It’s late morning, and Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology and cognitive neuroscience, warns me that he just had cake from Costco and a coffee. “I’m totally ADD, I warn you. I’m really excited about a lot of things,” he tells me, blue eyes glittering. For the next hour, Hare talks fast and nonstop about the dog lab as he careens about his office. There’s something about his energy, his look, and demeanor that keeps reminding me of Brendan Fraser’s George of the Jungle—only Hare’s rendition holds advanced degrees, has earned great respect in the world of academia, and has the tremendous responsibility that goes along with founding and running a major research facility at one of the nation’s top universities.
This lab is one of a few dog cognition labs that have opened at universities in the United States in the last several years, including one run by Alexandra Horowitz at Barnard College. Until the late 1990s, little attention was paid to the topic of canine cognition. Primates were the primary animals being studied for cognition. But “now it’s like out-of-control exciting, trying to unlock the secrets of a dog’s mind. Now everybody is so super-excited by this research on dogs, from psychologists to anthropologists to the average American dog lover,” Hare says as he swipes his hands through his shock of thick, wavy hair.
Hare and his staff had just written a grant to the Department of Defense when I visited. He admits he’s never worked with military dogs before, but he has many ideas about how his center can help advance the understanding of dogs in a way he thinks would benefit the military dog program. He’d like to develop a cognitive test for dogs who have been involved in stressful situations, like deployments. He also wants to be able to put together a system so handlers can check their dogs for stress in the field by methods other than simply looking at behavior. This involves testing cortisol levels in conjunction with core body temperatures, as taken by a thermal imaging temperature gun.
In addition, he’d eventually like to be able to use the results of an ongoing study on something called “laterality bias” to help improve accuracy of detector dogs. “Dogs tend to go to the right. A lot tend to stay to the right of what they’re searching,” Hare explains. “It’s something you should know about your dog before you send him to find explosives, if he favors one side over the other. Don’t you think that’s important information?”
I’m not sure what the Department of Defense thinks of Hare’s ideas, but even if he doesn’t get the grant the first time, the DOD should be prepared for more grant proposals in the future. “We want to help save money and dogs and save lives, and we’ll keep trying,” Hare says.
He and his graduate students are running several studies concurrently. This helps explain the colorful stripes and circles and geometric figures all over the floor of the lab. In certain studies, dogs and people need to be at certain fixed places. Marking up the floor eliminates a variable. The green tape is for the predictions study, the yellow tape is for the inhibitory control study, the worn-out blue tape is for a completed attention study, and the red tape is for the trust study.
The red tape is where we find Alice and Duane Putnam, who have driven for two hours to get here from Warren County, on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. (Staffers here tell me that they get calls from dog lovers all over the world who want to bring their dogs to the lab to be part of the research. The lab tries to limit participants to no more than a three-hour drive, so the dog won’t be discombobulated by travel.) The Putnams are here with their dog, Tri, who looks like he’s part Rottweiler, part German shepherd, and a bit of something else. They believe he is the reincarnation of two of their previous dogs, thus the name. (Two plus himself equals three. Tri sounds better than Three.)
The Putnams are fascinated with their dog. They say he’s too smart for his own good. When no one is looking, he opens peanut butter jars and Vaseline jars by screwing off their lids. Then he eats the contents.
Today Tri the Vaseline thief is taking part in the study about trust. He has been here before because his “dog parents,” as they call them at the cognition center, like the idea that they’re contributing to the better understanding of dogs. Besides, it gets them off their ten acres in the rural corner of the state.
Researcher Jingzhi Tan, aka “Hippo,” has devised a study that investigates how trust is established and whether dogs differentiate between owners, a very friendly new acquaintance, and a complete stranger. His goal is actually to find out how humans become friendly and trusting, and he says a good way to study this is through dogs. Many of the studies at the center could end up with significant findings about people as well as dogs.
When I start observing (via a video monitor, so I don’t interfere with the goings-on), Tri is being lovingly petted by a new acquaintance—someone who works at the center. She is on the floor with him, making friends like this for about twenty minutes. The Putnams are thrilled Tri is letting a stranger handle him without balking. He’s usually not quite as social with people he doesn’t know.
Following the petting session, this new friend and a complete stranger will enter the room and take turns sitting next to bowls with food—one bowl will be near the person, one will be near an empty chair. If the dog thinks a person is risky, the idea is that he’d try to avoid that person, and would pick the food that’s farther away. Mary, an intern who helps coordinate dog visits here, is the stranger today. But Tri doesn’t seem to mind going near her. He is fine with his new friend, too. In other variations of this study, the new friend and stranger take turns pointing to food bowls and researchers see if the dog trusts one more than the other.
The study, and others like it, could eventually have implications for military dogs and how they come to trust their handlers, but that would be years down the road. What counts now in this room is that Tri, dog number 54 for this study, is done and that he has trusted more people than the Putnams would have thought. They proudly stroke his head and tell him, “You did good!”
