Raymond Coppinger & Lorna Coppinger (352 pages) UK 2004

 A new understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviour and evolution.

"Probably the most important book about dogs ever written."
Dr Erich Klinghammer, Director of Wolf Park.

OUR INTRODUCTION to dogs echoed the childhood experience of millions of children in the United States. We each obtained our first dog when we were eleven years old. Within four decades, we had owned, named, and worked with on the order of three thousand dogs. Lorna’s first dog was a tallish, shorthaired, floppy-eared tricolor mixed breed from a nearby farm. Ray’s was a shortish, shorthaired, tulip-eared, mostly black mixed breed from a litter born behind a warehouse in the city We acquired a jointly owned dog ten years later, when, for Lorna’s college graduation, Ray presented her with a sleek, floppy-eared, orange collie-shepherd mix. During following years, several more dogs lived with us - two incredibly cute beagle pups, two incredibly uncute bloodhounds, an enthusiastic setter type, and an eager English setter. And then our children brought more dogs into our lives: a feisty little Pembroke Welsh corgi for Karyn, and a dozen Chesapeake Bay retrievers for Tim, who raised and trained them for hunting trials and field work.
The change toward a professional relationship with dogs came while we were in graduate school studying biology Ray’s official subject was animal behavior, with research into the evolution of color patterns in tropical butterflies and the reactions of hand-raised birds to novel stimuli. Lorna’s was about visual acuity in birds, and how this makes them such efficient depredators of crops. But at our rural home, the pine grove was filling up with sled dogs and their houses. We had acquired a white husky-malamute female and, as happens to many incipient sled dog racers, the next thing we knew we had five sled dogs, and then ten, and then ... at one point, including puppies, we must have had fifty dogs on hand. Over the twelve years of this competitive endeavor, we surely looked at, discussed, trained, bought, sold, accepted, rejected, and raced a thousand husky-type dogs. The conversation was hardly ever about anything but dogs. The dogs taught us a lot, but we also had a mentor in the next town, Dr. Charles “Charlie” Belford.
Belford was a veterinarian, and we’d heard of him because of his renown as a champion sled dog racer. It was due to him that we got into the sport. Because we had this pure-white, prick-eared husky that was supposedly born on a dog sled during Mush Moore’s famous cross-country marathon, we figured we had a pretty good sled dog. Since Belford was a world-famous sled dog driver (at that time one of the three best dog drivers in the world), we thought he would recognize the quality and breeding of our sled dog.
We took Sitka over for her shots, and waited for the expressions of admiration - which never came. It finally had to be pointed out to Belford that this was a sled dog. How do you know? he asked, and we told him about Mush Moore, and then he asked, “Has the dog ever pulled a sled?”
If only our now dear friend could have told us then that there was no way to look at a standing-still dog and tell if it could pull a sled on the run. If he could have just told us that a running dog had to have the right running shape. If he could have told us that it didn’t matter what the dog’s ancestry was as long as it had the correct size and conformation. Being a Siberian or a malamute didn’t necessarily mean it could run. But, no, we had to learn it all from scratch, for ourselves.
One of us decided to show Belford that the nature of Sitka could be nurtured, and trained her to pull a sled. That is when the yard began to fill up with dogs because it turned out that Sitka needed help, and the various new purported sled dogs (they were purebred Siberian huskies) we acquired were about as good as she was and it took a lot of them to pull a sled - and not very fast. Within a few years, Ray got his Ph.D. and his first real job as a professor at Hampshire College. At the same time he began switching from Siberians to the Alaskan huskies that hadn’t made Belford’s team. The sixteen-dog team he slowly developed over the years eventually ran as fast as any on the New England/Canada circuits. Sometimes they were even number one. Karyn, too, raced a five-dog team, and she helped add to the growing number of trophies. Ray’s team eventually achieved a distinction in racing circuits during the 1970s, because of its leader, an unusual border collie named Perro. Perro was a sort of gift from a statistics professor at nearby Amherst College. He and his family were reluctantly giving away their pet dog because he chased cars all day Perro turned out to be a dog driver’s once-in-a-lifetime lead dog. He was taller and lankier than most border collies, very fast, and he kept the Alaska husky team dogs on the right trail, responding immediately and accurately to “gee” or “haw” Sitka had long before been outrun, and gracefully retired.
