How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

by Berns, Gregory

  “Why do you want to see the experiment?” I asked. “It might not even work.”

  “I know, but I want to see it,” she said.

  “Is it because you want to skip school?”

  She turned away and mumbled, “Maybe.” But quickly recovering, she continued. “That’s not the main reason. I really want to see the experiment. Don’t you always say that real science is exciting? Wouldn’t I learn more there than I would at school?”

  In that, her logic was flawless.

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  I had no doubt that Helen would learn more about science watching this experiment than she would in an entire week of science class at the middle school.

  This was Helen’s first year of middle school, and the transition from elementary school had been a shock for all of us. Her workload was so much larger than what she was used to, she still hadn’t quite figured out how to balance homework and fun. In addition to the usual math, English, and social studies, her school required Latin for all sixth graders. In a classic case of confusing correlation with causation, the curriculum committee cited studies showing that kids who learned Latin did better on the SAT and reasoned that if all kids took Latin, their test scores would improve. Unfortunately, just because kids who take Latin have higher SAT scores doesn’t mean that Latin is the cause. These kids might already have a larger vocabulary and an interest in learning another language.

  Latin wasn’t the problem, though. Much to my dismay, it was science.

  Early in the year, I had tried to explain to Helen that science is always changing.

  To which she asked, “You mean that this stuff is wrong?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Then why am I learning it?”

  Because the state says you have to, I thought. But what I said was “Science is a way of answering questions about the world around us. What you are learning is our current understanding of the universe. As we learn more, our understanding changes.”

  “I still hate it.”

  I understood her frustration. She really had tried to memorize facts of geology and the weather systems of the Mississippi Delta and Piedmont regions of the Southeast. But no matter how hard she studied, the science teacher seemed to throw obscure questions at the kids that I would have thought more appropriate for a high school or introductory college class.

  The new semester had just begun when Helen asked me about coming along for the first scans. The next morning, we were standing at the bus stop.

  “Do you have any tests this week?” I asked. Her face turned white.

  “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “I think I have a science test today.”

  I was furious. “Helen, you just had a three-day weekend, and you didn’t study at all?”

  “I forgot.”

  “And, on top of that, you want to skip school to see the Dog Project?”

  Her eyes were starting to tear up. “I know the material.”

  “How can you know the material if you didn’t study?”

  There was no answer to the question. She got on the bus, and I walked home frustrated that she wasn’t prioritizing her schoolwork.

  Both Kat and I were ready to ground Helen as soon as she got home that night. In the past, when she received less than an 80 on her tests, she would lose computer privileges until she brought her grade up. While this had been an effective strategy to prevent her from wasting time on computer games, the time that was freed up didn’t generally translate into more studying. Computer time was exchanged for sulking time. She was well on her way to perfecting the art of the silent treatment.

  From the day she joined our household, it was clear that Callie was an alpha dog. In Cesar Millan’s terminology, she wanted to be pack leader. She hopped on furniture whenever she wanted. When Lyra started to chew on a bone, Callie would dart in to take it away, only to drop it on the ground a few feet away, indicating that she determined who would be allowed to eat the “prey.” And when Callie settled into our bed at night, it was almost always in a position uncomfortable for the human occupants. The expression “let sleeping dogs lie” should have been broadcast above her head, because any attempts to move her to a more harmonious location were met with the most vicious snarling possible from the little creature.

  Similarly, her insatiable appetite meant that all food had to be pushed back from the edge of the kitchen counter. With her long snout, she could grasp any morsel of food within three inches, even if she couldn’t see it. She once licked clean precisely half of a pumpkin pie, which was the extent her tongue could reach. Every time we caught her with paws up on the counter, we yelled at her to get down. Although she complied with the command, it never prevented her from doing it again, usually within minutes.

  It was this behavioral stubbornness that made us doubt Callie’s ability to participate in the Dog Project. I eventually realized that the problematic aspects of her behavior had nothing to do with her ability to learn. She could not only learn a complex task like going into the MRI scanner, she could actually learn to enjoy it.

  I wondered whether something similar was going on with Helen.

  Every time she did poorly on a science test, we used the equivalent of a squirt bottle or a shake can to curb the behavior: a scolding followed by a mild punishment. Punishment can be very effective in shaping behavior, but it works only when there is a credible threat of punishment present. This is so important, it bears repeating: only the threat of punishment can change behavior. As soon as the threat disappears, behavior reverts to its natural state. Punishment after the fact serves only to establish a credible threat in the future but does nothing to change what has already happened.

  Helen’s lack of studying was water under the bridge. Grounding her would not change the inevitable poor grade she was about to receive. Would it make her study more in the future? Possibly, but only under the constant threat of punishment. There had to be a better way.

  I asked Kat what she thought.

  “I don’t like the idea of punishing our kids for not studying either,” she said.

  “I wish Helen would want to study,” I said. “But if I had to study from that textbook, I probably wouldn’t do it either.”

  “What can we do?” Kat asked.

  “Maybe we need more of the carrot and less of the stick.”

