Lily gave up a treat she loved because dinner was bigger and better, but now she doesn’t get the treat at all – and she doesn’t even realize it. Lest you think I am picking on poor dogs, there are likely many, many people out there that suffer from a similar phenomenon.
Most dogs are keenly aware of their daily routines, heading to the door for a walk before their owner gets up, deftly positioning themself while you are cooking in the hopes of getting a scrap, or moving over to the food bowl at feeding time. It is unclear what mechanism they use to tell time – some have suggested they are so keenly aware of the very molecules in the air that they can measure differences between events by changes in their count – but it’s overwhelmingly clear they have at least some sense of how time flows, following the similar patterns every day at a minimum. Our aging coonhound, Lily has exhibited a bizarre behavior in this regard, something I have not seen in other canines. Rather than simply anticipating when dinner would be served, she appears to realize that her ability to bark incessantly – if you have not heard the piercing sound of a coonhound, you do not want to – to move up the timing in her favor. Once upon a time, she would have a rawhide treat between 9.30 and 10 PM while we were watching television. The treat would be proceeded by her rumbling on the couch, then leaping from it, then advancing into the middle of the room, looking back at us with a sort of plaintive command and then barking uncontrollably, but over the course of a couple of months, she began this routine at 9, then 8.30, then 8 PM. Perhaps someone as skillful as the dog whisperer could’ve gotten Lily under control during these episodes, making her behave as idealized dogs are supposed to do. Unfortunately, the best my wife and I could ever muster was to calm her down for a moment and get her back up on the couch with a combination of desperate commands, increases in volume, and downright begging. She would not lie down quietly, however, but would remain on high alert in that Sphinx-like pose expressing her superiority, before she leapt off the couch and started the entire routine again. Occasionally, she would just sit in the floor instead, clearly suggesting to us that she very much not under our control and that she would begin barking whenever she wanted. The only solution was to relent and give her the treat earlier than usual, but oddly, this didn’t translate into her wanting another treat at 10 PM. For some reason, Lily still remained satisfied with the single one after dinner, but she managed to push the timing up until she had it immediately. At that point, she would finish her regular food, perform an extensive analysis of the kitchen floor to ensure nothing was missed, sniffing in every corner with her snout like a vacuum cleaner, and start barking again, uncontrollably for her rawhide treat. Afterwards, she would be fine until bedtime.
This new routine persisted until we got a second dog, a young greyhound, Rosie. The greyhound didn’t directly interfere with the treat schedule. Instead, she seemed happy to go along to get along, one of those far more trusting dogs that knows a treat is coming one way or another and simply seeks to position herself to maximize the benefit, usually by laying on the kitchen floor with a concentrated look in her eyes that says don’t you forget about me, but something even stranger happened that we couldn’t possibly have expected. Something that ultimately upended the entire routine, impacting the whole day. The morning schedule had always been to give them breakfast after the first walk of the day, but Rosie, for whatever reason, got up a little earlier than Lily, around 6.30 compared to 7.30. Normally, she would announce she was wake and ready for the day by coming over to my side of the bed, positioning herself where she could not be missed, and effectively saying good morning, worship me and take care of me now given the breed is descended from Egyptian gods. My wife, not realizing precisely how crazy Lily truly was, did not think anything of beginning to feed them both at this slightly earlier time to preserve the overall rhythms of the day at least in principle, figuring what difference could an hour possibly make to a dog with their little doggie brains? Somehow, however, this slight shift in schedule caused the doggie equivalent of a lightbulb in Lily’s head because it wasn’t long before she started getting up even earlier than Rosie. Where once Rosie used to begin the day and Lily used to follow suit, or close enough to it without complaint, all of a sudden Lily was up at 5.30, 4.30, 3.30, 2.30, 1.30, and finally 12.30, barking uncontrollably until she was fed in the same fashion as the treat. First, she would sit up on the bed, alert. Then, she would jump off, stalk around, whine, and bark until she got what she wanted. During this near impossible period, my wife would wake up in the middle of the night, take both dogs for a quick walk, and then feed them before getting back to bed bleary eyed, hoping she would quickly fall asleep despite the interruption and rarely being as successful as she wished. Of course, we attempted to shut the out of control dog down as we did after dinner, but were no more successful, only able to get her back to sleep for fifteen to twenty minutes before she would wake up again, rinse and repeat. Feeding her was the only way to shut her up that worked, so Lily effectively took control of the schedule and kept moving up the time. Before we knew it, we were feeding them both just prior to bed and both were skipping breakfast as a result. Then, the routine had become dinner around the time we had ours, the rawhide treat right after, and a second dinner before bed. Oddly, even at that point Lily never insisted on being fed in the morning, even though that was the routine her entire life. She would instead go for the morning walk as planned, and wait for my wife to give her a tidbit from her own breakfast. To be fair, this was also accompanied by a demanding bark while not insisting on anything further. It was almost as if she knew how many meals and treats she got in a day, understood in some fashion she would not get more than that, and was just impatient to have it all at once – so impatient that she continued her habit of slowly and steadily moving it up.
