Something You Should Know - Understanding Our Phobias & How Your Dog Thinks – SYSK Choice

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

We all tend to want to impress others with our accomplishments or skills or whatever else that makes us exceptional. Yet there is a real problem with trying to appear so exceptional. This episode begins with an explanation. Source: Steve Chandler, author of 50 Ways To Create Great Relationships (https://amzn.to/3e7uIYk). Are there actually people who have a fear or phobia about buttons? Or popcorn? Of course! People have phobias about lots of things. It sure makes you wonder why. Where do phobias originate? What’s the difference between a fear and phobia? Can you make a phobia disappear or are you stuck with it? Here with a look inside the world of phobias is Kate Summerscale author of The Book of Phobias & Manias : A History of Obsession (https://amzn.to/3e7vjcw). If you have a dog, you probably think you know your dog well. But maybe not says Alexandra Horowitz. She is a researcher who studies dog behavior and cognition and she is author of the book The Year of The Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves (https://amzn.to/3CmfaYO). She joins me to reveal what dogs really think – or don’t think, how intelligent they are and what we can do to improve our bond with dogs.  Conventional wisdom is that you should change the oil in your car every 3,000 miles. However, that is very OLD conventional wisdom – and totally untrue.  Listen and you will save time, money, and the planet by not changing your oil so often. https://www.edmunds.com/car-maintenance/stop-changing-your-oil.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, why it might be a good idea to stop trying to impress people so much. Then, phobias. Why we have them, why there are so many of them, common phobias and some strange ones. I'm very intrigued by the phobia of buttons, which is known as Kumponophobia. And I'm amazed at how common it is.

Apparently Steve Jobs had it, which is why he always wore those turtleneck sweaters. Also, how often should you change the oil in your car? Probably not as often as you think. And the fascinating science of dog behavior. You may think you know your dog, but maybe not. One of the things I've tested in the lab is the guilty look of dogs. So a lot of people tell me that their dog feels guilty when they've done something wrong.

But we did a study and what we found is that guilty look is entirely prompted by us. All this today on Something You Should Know. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Give it the upgrade it deserves at Best Buy's Ultimate Appliance Event. Save up to $1,000 on two or more major appliances. Shop now in--store, or online at BestBuy.ca. Exclusions apply. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts.

And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. How often are you supposed to change the oil in your car? A lot of people believe it's every 3,000 miles, but that's actually not correct. In fact, Edmunds.com says we waste a lot of money, millions of dollars, on unnecessary oil changes, and we're disposing of millions of gallons of old contaminated waste oil into the environment way too soon. The 3,000 mile oil change rule is really a marketing tactic to get you to bring your car into the shop more often.

In fact, in an article in the trade publication National Oil and Lube News, they state that a few extra services or oil changes can go a long way toward increasing the amount of money a customer will spend. So here's the truth. Your car's owner's manual will tell you when to change your oil, and you should go by that. On average, it's about every 7,800 miles. The 3,000-mile rule was once accurate, but oil and car technology have rendered that recommendation completely obsolete. There is no car manufacturer today who recommends that the oil be changed every 3,000 miles.

Not a single one. Just because the last oil change place you went to put a little sticker on your windshield telling you when to come back in 3,000 miles doesn't mean you should. And if you have one of those indicators that comes on, a light that comes on that says you need service, those indicator lights come on because they're set to come on at a particular time, and you can reset them. In fact, we just did in one of our cars, it was set to every 3,000 miles, and we just reset it to 7,800 miles. So now it won't prompt us to change the oil until 7,800 miles have passed. And that is something you should know.