  We put our plan into motion at the dinner table that night. Not surprisingly, Helen didn’t think she had done very well on the test and picked at her food sullenly. Maddy sensed the tension and remained silent.

  With great solemnity, I announced, “Mommy and I have been thinking very seriously about the Dog Project.”

  Bracing for the inevitable hammer about to fall, Helen didn’t look up from her plate.

  “Helen,” I continued, “you really want to see the scanning on the big day?”

  “Yes,” she pleaded.

  “Okay. Mommy and I have discussed this, and because this is so special and may never happen again, we want to let you go.”

  “Really?” she exclaimed.

  “This is important to you?” I asked.

  She nodded vigorously.

  “Good,” I continued, “because there is a condition.”

  “What?” Helen asked.

  “In order for you to miss school, you have to pull your science grade up to an A,” I explained. “If you have an A in the class, you can come. The Dog Project is very important to me, and I would really like you to be there to share in it.”

  “I can do that!” she agreed.

  For the next several days, the prospect of positive reinforcement had the desired effect. Although Helen still didn’t enjoy studying science, there was a noticeable decrease in homework resistance. She threw herself into making flash cards and made an earnest attempt to memorize the material. Kat and I patted ourselves on our backs, celebrating our success at applying dog-training theory to preteen behaviorism.

  But lik
e dog training, the effectiveness is in the details.

  Callie was making progress in the training in large part because I was beginning to learn how to make it clear what I expected of her. Baby steps, coupled with consistent reward, make for effective learning. But if the desired behavior is too difficult, then the reward becomes unobtainable and motivation declines.

  With Helen, the desired behavior was clear: get an A. But what I had neglected to consider was the inherent unpredictability of her science teacher. I mistakenly assumed that if Helen put in the necessary effort, she would be rewarded with a good grade.

  Big mistake.

  A week later, despite all of her efforts, she returned home with a 75 on a quiz. This pretty much put out of reach the possibility of raising her grade to an A, at least by the time the Dog Project launched.

  “I really tried,” she said. “He makes the tests too hard.”

  Now Kat and I were in a difficult position. Helen had failed to achieve the goal we had set. If this were Callie, I would simply make her try again until she did what I wanted. But not only were we running out of time with the scan day a week away, but I also hadn’t accounted for an element out of my control: the fairness of the test.

  Certainly Helen could have tried harder. With half the school year gone by, she knew what the tests were like. But that wasn’t really the point. She had done what I had asked, which was to redouble her efforts at studying.

  The great compromise that emerged from this hand-wringing was an explicit and concrete statement of what was expected, a goal that was entirely within her control.

  “I still want you to see the dog scanning,” I said. “I know the tests are picky. So how about you put in an extra hour of studying each day until the scanning?”

  “If I do that, I can come?”

  “Yes, but to make sure that you’re studying the right things, it has to be with either me or Mommy.”

  Helen already had one to two hours of homework each day, so this was not greeted with enthusiasm. But grudging acceptance was all that was required.

  She refused to study with me that night. But over the next two days, the resentment diminished, and Helen allowed me into her room to go over concepts from science and math. I hoped that my explanations of how things worked would somehow help her remember the laundry list of facts that she would be tested on. But all I really wanted was an excuse for her to share in the excitement of the Dog Project and see what real science looked like.

  12

  Dogs at Work

  THE DRESS REHEARSAL with Callie at the scanner made it clear that the dogs should be conditioned to more than the MRI. They needed to get used to the entire experience. We wanted them peaceful and poised on the day of scanning. The more we could do to get them used to the environment, the calmer they would eventually be. Because of her agility competitions, McKenzie was a certified road warrior, and traveling didn’t faze her. But Callie was a homebody, and she didn’t take well to car travel. After all, most of her car trips ended at the vet for a series of shots or a similar indignity.

  So I started bringing Callie to work.

  Getting her into the car was the hardest part. I would say, “Wanna go to work?” and Callie would run over to the garage door and leap up and down as though her legs were made of springs. But once I opened the car door, she would balk, tail between her legs. She would stiffen up as I placed her in the front seat. Even when we got moving, she never relaxed and would try to sit in my lap as I drove. Eventually we settled into a mutually acceptable position with her in a standing position, hind legs on the passenger seat and front legs on the center console, facing me. She shivered for the entire thirty-minute trip from house to campus. Her nervousness also caused her to shed, leaving short black hairs all over the seats.

  Once we got to Emory, Callie became her normal, cheerful self. The short walk from the parking deck to the lab triggered smiles in all whom we passed. Callie liked to hop up on a stone wall, about waist high, in front of the lab building, where she would trot along, doing her best imitation of a circus dog on a tightrope.

  Inside the lab, she would zoom around to each of the waste cans, looking for food scraps. Once she was satisfied there was no free food, she would interrogate the people. Lisa would lower her face to dog level and coo, “Callie!” Callie would stand on her hind legs to lick Lisa’s face. The guys were friendly, if not as demonstrative, and tried to engage Callie by throwing a tennis ball around. But Callie was not a retriever. Her interest in things that moved tended toward small, furry animals.

