These days, we can use the words "animal" and "emotion" in
the same sentence without having to cower from the charge of anthropomorphism.
We’re now in the era of Animal Planet,
no longer thinking of animals as insensate brutes. For example, in the eighties
I rented a National Geographic video on whales for my young children thinking
it would feature great footage of their underwater world, but it was filmed in
the fifties and was about "modern" whaling with explosively charged harpoons
launched from the bow of a huge factory ship. The narrator actually called
whales "monsters of the deep." But today we listen to music inspired
by whale song, the Coast Guard rescues an ice-bound whale in the arctic, and we
charter boats hoping to catch a glimpse of a whale breeching (even sharks are
getting a P.R. makeover). So I know that the readers of these pages believe
that the emotional rapport they enjoy with their dog is genuine, meaningful,
and not an anthropomorphic contrivance they need in order to feel good about
their furry ones. (The next term that needs to be brought into common parlance?
Energy.)

I’m calling my blog "The Emotional Dog" for two
reasons. One, in my view, emotion is animal energy that animates as well as
informs, so I’m seeking to contravene the pejorative view of emotion as
impulsive, irrational, chaotic, and even self-destructive. In my model, emotion
is always positive, as in a "force" of attraction. So, for example, when we see
someone acting problematically, rather than calling them "overly-emotional" it
would actually be accurate to say they are acting instinctively. The problem
isn’t too much emotion, but rather not enough feeling. Emotion is purpose
driven, not capricious; it is responsible for complex and successful
behaviours, such as a dog’s infinite capacity to adapt itself to any family’s
lifestyle. During my career as a dog trainer I’ve come to believe that emotion
is the basis of sociability: the more emotional, the more social, quid pro quo.

Secondly, I’m trying to offset the current trend in
behavioural science as well as in conventional thinking that equates all forms
of intelligence with human thinking (my definition of human thinking being the
ability to compare one moment to another moment, or one point of view with
another point of view; in short, to conceptualize about Time). I am proposing
that canine cognition is a function of "emotional capacity" as
opposed to a linear, deductive, intellectual kind of problem-solving logic.
Yes, dogs are smart, but their intelligence is not akin to human reason.
Emotion is a mirror; each party in an emotional bond comes to reflect the
other. The more emotion engaged, the clearer the mirror, and the more
intelligent the bond.

What we call intelligence in our dogs, which we then accord
to a rational, problem-solving mentality, is actually a feeling, a state of
synchronized emotion. Over the course of this blog I will explore Why Dogs Do
What They Do as a function of emotional capacity, which means the ability to
feel what another is feeling. I am going to argue that emotional capacity will
prove to be the best explanation for everything canine, from the evolution of
the wolf via its unique manner of hunting, to the domestication of the dog via
its unique diversity of breeds, as well as why dogs sit for treats and love car
rides and can divine illness or criminal intent in a person-ultimately, why
dogs are the only animal that have been able to fully cross the species divide
and achieve a degree of attunement with human beings, a symbiotic entrainment
between two species that is unparalleled in nature.

Emotional capacity is a carrying capacity. In other words,
how much emotion can course through a dog’s body and mind before a conductive
capacity is breached, at which point an instinct and/or a habit is triggered
(in humans, also a thought) and this then takes over the dog’s mind.
Individuals and species of animals vary in their emotional capacity, and circumstances
can vary in their emotional conductivity, which is why a dog can be malleable
in one context and then inexplicably reactive in another, when rationally
speaking the two circumstances would seem similar from our human point of view.
What changes from context to context is whether or not the dog feels in sync
with his surroundings. For example, two dogs might be about to get into a rip
roaring fight in the kitchen but before things escalate out of control their
owner manages to get them out in the yard, whereupon they immediately transform
as if nothing had happened and even begin to play. This is because when the
moment is different (typically, the outside represents a high state of sync due
to a history of play and the chance to investigate things together), the
potential immediately exists for the dogs to be different. In fact, the dogs
have no "idea" as to what just happened indoors because they don’t
carry the mental memory of the kitchen-point-of-view into a new moment. (They
do however carry a physical memory from point to point, and the subtle yet all
important distinction between these two types of memory we will be exploring at
length as we discuss Why Dogs Do What They Do.) Emotional capacity endows an
individual with behavioural plasticity. For example, a high emotional capacity
allows someone to walk into a room and immediately pick up the "vibe"
so that they can change on the fly what they had set out to do or say because
of the mood they now find there. 

A good way to approach the notion of emotional capacity is
to examine the comparative behaviour of the two animals most familiar to most
of us, cats and dogs. Consider for example the different responses one can
elicit when rubbing a cat on their belly versus a dog. My cat "Boone"
loved a gentle massage, but when he was on his back I had to tread lightly with
my touch. A little too much animation on my part especially in the tender,
tummy area and Boone’s feeling for me would "collapse" and he either
had to run away or he’d lock up and clench my hand with a full claw and jaw
clasp. In contrast I could literally mop the floor with Barley, my Corgi, who
would lie on his back and wallow in ecstasy no matter how much energy I put
into our game. A cat can only tolerate a certain intensity of stimulation
(because it evolved to hunt by instinct) before its capacity to feel for
something beyond itself collapses. Meanwhile, even when I twirled him in a
tight circle on the slippery floor Barley could nevertheless continue to feel
attracted to me so that the bite/flight reflex never kicked in (this is because
canines evolved to hunt by being in sync, i.e. by feel). As I swished him back
and forth Barley’s body remained supple and sensual to my touch; he was
emotionally conductive. Another example of the same phenomenon could occur when
I opened the door for my cat Boone to go outside. If a gust of wind rattled the
bushes just outside the doorway, this could knock him out of the impulse to
relieve himself so that he’d have to withdraw a few feet from the door and then
"reacquire the signal." On the other hand, when my dog Barley wanted
to go outdoors, the wind could have blown the door off its hinges and he would
have merely scrambled over it on his way out to the yard. Overloading a dog’s
emotional capacity is also why years of obedience training can vaporize in an
instant during a critical moment of high intensity.

In short, in the coming posts I’m going to
illustrate dog behaviour by way of emotional capacity, or the ability to feel
what another is feeling. I’m going to argue that what we call social behaviour
is actually a state of emotional synchronization (a "true" feeling) rather than
the result of instinct or intellectual acuity. Dogs are not pack animals,
they’re group beings. They know us by feel, not by thought or instinct. I’m
going to argue that everything a dog does is a social act as emotion, a simple
force of attraction, evolves a complex emotional mirror, i.e. a feeling. Stay
tuned.