Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [113]
A simple game of fetch, for instance, is a dance of call and response. We enjoy the game because of the dog's reactive readiness to respond to our actions. Cats, by contrast, are simply not enjoyable fetch playmates: they may in fact fetch you an object, but in their own time. Dogs participate in a kind of communion with their owners around the ball, with each responding at a conversational pace: in seconds, not hours. The dogs are acting like very cooperative humans. Another game is simply doing an activity in parallel: running together. In play between dogs parallelism is common. Two dogs may mimic each other's gaping mouths yawing back and forth. Often one dog will observe and then match the other's preoccupation: hole digging, stick chewing, ball trumpeting. As wolves hunt together collaboratively, this ability to act with others, matching their behavior, might come from their ancestry. To have your play-slap matched by a dog's is to feel suddenly in communication with another species.
We experience the dog's responsiveness as expressive of a mutual understanding: we're on this walk together; we're playing together. Researchers who have looked at the temporal pattern of interactions with our dogs find that it is similar to the timing patterns among mixed-sex strangers flirting, and to the timing among soccer players as they move down the field that feels like great teamwork. There are hidden sequences of paired behaviors that repeat in interaction: a dog looking at the owner's face before picking up a stick, a person pointing and a dog following the point to what it's directed. The sequences are repeated, and they are reliable, so we begin to get the feeling, over time, that there is a shared covenant of interaction between us. None of the sequences is itself profound, but none is random, and together they have a cumulative result.
Walk down Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan around lunchtime on a weekday and you experience the frustration and pleasure of being a member of the human species. The sidewalks are mobbed, jammed with tourists wandering and gawking; office workers rushing to grab lunch or dallying before returning; enterprising street vendors rushing from enforcement officers. It is a formidable sight, one you may not relish joining. On most days, though, you can take any pace you'd like, and just as easily wend your way through the crowds. It has been speculated that people walking en masse don't crash into each other because we are instantly and easily predictable. It only takes a glance to calculate when the oncoming person will reach you. You unconsciously veer subtly right to avoid him; he has done the same with you. It is not unlike (but not quite as completely successful as) the school of fish that abruptly, with one mind, turns tail and goes back from where it came. We are social, and social animals coordinate their actions. What dogs do is cross the species line and coordinate with us. Pick up the leash of any dog in your neighborhood and suddenly you are walking together, like old friends.
The significance of these three elements is corroborated by the kinds of feelings generated when they disappear: of mild betrayal, of momentary severance of the bond. There's a feeling of disconnect when a dog one reaches for ducks her head away, preventing contact. The frustration is immediate when a dog stops cooperating in taking turns in a game: refusing to bring the ball back, not seeing the toss or pursuing a seen toss. A betrayal is felt when the simple communication come! isn't followed by a dog coming. And it would be heartbreaking to approach your dog and to fail to prompt a tail to wag, ears to flatten to the head, or a stomach to be bared for scratching. Dogs whom we perceive as stubborn or disobedient are those dogs who flout these elements. But these elements are natural for both them and for us; a disobedient dog more likely simply does not realize what rules he is being asked to obey.
THE BOND EFFECT
Our bond with