  With each trip to the lab, I brought a toy to keep her amused. It wasn’t long before bones and Kongs lay scattered on the floor. A water bowl was in one corner, a doggie bed in another. The lab was starting to feel like home.

  Presciently, we had included language in the official IACUC protocol specifying that the dogs would first be familiarized with the scanner environment. This would minimize the chance of the dogs freaking out and running amok. Although the intent was to placate the risk-averse lawyers, there was now the obvious side benefit that the dogs would not only have to be familiarized with the scanner, but they would need to be familiarized with the staging area—the lab. Therefore, when I brought Callie to work, I was just following protocol.

  Also according to our protocol, we would need to find the right subjects. Mark had suggested a laundry list of ideal characteristics: calm, good in novel environments, good with strangers, good with other dogs, inquisitive, unafraid of loud noises, unafraid of heights, and able to wear earmuffs. These traits were specified in the official IACUC protocol that gave us permission to do the research.

  Never mind that Callie and McKenzie had already been selected as our first two subjects. We would still need more dogs. We needed backups in case Callie or McKenzie couldn’t make it into the MRI. Of course, we could conduct dog tryouts at CPT, and eventually we would, but we could just as easily hold “auditions” at the lab. Because the dogs hadn’t yet qualified to be research subjects, and therefore fall under the IACUC rules, they existed in a gray zone between pet and research, and, as I was painfully aware, pets were not allowed.

  One day, Andrew brought in his toy poodle, Daisy. Andrew had warned us that she was a temperamental dog and barked when anxious, which was often. We were already testing the boundaries of research rules, but if we got noise complaints, dogs would not be welcome anymore. Daisy was on good behavior, though. She didn’t stray far from Andrew, and he limited the duration of her visit. He didn’t dare bring his other dog, an American Eskimo named Mochi. She tended to leave puddles wherever she got excited. Other lab members soon followed suit. One day I was greeted by two beautiful huskies, London and Reyna. Another day, Lisa’s goldendoodle, Sheriff, paid a visit. Sheriff was a golden, frizzy cross between a golden retriever and a standard poodle. He didn’t qualify for the Dog Project based on size alone.

  The dogs had a noticeable effect on morale. The lab felt more relaxed. The students were less distressed by whatever problems were cropping up in their research. The simple brush of a dog walking by, or the press of a cold, wet nose on your hand, was enough to drop anyone’s stress level. People laughed more.

  The beneficial effects of dogs in the workplace have been well documented. Sandra Barker, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction, has been studying the effects of pets at work for more than a decade. In 2012, her team measured stress levels of workers who were allowed to bring their dogs to work. Normally, stress is lowest in the morning and rises steadily throughout the day. But the presence of dogs kept self-reported stress at their morning levels all day long. The researchers also found that the presence of dogs increased communication between workers.

  Whether these effects on stress are simply a matter of perception has been difficult to determine. The most concrete proof would be reductions in the body’s stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands, which sit on top
of the kidneys. When a person is stressed for any reason, the brain sends a signal to the pituitary gland, which releases a hormone that flows through the blood to the adrenal gland, causing the release of cortisol. The effects are nearly instant. Cortisol causes blood pressure to rise and the heart to beat faster. These are beneficial effects if you need to jump into action, but if the adrenal gland continues to release cortisol because of chronic stress, its effects will begin to damage the body. Chronically high levels of cortisol cause stomach ulcers, hypertension, and diabetes.

  Some studies have found that dogs decrease cortisol levels, while others have not. There is relatively little research in this area, so much of the variability in results probably comes from the variety of conditions in which dog-human interactions have been studied. Not everyone likes dogs, and as Lyra proved at the lab party, dogs can send cortisol levels skyrocketing in people who are afraid of them.

  Even though there is not a lot of biological evidence yet to prove that dogs have health benefits for humans, some companies have recognized that their employees are happier and more productive when they are with their dogs. Google, for example, states, “[Our] affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we’re a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out.” Amazon has a similar policy, simply requiring that employees register the dog and be responsible for good canine citizenship (barking and peeing are no-no’s). Other large companies with dog-friendly policies include Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Clif Bar, the Humane Society headquarters, Build-A-Bear Workshop headquarters, and the software maker Autodesk. And, of course, many small businesses around the country.

  If having dogs at work makes the humans less stressed, do the dogs feel happier too? The question is embedded in the much deeper riddle of animal emotions and gets to the heart of why we were doing the Dog Project.

  For the most part, scientists have ignored the question of whether animals have emotions. This is peculiar because most pet owners are pretty sure that they do. Science, though, deals with things that you can measure, and, by definition, emotions are internal. Science has been able to measure only behaviors that are a result of an emotion. With humans, this is not a problem. You can always ask a person how he is feeling and deduce which emotion is associated with a behavior. The linking of subjective states and objective behaviors is an important step because different emotions may result in similar behaviors and expressions. For example, if you see someone crying, you might assume he or she is sad. But those could be tears of joy. The only way to know is to ask.