Guilty, Guilty, Guil — Oops, Not Guilty
Jolanta Benal, CPDT-KA, CBCC-KA
First, watch this priceless “guilty dog” video.
[Insert interval of helpless laughter.]
Now watch it again, and this time keep a close eye on how Tank the Bull Mastiff changes his body language as his guardian speaks to him. I think he looked a little subdued even to begin with, probably because of that garbage-can-lid neck gear … but still, this video is a perfect example of how easy it is to make our dogs appear “guilty.” The man in this video is super, super mild — even humorous — in the way he reprimands Tank, but it’s enough to produce that look.
People who study dog cognition and behavior are just about 100 percent sure that dogs don’t connect their humans’ reprimands with their own behavior unless the reprimand is instantaneous. (And even then, dogs sometimes get the wrong idea. The classic example is the puppy scolded for a housetraining mistake. His guardian thinks she’s scolding him for peeing in the house. He thinks she’s scolding him for peeing. Oops, way to teach the puppy not to pee in front of you but go behind the sofa instead.)
Anyway, Tank here has a clue that his person’s Not Pleased About Something, and maybe he has a clue that Something has to do with his person being present at the same time that there’s garbage on the floor, but there’s a snowball’s chance that he’s thinking anything like “Oh, I really shouldn’t have dumped out the garbage.” And as for feeling guilty — we can’t prove for sure that he doesn’t, but probably not.
The dog researcher Alexandra Horowitz did an experiment about dogs’ guilty looks a couple of years ago.
While dogs’ owners were out of the room, she set the dogs up to eat or not eat treats that the owners had told them to leave alone. Then she told the people whether the dogs had eaten the treats, but she didn’t always tell them the truth.
People whose dogs had supposedly eaten the forbidden treats were instructed to reprimand their dogs. People whose dogs had supposedly not eaten the treats were instructed to greet them normally.
Guess which dogs acted significantly more guilty? Yup, it was the dogs being reprimanded — and they acted guilty whether or not they’d eaten the treat. As for the dogs who didn’t get reprimanded, they didn’t act guilty – again, whether or not they’d actually eaten the treat. The dogs that acted the most guilty were the “innocent” dogs who got reprimands!
The moral of the story? Well, it’s got two. Pay attention to how your tone and body language affect your dog — he may be more sensitive than you think! And think twice before you assume he “knows” … whatever. Our dogs’ brains aren’t that big and wrinkly. Honest!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Jolanta holds professional certifications in both training and behavior counseling and belongs to the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She also volunteered with Pet Help Partners, a program of the Humane Society of the United States that works to prevent pet relinquishment. Her approach is generally behaviorist (Pavlovian, Skinnerian and post-Skinnerian learning theory) with a big helping of ethology (animal behavior as observed in non-experimental settings).