Dog REALLY IS Love
The science is in, and when you hear the findings you’re going to nod your head in recognition.
There truly is something special about dogs.
As a species, they possess a unique gift for building close relationships with members of other species. That includes humans, as we all know. But dogs can love any creature, especially if they’re introduced at a young age. Humans have benefited from this remarkable canine ability, such as when herding dogs take care of flocks of sheep, goats, and other animals. The pioneering behaviorist Clive Wynne says the most extravagant case he’s seen is the dogs who protect penguins from predators on an island off the south coast of Australia.
Wynne delivers his career’s trove of insight — along with his personal experience of living with and loving his own dog, Xephos — in his touching, inspiring, compassionate, and meticulously researched book, DOG IS LOVE: Why and How Your Dog Loves You, published in September by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
A psychology professor at Arizona State University, Clive L. Wynne is the founding director of ASU’s Canine Science Collaboratory and serves as Director of Research at Wolf Park in Indiana, where science and conservation meet to help people better understand and coexist with wild wolves. Earlier in his career, he was founding director of the Canine Cognition and Behavior Laboratory at the University of Florida, the first lab of its kind in the United States. He has published pieces in Psychology Today, New Scientist, and the New York Times, and has appeared on National Geographic Explorer, PBS, and the BBC.
A Forbidden Four-Letter Word
He can still remember the first time he used the dreaded L-word at a scientific conference. Lecturing before psychologists and behaviorists at a major gathering in Denver, Dr. Wynne announced that the nature of dogs’ relationships with us can best be described as love.
It’s not a word that gets tossed around in scientific journals. But, when he spoke recently with Spot Magazine, he explained why he no longer hesitates to use the word.
“Some of the time I think we [scientists] use technical words and we’ve invented just because we’re embarrassed to use the word. But these are strong emotional bonds which I think we can call love.” It’s extra work that, in the end, might not create a term that’s any more accurate or useful than the simple word, love. “You might say ‘exaggerated gregariousness,’ which is something like eleven syllables, when really I don’t think we need anything more than ‘very loving.’”
While love might be an unusual word to appear in scientific literature, Wynne’s book points out the mounds of scientific proof of dogs’ extraordinary capacity for love.
Scientists have found the genes for dog love. Dogs show mutations in three genes that are responsible for their highly-loving natures. The same gene mutations show up in people who suffer a rare disorder called Williams-Beuren Syndrome. The syndrome causes delays in physical and intellectual development, but is also associated with heightened friendliness and an exceptional capacity to form loving bonds with others.
Dogs love their humans as much as infants love their mothers. Simple behavioral tests have proven this again and again.
Dogs look out for their humans and will help them in a crisis — as long as they understand what’s needed. Experiments show that dogs are concerned when people cry, and, if their owner is trapped in a box, many dogs will try to rescue them — so long as they know how to open the container. Dogs who didn’t know how to open the box showed distress but didn’t know how to help.
Two hearts can beat as one. It’s not just the stuff of sappy ballads. When a dog and her special person sit and relax together, their heartbeats come into synchrony.
Dog and human brains respond to the love they share. When a specially-trained dog lies still in a brain scanner and is shown signs that his special human is nearby, his brain shows activity that indicates how happy he is. Similarly, when people and their dogs look at each other, levels of the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin increase in both partners.
From the Lab to Life
On the day Wynne spoke to Spot, he was suffering from a bit of sleep deprivation. His beloved dog Xephos had kept him awake the night before, barking and whining about something in the backyard. “She sleeps in our bedroom. But something startled her — maybe a small animal — and she was out the doggie door, and then back indoors, and she did that repeatedly.”
He was preparing to fly to Portland and speak at a national conference of dog trainers and behavior experts. But Xephos is distressed when she’s excluded from the bedroom — a kind of forced loneliness and separation that he’s come to see as emotionally painful for dogs.
The point of science, he says, should be to help us know how to live better, and should offer us insights we can use in our daily happenings and relationships.
Dogs like Xephos are far removed from their wild wolf ancestors. They’ve evolved to rely on humans for their physical, mental, and emotional needs. Overall, he says, humans have made strides in how they view and treat their dogs over the past few decades. But we still have work to do.
Dogs Deserve Better
Spot asked Wynne — who is British-born but soon to become a US citizen — what he’d do if we could appoint him National Dog Czar.
There’s plenty he’d change if he could. But mostly, he says, he’d like to continue to help people understand the world from the dog’s perspective. With enough insight and empathy, we couldn’t help but change our relationships with dogs, starting with how many hours they’re alone in homes, yards, and apartments while people are working.
“The bottom line is it’s just the solitude which is the deeply problematic imposition. That’s what I come back to: the dog’s emotional need.”
In his travels and studies, he discovered the unique lifestyle of Bahamian dogs in Nassau. Without yards, crates, tethers, and locked kitchen doors to confine them, these dogs roam during the day, visiting human and canine friends.
Of course, what might work in a close-knit island community would be impractical and dangerous in most US communities, but Wynne says there’s something we can learn from it anyway. “These dogs who are social beings must be free to find company while you’re away at work.”
Company may take the form of a sitter or neighbor looking in during the day, a high-quality doggie daycare, a take-your-dog-to-work arrangement, or judicious use of telecommuting from home offices during even a small part of the workweek.
Most importantly, Wynne says, “People should think about whether their life has a dog-shaped space in it before getting a dog.”
And so, the world-famous dog scientist prepares to pack for his Portland trip with a dog-sized hole in his nightly rest. And he’s more than fine with that.
“If you mention that Xephos kept me awake, be sure to say that I still love her.”
She did. And he does.