Do you have a phobia? A fear of something? Maybe it's spiders or snakes or heights or clowns or just something that creeps you out, disgusts you, or puts you in a panic. Well, you've come to the right place if you've ever wondered why that is, or where phobias come from, and why people seem to have such unusual phobias, and anything

else about phobias. My guest is Kate Summerscale. She is a writer and former literary editor for the Daily Telegraph in London, and author of a book called The Book of Phobias and Manias, A History of Obsession. Hi, Kate, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, it's great to be here. So before we get into the nuts and bolts of phobias and what they are and where they come from, right at the top here, just tell me some strange phobia that someone actually has that would surprise me. There's a story in my book about a young man who's scared of popcorn. I mean, really scared of it, appalled by it. He finds it like kind of worse than maggots or something, something kind of bloated and expanding. And when he was at school, of course,

his classmates would just tease him, throw popcorn at him. And it was quite a problem because it made it difficult for him to go to the cinema where popcorn was ubiquitous. And people thought it was hilarious, but to him, it was not hilarious. It was absolutely threatening and deeply distressing. See, that's one of those phobias. It's hard to imagine, like, where does that come from? But before we get into that, so help me understand. So you often hear people have a phobia about spiders. Is it really a phobia or is it just kind of an ick factor that they just don't like spiders or because it doesn't seem like it's anxiety so much as it's just gross. Broadly speaking, all phobias are on a spectrum. I think lots of us describe ourselves as phobic about certain things, but to be a diagnosable phobia as the anxiety or aversion or disgust reflex has to interfere with our normal lives. It also has to be irrational and to have lasted for six months or more, so be an abiding thing. And yes, it is an ick factor with spiders, but it's also a fear factor. Apparently, spiders trigger both the disgust reflex and the fear

reflex so we recoil from them as if they might infect us but also as if they might attack us. So they're unusual in that and it is a very common phobia. What are the common phobias that people seem to have? Well spiders, arachnophobia is common. Even more common is aphidiophobia, which is the fear of snakes, which I think is the most common of all the specific phobias.

Though there are also categories like social phobia, which are very prevalent. Lots of people have social phobias of one sort or another. What are some examples of social phobias of one sort or another. What are some examples of social phobias? Agoraphobia is often understood as a kind of social phobia. Glossophobia is the fear of public speaking, which is also social phobias, the sort of difficulties around being with other people. So they don't fall into the same group as the

specific phobias which are phobic reactions to particular objects creatures situations what are the numbers I mean it seems like when you talk to people everybody has something that bothers them has some sort of phobia but what are the the statistics on this who has phobias well in terms of diagnosable phobias it's thought that one woman in ten has a phobia and one man in twenty and the it's quite hard to measure their prevalence because most people who have phobias don't seek treatment. They simply avoid the thing that they are scared of or averse to.

But there have been some big sort of compilations of worldwide surveys that suggest those figures are about right. Well, I imagine there have been phobias for as long as there have been people. But but when did it get that name? When did somebody finally say, you know, when that person gets freaked out by spiders, that's a phobia? The idea of a phobia as a psychological condition, it only came about in the late 18th century.

And then there was a great craze for naming these conditions, finding specific phobias in the 19th century and early 20th centuries. So it's sort of if something is named as a phobia, then suddenly you have people who have it. But it's not as if nobody had those irrational fears before. Well, I know you talk about that there is something of a contagious element to phobias and that people have phobias and maybe think they're the only one. But in fact, there are a lot of clusters of holes, which was only named in 2005 and was only identified because people shared pictures of clusters, irregular clusters of holes on the internet and discovered that they shared an aversion to these images, that they made them recoil and sometimes feel nauseous or dizzy.

And so the condition was identified then and found to be actually quite prevalent and groups gathered on the internet and a woman in Ireland gave a name to the pathology. And so I think probably it was something pre-existing that nobody had really considered before as something that might be shared or might be classified as a phobia. But scientists have speculated that it's actually based on our aversion to pathogens because these irregular clusters of holes look quite like fungus or mold or the pustules of infectious disease. And so there's a sort of evolutionary explanation for why we might have this fear. Well, I always thought that phobias, for the most part, had to be triggered by an event. Like you're afraid of spiders because you had some disgusting experience with one. But it sounds like what you're saying is that maybe they're more genetic or they're evolutionarily evolved in us.

