The New Science of Understanding Dog Behavior

Theology and Dogs

Some of my favorite scriptural passages involve the affirmation that God has an intimate relationship with the non-human world.  Psalm 150 proclaims, “Let everything that breathes praise God.”  Romans 8 speaks of all creation groaning in quest of wholeness, and suggests that the same spirit that moves through non-human life also speaks in sighs too deep for words in our own experience. 

Now, I must confess that my first conscious theological reflection was connected with the salvation of dogs. When I was no more than five years old, my parents left my brother and me for a few days with a pious Baptist lady, Mrs. Orr, while they attended a conference.  Mrs. Orr had a dog named “Taffy” and for three days I played non-stop with this lively terrier.  I had never had a dog before, and this was a boy meets dog, love at first sight encounter.  Being a pious Baptist boy, I asked Mrs. Orr, “Will Taffy go to heaven?”   I still recall her making a face and responding as if I’d said a bad word, “Talk to your father, he’ll straighten you out.  Don’t ever ask such questions again?  You should know that God only loves humans and that Christ died for us, not dogs!”  At that moment, I began to question the theology of my childhood.  “If God didn’t love Taffy, something must be wrong. I love her.  Shouldn’t God love the things that I love?  What has Taffy done that would keep her out of heaven?”

Now, I believe that when John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world,” the scripture means just hat – that God loves the cosmos, including creatures of all kinds. In the wondrous journey of creation, God has brought forth varieties of creatures, and has called them good. (Genesis 1) God loves dogs and cats, dolphins and fireflies, infants and senior adults.  I believe that God feels the joy of a dog running across the field or chasing lemons in an orchard, and God feels the pain of dogs who have been mistreated by their owners and dogs who grieve the death of beloved owners.  I am sure that Eric Liddell’s affirmation from the film “Chariots of Fire” also applies to dogs, “God made me fast, and when I run I feel God’s pleasure.”

For many people, God speaks through their animals, and especially dogs, to them.  They experience God’s faithfulness and acceptance in a beloved companion animal awaiting their arrival home each day, often intuiting their moods better than most human companions.

The holiness of dogs and all creation stems from the doctrine of God’s omnipresence.  God’s omnipresence means that God is present in every cell and every soul.  There are no God-free spots in the universe. More than that, God’s omnipresence is not neutral in orientation, but is aimed at beauty and wholeness.  In some way or another, Jesus’ affirmation, I have come that they might have abundant life (John 10:10), applies to all creation, including dogs and cats, and not just humankind.  If God is present as the source of inspiration and guidance in all things (what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead calls the “initial aim”), then God is surely inspiring dogs and cats, enabling them to care in ways congruent with their experience and context.  Grace is global, not partial.  In the interdependence of life, there is a continuity of grace, sufficient for each creature – whether the firefly that lights up for a few days on a summer night, my cat Charlie sitting on my lap as I meditate.  God is present in my grandson sleeping in my arms and in the bluebirds that mesmerize him as he looks out the window.  

I believe that all creatures share in God’s everlasting life, initially, in God’s intimate memory of all things.  God’s memory is described by Alfred North Whitehead as a tender care that loses nothing of value.  Surely, anything that is loved shares in eternity, and that means my first dog Duke, and Flaca, the dog of my adult years.

-- Dr.Bruce Epperly 

Terry Gross interviews John Bradshaw
On What It's Like to be a Dog?

​Interview Highlights

On playing tug of war with your dog

"Let's take a very simple piece of advice that trainers take out, which is you should never allow a dog to go in front of you through a doorway because it will give the signal to the dog that you are submissive and are therefore allowing him or her — the dog — to become dominant. Take another one. Many trainers advise against playing tug of war games because there is a risk the dog will win and the dog, by winning, will think that you are being submissive and he will therefore be able to control you in the future. We've done research into a number of these things — including the tug of war game — and have shown that the premise is just completely not true. If you do let a dog win over and over again at tug of war, it likes you. It wants to play with you more than it did to begin with because it's having fun. If, on the other hand, the dog gets less attracted to you and doesn't so much want to play with you — again, but there's absolutely no change of the dog's behavior outside of that particular situation of play — the dog does not get into its head that you're kind of a soft touch and that in the future it will be able to control you and whatever you do."

On dog senses

"They're colorblind to a certain extent but colorblind humans are not that badly handicapped. Their hearing is a little bit more sensitive than ours in the high-pitched region. But it's their sense of smell that really distinguishes them from us. And I don't think we really take up too much recognizance of that. I think dogs have a right to sniff things whenever it doesn't cause a problem to us. When I meet a dog, I hold my hand out. I don't stick my fingers right out, just in case, but I just make a loose fist and put my hand out to the dog. If it's a small dog, I'll squat down. And that dog will want to come and sniff my hand and lick it if necessary. That's a greeting, and I think if we don't do that, I think it's as upsetting to the dog as if we were talking to somebody that we never met before and covered our faces at that point in time, as if we were trying to disguise who we were."

Dr. John Bradshaw is an anthrozoologist and a noted scholar of animal-human interactions. Basic Books

​DOG SENSE: HOW THE NEW SCIENCE OF DOG BEHAVIOR CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER FRIEND TO YOUR PET
BY JOHN BRADSHAW
HARDCOVER, 352 PAGES
BASIC BOOKS
LIST PRICE: $25.99