Part of the fun with the sled dogs was discovering what makes a good sled dog. Why were purpose-bred sled dogs like Belford’s Alaskans better for thejob than the other dogs people sometimes hitched up - the pointers, the Irish setters, even the Siberians, for instance? Was it the nature (genes) of the dogs or the nurture (developmental environment)? Our hobbies and our professions blended as we began to ask questions about sled dogs. For example, why did some dogs, but not all, form debilitating little “snow balls” of ice crystals between their toes during a race? We designed an experiment comparing footpad sweating of Siberian huskies, coyotes, and wolves, and found out that the domesticated canines and western coyotes had a greater density of sweat glands in their pads than wolves and eastern coyotes. We also asked, How does ambient temperature or training affect a dog’s ability to run? We measured temperatures in running sled dogs, and determined that at ambient temperatures over 60 degrees Fahrenheit, running sled dogs cannot radiate enough heat to counteract the internal heat buildup. Above 60 degrees, they overheat and become ineffective runners. These results provided information about microanatomy and physiology of sled dogs and demonstrated clearly how well adapted they are to their specific environment. We published the results in scientific journals. Ray adjusted the management of his racing team, to the benefit of the dogs. Meanwhile, Lorna finished her degree and was studying the history of sled dogs and taking photographs at the races. She wrote the first comprehensive book about the use of sled dogs for moving freight, aiding exploration, and racing for sport, and about the men and women who drove dogs and achieved success as dog handlers.
Then, during a sabbatical leave from Hampshire College, we began a dog behaviorist’s dream project. The sheep industry needed a new idea for protecting sheep from predators, and the researchers at the Winrock International Livestock Research and Training Center in Arkansas were trying to find out if it was really true that in Europe, special breeds of sheepdogs lived among the flocks and protected sheep and goats from wolves, bears, and human thieves. In the United States at that time, “sheepdog” meant a herding dog. Winrock liked the work we had done in pinpointing aspects of breed differences in sled dogs and asked us to try to sort out the sheepdogs. They sent us on a quest, which began with visits to farms and ranches all across the country. Karyn, newly licensed to drive, and Ray took the sled dog truck and drew a convoluted track across the map of the United States. We covered ten thousand miles during March 1977, and searched out anybody who claimed to know anything about sheep-guarding dogs. There were only about twelve serious stops.
In Texas, we spent days following a komondor, which is a Hungarian flock-guarding dog. Maggie lived with and was in charge of hundreds of goats, and she convinced Ray and Karyn that she was truly protecting those Angoras from the ever-present coyotes and bobcats. We told Win-rock that if you could get one dog to do it then you could get a thousand - if you knew what you were doing, and if you had the right kind of dog. On the trip we managed to talk a cowboy out of Bandit, a cross between a border collie and a Queensland blue heeler cattle-herding dog. The cowboy had taught Bandit that the softer he talked, the madder he was, and we were able to impress our friends with how good the dog’s hearing was by whispering commands over fairly long distances and having her respond immediately.
In those days there was a healthy skepticism about having big dogs in the same pasture with sheep - understandably so. One Texas rancher had enthusiastically bought a komondor or two, but had run into trouble with them chasing and biting his sheep. He told us it was bad enough when he got his predators for free, but he was darned if he was going to pay for them. Our experience, too, from childhood books such as Bob, Son of Battle, told us that dogs chased sheep and ate them. Our sled dogs never killed anything but the best chicken in the neighbor’s flock.
