pedantic... I may be missing something if the word humanize is being used for a reason I don't understand.
 
And PS, I wasn't going to come back to the thread bc I can't stand gender stereotypes, I think they're so unhelpful, could we not equate feminity with emotion anymore, please, thanks.

ORIGINAL: jones

I want to comment on empathy versus sympathy. Sympathy has the added element of reliving emotional memories of the situation while empathy is the understanding but keeping emotions in check. Sympathy is self serving and when put in the dog situations, serves no good. Where empathy allows control over happenings within the situation.

Interesting, I'm glad you brought up this distinction David. Being a bit of a word geek, and rigorously trained for writing clarity in college (you wouldn't know it now though huh []), I think it's important to clarify our terminology in order to have a productive discussion... we can't very well have a conversation if we're using the same words to mean different things.

As psychology terms, (my understanding is) empathy is the ability to identify with another's feelings - to understand and feel what another is feeling. Sympathy is more akin to pity or compassion - feeling affected by another's feelings and/or wishing to help relieve another's suffering or pain. You can be empathetic w/out being sympathetic (I understand how you're feeling but I don't feel pity toward you), sympathetic w/out being empathetic (I feel bad for you and want to help even though I can't relate to what you're experiencing). And of course you can be both at the same time. If I've understood you correctly David, I think I have basically just restated your descriptions in a slightly different way.

I also think it's worthwhile to parse out humanizing and anthropomorphizing. Humanizing may be being used incorrectly here... it means to make something human or humane. So you can "humanize" a hospital health care system for example. Anthropomorphism is assigning human characteristics to non-human things or beings. I think that's what we're really talking about. But I'm not just being pedantic... I may be missing something if the word humanize is being used for a reason I don't understand.

And PS, I wasn't going to come back to the thread bc I can't stand gender stereotypes, I think they're so unhelpful, could we not equate feminity with emotion anymore, please, thanks.

I'm glad you did come back, jones. I'm pleased that we seem mostly over the stupid clashing of blanket ideals that we were experiencing earlier. And gender stereotypes get my hackles up, too. I grew up with 3 brothers and no sisters and have always struggled against 'girly' images.

Now, to the topic at hand. You and David are both quite right. I haven't been using words the way they really should be used. I wouldn't have chosen humanising myself; it just seemed like the most efficient way to combine all the thoughts I was having in one word. In retrospect, I should have been a little clearer about how I was using these words to begin with.

At this stage, sympathy and empathy still get muddled for me. I can't say that I court empathy while leaving sympathy behind. I certainly do when dealing with everyday problems, such as my dog being afraid of loud noises, but in those cases where my dog is in pain, I find it pretty hard to empathise without feeling a little sympathy. What comes to mind is last week when my dog was bitten by a bullant. I've suffered the same thing and therefore know how much it hurts. I was calm and matter-of-fact in how I dealt with the bite, but I still felt sympathetic, having been there myself. It didn't even occur to me that my dog might feel the pain more accutely, or not as strongly as I did, even though I walked home when I was bitten on the toe, but my dog apparently could not and got carried. If she'd been any bigger, though, she would have walked home. [] I carried her so we'd get home quicker. Did my sympathy affect how I dealt with my dog? I don't really think so. It was bundled in with the empathy. I had a good idea of how much she was hurting through personal experience, but I was still open to reading her signals. For all I knew, she could have an allergic reaction or something. If anything, it might have made her feel more dependent on me, which was fine at the time because she generally doesn't like to be carried and she was making it difficult for me to begin with. When I got her home, I put some ice on her bitten foot and spoilt her a little. That was being self-indulgent, but she coped well. She soaked up the sympathy until her foot felt better, then she got up and the sympathy dried up and she was sent outside. If she was a dog prone to sooking and wringing sympathy out of people, then I would not have spoiled her, but she's not and I knew she'd get tired of sticking her foot in the air and looking sorry for herself as soon as she felt better. I figured there's no harm in it. When it comes to pain, I know she's pretty tough and impatient with it. She wants to feel better so she can go have fun. Sympathy in my family is only given out if you can't walk, so you only get it as long as you're too sore to go find other fun things to do. In that way, it's regulated more by the receiver of the sympathy than the giver. Is that fair? I'd not give out any sympathy at all if I had a dog that found lying on the ground with her foot in the air preferable to doing normal doggy things.

