The Other End of the Leash

The Other End of the Leash was a street library find, written by Patricia McConnell, an animal behaviour specialist who owns four dogs and has worked with hundreds of others. She has some amazing insights about the clash between our human/primate ways of behaving, and the preferences of dogs/canids. For example, we humans love to interact face-to-face, and to embrace chest to chest. But for dogs, this is deeply uncomfortable -- their natural preference is for side-by-side company. It's true, if you leave it up to the dog, she will snuggle by your side, and they can find staring into their eyes confrontational, though we might experience this as loving. 

McConnell has similar tips to offer about behavioural training, emphasising dogs' preferred behaviour. For instance, if you want to persuade a dog to come to you, it's better (if counter-intuitive for a human) to turn away from the dog, which will encourage it to follow you; moving toward the dog, which most of us would do instinctively, will only encourage it to move away from you (dogs love chasing). We humans also insist on repeating ourselves; if Spot doesn't obey our command to 'sit,' we're likely to just keep saying 'sit, sit, sit' in a more agitated, louder voice, which the dog will just hear as the equivalent of excited barking.

However, I was just as interested in her stories about the differences in her own dogs' personalities and ways of relating to each other -- she owns three Border Collies, all of different temperaments, and a Great Pyrenees, a breed I hadn't come across before. McConnell writes movingly of the death of a previous dog, and the night-long vigil she and her other dogs held with the body. Each dog had a different reaction to the dead dog's body -- one ignored it completely, one sniffed it all over in utter confusion, one recoiled in seeming horror and distress. Absolutely fascinating.