Well, I think a lot of phobias can be traced to some, an evolutionary explanation can be found for them, even if it's rather indirect, but they have to be triggered by experience often and most dramatically that is a shock or a trauma some bad event that happens like if you're bitten by a dog and you develop a phobia of dogs for example maybe an obvious example but it can be that you witness somebody else's fear. That could be the triggering event. So the child of somebody who is scared of spiders is more likely to become scared of spiders. And so that may have a genetic component. It also clearly the modeling, the fact that you see fear on your parents' face is the thing that sort of awakens or alerts the anxiety in you. Do you think, or has there been enough experience in this, that if someone has a phobia that really

is in the way, pretty much any phobia can be overcome if you work at it enough or or like the cluster of holes phobia I mean it seems like that's just part of who you are and the better the better choice would be to avoid clusters of holes yes I mean I think phobias are actually among the most treatable anxiety disorders so there's cognitive behavioral therapies, there are virtual reality therapies, there's hypnosis, some phobias can be helped with medication, talking therapies, exposure therapy. But most people, and many of these are extremely effective, but most people don't seek those out. And perhaps some people, phobias in some ways do become an identifying marker of who somebody is. And being trypophobic or arachnophobic or having a horror of buttons feels like a personality trait.

And it can be managed by simply avoiding the objects of one's fear. We're talking about phobias, why we have them, where they come from, and what you can do about them. Kate Summerscale is my guest. She's the author of The Book of Phobias and Manias, a history of obsession. Take back your free time with PC Express Online grocery delivery and pickup. Score in-store promos, PC Optimum points, and more free time. And still get groceries. Shop now at pcexpress.ca. Mama, look at me. Vroom, vroom.

I'm going really fast. I just got my license. Can I borrow the car, please, Mom? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time. You'll be relieved they have 24-7 roadside assistance with Intact Insurance. Mom, can we go to Nana's house tomorrow? I want to go to Jack's place today. I'll just take the car. Don't wait up, okay? Kids go from zero to 18 in no time, don't they? At Intact Insurance, we insure your car so you can enjoy the ride. Visit Intact.ca or talk to your broker. Conditions apply. So, Kate, I have a phobia. I haven't really thought much about this until this discussion,

but I have a phobia about roller coasters. Every time I get near one, I start to sweat. And I had an experience when I was young that was rather frightening. But not only do I have a phobia about it and don't like going on them, I don't like, I just don't like them. So I have no incentive to fix that because I have no, it doesn't, fixing it has no appeal to me because I still don't like them. Yes, it sounds like the experience you had has made you not just avoid going on them, but you've maybe put some of that scared feeling into the roller coasters per se, you know, as objects. And that might be quite a sort of useful mechanism that you've, you know know it's a way of

parceling up the experience and consigning it to the roller coaster instead of yourself right it's like a way of expelling the feeling is to associate it very firmly with that object but the thing the thinking is the interesting thinking is though that why would I want to get over that so that I would then go on something that I don't like because I'm associating my liking of roller coasters with my fear of them that that's all part of the same thing so I could get over the fear but I still don't like them so why would I do that what would be the benefit so yeah well there there wouldn't be and and you know you're you're in good company and most people do take that sort of pragmatic view um if your fear was of something that you had to deal with on a sort of daily basis there would be more incentive to get over it

but if it if it does serve as you know if it is something you can avoid and take pleasure in avoiding, then that is a solution. And we all fear all kinds of things and we all like and dislike things in different ways and maneuver our way around the world according to those preferences. And that, I suppose, lies at the extreme end of that. And it's quite a useful anchor to know, I hate that, you know, I will not do that. I will not go there. And so, there's no reason why we should want to get rid of all our phobias. It's only when it damages our lives that we, and stops us from doing things that we might want to do, that we might want to tackle them.

