Is your dog guilty?
So you’ve just caught your dog
red handed. Maybe you caught him snoozing on the lounge, maybe he was bench
surfing, or maybe he made off with your knickers! So you tell him off. Then he
gives you a look, that same look he always has when he’s done something wrong.
He looks guilty right? I wouldn’t be so sure! There is a group of emotions that
are known as self-conscious emotions. These self-conscious emotions are; guilt,
shame, pride and embarrassment. Each of these emotions require self-evaluation[1], an ability that dogs do not have. The neocortex of a
dog’s brain has not evolved enough to have the capacity for self-evaluation and
so a dog is unable to feel self-conscious emotions like guilt.
So what’s really happening when
your dog gives you that ‘guilty’ look? Dogs are very good communicators, and it
is our job as their guardians, to learn to read and understand dog
communication. One of the major forms of communication used by dogs is body
language. Dogs use body language to communicate to other dogs and people how
they are feeling. That ‘guilty’ look your dog is giving you, for example head
ducking, lip licking, head turning away, ears back, low body posture, rolling
onto the back, the paw lift, low tail thumping, excessive or slow blinking etc.
are all indicators that the dog is stressed by how you are behaving. Even if
you haven’t reacted yet, the change in your breathing and
heart rate can already be detected by your dog and they are anticipating your
reaction. “Well,” you say, “sometimes I come home and I haven’t even seen the
shreds of newspaper yet and my dog is already acting guilty!” The thing about
dogs is, they generalise fear extremely well. This means that the dog
associates your reaction to the pile of shredded newspaper on the floor. An
experiment was conducted in 1977by veterinarian Peter Vollmer, in which
the dog’s owner shredded newspaper
before leaving the house, and returned to find that her dog had that same
‘guilty’ look as if the dog had shredded the newspaper itself. What was
actually happening was the dog’s reaction was triggered by the environmental
cue of newspaper shredded on the floor. The dog had learned previously that a pile
of shredded newspaper = mum gets angry.
The so called ‘guilty’ look is
actually your dog saying, “please calm down, you’re making me nervous.” Punishing
a dog for ‘misbehaviour’ will only suppress the symptoms of a deeper underlying
cause. It would be like trying to fix a broken leg with some panadol. Sure it
might suppress the pain for a short while, but it doesn’t change the fact that
your leg is broken. Instead, we should be asking ourselves why the dog is doing
this behaviour. Is the dog anxious, bored or fearful? Once you uncover the root
of the problem, you can treat it.
So next time you see your dog
giving you the ‘guilty’ look, take a step back, think about your own behaviour,
listen to what your dog is asking and calm down! And besides, if you wanted a
dog that behaved 100% of the time, you should have gone to Toys R Us!
[1]
The Self-Conscious Emotions, Theory and Research, Jessica L.
Tracy, Richard W. Robins, June Price Tangney, 2007
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