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cwalt
MH
Posts:180
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| 08/10/2008 1:39 PM |
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| Cj wrote:
Now dogs have a major intellectual advantage, they all can read dog,
human and wolf body languages whereas wolves and humans are pretty much
limited to only their own species' signals. Is being trilingual a
handicap or a sign of lesser intelligence?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My question is unfair since it asks about intellect while actually
considering an array of innate behaviors and reflexes that are not a
product of thought. Since we have little observational skill in
evaluating wolf behaviour we have to confine our discussion to the
behavior of hunting dogs. The interesting thing about dogs is the
degree to which they socialize (American) or imprint (European) to
humans. Part of this process is learning to interpret human body
language, something they do with surpassing skill when reared as house
dogs.
When we interact with our gun dogs there appear to be at least three
levels at which we communicate to dogs: The primary communication path
is our body language, the secondary communication path is the human
voice and the tertiary level is physical contact. The dog's
communication medium is primarily its' body language. When we read
books on dog training the communicative points of emphasis are the voice
and physical contact, the latter includes leads, collars and electronic
media. The most important means of contact, human body language, is
rarely even mentioned. I am not certain of the reason for this gross
omission but perhaps it lies with the fact that we are not aware of our
own body language. Dog consider humans as part of their pack or as
strangers, they cannot think of us in any other way. This means that
our dog's primary means of interaction with us is body language, they
are socially very visual animals. Scent is enormously important to dogs
but as a means of communication scent is way beyond our capabilities.
This means that the social and working interactions between humans and
dogs is primarily a steady and continuous exchange of body language
signals that determine what, where, why and how. If you want to have
control over your dog you have to understand and control your own body
language because how you sit, stand or move is 90% of your communication
with your dog. What the dog understands is primarily determined by our
attitude and emotional state, physiological factors that control our
body language. Through your own body language you inform the dog of who
is the pack leader and who is in control of the immediate physical
situation, you tell the dog how to hunt and how to obey with your
posture and gestures, you tell the dog whether you mean it or not with
how you stand. Your body language is the entire text of your
communication with the dog, your commands and hand signals are merely
punctuation.
Cj |
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jmurr
MH
Posts:158
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| 08/10/2008 2:30 PM |
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| In "The Labrador Shooting Dog," Mike Gould writes about developing what he calls
"Influence Handling" in a hunting dog. This is, briefly and partially, a process
by which the hunter/handler silently guides the dog over the ground to be hunted
solely by his own movement over that ground. The man turns and goes in another
direction, so does the dog, etc.. Bill Tarrant wrote about it also in one or more
books before Mike's book came out. They both made some fanciful claims about a
particular dog Mike had had which they claimed he was able to control in the
fashion of formal USA retriever handling on blind retrieves this way even when the
dog was over a ridge and out of sight of the handler. Mike claimed, on an internet
forum, he had successfully "influenced" coyotes and large prey animals. He was
laughed off the board in short order. Mike and Bill were unable to explain this
phenomenon in terms of "normal" science and resorted to mysticism for an
explaination. Bill referred to Mike's "invisible rubber band," but Mike protested
that rubber bands only attrack while he was able to "push" the dog away as well as
draw it in (Cj, you KNOW this is possible!).
My belief it is a real phenomenon (though I need to see a dog "handle over the
hill; before I'll believ it) deeply rooted in the ages through which predators and
prey have had survival advantage bestowed by virtue of being able and inclined to
keep track of friend and foe as they make (and protect) their livings. I am not
convinced one has to invoke mystical connections or hitherto undescribed senses in
explaination (sight, hearing and maybe touch) may do very well, thank you, but
would be open to demonstration of something new.
My suspicion is there is more "thought" going on in the heads of our dogs than most
of us are willing to admit. Being of that mind set we don't look for its effects
and won't see them when they manifest. Most of us are not remotely interested in
lettting our hnting dogs be dogs without attaching some level of puppet trings.
There have been a few instances where people have observed young growing wolves,
both with and without parents. Lois Crisler wrote of her observations of wolves in
"Artic Wild" and "captive Wild" and David Mech wrote of his in several places. The
possibilities for learning, both about wolves but also about dogs, appear vast.
One might get some insight into the opportunities to be found by looking at two
extraordinary recent books - "Merle's Door," by Ted Kerasote (thank you, Stu, for
the reference) and "Among the Bears," by Benjamin Kilham.