But another problem, and I have faced this with roller coasters and made peace with it, is there's a lot of social pressure. Well, you shouldn't be afraid. They're completely safe. You'll be fine. And I have to, like, defend myself. And so I stopped defending myself. I don't do that anymore.

But there is a lot of the same thing with spiders or anything else. People will say, oh, come on. What are you talking about? It's not going to hurt you. But that's not the point. Right. It can sometimes be useful to simply say, I have a phobia of. People won't accept it so well if it's something like

popcorn because they think that sounds silly. But if you say it about spiders, I think people might know that now, as with many anxiety disorders, are kind of learning to have a bit more respect for just a kind of like, don't go there. This is deeply deeply troubling to me i don't need to explain it it just is and so i think there probably is more understanding and sometimes the use of the word phobia can help communicate to another person the level at which you're troubled by something it's not i don't like it it's not not even it scares me. It's that it is like anathema to me. You know, it is very distressing to my psyche. At the beginning of our conversation, I asked you to name an unusual phobia and you named popcorn, which well done. Now that's

pretty unusual. But very few people likely suffer from that. Are there what seem to be unusual phobias, or can you name an unusual phobia that it turns out a lot of people have? Yes, I'm very intrigued by the phobia of buttons, which is known as kumponophobia. And I'm amazed at how common it is. When I've talked about it to friends, I almost always, the person will know somebody who has this phobia. And apparently Steve Jobs had it. And he, which is why he always wore those turtleneck sweaters. So people who have this phobia don't like to have clothes with buttons. They don't like to wear shirts. They don't like to have clothes with buttons they don't like to wear shirts they don't like to wear jackets or coats with buttons but it's a very strange one i so i sort of dug

into some of the case studies to try to work out what it might mean where it might come from as often as not people had the cases i came across people had had some distressing experience with buttons early in their life one that interested me was a boy who had had some painful dental work when when he was a child and he had looked at the buttons on the dentist shirt while the work was being carried out. So he'd made an association. And it struck me that there is an association, perhaps, between buttons and teeth. Because most people who are scared of buttons are particularly scared of dangling buttons

or fully detached buttons. It's the idea that they might fall off or hang that is disturbing. And I thought this was mapped quite neatly onto teeth, which we feel very threatened by the idea of having a tooth pulled out or dangle from the mouth. There's also theories of buttons about, it seems to most people who suffer from the button phobia, find buttons disgusting, strangely enough. They trigger the disgust reflex and their facial expressions. Can you name, real quickly, just run down some of the more interesting, maybe unusual phobias that you came across in your research that people would find unusual?

Coulrophobia, which is the fear of clowns, which became very widespread in the States in the 1980s. Triskaidecophobia and tetraphobia, those are the obsessive fears of the numbers 13, which is quite common in the West, and of the number 4, which is quite common in the West, and of the number four, which is very common in the East, because various countries like Japan and China, the word four is very similar to the word death. Phobia of balloons, often of the popping of balloons, but some people not bear to be around balloons. There's also telephonophobia, which is a fear of taking phone calls, which was very common when the phone was first invented, but has now become common again because younger people tend not to make phone calls, but instead to text and make social media posts.

And the fear of cotton balls, which I'd never quite thought about, but it's all about the slightly uncanny texture, the squeak that cotton balls make as they tear. Some people are extremely averse to that and can't bear to touch the stuff. You said in your description of clown phobia that it became a thing particularly in the West during the 80s. What happened in the 80s that made it so popular, phobia? Well, in 1979, there was a serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted. Oh, yeah, right, right. And he was pictured in the papers wearing a clown costume. And there

became almost a mass panic, especially among schoolchildren and schools about killer clowns, stalker clowns. And then there was Stephen King's book, It, in 1986, which kind of cemented the figure of the predatory cloud. Do phobias ever just go away on their own? Like you have a phobia of spiders and you wake up one morning and all of a sudden you don't? Sure, yeah. I had a phobia of blushing when I was a teenager, which of course makes you blush. That just fell away.