So again, this comes back to flexibility and knowing one's dog. Penny gets sympathy only when I know it's not going to encourage her. That means no sympathy for fear or minor hurts, only for things so bad the sympathy can't outweigh the unpleasantness of it, only sweeten the experience a little. Does that make sense?

As for humanising.... I think you're right and what I mean is anthropomorphising. My apologies for using words incorrectly. I'm usually a lot better than that, but this is a difficult topic for me to express in words because I don't completely understand my own thought processes. A lot of the decisions I make regarding my animals are instinct, and it's hard to nail down exactly what I'm doing and explain why I think it's okay.

Jones, rigorously trained for writing clarity in college?  As an accountant I can clearly write the financial status of a company.  When it comes to psychology and the dog world, words that I use have different meanings.  I have to use common everyday language.  Hence I refer to myself as common Joe.  Please know you can freely translate and correct.  That can only help matters.

I would also add entering the situation w/out empathic and w/out sympathetic.  My point is to be in the state of mind that most effectively deals with the feeling.

For empathy, I would substitute feel with the word know because feel implies a sensation takes place and sensations are in the moment, forgotten, but recognized.  I think you can move from empathetic to sympathetic if the experience triggers vivid memory and an emotional response.  I don't think you can move from sympathetic to empathetic within the same scene.  What do you call it when you are confronted with a feeling that you have no frame of reference so you can't extend support by either empathy or sympathy.  This is my SA dog and I can only term it frustration.  Try masking that in the dog's presence.

If I say a river is angry.  I am anthropomorphism the object.  Damming (not condemn) a river is humanizing?

Jones, you never stated your thoughts and if you have in experience in handling a situation.

ORIGINAL: mudpuppy

...Ok, on to topic of thread:  I feel no need to "humanize" dogs. Their emotions and feelings and thought processes are fine as they are. Treating adult dogs like children is rather demeaning, I think.

 
Since we are talking about clarifying our terminology in order to have a productive discussion, can someone clarify anthropomorphizing.  Anthropomorphizing is easy to understand in terms of inanimate object but when it comes to living organizim with higher brain capacities, I need clarity when discussing.  In terms of the dog, what are the emotions and feelings that both human and dogs have in common? Are there feelings that are unique to the dog and not human and vice versa.  Are any of those feelings instinctual and have no cognitive purpose other than to satify a need?  Can a line be drawn that clearly tell us we are anthropomorphizing?

Jones, you never stated your thoughts and if you have in experience in handling a situation.

 
I stated my thoughts about anthropomorphizing (by agreeing w McConnell mainly) but not about the empathy/sympathy issue. I guess, to be honest, that's because I find the latter a little less intellectually engaging. But I'll go for it now....
 
I've heard all this business about "coddling" and comfort being a reinforcer for fear... this was not an idea invented by a TV star and I think it's pretty widely embraced in the dog world. But I have had my doubts about it for some time. Comforting a dog that's in pain, with all due respect to corvus, I think should be viewed as a "one off" and not really in the weird gray area where so-called coddling is questionable. Almost anyone would comfort an injured dog, and I think getting into the particulars of "how comforting" one is does not really have a lot of bearing on the overall issue of whether empathy or sympathy helps or hurts dogs... after all, most dogs don't get hurt every day or several times a week even. But dogs can have SA every day, or be insecure around other dogs at the dog park several times a week.
 
Now, I'm going to incriminate myself as a stupid puppy owner but bear in mind I was a newbie when I got Russell. We used to bring him to the dog park when he was a young lad and there were plenty of rowdy dogs there. Everything I had read *to that point* had drilled it into my brain that I was never to comfort and coddle my puppy/dog, never to protect him physically from things I knew weren't really dangerous, and never to soothe him when he was afraid. So I very strictly adhered to that code and stood there letting rowdy dogs roughhouse with my little cocker spaniel puppy, and as long as I was sure they were only playing, I never did anything. I didn't pet him when he hid between my legs, in fact I stepped to the side so I wouldn't be "coddling" him. Am I an uncaring robot? Not at all, I felt like a jerk sometimes but believed I was doing the right thing - I empathized but refused to sympathize. I didn't want to reinforce his fear. I was very determined to make him comfortable with other dogs since I knew he would be an 'only' for a good couple of years at least. However, this method did not work. He was easily overwhelmed by these rowdy dogs, and he continued to be so. I never reinforced his fear, and yet he continued to be nervous and afraid around groups of strange dogs. In fact I think it became worse since I was just leaving him hanging. By the time some common sense overrode my 'reading' and I decided to step in and be a comfort to him in such times, the behavior pattern was already set. He will come to me and let me protect him now, but the emotions of nervousness and fear are still there.
 