Thus, right before bed became 10, 9.30, 9.00, 8.30, and then 8.00. The new, completely unplanned routine was dinner, treats, and a second dinner immediately thereafter. This persisted well enough for a couple of months, but then something even stranger and rather counterintuitive happened. Out of nowhere, Lily began refusing the treat after dinner and insisting on the second dinner immediately. At first, we thought this might have been because of her aging teeth – she is rapidly approaching 15 years old – and that she couldn’t handle the rawhide treats anymore because it hurt to eat them. We tried to address this concern with softer treats and regular biscuits, but even though Lily would happily eat both of these tasty-to-a-dog morsels at other times, barking for them in the same incessantly distinctive way she uses for everything else, she began to flat out refuse anything between dinners. Instead, when once she would bark and bark until it was in her mouth, now she only approaches it slowly, studying and sniffing away as if she might well grab it from your hand and return to the old routine. After all, what red blooded American dog turns her nose up at a snack? Ultimately, however, she dismisses the silly treat with a rather dissatisfied sniff, turns away, and starts promptly howling again until she gets the second dinner. For her part, Rosie has been forced to adapt and remains unwilling to give up the treat. Her routine is now a short walk right after the first dinner – by short, I mean she barrels just past the patio, relieves herself as fast as possible, and then runs back in like the yard was on fire – sometimes, believe it or not, she even tries to fake it – and then she gets her treat. Once it’s in her mouth, she races up stairs to eat in peace, but before she is finished, Lily has executed her own new routine and dinner is served. Rosie certainly isn’t going to miss a meal, so she has learned to improvise, either hiding the treat in the couch upstairs or taking it into her crate. After the second dinner, she finishes it at her leisure – all while Lily no longer gets a treat at all.
In other words, the coonhound’s seemingly unique ability, at least in my experience, to anticipate food and grow increasingly impatient to eat it sooner and sooner has resulted in her getting less than she would otherwise – and somehow, she doesn’t even notice. What are we to make of this, both from the perspective of dogs and humans? For all the talk in expert circles about animals being sentient and conscious, and for all a canine’s obvious gifts, it should be equally obvious that they are not good problem solvers and suffer from a general lack of awareness outside their immediate needs. It’s impossible to read the mind of a dog, but it certainly seems to me that her only impetus throughout was an overriding impatience to get food, the sooner the better, but despite her success in that regard, she ultimately ended up with a reduction rather than an increase. Lily gave up a treat she loved because dinner was bigger and better, but now she doesn’t get the treat at all – and because she lacks awareness in the way we would normally define it in humans, she doesn’t even realize it. Lest you think I am picking on poor dogs, there are likely many, many people out there that suffer from a similar phenomenon. They might have the awareness to realize they are getting less rather than more, likely to rail at the unfairness of the world in response, but all too frequently, impatience leads to a lesser outcome than otherwise. As the old saying goes, sooner isn’t always better, the grass isn’t always greener, and we should be careful what we wish for. The same applies to dogs and people.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 