Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [94]
All the dogs survive the experiment looking well fed and a little bewildered. In many of the trials, the dogs could be models for the guilty look: they lower their gaze, press their ears back, slump their body, and shyly avert their head. Numerous tails beat a rapid rhythm low between their legs. Some raise a paw in appeasement or flick their tongue out nervously. But these guilt-related behaviors did not occur more often in the trials when the dogs had disobeyed than in those when they had obeyed. Instead there were more guilty looks in the trials when the owner scolded the dog, whether the dog had disobeyed or not. Being scolded despite resisting the disallowed treat led to an extra-guilty look.
This indicates that the dog has associated the owner, not the act, with an imminent reprimand. What's happening here? The dog is anticipating punishment around certain objects or when seeing the subtle cues from the owner that indicate he may be angry. As we know, dogs readily learn to notice associations between events. If the appearance of food follows the opening of the large cold box in the kitchen, why, the dog will be alert to the opening of that box. These associations can be forged with events of their making as well as those they observe. Much of what is learned is based, deep down, on making associations: whining is followed by attention, so the dog learns to whine for attention; scratching at the trash can causes it to tip and spill its contents, so the dog learns to scratch to get what's inside. And making certain kinds of messes is sometimes followed much later by the presence of the owner, which is itself quickly followed by the reddening of the owner's face, loud verbiage coming out of the owner, and punishment by that reddened loud owner. The key here is that the mere appearance of the owner around what looks like evidence of destruction can be enough to convince the dog that punishment is imminent. The owner's arrival is much more closely linked to punishment than the garbage emptying the dog engaged in hours earlier. And if that's the case, most dogs will assume a submissive posture on seeing their owners—the classic guilty look.
In this case, a claim about the dog's knowledge of his misdeed is importantly off the mark. The dog may not think of the behavior as bad. The guilty look is very similar to the look of fear and to submissive behaviors. It is no surprise, then, to find so many dog owners who are frustrated with attempts to punish a dog for bad behavior. What the dog clearly knows is to anticipate punishment when the owner appears wearing a look of displeasure. What the dog does not know is that he is guilty. He just knows to look out for you.
A lack of guilt does not mean dogs do nothing wrong. They not only do plenty of human-defined wrong things, they sometimes seem to flaunt these things: a half-chewed shoe is paraded in front of a busy owner; you are greeted by a dog merrily exhausted from rolling in defecation. The teddy-bear guard dog looked nothing if not proud when photographed surrounded by the teddy-bear remains. Dogs do seem to play with the fact of our knowing and not knowing something—to get attention (which it generally does) and perhaps just for the sake of playing with knowledge. This is not unlike a child testing the limits of his understanding of the physical world by sitting on his high chair, dropping a cup to the floor … and again … and again: he is seeing what happens. Dogs do this with different