But we had seen Maggie, and so, with the help of Winrock and Hampshire College, we journeyed to the sheep pastures of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, Italy France, Portugal, and Spain, and even, with additional help later on from the Anatolian Shepherd Dog Club of America, to Turkey These were supposed to be fact-finding trips, but like always, we weren’t able to just look. We bought four pups in Yugoslavia and shipped them to Lorna’s mother in Boston. She turned them over to Ray’s cousin Barry, and he added them to the four we had earlier shipped him from Italy and the two from Turkey When we returned from Europe that first summer (via Scotland, where we had picked up six border collies), we found the four Italian Maremmano-Abruzzese pups, the four Yugoslavian Šarplaninacs, and the two Turkish shepherd dogs doing just fine. We kept all sixteen puppies in the same pen, and the question was, What is the behavioral difference between a herding and a guarding dog, and when during a pup’s life do these differences appear?
We knew, of course, that herding dogs were bred to herd sheep and guarding dogs to guard sheep, but we were after the deeper differences between them. What were the differences in their brains that separated so markedly the herding from the guarding behaviors? Why were they different?
We had sold the sled dogs. Twelve years of fall training, winter racing, and spring and summer maintenance were enough. It was time to move on to some new, exciting research.
Between 1977 and 1990 we bred and placed more than fourteen hundred livestock-guarding dogs on sheep farms and ranches across the United States and Canada. The original stock was augmented during successive trips to Europe and Turkey Some of our original grants were extended, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Science and Education Administration added three years of support. We kept track of every dog, recording their successes and failures for fourteen years. We were on the road constantly observing our dogs, camping in high mountain pastures with the flocks, giving talks in grange halls. As part of our academic research, we began studying behavioral variation within the guarding dogs, pondering why some dogs were attentive to sheep and others were not. We also wondered what mechanisms in dogs led to the creation of two very distinct kinds of sheepdogs: those that herd and those that guard. They both worked with sheep (and often, other kinds of livestock), but they looked and behaved very, very differently Was it training, developmental environment, or genetic? Was it nurture or nature?
Sheepdogs are an exceptional subject for behavioral ecologists, or ethologists. Here are two distinct races - herding dogs and guarding dogs - within a single species (Canis familiaris), both chosen to work in the same environment (grasslands), both chosen to respond to the same environmental stimulus (sheep), but their genetic natures call for them to respond to sheep in two distinctly different ways. A biologist has to wonder how two races within the same species have evolved to behave so differently Aside from variations in coat color and size, these two types behave as if they are “wired” in highly differentiated ways.
There is probably no other place in nature where such a perfect situation for comparative study within a species exists. Researchers commonly have trouble sorting out what parts of a behavior belong to the genetic nature of the animal and what parts are a product of development and nurturing. Designing experiments to compare two breeds is difficult, because one of the breeds is always in the wrong environment. If we were trying to find out if the difference in behavior is genetic, we have to observe the two breeds in the same environment in order to eliminate environment as an experimental variable. But if they are adapted to different environments, then one of them will always show atypical behaviors because it is out of its natural environment.
In studying the sheepdogs, we discovered why dogs are to us one of the most fascinating animals on earth. Here are breeds within a single species, animals that have no appreciable differences in their genetic codes, with no infertility between the breeds, and yet they innately learn different things as they mature, even in the same environment. The six border collies and ten livestock-guarding dogs we bought in 1977 were all born in their native countries on or about April 19, transported to our yard before they were eight weeks old, placed in the same large paddock, and cared for by assorted adults, children, and students. No sheep were present. By the time they were ten months old, the border collies were acting like a different species, showing their breed-characteristic “eye-stalk” behavior and trying to herd each other. The guarding dogs played with each other and ignored the collies. None of the guardians ever showed eye-stalk. It was a powerful example of the effects of small genetic differences.