I think a lot of children are phobic they're terrified of certain things and phobias are most prevalent in childhood and they they get they lessen as you age apparently old people people sort of are the least phobic of all we get less phobic as we progress through life. Well, I've learned about some new phobias I didn't know existed before, but perhaps more importantly, I mean, it seems based on what you're saying,

if people can be phobic about popcorn or buttons, people could likely be phobic about anything. And perhaps we need to respect that. If people are phobic about it, they're phobic about anything. And perhaps we need to respect that. If people are phobic about it, they're phobic about it. I've been speaking with Kate Summerscale. The name of the book is The Book of Phobias and Manias, A History of Obsession. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Thanks for being here, Kate. Oh, well, thank you. You're very kind. It's been fun to talk. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals.

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are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. Since dogs are man's best friend, you have likely had your share of interactions with lots of dogs in your life. Perhaps you even have one in your home right now. As I'm sure you've seen, many dog owners treat their dogs as if they're almost human. They're a part of the family. They project human-like qualities on their dog, as if the dog thinks like a person and understands like a person. But do dogs do that? What is going through a dog's mind?

What do they respond to? How do they view the world? Someone who studies this is Alexandra Horowitz. She is a researcher who observes dogs for a living, and she's author of a book called The Year of the Puppy, How Dogs Become Themselves. Hi, Alexandra. Welcome. It's great to be here, Mike. Thanks. So, real briefly, explain what it is you do.

Well, I'm a dog cognition researcher. I study domestic dog behavior, the behavior of owned dogs, with an interest in finding out more about what they know and understand and believe, you know, what it's like to be a dog, basically. And I have a research interest in this. I'm interested in understanding non-human animal minds. But I think with my particular work, it also has a real relevance to this relationship that we have as a culture and as individuals with the dogs that live in our home.

So very often people will make statements about their dogs. You know, my dog is really smart, or my dog understands this, or my dog's really dumb, or whatever they say. Are they probably right because they live with the dog, they know the dog, or not? We don't know ahead of time whether those are right or wrong. In my mind, those statements that we make, which are suppositions based on behavior or our expectations, should be tested. And we should look at them critically with a kind of scientific eye. And that's what I like to do. So I think sometimes it turns out that statements of long-time dog owners about what their dog knows or understands turn out to have a lot of truth.

Other times, they're really off the mark. And can you give me an example of that, of both of those, of being right on the money and being way off the mark? Okay, well, I'll start with the second. One of the things I've tested in the lab is the guilty look of dogs. So a lot of people tell me that their dog feels guilty when they've done something wrong, or at least, you know, that the person has designated as wrong behavior, gotten into the trash, for instance. And in fact, there's a whole internet explosion of images and videos of dogs standing looking guilty next to the couch that they've just

denuded or whatever it is. But we did a study, and this study has been replicated by several other labs, where we basically just allowed a dog to either do something wrong or not. And we varied whether their person knew that it was wrong, the words knew that they disobeyed or not. And what we found is that guilty look, the thing that makes us think that the dog feels guilty is entirely prompted by us, by our subconscious

or even conscious behavior when we encounter the scene and start to interact with the dog. Now, I'm not saying the dog doesn't feel guilty, but guilt, we should reflect, is a very human-like concept based on understanding the rules of human society. And dogs probably shouldn't be expected to have a full understanding of what's right or wrong. Instead, I think it's more of a submissive behavior based on past experiences with us that,

hmm, they tend to get angry with me if I put on this face. You know, that clears things up. So that's an example where we get things wrong. Are you saying that that look is manipulative in the sense that the dog is using it knowing if I look like this, then maybe I won't get in trouble? I wouldn't call it manipulative. I would call it an appropriate response that gets a better response from us. You know, if instead of being yelled at or put in the other room or put in their crate, they can put on this look and they don't get yelled at or put in the other room or put in the crate,

then that's a look that I would put on as well when I saw you skulking around the doorway or using a tone of voice, for instance. So what generally is the experience of a dog? How intelligent are dogs? And I know there's lots of different breeds and whatnot, but how much of our life do dogs get and how much of their life do dogs get? And how much of their life do we get? I think we get surprisingly little of their life. And that's because of some of the statements that we start to make right away, assuming that they're having the same experience as we are.