Jere
> Cj wrote:
> Now dogs have a major intellectual advantage, they all can read dog,
> human and wolf body languages whereas wolves and humans are pretty much
> limited to only their own species' signals. Is being trilingual a
> handicap or a sign of lesser intelligence?
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> My question is unfair since it asks about intellect while actually
> considering an array of innate behaviors and reflexes that are not a
> product of thought. Since we have little observational skill in
> evaluating wolf behaviour we have to confine our discussion to the
> behavior of hunting dogs. The interesting thing about dogs is the
> degree to which they socialize (American) or imprint (European) to
> humans. Part of this process is learning to interpret human body
> language, something they do with surpassing skill when reared as house
> dogs.
>
> When we interact with our gun dogs there appear to be at least three
> levels at which we communicate to dogs: The primary communication path
> is our body language, the secondary communication path is the human
> voice and the tertiary level is physical contact. The dog's
> communication medium is primarily its' body language. When we read
> books on dog training the communicative points of emphasis are the voice
> and physical contact, the latter includes leads, collars and electronic
> media. The most important means of contact, human body language, is
> rarely even mentioned. I am not certain of the reason for this gross
> omission but perhaps it lies with the fact that we are not aware of our
> own body language. Dog consider humans as part of their pack or as
> strangers, they cannot think of us in any other way. This means that
> our dog's primary means of interaction with us is body language, they
> are socially very visual animals. Scent is enormously important to dogs
> but as a means of communication scent is way beyond our capabilities.
> This means that the social and working interactions between humans and
> dogs is primarily a steady and continuous exchange of body language
> signals that determine what, where, why and how. If you want to have
> control over your dog you have to understand and control your own body
> language because how you sit, stand or move is 90% of your communication
> with your dog. What the dog understands is primarily determined by our
> attitude and emotional state, physiological factors that control our
> body language. Through your own body language you inform the dog of who
> is the pack leader and who is in control of the immediate physical
> situation, you tell the dog how to hunt and how to obey with your
> posture and gestures, you tell the dog whether you mean it or not with
> how you stand. Your body language is the entire text of your
> communication with the dog, your commands and hand signals are merely
> punctuation.
>
> Cj
>
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cwalt
MH
Posts:180
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| 08/10/2008 4:41 PM |
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| Jere Murray wrote:
> My belief it is a real phenomenon (though I need to see a dog "handle over the
> hill; before I'll believ it) deeply rooted in the ages through which predators and
> prey have had survival advantage bestowed by virtue of being able and inclined to
> keep track of friend and foe as they make (and protect) their livings. I am not
> convinced one has to invoke mystical connections or hitherto undescribed senses in
> explaination (sight, hearing and maybe touch) may do very well, thank you, but
> would be open to demonstration of something new.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
Most students of animal behaviour come to a point where metaphysical
explanations occur to challenge reason. Many quit at that point and
just turn to something else to study, I believe that Niko Tinbergen did
this a few times whereas Konrad Lorenz often attempted to posit a
metaphysical explanation to stimulate thought, this hurt his reputation
for objectivity in some quarters. I don't rely on metaphysics to
explain dog behavior but it helps with human behavior.
I don't attempt to control my dogs "over the hill" but I do come to
expect, with each of them, that they will hunt _with_ me and when we're
hunting as a pack I "know" what my dog is doing and my dog knows what
I'm doing.. it isn't control, it's expectations. The reason I don't
expect control is that I can't be over the hill with the dog, the animal
is in charge of the situation over there and I trust my dog to do the
pack-like thing under any circumstances. This takes a few years of
hunting to develop but when you have it you never have to speak to the
dog or give it a hand signal all day in the field. Many trainers never
achieve anything like this because they want to establish and display
control at all times... this is permissible with retrieving but
inappropriate for upland hunting. If necessary control 'strings' should
be in the dog's mind, they shouldn't be in the handler's mind.
Cj
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> My suspicion is there is more "thought" going on in the heads of our dogs than mostof us are willing to admit. Being of that mind set we don't look for its effects and won't see them when they manifest. Most of us are not remotely interested in lettting our hnting dogs be dogs without attaching some level of puppet trings.