Alice Putnam exhorts him: “Kissy Mama!” He doesn’t. “He’s not much of a kisser,” she explains. She says she knows her dog well.
But how well does her dog know her? Chances are, much better than she would suspect.
35
THE SMELL OF FEAR REVISITED
Alexandra Horowitz likens dogs to anthropologists: They study us. They observe us. They smell changes in our very chemistry. They learn to predict us. “They know us in ways our human partners sometimes do not,” she says.
I’ve heard a similar refrain dozens of times from handlers, particularly those who have deployed and spent almost every hour for months with their dogs: Their dogs know them better than their spouses or parents do.
Nearly every handler I interviewed, for instance, said that his dog can tell when he’s having a bad day. Most civilian dog lovers would say the same thing. But how can it be that a dog—who doesn’t speak your language and doesn’t know about problems with your bills or your boss or your in-laws—can somehow sense when things are amiss in your life?
It’s a phenomenon many military working dog handlers and instructors refer to as “dumping down the leash.” How you’re feeling and acting is observed by a dog, who will react to this information in different ways. A tense handler is likely to make a dog more tense. Likewise, if a handler is confident and not fearful, even after a loud explosion nearby, the idea is that a dog who is not already gun-shy will figure there’s nothing to worry about, with an instinctual logic along the lines of “My handler’s OK with it, and he’s the leader here, so it must be OK.”
Dogs are very sensitive to body language, so the least little tense movement—a change of gait, a slight hunching of shoulders—can be observed and interpreted as something being amiss. When we’re upset, our voices can go up slightly in frequency as well. Dogs get these nuances in ways most people don’t.
Masking strong feelings by acting like things are OK may not always work, either: It’s quite likely that dogs can smell fear, anxiety, even sadness, says Ho
rowitz. The flight-or-fight hormone, adrenaline, is undetectable by our noses, but dogs can apparently smell it. In addition, fear or anxiety is often accompanied by increased heart rate and blood flow, which sends telltale body chemicals more quickly to the skin surface.
It makes for a trifecta of revelations to a dog: a bouquet of visual, auditory, and olfactory cues that makes dogs incredibly tuned in to how we’re feeling.
It’s comforting to think dogs have empathy and want to see the people they care about feel better when things are not quite right. This sort of action adds to their reputation as man’s best friend. But most scientists who study dog behavior say it’s more likely that dogs who seem to be acting in comforting, helpful ways simply want to restore order to their pack.
John Bradshaw explained it to me this way: “People are more important to dogs than anything else, and they rely on us to provide them with a stable and predictable social environment. If they sense that anything unusual is going on, that people are behaving in ways they don’t usually behave, they will do anything they can to restore the situation.
“Initially they’ll do things that have worked in similar situations in the past. They’re not trying to comfort anyone else, they’re trying to comfort themselves, but often one leads to the other. The dog picks up a toy and uses it to get someone’s attention, usually the person who’s behaving oddly (as far as the dog is concerned), but not necessarily. The dog is just craving attention—but if it does this in a “cute” way, then the effect may well be to calm that person down. That is in itself rewarding for the dog, so the next time a similar situation presents itself, the dog wheels out the same strategy. It doesn’t know why its behavior has the desired effect, it just knows that it works.”
It makes sense. And I’ve heard this from a few different dog experts. But I prefer my own interpretation of Jake’s actions when I’m having a rare bad day. He follows me around significantly more, making an extra effort to visit me at my writing desk. He usually leaves me alone here: This is my turf, distraction-free as possible, which is handy on tight deadlines. But on a tough day, Jake will inevitably scratch on my door for admittance. Happy to see a friendly face, I let him in and pet him for awhile. That alone makes me feel better. Then he usually curls up under my desk, falling asleep at my feet.
It may not be scientific, but it feels pretty good to think Jake has empathy. Sometimes he even seems to pick up on my likes and dislikes, favoring the people I enjoy but getting downright testy with one rude man we see sometimes at the park. Whenever we encounter him, this man snarls at me: “Better clean up after your dog, lady.” Apparently he does this to all people with dogs. I don’t take it personally, but it’s annoying.
The first couple of times this happened, I assured him of my poop-scooping vigilance, but now I just try to avoid him when I see him. But sometimes our paths will cross. When they do, Jake does something he doesn’t do with 99.9 percent of the people we meet on our walks. He barks. Just a few good deep bellows, followed by a long stare as if to say, “Leave us alone or else.” I don’t bother telling him to stop. He’ll join up with me within moments, and I quietly cheer him on with a “Good boy!” He may not be wearing one, but my feelings have clearly dumped down the leash.
Of course, Gunny Knight could have told you all about dogs’ senses long ago without any studies. “I don’t need all that scientific stuff. The best lab is right out here with the dogs, and especially over on deployment. That’s where dogs and handlers really get to know each other.”