By 1990, we had stacks of data about the two types of sheepdog. We had observed sheepdogs in the farm kennel-laboratory at Hampshire College, out on sheep pastures across the United States, and again in the Old World in their original habitats. We published papers and reports for the scientific and the farming communities. After winding up the applied aspects of the research, we began to look more closely at theoretical and practical implications of what we’d found.
What stood out, in particular, was the fundamental contrast between the two types of sheepdogs. Each showed distinctive behaviors, and the more we studied them, the more we learned about the relative effects of genetics and environment on their adult behavior. We began to see the absolutely critical relationship between a pup’s early development and its abilities to learn or perform a task in adulthood. The reasons for subtle differences in breed behaviors began to become obvious. We think that in this book we can explain these differences and the reasons for them, and thus add an essential dimension to information about dogs.
Many books have been written about dogs: choosing, raising, training; their intelligence, their health problems, their psychiatric problems, their inner lives, their secret lives, and their love lives. They delve into the dog’s domain and try to explain their behaviors. There are good books on dog training, and we know some super dog trainers. Both provide techniques for training, or for modifying a problem dog’s behavior, so that the dog and the people in its environment will enjoy each other. But dog training is commonly done using a technique called the “conditioned response.” It is based on punishment/reward. The animal is punished for a wrong response, rewarded for a correct one. It is basically the same method used to train whales, or rats, or pigeons. The vocabulary and the approach are rooted in the field of psychology—the study of the mind and mental processes.
But dogs are not whales or rats, and especially they are not pigeons; they do not respond to instrumental conditioning in the same way They are a beautifully different organism. But what is that difference? How are they different? Why? How did they get different, and does it really matter?
Some people who work with dogs know the answers to some of these questions. Bird dog trainers know they can’t train a young dog until after it shows “point.” Point is innate; it is wired into the dog’s brain. The same is true with the border collie, which has “eye” hardwired in. It’s impossible even to try to herd sheep with a pup until it shows eye. What a border collie handler does is train the dog when and how to go in order to use the eye. But nobody can train a dog to show eye, or to point.
A few years ago, people who work their sheep with border collies waged a campaign against the registration of their breed by the American Kennel Club. Because showing eye is a genetic trait, it can be selected against, and if border collies are going to be bred for shows and as pets, breeders are going to have to get rid of the eye. We got Perro because he showed eye, stalk, and chase behaviors all day long to passing cars, chasing them up and down the suburban street. A dog that shows eye can be a problem pet. On the other hand, breeding border collies for pets tends to winnow out those with intense working behavior. One can’t have it both ways, as we shall see. That is why working-dog people prefer to keep their top-flight working dogs out of the pet and show markets.
Those trainers and handlers are showing a basic understanding of a dog’s behavior that is rooted in biology and cognitive psychology. They understand that dogs are biological organisms, growing and acting within biological constraints.
Other people who work with dogs and use standard instrumental techniques often come to realize that something is missing. Trainers of dogs to assist physically challenged people, for example, are well aware that over half the dogs that enter training do not finish, or do not qualify at the end of training for their new jobs. They think what they need is a “better” dog. Pet owners complain of dogs that have behavioral problems: they chew furniture, bark all night, have “anxiety attacks.” Could it be that many of these problems could be solved by paying attention to early development of pups, by exposing them early and consistently to the environment and events of their adult life?
Very few dog books have been written by biologists. What we have learned since we took Sitka to Dr. Belford’s office has made it clear that dogs need a new book, based on their biology, explaining what they are, why they are different from wolves and each other, how they got that way, and how their relationships with people can be enriched so both species benefit. We hope this book will fulfill that need.
We have tried to treat all the dogs in this book consistently But we realize that even though we are supposed to be unbiased, objective scientists, we are also two of the world’s most avid admirers of dogs. Our prejudices may show through and we may make mistakes. If our preconceptions are unfounded, we apologize. If the controversial portions generate discussions that lead to improved relationships with dogs, then we will suffer all criticism, and admire the dogs (and their human symbionts) even more.

Highly Recommended!