So, that's my personal anecdote. Speaking more generally, anytime there is a hard and fast "rule" in dog training or so-called dog psychology, I try to ask "why?" - why do we have that rule.? Where does it come from? I think sometimes it comes from superimposing some general principle on a specific situation and doesn't always work. In the case of the 'law of coddling,' I suspect the origin is... when humans speak in a sweet, positive tone of voice, this is viewed by the dog as praise. When praise comes after a behavior, it is a reinforcer. Therefore, when praise comes during an emotion, it is also a reinforcer. Seems to follow a nice straight logical line, but is it true? I am not at all sure. How we would go about finding out for sure, I don't know. But I have a great deal of doubt.
 

Anthropomorphizing is easy to understand in terms of inanimate object but when it comes to living organizim with higher brain capacities, I need clarity when discussing.  In terms of the dog, what are the emotions and feelings that both human and dogs have in common? Are there feelings that are unique to the dog and not human and vice versa.  Are any of those feelings instinctual and have no cognitive purpose other than to satify a need?  Can a line be drawn that clearly tell us we are anthropomorphizing?

 
The degree that people, and even science, anthropomorphize animals seems to be on a sliding scale. The most extreme viewpoint, and some scientists (and perhaps some laypeople) do believe it, is that the dog is just a kind of animated stimuli-response machine. There is no "fear," there is only a self-preservation instinct. The notion of "fear" in an animal would be a totally anthropomorphic and false concept, based on our applying the wholly human emotion of fear to an animal that is just blankly following its flight-or-fight instinct to survive. Once you leave that position, you're into a whole vast middle area of what emotions or thoughts dogs may *actually* have that are not just human interpretations of observable behavior. That's why I think McConnell makes such an astute point about how we anthropomorphize dogs... it seems culturally acceptable to give them negative "human" emotions but not positive ones, but who decided that and why?

That's a really good point about "coddling". I always heard the same, don't coddle a fearful dog. That is TRUE almost ALL the time. But there's some point where you know your dog and know it won't break his psyche to provide a little physical support. Canids in packs don't pet each other when something scary is happening but pups in a den will curl up together when nervous. Letting your dog sit next to you during a scary thunderstorm isn't anthropomorphizing, it's going back to his neophyte (puppy) state. That horse is out of the barn already, we may as well use it to comfort our dogs.

For years I ignored Ben as his thunderphobia got worse. I tried drugs, crating, wrapping - he's just getting worse and worse.

Finally we had an awful year of storms and I said to myself, "Ben's going to be eleven this year. He's going to be dead in just a few years, if I'm lucky, maybe sooner if I'm not. If I make him worse I'll just deal with it." I invited him up on the bed during a particularly bad storm that raged for hours.

I didn't pet him, I made him "stay" at first because he actually doesn't like the bed, but I did make sure he knew he was welcome to seek contact. And he did, laying with his head under my arm most of the night.

The next few storms he got more relaxed, and after that he'd automatically jump up on the bed if a storm came up, and now if I'm not here and a storm comes through, I can tell he's been up on the bed, though he normally doesn't lay there when we are gone.

Before I tried this with Ben, I did this with puppies. That's where I got the idea. Actually, I got the idea from orphan lambs. The first few nights I'll sleep with a weak orphan lamb right in the bed. A lamb can literally die of loneliness. That's not true of a pup but I found that you can greatly decrease the first two or three night blues if you [gasp] let the pup sleep with you.

Then I crate the pup halfway through the night (I have to get up to potty the pup anyway) - the pup has meanwhile had some daytime crate training and knows the crate isn't awful. Then after a couple more nights the pup is ready to sleep in the crate all night.

You have to be careful. It's easy to spoil a dog and hard to undo spoiling. But it's easy to avoid if you just remember that you set the rules - even for coddling, lol.