Problems with Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation
Ms. Grandin acknowledges that Labrador retrievers have been bred for a solid, low-fear temperament and a high tolerance for pain, but still demonizes "vicious" dog breeds by saying that because they have been bred for a certain look, they have also inherited aggression and "dominance" along with that look (pg. 237). This is to completely ignore the fact that a big component of selection criteria for backyard breeders of pits and Rotties and other "vicious" breeds is temperament--the dogs with terrible, aggressive temperaments are the ones who get to breed. If the dogs who kill people were all purebred show dogs who had been bred for appearance, then I would grant her that point, but until someone gives me a better reason, I would say that breeding FOR aggression is the major reason for aggression in certain breeds.
In fact, Ms. Grandin even says that other dogs have had the high-popularity, high-aggression correlation in the past (pg. 149), yet doesn't make the connection between the selection criteria and their popularity. When GSDs became popular, it was not because a large number of people decided that they wanted a protective-yet-friendly companion dog that was intelligent and had pointy ears; it was because a segment of people decided that GSDs looked scary, were big, and could be trained to bite other people. Once an original group had the desired aggression, these people bred the most aggressive dogs to sell to other people who wanted aggressive dogs, and the cycle continued. But the major selection criterion was not "pointy ears," or even the collection of traits that make a shepherd a shepherd, it was "Will this dog bite at the slightest provocation?" That is why, if we were to go look at dogs that present with aggression (say, let's go to St. Louis city and walk past peoples' dogs, noting which ones snapped at us), I am certain very few would meet any semblance of their breed standard. They were bred mostly for temperament, not looks.
Where this converges is at the point where we get pit bulls who look like ugly lumps of muscle AND are aggressive, or where we get Labs with big blocky heads AND low reactivity. Those dogs are bred for both looks AND temperament, and those dogs combine the best or worst aims of their breeders. What I would like to know is why a Lab can be bred for a certain look AND a certain personality/temperament, and a pit bull cannot. In Animals in Translation, it seems as though Ms. Grandin is saying that as people bred Rottweilers (for this is her chosen scapegoat breed) for big frames and blocky heads and orange eyebrows, they totally ignored temperament and wound up with "dominant" dogs, yet as people bred Labs, they considered temperament as important as looks and wound up with "good" dogs. Whatever kind of cognitive dissonance it takes to believe this, I want no part of it. Is it so unthinkable that people would deliberately backyard-breed dogs for aggression?
Ms. Grandin's specialty, however, is farm animals, so I don't really hold it against her as much that she doesn't acknowledge the idea of breeding for temperament. However, this is a place where I think she should have stuck with what she's good at (and she is wonderful about farm animals) and just not spread the myth that because an animal has physical attributes similar to a pit bull or Rottweiler, it will automatically be a "dominant" dog. I won't even touch the "dominance" thing, because I think it is SO overblown, but I am pleased to see that she does not advocate nonsense like "alpha rolls" and advocates positive methods in her book. There are some stupid methods recommended (nipping a puppy on the muzzle when correcting a behavior? I think not.) but overall, her concern with animal welfare is evidenced in most of what she says.
However, some other things bother me in this book (pg. 159), notably the tacit approval of letting cats live "naturally" outdoors so they can develop "natural" cat behaviors. I think this willfully ignores that "natural" for a domestic animal outdoors frequently includes disease, early death, rampant breeding, killing wildlife, peeing wherever they want, etc. She makes the claim that if cats are never let out, they will flip out if they need to be taken outside the house. But what about cats who have SAFELY been socialized to being out of the house?
My indoor cats don't freak out when they need to go places. Indy is tolerant of the car and scared of the vet (his first vet visits were for traumatic things). Bubbles actually likes the car and tolerates vet visits. Shelby doesn't mind being carried places outdoors or being in the car or the vet. Suki wants no part of any of those things, but I also didn't have her as a kitten and she's had more vet-related bad things happen to her than the other cats. They've never been allowed to roam "naturally" outdoors, but I do take them places and carry them while I take the dogs out, and generally give them non-traumatic exposures to "out-of-the-house". Of course indoor cats whose first experience with being out of the house is being poked, prodded, treated for injury, operated on, or otherwise frightened will be upset, but there is a safer way to socialize cats to novel experiences without putting them in danger or destroying native wildlife.
I also take umbrage with Ms. Grandin's interpretation of a dog's behavior on page 165 of her book, but don't have the time to paraphrase it here. Suffice it to say that what she sees as a dog trying to dominate someone, I see as a pretty clear-cut bad reaction to change. Actually, I guess I will paraphrase it: A woman and her children and dog left an abusive husband who treated the dog okay, but the woman terribly. Then the dog started to try and keep the woman in the house, and once went out while she was going someplace, got in her car, and would bite her when she tried to remove him. That doesn't really sound like "dominance" of any kind. I don't have enough information to determine what it is, but it seems far more like a demented way of protecting the woman than aggression. And with that kind of life change, I would not be surprised by many kinds of fearful reactions. Plus, the woman started using food to lure the dog places when it behaved badly, so it was being rewarded for being awful, which would lead to rapid escalation of the original behaviors.
Additionally, Nick Dodman is full of crap. "Originally bred for aggression and tenacity, pit bulls, if provoked, will bite hard and hang on, making them as potentially dangerous as a handgun without a safety lock...they can become quite civilized, developing into loyal and entertaining companions. But the potential [emphasis his] for trouble is always lurking somewhere, as a result of their genes and breeding." (quoted on pg. 149) ...Aggression to who? Provoked how? Breeding for what qualities? By who? Necessary information, Dr. Dodman. (And he doesn't explain it in the book he wrote it in, either, because I've read it.)
