October 20, 2024, 10:12 am | Read time: 11 minutes

“Hierarchy has nothing to do with stepping down. If you apply this to the dog-human relationship, it gets scary,” says Dr. Juliane Kaminski. The well-known dog researcher studies how dogs learn and think. PETBOOK author Manuela Lieflaender asked her whether dogs are different today than they were 20 years ago and what they really need from us.

PETBOOK: There are dog experts who claim that dog behavior has changed in the last 10 to 20 years. Today, for example, there are dogs that smile at their humans. How do you see this?
Dr. Juliane Kaminski: “20 years is too short a period of time to change anything genetically. You can only talk about differences between individuals. But this is not necessarily a change over the last 20 years. The only thing we can say is that breeding requirements have increasingly focused on external characteristics over the last 100 years, especially with standard breeds, which have to conform to an external standard. The behavioral component has clearly been neglected. We notice this with modern breeds.

The Border, the Labrador, which are very popular, where breeding goals are left out. If at all, they are only external. Behavior or temperament rarely plays a role. We have problematic developments – behavioral difficulties that are genetically predisposed.”

My impression is that we won’t make any progress with education methods that work according to a formula. Instead, we need to make the effort to understand our dog’s needs and find our own way to reach our goal. How do you see this?
“That’s not specifically my research topic. But behaviorally, I agree – you have to learn to read dog language before you get a dog. Some dogs show signals more subtly than others. This often has to do with anatomy. But when it comes to training or learning, it’s very standardized. There are certain patterns. There are differences in temperament and sensitivity. You have to adapt the training to that.”

Which learning method do you prefer as a scientist?
“I think positive learning methods are important. We need to get away from the old methods and instead deal with the dog in a positive and cooperative way. Dominance and hierarchy have no place in dog training. At the same time, I think the development in the dog world is following the child-rearing world, and that is also exaggerated.”

Dr. Juliane Kaminski: “Hierarchy has nothing to do with stepping down. If you apply that to the dog-human relationship, it gets creepy.”

Nevertheless, dogs live in hierarchies.
“Of course they do. Hierarchies exist in every group of mammals. We know that from dogs living in the wild. There are a few groups that don’t actually have anything to do with humans, and there’s no supplementary feeding. If you look at these dogs, you can see that hierarchies develop there, too. My problem with the term is this misinterpretation on the human side. Humans equate hierarchy with oppression, but that doesn’t exist in hierarchical systems. These systems do not function through violence. In some cases, they don’t even involve physical conflict but are regulated by age. And the human-dog relationship is also based on cooperation and interaction and not on dominance.”

Do we still know too little about how to deal with dogs?
“In many countries, it is a huge problem that the profession of dog trainer is not regulated at all. People don’t know which trainers really know their stuff. That needs to change. There are still too many outdated methods in circulation. Especially this distorted perception of what hierarchy actually is. Hierarchy has nothing to do with stepping down. If you apply this to the dog-human relationship, it gets scary. It’s not compatible with animal welfare.”

The situation of dogs living in the wild cannot be transferred to our cohabitation with dogs or to multi-dog ownership. The oldest dog is not the boss. On the contrary, in a multi-dog household, things can get so bad that the constellation no longer works.
“There will always be stress in group life. Nevertheless, no dog steps from the top to the bottom. Behaviorally, that’s not what happens in groups. The purpose of hierarchies is to provide structure and context. No animal spends the whole day trying to get on top of the others. Hierarchies are not established through physical violence but very often through the position of the mother within the pack. In other words, if she has a high rank. There are various combinations in this respect, as the animals are often related to each other.”

So you should only work with positive reinforcement and treats?
“I don’t see it as anti-authoritarian. What we know is that the dog has adapted to us. It has become more and more cooperative. In terms of temperament, it has become more receptive to cooperating with us. Over thousands of years, it has learned to get along with us and with living together. In this constellation, it is attuned to our communication, to reading and interpreting us. These are the results of our research. Violent suppression is out of place. Dealing with the dog must be positive. Certainly, boundaries can be set physically. But physically communicative.”

“People have the wrong idea about dogs”

If the dog has adapted so well to us, how do you explain the fact that animal shelters are overcrowded and there are so many dog trainers?
“I explain it by the uncontrolled production of puppies. People buy on the internet, and that’s a huge problem. The increasing humanization also plays a role. You can see this in the posts on Instagram: the dog is a status symbol of the perfect family member. It does everything: kisses the baby and dances with the children. Everything presented to you puts pressure on the dogs and leads to excessive demands. People have the wrong idea about dogs. Hard work is required to get the dog to do a lot of things. The stress signals that dogs send out when they don’t like hugs, for example, are not recognized at all. People don’t recognize the boundaries of their dogs.

