Stephanie Tobin was doing her BS Honors in psychology (Salem State University, US) when Maythil met her on ResearchGate (RG). Maythil was intrigued by what Tobin was trying to demonstrate in the reaserch she was conducting. It’s about what’s amiss in the modern version of communication in the dog-human relationship that began around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Maythil had already reached that topic in a Zebra Crossing article through a totally different tangent.

Lilly Cheriyan vaguely recalls that Maythil had mentioned this in one of his other coulumns, but we have no information about it straight from the horse’s mouth. Hence our great surprise when we came across an edited transcript of a ‘conversation’ between Maythil and Tobin. It was in a pen drive (among “et cetera”) that Maythil has courierd to us because it contains 100s of ZC articles. We say “Edited” because most of the transcript is what Tobin said. First I will upload it, and then I will reproduce the entire corresppondece sometime later. Stay tuned.

Goal: The present study attempts to empirically demonstrate a lack of successful communication between the two species’ modern day version of their ancient relationship. The ultimate goal is to raise awareness about how little the general population knows about interacting with dogs, the negative influence this has on our relationship with them as a species, and its consequences. The intent is to improve the treatment of dogs.

Rad Maythil: I admire this project, Steff.

Stephanie Tobin: Thank you, Rad!

RM: It reminds me of Konrad Lorenz’s amazing illustrations of what I would call postural semantics.

ST: What a great way to put it, I love it!

RM: Let me reproduce a few lines from a note that I have written for my Sunday column in a newspaper: “Tail wagging the dog used to be just an idiom, but no more. Emotional states can cause asymmetry in a dog’s tail-wagging.behavior. Italian researcher Giorgio Vallortigara found that there is a right bias when dogs are happy or at ease (when they are positive, in short), and a left bias when they are disturbed or unhappy (when they are negative, in short). Have you come across this in your research?

ST: I have, actually!

~ Before I respond, I’d like to first just briefly draw attention to the fact that I have never heard the phrase “tail wagging the dog” prior to your comment! I’m not sure if it’s related to the times or if it is because I have never been one for using idioms or other illustrative phrases (at least not outside of my own imagery). I had to Google the phrase, it’s certainly an interesting one! Especially considering how expansive the general consensus regarding the tail wag is.

~ Tail wagging is a fascinating topic in general, particularly due to the consensus of the general public assigning it a label that identifies it as strictly a sign of happiness. I found that research to be enlightening, my only issue is that my eye sight can be very poor, causing me to be more sensitive to height levels and speed/nature of movement! Therefore, I’ve been unable to try applying it to daily life, but I certainly read one of the articles released recently regarding the matter.

~ Tail wagging is very interesting, for roughly the same reason the human translation of dog “smiles” is a fascinating topic. A lot of my research was built on the two species’ different focus points during the process of communication. My literature search found that dogs look at the whole body, whereas humans tend to focus on the chest up, primarily the area around the face [*1].

~ My theory grew into the suspicion that humans are unaware that attention to the entire body and it’s signals is required to accurately communicate with dogs (which you see a great example of in my publication of Shepherd’s (2002) ethograph, the two last behaviors in the columns, one that she pointed out since only a slight head tilt signaled the difference between the two very different messages being conveyed), and tend to focus on the facial area, vocalizations (not a part of my research, just an omitted piece of my theory), and other stereotyped areas, including the tail. Things such as ear and tail movements, responses that we do not possess or include in our species’ communication process, we learn a thumbnail idea of what they mean causing an inappropriately simplified understanding of each of those signals. Then the parts that we do share with them, such as what we might label as “smiling”, we tend to equate to our own meaning of the gesture. Pairing this with the research on the human response to smiling (fascinating stuff, including a study [*2]), which found a correlation between the smile and an increase in another individual’s likeliness of engaging with the smiler, takes a whole new angle to look at.

~ The research of G. Tami and Gallagher (2009) found results that support the idea of certain areas of the canine body receiving focus from the human observer, including face, tail, and full body movements (rather than looking to the individual signals that help to differentiate between behaviors E and H of Shepherd’s (2002) ethograph and their messages). I conducted an earlier study in which I attempted to collect this data using a “free-choice/response” technique but found it to be unsuccessful. The topic of tail wagging, smiling, and other signals are certain to reveal a much deeper and more detailed idea of what humans are comprehending when engaging in this interspecies communication. However, for the time being I’ve had to put those on the back burner while I attempt to design a method that illustrates their general capabilities to decipher the simplified version of the messages in Shepherd’s (2002) ethograph.

~ I also was attempting to produce one of the first studies to directly compare the human and dog communication comprehension capabilities. I hope that once I’m able to create a nearly entirely reliable and valid tool to measure the human capability to understand the dog, and perhaps after I’ve gotten the comparison study to a better place, I will be able to focus on the individual canine signals viewed by humans in order to get a more detailed idea of what’s going on when an average human finds themselves face-to-face with a dog.

~ I do steer clear of the idea of emotions in the dog, and in general. I concentrated in behaviorism while in school, and our take on emotions is that they’re not yet a reliable item to measure, as there’s no way to identify them using rMRI scans [*3] nor is there a way to collect accurate data through other methods such as self-report, primarily since the experience of each emotion is individualized. As covert behaviors they’re too difficult to measure in humans and, as of now, cannot be reliably measured or have their existence confirmed (although anyone who’s spent time with one of these animals knows emotions do exist within the species) within the dog. Therefore we don’t acknowledge them as a par of the research, instead we view the basic biological responses (fear, resource-seeking, neutral/unstimulated, etc.) and the physiological reactions they elicit, then translate them into a basic message of what the dog wants (engagement, space, etc.).

~ Other than that there’s no difference between the approach other than the terminology of the foundational eliciting stimuli. I try to steer clear of utilizing articles that differ in this particular terminology because the equating of the two different types is purely conjecture. I have read a number of them though (I believe only a few are cited in my project at this moment – I’ll put them in the references).

~ That’s certainly an incredible topic. Thank you for sharing a snippet of your article!