Because we're in the same room together. Maybe they're sitting on the couch with us. They must be having the same experience. It's really not like that. They are very cognitively flexible. So especially their social cognition, sort of thinking, using others or understanding others, including human others is pretty good. In fact, much better than most other non-human animals. They look us in the eyes. They certainly can be attuned to things we're saying, not complex sentences, but they learn words of a human language, a language they don't

have themselves. So they can be very sensitive to our behavior and to things that are meaningful to us. So in that sense of intelligence, if we think that humans, you know, classify as the, like, the most intelligent species, they show lots of examples of that, but they are really different intelligence as well, right? I mean, just to give an example, their perceptual world is made up not just of sight, which is decent, their vision is pretty good, but of smells, right? They are mostly recognizing things, seeing the world through smells. So is it more or less smart to understand the world through olfaction instead of vision? I don't know that I could say it's either, you know, it's just a different way of looking at the world.

So when dogs do things, I'll use my own dog as an example. My dog barks at every stranger that comes into the house until she basically gives up. Because I don't know what she's trying to do or say or what she's hoping for. But eventually, if you ignore her long enough, she stops because she's not getting any reaction. And people say, oh, she must have been abused or she must have been, you know, she's not getting any reaction. And, you know, people say, oh, she must have been abused, or she must have been, you know, she's a rescue. I can't figure that out. I don't know why she barks at every stranger. Well, I think you almost just told me why she barks at every stranger.

She's telling you that there's a stranger, right? And, by the way, barking is something that their closest ancestors, wolves, do not do. They probably developed barking, or we bred barking into them over the course of domestication in order to communicate with us primarily, right? It's just at the frequency of speech sounds. They use it kind of to tell us things. Often barking at someone at the door is announcing somebody is here, right? And it's, and or it's a sort of a show of excitement, right? Like barking as kind of hollering, like saying hello. The reason that it continues is if, as you say, somebody turns around and sort of barks

back at them, don't bark. Then you're kind of in conversation, right? That's rewarding. If you ignore them, then the barking eventually stops. So what does a dog typically think about all day long? Well, there are some places that science does not have an answer. And I think that's one of them. I don't know what dogs think about.

I don't even know the medium of their thoughts. You know, obviously, while I think in sentences often, I can't expect that a dog is thinking in sentences. That makes no sense. Certainly, they can anticipate things. They reflect on things. They have memories, but I don't know what form those take. And I'm not even sure what science could start to address that, which is, I think, why people have such elaborate explanations that they put in that place where science doesn't really have an answer. Well, one of the reasons I think people wonder about that is, you know, there is that guilt of feeling like, you know, when people go to work in the morning and they leave their dog alone by itself all day, is the dog just bored out of its mind or is it occupying itself somehow with thoughts or something? Yeah, I think a lot of

behavior indicates that dogs are really bored when they're left alone with nothing to do. This is why, you know, giving them something to do, whether in cases with dogs who like to have other dogs as companions, like another social companion is a great idea. Just having someone else there to experience the world with, having a dog walker or somebody else come by and keep them company or take them out for the adventure of smelling the world or have toys, something else to engage them. If they don't, I think that it's very likely that they are bored. Their behavior certainly indicates boredom. They don't need to sleep all day.

They do that for lack of anything else to do. Should everybody feel guilty for leaving their dogs at home? I think everybody should think about what they can do to sort of provide stimulation for this like sentient creature who we've taken into our lives, but then we've reduced the environment of and they can't control it for themselves. Are dogs like in some ways like humans in the sense that their life as a puppy sort of dictates how they turn out or not. In some ways, I think that's a fair analogy insofar as if things go really well, it's likelier that a dog will be better adapted to all the new things that happen to them in the world.