Boundaries are individual: not every dog can be taken everywhere, and not every dog can handle children. You have to accept these boundaries. Unfortunately, dogs are only bought for their looks. My penultimate dog was a Ridgeback. On a walk, I once met a woman with a Labrador who said to me: ‘I couldn’t decide whether to get a Labrador or a Ridgeback; they’re both so cute. But you can’t compare these dogs at all in terms of their temperament and what they’ve been bred for. And that’s what I mean by that – people often don’t care about the needs of their dogs.”

Dr. Juliane Kaminski: “People often don’t care about the needs of their dogs.”

What do you think dogs need? And how should we respond to them?
“That varies from person to person. It depends on the breed. We have to ask ourselves, what has my dog been bred for? You have to deal with that. Some want to sniff a lot; others want to tug at something, and others want to dig. You have to look at the original working function and make room for this need. If a dog wants to grab prey, I have to give it the chance to tug at something or break something. If it wants to follow a scent, I should do nose work with it.

Mental stimulation is important. Some dogs don’t like to walk that much. Then give it something to do in the house: sniffing games, hiding things, letting it experience smells. Hide food in the house, hide objects. Hide food under small containers or pots. This can be easily integrated into everyday life. I think sniffing mats are great. You can also simply throw a handful of food into the garden. However, you shouldn’t overdo it. Dogs should sleep 16 hours, some even more.”

Let’s get back to your research. What is your favorite project?
“The Border Collie Rico fascinates me the most because what I’ve learned is that not many dogs can do what they can, and you can’t teach it to everyone. When I first saw Rico on TV, I couldn’t believe that it could tell 250 toys apart. I thought it was actually doing something completely different, namely reading its owner’s body signals. I didn’t think it was paying attention to the words. This is still the most exciting thing for me in my career because I didn’t expect it to be like this. My suspicion from the start was that some dogs can do this and others can’t. But I wanted to know what the cognitive differences were. So we launched an appeal to find the “Rico dogs” and found a group of 12 dogs worldwide. We are currently working with them.”

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Dr. Juliane Kaminski: “There are no breeds that are smarter than others”

Which breeds are we talking about? The usual suspects Border Collies, Aussies …?
“No. It’s exactly this way of thinking that annoys me because these are breeders’ slogans. For a while, the poodle was considered particularly intelligent; then, it was the border collie. We have found no evidence of this in our work. The Rico dogs, for example, distinguish objects by name, and they also include a pug and a Doberman. Of course, breeds such as the Border or the Australian Shepherd are over-represented. But that’s because they have a high motivation to work, for which they were bred. They are generally more willing to look for a job if they don’t have one otherwise. That’s where this perception comes from.”

So, these breeds aren’t that intelligent?
“I’m not saying they’re not intelligent; I’m just saying there are no significant differences in cognitive ability. They are just particularly hard-working and bred to pay special attention to our signals.”

How do you work with these 12 dogs?
“It’s about finding out in which area they show special abilities. Whether they can remember certain things particularly well. We have created a small intelligence test for dogs to find out where the differences are compared to other dogs that can’t distinguish so many concepts.”

What has your research done for you in terms of dog ownership?
“I first realized that I had a lot of myths in my head. Instead of going on walks for hours, I play mental games with my dog at home. That’s where my research comes in handy. I’ve always trained in a positive way. As best I can, I try to train everything positively.”

Do you work exclusively with classical conditioning?
“There are different learning mechanisms; conditioning is definitely one of them. Social learning. Dogs don’t imitate, but they benefit from having seen a procedure. By positive, I mean how can I make my dog understand what I want him to do? How can I achieve this? You often have to take much smaller steps than you think. I’m not a fan of thinking that dogs only work through conditioning. My research has shown that dogs can think flexibly. Not everything has to be conditioned, as with robots. First of all, the dog has to understand what is expected of it, and this is achieved through repetition and positive mechanisms.”

I read more and more often that, according to scientific findings, dogs are an intermediate species between animals and humans, so to speak. What do you think?
“I think a lot of truth is being lost in the press. Dogs are domesticated animals. They are strongly adapted to living with us. This can be seen in their behavior, their temperament, and their anatomy. They are not the wild form. You could perhaps say they are something between a wolf and a human, but that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. Nevertheless, they are living beings that have different needs from humans in many areas. It is not necessarily helpful to negate this.

If we look at all dogs, 85 percent of them live as street dogs, village dogs, or wild dogs all over the world. This Western perception of dogs is an extreme form of dog ownership that is not the norm. That’s not a bad thing; I keep my dog like that, too. But if you look at it as a species, then this way of life is not adapted to this species, but an extreme. Our way of keeping dogs is a niche. It’s only been around for 100 or 200 years. It’s a modern thing. Therefore, it’s not accurate to say that the dog isn’t truly a dog.”