Annette's Adventures

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pride

glacial lake at the end of the trail

I’ve owned Diego since he was four months. I did everything with him, socialized the hell out of him, he loved other dogs when he was young. We went to training classes, etc.

And then one day when he was about eight months old he jumped a dog. He no longer tolerated strange dogs.

And I felt like fucking hell. I believed that “it’s all how you raise them” shit. Here I am doing my best with this dog, and he turns out like this! I seriously considered rehoming him.

It took a lot for me to get out of that stupid mindset. I took him to behaviorists and trainers who all pretty much said the same thing - that’s his personality.

She’s a rottweiler, so a breed prone to being aggressive. And she was neglected as a pup, when I got her she was skinny, half bald with mange and jumpy if you moved to fast around her head. And she was the wriggliest, friendlisest pup you could ever imagine (if a little shy, which she still is). If it were all in how you raise them, she’d be a mess.

She’s been home about 3 days in this picture:

LET’S HAVE A TALK ABOUT SOME MOTHERFUCKING REACTION RANGES, KIDS. 

A reaction range (or range of reaction) is the intersection of nature and nurture in terms of traits which are variable, complex, and (in some way) quantitative. Things like wariness and intellect are not ‘quantitative’ in the same way that jelly beans in a jar are but they are called so in this instance with the understanding that ‘qualitative’ means things like, spotted or drop earred. With quality you either are or your aren’t. With quantity there is a possibility to be more or less of a trait. (Please hold comments on how dogs can be more spotted or less spotted, etc… This is how these things are defined in this setting, just bear with me)

So, with this in mind, friendliness, or it’s converse, aggression, are both defined as quantitative traits. You can be more friendly or less friendly, more aggressive or less aggressive. It is a spectrum. In a simplified imagining of this you have one side which is an imaginary dog who never knew a stranger, absolutely loves everyone and everything and would never snap or growl under any circumstances, on the other sides is another, equally imaginary dog who is aggressive towards everything and everyone, knows no ally and never has accepted a kind hand in its life. 

These are extremes. In the grey area in the middle lies every dog you have likely ever met in your whole life and every dog you are likely to meet ever. These are also specific. The spectrum for dog-agression is not the same as human-agression, not the same as prey-drive, and in real life is often separated between sexes and sizes and personalities of other dogs. (ie; same-sex-dog-aggression, larger-dog-aggression)

This is where the nature comes in. Each dog (and creature) is born with a set range of possible outcomes for these quantifiable traits, in this case dog-friendliness (we will ignore the narrower categories for now and try to put them in this simpler umbrella). If we set this spectra on a scale of 1-150, higher numbers being friendlier dogs, then a sample dog, must fall on this number scale.

So, we have a litter of puppies and pick one at random, we name him Tom. Tom is a Shepherd mix who we know, though our all-powerful hypothetical powers) is born with a reaction range from about 80-111. As he matures Tom can land anywhere on this spectrum of friendliness from 80-111. 

This is where nurture comes in. If we clone Tom twice and give Tom1 to a deprived home with no training and almost no socialization and that will abuse him, Tom2 to an average home that is well-meaning and offers some training and socialization and treats him pretty well otherwise, and then we give Tom3 to an enriched home, a dog expert who trains him well, socializes him from the first day, and loves on him as often is appropriate, each Tom will grow up to fall on different parts of the reaction range. Tom1 ends up on the lower end of the spectrum, around 83, Tom2 is mid-range, around 92, and Tom3 is on the high end of the spectrum, around 108. The more enriched environments give the best possible outcomes. 

Now we introduce another dog, Miguel, a hearty little Lab mix who was recently rescued from an abusive home. We know that Miguel has a friendliness range from 97-125, higher than Tom. So, we compare him to the three Toms. (pretend this is friendliness not IQ)

Miguel is more friendly than the equally deprived Tom, and just as friendly as the average Tom, despite having a poorer quality of life. If given to a home which is patient with him, Miguel may have a chance of rising higher on his scale and, one day, may be even friendlier than the enriched Tom. 

But, you may ask, can Tom ever be as friendly as an enriched Miguel that is at the tom of his reaction range? No. The absolute answer is no. Each dog is born with their own innate range, woven into their very core by the wonders of genetics. You can make a dog as high on it’s range as it can go- but it can never go higher. Tom will never be able to be as friendly as Miguel, but the Tom raised in the enriched home will be much friendlier than the Miguel who was raised by the deprived home and received no help, too little help, or help too late. 

How does this influence how we look at our own dogs?

The reaction range warns us to all heed the over-arching themes within each breed type- they exist for a reason. Chows were bred to guard and will be more wary of strangers, Hounds were bred to track and will follow their noses, and fighting breeds were bred to be dog aggressive and will be more likely to not get along well with others. You may have the most dog friendly, well bred and trained Cane Corso in the world, but realize that it will never be as friendly and amiable as most any decently bred Golden raised to it’s full potential, and getting it there will involve your hard work and diligence. 

It also encourages us to train the dog that we have- not the dog we wish we had. If you have an aggressive and reactive dog but wish to play flyball… you are going to have to think realistically. If you can’t even walk on the opposite side of the street as another dog without having to pull all the stops to keep your dog under the control of it’s training (leave it!! watch me! watch me! good boy! sit. good boy! watch me!) and keep it from snarling and lunging- then congrats, you have taken your reactive dog and made the best of it’s genetics by bringing it to the top of it’s reaction range. BUT you would be making a mistake to try and get this dog to do more than it can, or at least to try after getting strong feedback that it would be unfruitful to try again.