They'll be better equipped. And that goes from everything in terms of their physical health, if they get plenty of food, to their mental health. If they get lots of stimulation, see a lot of new things in an agreeable way in that early socialization window when they're curious and not yet fearful or afraid. And similarly with people. And do dogs bond with people better if they bond with them when they're puppies or dogs will bond with people at any point in time or they won't or what? Yeah. Dogs are unique in being able to bond with people at all, basically. And if they've been exposed to people at all in the early part of their life, the socialization window is about from four to 14 weeks in puppies, then they have no problem bonding with someone who they see several times and forming a relationship. It doesn't need to be the person

who they later will meet in that early window for them to form that relationship, but they do need to have met people, right? So exposed to this species, basically. If they meet cats, they could also maybe form a later bond with cats. You mentioned a moment ago that one thing you could do is if your dog is bored all day long, get another dog. Is that kind of across the board that dogs prefer or like the company of other dogs as opposed to being all by themselves? Well, that's a great question. I mean, that really does vary by dogs, and it varies by the dog's experience with other dogs. So here's a case where I think owners know their dogs best.

And if your dog never wants to have another dog come over, really stays away from other dogs when you go out for walks or when they're running off leash or you're at a dog park, I would say that adding another dog to that house might be difficult. It might not be healthy for that dog. Instead, it might be difficult. Do dogs care about whether the dogs they're with are the same or different breeds, or to a dog, is a dog a dog? They recognize all dogs as dogs. They absolutely seem to, they do seem to acknowledge if a dog is really differently shaped or sized, right? And in play, actually, they're very good large dogs at self-handicapping so that they can play with really little dogs. And little dogs can often be very confident and aggressive with bigger dogs who do that. But I do notice as well that they seem to be especially responsive to dogs of

their own breed or size and I think that might just be that the communications that happen a lot of bodily communications are always happening the moving of the face and the eyes and the ears and the tail and the whole body posture it might be that they kind of interpret those communications from a dog of their same size or breed more readily, more easily, than they would from a dog of a different breed, right? So for instance, you know, a lot of dogs do a lot of communications with their tails, but there are also breeds that don't have tails. So on seeing a dog of their own breed, they might get glean those conversational cues, but it might be a little bit harder with a dog of a different breed. You know, I've wondered, I don't know if anybody's ever

studied this, you know how human twins have this kind of connection that is hard to explain. Do dogs have the same litter? Has anyone ever looked at whether there's any kind of special bond there that like twins and humans have or a dog is a dog? They certainly are very interested in and responsive to their litter mates when they are growing up together. They learn from each other really readily, much more readily than if you put another dog in with them. And yet, if they're separated from their littermates, as most dogs are, as if they're distributed to human households, for instance, they don't seem to show a lot of recognition when they see that dog again later on in life. So I don't think they think that's just another dog. They do prefer the scent of their siblings much later, if laid on a blanket, than the scent of another dog.

But their behavior doesn't show like this long-lost recognition or affinity for a sibling. So I really want to hear what you have to say about this idea that we've all heard that dogs need to know that you're in charge, that they need to be trained, they want to be trained, they want to do what you want them to do. Yes or no? I don't think so. I think those are kind of misperceptions. I mean, first of all, I don't know why there has to be anybody in charge. It comes from this kind of false notion that their ancestors, wolves, because there's often the descriptive use of parent of the pack as being an alpha,

because there's somebody who kind of organizes parent of the pack as being an alpha, because there's somebody who kind of organizes and leads the pack that somehow we have to mimic that arrangement. You know, the wolf packs are made up, actually, as it turns out, of family members. So it's no different than maybe a parent who is the one who's kind of in charge of the family, but in contemporary society, they're not like laying down the law all the time. They're helping the youngsters, the ones who know less in the family, to just become part of good members of the family and of society. On the other hand, I do agree that they, not that they need to be trained, but that they