Final thoughts: Ms. Grandin's system for evaluating slaughterhouses is wonderful. Seriously, I have never seen a better one. I wish she'd do work with the way the animals live prior to slaughter, too.
I just wish she would shut up about dogs until she can see why she's contradicting herself.
In fact, Ms. Grandin even says that other dogs have had the high-popularity, high-aggression correlation in the past (pg. 149), yet doesn't make the connection between the selection criteria and their popularity. When GSDs became popular, it was not because a large number of people decided that they wanted a protective-yet-friendly companion dog that was intelligent and had pointy ears; it was because a segment of people decided that GSDs looked scary, were big, and could be trained to bite other people. Once an original group had the desired aggression, these people bred the most aggressive dogs to sell to other people who wanted aggressive dogs, and the cycle continued. But the major selection criterion was not "pointy ears," or even the collection of traits that make a shepherd a shepherd, it was "Will this dog bite at the slightest provocation?" That is why, if we were to go look at dogs that present with aggression (say, let's go to St. Louis city and walk past peoples' dogs, noting which ones snapped at us), I am certain very few would meet any semblance of their breed standard. They were bred mostly for temperament, not looks.
Where this converges is at the point where we get pit bulls who look like ugly lumps of muscle AND are aggressive, or where we get Labs with big blocky heads AND low reactivity. Those dogs are bred for both looks AND temperament, and those dogs combine the best or worst aims of their breeders. What I would like to know is why a Lab can be bred for a certain look AND a certain personality/temperament, and a pit bull cannot. In Animals in Translation, it seems as though Ms. Grandin is saying that as people bred Rottweilers (for this is her chosen scapegoat breed) for big frames and blocky heads and orange eyebrows, they totally ignored temperament and wound up with "dominant" dogs, yet as people bred Labs, they considered temperament as important as looks and wound up with "good" dogs. Whatever kind of cognitive dissonance it takes to believe this, I want no part of it. Is it so unthinkable that people would deliberately backyard-breed dogs for aggression?
Ms. Grandin's specialty, however, is farm animals, so I don't really hold it against her as much that she doesn't acknowledge the idea of breeding for temperament. However, this is a place where I think she should have stuck with what she's good at (and she is wonderful about farm animals) and just not spread the myth that because an animal has physical attributes similar to a pit bull or Rottweiler, it will automatically be a "dominant" dog. I won't even touch the "dominance" thing, because I think it is SO overblown, but I am pleased to see that she does not advocate nonsense like "alpha rolls" and advocates positive methods in her book. There are some stupid methods recommended (nipping a puppy on the muzzle when correcting a behavior? I think not.) but overall, her concern with animal welfare is evidenced in most of what she says.
However, some other things bother me in this book (pg. 159), notably the tacit approval of letting cats live "naturally" outdoors so they can develop "natural" cat behaviors. I think this willfully ignores that "natural" for a domestic animal outdoors frequently includes disease, early death, rampant breeding, killing wildlife, peeing wherever they want, etc. She makes the claim that if cats are never let out, they will flip out if they need to be taken outside the house. But what about cats who have SAFELY been socialized to being out of the house?
My indoor cats don't freak out when they need to go places. Indy is tolerant of the car and scared of the vet (his first vet visits were for traumatic things). Bubbles actually likes the car and tolerates vet visits. Shelby doesn't mind being carried places outdoors or being in the car or the vet. Suki wants no part of any of those things, but I also didn't have her as a kitten and she's had more vet-related bad things happen to her than the other cats. They've never been allowed to roam "naturally" outdoors, but I do take them places and carry them while I take the dogs out, and generally give them non-traumatic exposures to "out-of-the-house". Of course indoor cats whose first experience with being out of the house is being poked, prodded, treated for injury, operated on, or otherwise frightened will be upset, but there is a safer way to socialize cats to novel experiences without putting them in danger or destroying native wildlife.
I also take umbrage with Ms. Grandin's interpretation of a dog's behavior on page 165 of her book, but don't have the time to paraphrase it here. Suffice it to say that what she sees as a dog trying to dominate someone, I see as a pretty clear-cut bad reaction to change. Actually, I guess I will paraphrase it: A woman and her children and dog left an abusive husband who treated the dog okay, but the woman terribly. Then the dog started to try and keep the woman in the house, and once went out while she was going someplace, got in her car, and would bite her when she tried to remove him. That doesn't really sound like "dominance" of any kind. I don't have enough information to determine what it is, but it seems far more like a demented way of protecting the woman than aggression. And with that kind of life change, I would not be surprised by many kinds of fearful reactions. Plus, the woman started using food to lure the dog places when it behaved badly, so it was being rewarded for being awful, which would lead to rapid escalation of the original behaviors.
Additionally, Nick Dodman is full of crap. "Originally bred for aggression and tenacity, pit bulls, if provoked, will bite hard and hang on, making them as potentially dangerous as a handgun without a safety lock...they can become quite civilized, developing into loyal and entertaining companions. But the potential [emphasis his] for trouble is always lurking somewhere, as a result of their genes and breeding." (quoted on pg. 149) ...Aggression to who? Provoked how? Breeding for what qualities? By who? Necessary information, Dr. Dodman. (And he doesn't explain it in the book he wrote it in, either, because I've read it.)
Final thoughts: Ms. Grandin's system for evaluating slaughterhouses is wonderful. Seriously, I have never seen a better one. I wish she'd do work with the way the animals live prior to slaughter, too.
I just wish she would shut up about dogs until she can see why she's contradicting herself.