It does not make you a failure of a owner or trainer that your dog can not do the things that the dogs of others can. Read that again. It does not make you a failure of a owner or trainer that your dog can not do the things that the dogs of others can. If anything it makes you a wonderful owner and trainer to recognize what your dog is capable of and strive to bring it to the best of it’s ability without pushing it to an impossible goal.

So, do your research when choosing a breed, talk to the shelter or breeder extensively, gauge what your dog is capable, and accept the roof of possibility when you hit it. Your dog is your dog and no one else’s- all you are expected to do is make it the best dog it can be with the genetic code it was born with. 

Every puppy on Earth goes through multiple “fear periods” and “socialization periods”, starting from the first day he is born. Puppies are born without their senses aside from smell (from day one, a puppy’s sense of smell is already stronger than a humans!), and from hereon out, every single interaction he has is a learning experience and will shape how he turns out to be as an adult. Many experiences are taught by the owners (usually later on, when the puppies are beginning to wander around and it becomes time to sell them), whether intentionally or without knowing at all. A puppy whose mother is a poor mother will be shaped by how she treats her puppies, and he will be shaped by how his siblings treat him. A puppy who is only 21-49 days old and is routinely beaten up by his litter mates may grow up to have a lower threshold for tolerance to roughness or aggression. A puppy who investigates the family cat and gets swatted may become fearful or aggressive towards cats later on. Conversely, a puppy who has NOT been been introduced to rough playing or has not had his limits pushed by his littermates may grow up to be a rough player, who doesn’t understand the limits of other dogs and is routinely “bullying” other dogs at the park and getting into fights. A puppy who hasnt been introduced to men or people in glasses or hats prior to his first fear period may become terrified of people like this.

Certain dog breeds (like hounds, fighting breeds, retrievers, etc) that are bred for a certain temperament will generally have a set guideline for how they will react. Of course, depending on how the puppy’s socialization and fear periods went in his youth, he may still develop fear of random things or objects. Gun dogs, for example, are taught from an early age to be desensitized to the sound of gun shots  and similar noises like thunderstorms, this is the same way that we teach dogs to become less fearful of such noises.

A Golden Retriever is still most likely going to want to perform instinctual tasks that were bred into his ancestors, like swimming and retrieving. A bully breed is still going to want to fight, and these things are normal behaviours for the dogs.

You can raise a bully breed up as fine as you can from day 1, and his genetics are still going to trump his puppyhood in the end. A bully breed who is aggressive towards dogs isn’t necessarily fought, and didn’t necessarily have negative experiences with his littermates during puppyhood. (In actuality, squabbling and fighting is pretty normal for any breed of puppy, and is a sign that it’s about time to seperate and sell the puppies).

This painting is inspired by my recent trip to China. Growing up there I always had poor health and would cough up a lot of phlegm, and every time I went back I would bring a smog mask. This time I forgot to pack mine, so the first few days back I thought I could just tough it out. I ended up developing a fever, coughing none stop, and my lungs burned so much.

Yeah, I got one of Tumblr’s you-may-have-unwittingly-interacted-with-propaganda-blogs emails too. And like everyone else, I kind of shrugged because really, what am I supposed to do about that now? I have search disabled on my blog, and my tags are a mess; there’s no way I could go through and actually find any of the propaganda I may have inadvertently boosted over the seven years I’ve been on this site.

But out of curiosity I looked over Tumblr’s list of IRA-linked blogs. And one username stood out to me. I recognised it because for several months last year it had been showing up constantly in my notifications after I reblogged one of their posts with a response.

That username was black-to-the-bones, and this is the post I reblogged from them:

When I first saw the post by black-to-the-bones, I wanted to know more about these women. I dug up the original Tweet, ran a reverse Google image search and… well, as you can see from my reblog, there turned out to be quite a lot of information about them on the internet, which I spent the next hour or two collating into my post.

Now, don’t get me wrong here: I am one hundred percent aware that history regularly erases the contributions of women, and especially women of colour. But as you can see from my reply, in this particular case the history of these three women absolutely is not “hidden from us”. The person attempting to hide these women’s history was black-to-the-bones themself.

The original post – which we now know was posted by a state-sponsored propaganda blog – took a legitimate issue, but misrepresented facts to stir up emotion about that issue. The issue was perfectly tailored to resonate with Tumblr’s culture of social justice, and it worked. The vast majority of reblogs of the original post do not include any correction or further information.

Again, don’t get me wrong: anger is important. It’s a necessary part of social justice. But we have clear evidence that bad-faith actors are intentionally fomenting false anger to keep us reacting emotionally rather than thinking rationally. And they are smart about it. They will mix in their attempts to divide and enrage us with innocuous cute videos to gain followers, and legitimate posts about issues. So that when they do post actual misinformation, it slips under our radar.

When propaganda blogs do something like try to smear a Jewish woman as a white supremacist, it’s obvious who their target is, and what their goal is. But I wanted to highlight the black-to-the-bones post above because it’s a subtler, more insidious kind of propaganda. It’s part of a continuum of tactics designed to keep up a constant background noise of outrage. 

Because while anger is important, constant anger makes it harder for us to empathise with each other. It makes it harder for us to be constructive, rather than destructive. And ultimately, it just exhausts us and leaves us too apathetic to care.

So getting back to my original question: What are we supposed to do about that now?

Fact. Check. Everything.

Your racist grandparents aren’t the only ones being targeted by fake news. We are being targeted with posts that are specifically designed to appeal to Tumblr’s social justice culture. So if you see a post about an issue that makes you angry, stop before you reblog. Check the source. Google the details. Make sure your anger about legitimate issues isn’t being exploited by malicious actors.

Jane Smiley (via inspired-to-write)

Somehow this is the most inspiring thing I’ve read in a long time. I’m going to go write now.

(via joleebindo)

YES, no work has to be perfect. But it has to be in motion.