need engagement with you. And if you choose to do that through training uh tricks for instance or participating in like a sport like agility with your dogs which does require some amount of training then that can be really rewarding for the dog and also for the person often but it doesn't have to be through training you know they are interested in interaction with you they're social animals uh so it could be any kind of interaction, not necessarily training. But they need that engagement. I agree with that component of it. But you often hear like, if you let your dog pull on its leash, then you're clearly you're not in charge and that the dog needs to be at your

heel following you. And that you need to show the dog that you're the boss. Yeah, I think that's a mistaken notion. What happens if the dog is the boss? They, nothing happens. You're clearly in charge. You're the one who controls when a dog goes outside, when they get to eat, when they get to relieve themselves, for goodness sakes, right? Like humans are in charge of dogs' lives.

But I think that what we should take from that is that we have a responsibility to see what the dog needs in their life and provide for those needs versus worry that they're somehow going to take charge of the family. That doesn't happen. And it's a mistake to create a relationship based on the idea that it might. As you just said, you know, dogs rely on humans for everything, food, shelter, when they get to go to the bathroom, all that. Is that how a dog views its owner? Or is there truly, I don't know how you would figure this out, is there truly love from the dog towards its master, or is it just meet my needs?

I mean, I think it's a very ponderous question whether the dog truly feels love. I think most of their behaviors indicate that they do feel some, what I would call love or affection, if you don't want to use the word love, toward their people. And I think that's but just part of being a member of the family, which is in fact the way most people now think of their dogs as at some level family members. I think they think reciprocally like that, that we are the family, they look out for us, they're interested in where we are and how we're doing, they notice changes in our behavior. They're responsive to us in a way that they might not be responsive to the next person who walks along or walks down the sidewalk. So that affiliation, that affection, that looks love-like to me, but I'd hesitate as a scientist to say, I know exactly what the dog feels like. I would just say, yeah, all their behavior seems to indicate that they experience the love toward us as we toward them. So what about the idea that certain breeds are much smarter than other breeds? Are all dogs,

you know, in the same intelligence ballpark? Or, you know, I mean, I've, you know, Lassie was trained to find Timmy down the well and go call the police and you know my dog couldn't more do that than she could fly to the moon. Well I hesitate always in saying that what a breed or even a particular dog is smarter than any others because it really just asks the question is what are you asking them to do that's smart so there are some dogs like border collies who are really responsive and very astute workers and not only could easily be trained to do the thing they were initially bred to do, you know, herd grazing animals, but also a lot of the dogs who have

learned a lot of words in scientific research have been border collies. So they seem to be really keen on working. However, if what you want a dog to do, if the thing that would make your dog a brilliant dog is just like hang out cooperatively by your side while you're working, and then agreeably go for a walk with you when you wanna go for a walk,

and then agreeably come back in when you wanna come back in, then a border collie is not at all good at that, right? They have a very different temperament and they're not skilled at being that kind of companion animal the way maybe a lab mix would be. So it really depends what you're calling intelligence. And I think in different contexts, we mean different things. So in my estimation, there's no dog that's smarter than another dog. It's just what they're being asked to do. Well, I think for anybody who has a dog or has had a dog or interacts with dogs,

this is really valuable information. I've been speaking with Alexandra Horowitz. She is a researcher who observes dogs for a living, and she's the author of The Year of the Puppy, How Dogs Become Themselves. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Alexandra. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I remember hearing this advice a long time ago, and it made sense to me. It's from a guy named Steve Chandler, who wrote a book called 50 Ways to Create Great Relationships.

He says one of the reasons that we fail to connect with other people is we just try too hard. There's a tendency in our culture to push ourselves and our kids to appear to be exceptional. The downside of being exceptional is we become the exception and therefore become isolated. Because no one really wants to be with an exceptional person. Research shows people like people who are like they are. So if you can convey I'm just like you, you connect with people much better than if you convey, hey, let me show you how great I am. And that is something you should know.

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