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Most hunting dogs can think, anticipate and have expectations. They can
be effective with these behaviors only if the hunter is consistent in
body language and emotionally honest. The problem with the ethological
science part is that we know more than we can ethically assert to be
true. My suspicions may be consistently confirmed by a dog's behavior
but if I cannot come up with a rational explanation that can be tested I
cannot publish the suspicions and assert that they're real. In the end
the only test of our expectations of our dogs is that we are predictive,
we can expect what the dog will do next and be affirmed the majority of
the time. After all in science the only test of a theory is
predictability, it's the same thing with bird hunting but we can be a
bit metaphysical. You have to be willing to suspend the training mode
and let the dog teach you!
Cj
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> There have been a few instances where people have observed young
> growing wolves,
> both with and without parents. Lois Crisler wrote of her observations
> of wolves in
> "Artic Wild" and "captive Wild" and David Mech wrote of his in several
> places. The
> possibilities for learning, both about wolves but also about dogs,
> appear vast.
> One might get some insight into the opportunities to be found by
> looking at two
> extraordinary recent books - "Merle's Door," by Ted Kerasote (thank
> you, Stu, for
> the reference) and "Among the Bears," by Benjamin Kilham.
>
> Jere
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I referred to being limited to working with dogs rather than wolves
I simply meant that the vast majority of hunters or trainers will never
have an opportunity to study one wolf let alone a pack of them and so
how can we understand behavior that we can never observe? Dogs are our
study 'wolves' and so we have to build our ethology on their shared
behaviour with us. The opportunities for learning about dogs are indeed
vast but before we can access them we have to get rid of our training
expectations and let the dogs teach us how to hunt. The only thing we
have to teach is how we can handle our own gun, the rest is follow the
dog and keep your mind open and your mouth shut. Study the dogs, when
you can read read them they will teach you to understand yourself and
become aware of your body language. Only such learning and your
willingness to control your own body language will permit real
communication with your dogs.
Cj |
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jmurr
MH
Posts:158
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| 08/11/2008 12:02 AM |
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| Cj wrote:
> ...
> I don't attempt to control my dogs "over the hill"
I haven't purposfully tried to do this except:
When I am upland hunting in the west it is not unusual for the dog to be hunting
"over the hill" from me, literally or figuratively. I will only try and
reestablish visual contact in the event the dog remains out of sight for a period
of time which is unusually long. (I can't tell you how long that is in minutes -
its something I "feel" rather than measure with a timepiece.) I go my way and
usually the dog reappears somewhere to the front and we again have visual contact.
If not, I will go looking for the dog and hope to find it pointing birds. I don't
KNOW that the dog knows where I am and what I'm doing all the time, but it seldom
appears "lost" on reappearance. I don't typically endeavor to control my dogs
while upland hunting either - thanks, in part. to your influence, Cj.
Recently I've become interested again in Gould's "Influence Handling," or more
specifically interested in whether it really does work "over the hill" and if so
HOW. As I said earlier, while I'm open to well conceived unconventional
explanations, I won't go there without ruling out the conventional or without solid
evidence for some unconventional mechanism. (Kilham noted some interesting behavior
in his bear cubs by which they distinguished edibles from inedibles. He "looked"
and discovered a new sensory organ in the roof of the bears' mouth which they use
to this end. It is present in all bears on the planet except pandas.) I walk my
dogs twice daily. usually we walk on the local gravel road and our 3/8 mile long
driveway winding through the spruce forest. To test this "handling" phenomenon a
little, I've taken to stopping when the dog is deliberately moving out in front and
away from me. Almost invariably the dog will stop after traveling for some several
to tens of yards after I stop and turn to see where I am, what I am doing. I
seldom see the dog stop to check on me if I don't stop. After the dog stops, if I
walk backwards, the dog will move towards me. This does not "work" if it is
raining at least moderately. That's why I suspect the dog is keeping track of me,
in this situation, by hearing. At this point it wouldn't surprise me that one might
develop this behavior well enough to accomplish the "over the hill" blind retrieve
handling Gould and Tarrant talked about. This dog may be a bit old for that now
and he isn't exactly well developed in that regard when he can see me though
he handles pretty well when he thinks I'm really in the loop in the search for a
downed bird. I wish Mike still had that dog now, or when I visited him in Idaho
several years ago; or a new one.
Jere
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