created: 2024-01-06T13:04
updated: 2024-07-18T13:58
tags:
- canidsReading notes on The Other End of the Leash by Patricia B McConnell
Quotes with some annotations and notes
(Forgive the screenshots from Mille feuilles, I know they're not accessible, I can't figure out how to add descriptive alt-text in this programme.)
We are often oblivious to how we're moving around our dogs. It seems to be very human to not know what we're doing with our body, unconscious of where our hands are or that we just tilted our head. We radiate random signals like some crazed semaphore flag, while our dogs watch in confusion, their eyes rolling around in circles like cartoon dogs. (p xvi)
You know, I think a lot about this as a person who has a lot of issues with dissociation, clumsiness, and proprioception in general due to being a clumsy and extremely awkward human who also tries to never focus on physical sensations because of chronic pain issues.
There are many examples of how [our behavioural heritage from chimpanzees] can create trouble in our relationships with dogs. For example, humans love to hug. It's called "ventral-ventral contact" in the primate literature, and chimps and bonobos love to do it too. They hug their babies, and babies hug them. Adolescent chimps hug each other, and so do adult chimps when they're reconciling from conflict. (...) Try telling an adolescent girl, or any four-year-old, not to hug her beloved dog. Good luck. But dogs don't hug. (...) Dogs are just as social as we are, veritable social butterflies who can't live a normal life without a lot of social interaction. But they don't hug. And they often don't react kindly to those who do. Your own dog may benevolently put up with it, but I've seen hundreds of dogs who growled or bit when someone hugged them. (pp xxi-xxii)
We're simply us, and just as dogs chew and bark, we tend to do things that are natural to us, even when they don't serve us well. (p xxv)
Fieldwork in your living room
— There is a section on pages 8 and 9 that is worth rereading carefully on observation and how to practice becoming better at observing the human and especially nonhuman around you.
The power of directing your gaze in human-canine communication
An important principle in primate communication seems to be, "If we can't see each other, then we can't start something." (..). Turid Rugas, a Norwedgian dog trainer, call turning the head a "calming signal," and I agree that it does have a calming effect on the dog who sees it (although I don't think that dogs are necessarily doing it consciously to relax the other dog). Humans can do it consciously, doing what wolf researchers call "look aways" by turning our heads to the side when we greet a new dog or we sense that tension is mountain. You can also cock your head [to the side], which is something never done by a tense dog on offensive alert. Many mammals cock their head to gather more information about the world around them, and they almost always do it when they're curious and relatively relaxed. If you cock your head, you are signalling to a dog that you're relaxed, which can go a long way towards relaxing the dog as well. — The Other End of the Leash by Patricia B. McConnell (Page 35 - 36)
A few thoughts:
- Eye pressure and autism: Like a lot of young people who grew up in the 90s in the west, sustaining eye contact during conversation was drilled into me. I often wouldn't be allowed to communicate if I wasn't maintaining eye contact. It's interesting that I've noticed in myself that when I am more tired, I tend to avert my eyes more, as a way of conserving my own energy and focus that energy on the conversation. The parallel, where it contrasts and where it is similar with the calming signal head turn in canines is fascinating to me.
- In a lot of ways, this entire book feels like a necessary and thoughtful update to Turid Rugas' seminal book on dog calming signals — download PDF here. (Update: I've just learned that this book preceded Rugas' book by three or four years. LOL.)
- Leif reports that when he uses the head tilt, mimicking a confused or curious creature, with our puppy Pippin, he launches his whole body at Leif in overly energetic happiness. So while I do think that head tilts are a good tool to have around human and nonhuman mammals, do note that with puppies, it can excite them because everything excites puppies.
—
2024-03-25: In this interview with Victoria Stilwell and Kamal Fernandez (roughly 30 minutes in), Victoria talks about how read The Other End of the Leash revolutionized her training practice.