PART FOUR
DOGS AND THEIR SOLDIERS
36
ROUND THE CORNER, DOWN TO THE RIVER
In February 2011 a marine squad of about twenty men was returning to base in the upper Gereshk Valley of the Helmand Province in Afghanistan after a morning of patrolling a small village. Coalition forces hadn’t been in this area for ten years, but they had encountered no problems. They’d walked from the lush “green zone” near the Helmand River up to a plateau in the muddy “brown zone.” It was a cold, wet, overcast day and they were glad to be heading back.
Suddenly three Taliban insurgents opened fire with AK-47s from about sixty yards behind them. The marines in the rear immediately whirled around and fired back with M4s, 240s, and 249s, while other marines flanked the insurgents so they wouldn’t get away. It’s a tactic known as laying a base of fire and enveloping the enemy. It can be highly effective, but this time the insurgents bolted just before the squad could surround them.
The three men ran behind a thick mud wall around a compound at the village edge and once again fired their weapons at the marines, who were in a vulnerable position in a field of short poppies. Several marines ran toward the gunfire, shooting their own weapons in a fast, cyclic manner they’d practiced to perfection. They looked fearless on the outside, but inside, dog handler Marine Sergeant Mark Vierig told himself, “Just don’t get shot in the face. Just don’t get shot in the face,” as they charged the wall, running straight into the fire.
At this point, the insurgents probably realized they did not have fire superiority, and they fled toward the half mile–wide village, hoping to blend in and get lost.
But you don’t get lost so easily when there’s a combat tracking dog team in hot pursuit. Vierig and his Belgian Malinois, Lex L479, are a rare breed of military dog team. Their mission is twofold: to find the people who plant IEDs and to track down fleeing insurgents who so easily disappear into their familiar surroundings.
Vierig has been a dog handler since 2002 and a combat tracker for the last two years. His dog is six and one of the best noses in the business.
They set out after the men. Any of the three would do. Vierig ran to the spot where he knew one of the men had been, and put his dog on the track, telling him “Zoeken!” (Dutch for “Search!”; Lex is from the Netherlands.) Lex picked up the man’s scent immediately, and they started following the invisible trail toward the village.
The dog pulled strongly on the leash, nose to the ground, tail up, confident. Vierig followed six to ten feet behind, running in eighty pounds of full combat gear. As long as his dog had his nose down and “pulled like a freight train,” Vierig knew he was on track. In situations like this, where people are fleeing from a chase instead of just casually walking away from planting an IED, the track they leave is particularly strongly infused with “extreme pheremones” and other scents that are highly interesting to dogs.
Tracking is a dangerous mission in Afghanistan, where IEDs are so prevalent that troops don’t want to go out without a metal detector or a bomb dog. Trackers don’t have either luxury. In situations like this, they’re heading into virgin territory at a jog or even a run. If a dog loses the track, and a handler doesn’t realize it, not only may the two lose their quarry, but they can lose their lives—and those of the troops following close behind.
But if the dog is on a good track, it’s a safer business. After all, the person the dog is pursuing has already run over the ground and would (in theory) have set off any IEDs. Plus the insurgents are often very aware of where IEDs are and will avoid those areas. (Much intel on IED placement is gathered by observing insurgents and others steering clear of certain areas.)
Lex continued into the village in confident pursuit of the insurgent. It’s tricky tracking around buildings, because there are many places for the enemy to hide and open fire. So once in the village, Vierig had to slow down his dog and begin doing tactical tracking. Slowing the pace increases the time/distance gap that’s important to keep to a minimum when tracking, but it’s the only way to proceed in villages. For instance, Vierig explains, there’s the matter of corners. Danger can literally lurk around every one of them.
“If I blow by a corner and the guy knows I’m tracking him, he can just hide behind a corner and as I blow by straight, he can shoot me. So I’ll get to the corner of the building, down the dog, pie the corner [a tactic where a handler can look around the corner in cautious “slices” to make sure
no one is waiting to kill] and if it’s clear, we move on.”
Lex and Vierig tracked the man through the labyrinth of alleys in the village. People who had been out when the marines had patrolled the village earlier had all run inside for safety. The village appeared eerily devoid of residents. Lex didn’t lose the scent trail once. The insurgent wasn’t in sight, but he may as well have been. Lex’s nose could “see” his trail as clearly as you and I can see a path in a park.
Lex suddenly took an abrupt right turn down an alleyway. The dog “threw a huge change of behavior,” picking up his head a little higher, pulling to the point where Vierig couldn’t stop him. “OK, boys,” he yelled to the eight marines who were keeping up right behind him in perfect Ranger file, “we’re close, get ready.”
At the end of the alley, Vierig could see the man for the first time since he ran behind the wall. He was bent over a creek, rubbing his hands with water, presumably in an effort to remove any scent of black powder. As they approached, Lex barked “in a way that hits a nerve in my neck,” says Vierig. The man had nowhere to run. The marines snapped some flex-cuffs on him and radioed the others in the squad to take him. Vierig gave Lex loads of praise, lots of pats and rubs, and threw him a tennis ball, which he joyously destroyed. “His tennis ball is like crack cocaine to him. That dog would rather have a ball than breathe.”
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