Culture Clash Essay

Jaclyn Dignan

Culture Clash Paper

2/1/07

The one thing that humans have a hard time understanding is that animals do not think like humans at all. Their mentality is living off of food, shelter, and sex. Culture Clash really helped me realize just how confusing an animal’s behavior really is. It’s not impossible to get to an animal’s level of behavior using Pavlov’s operant and classical conditioning, which is fascinating. A few of the more confusing things that I have come across are how to actually understand how the animal, in certain situations, is feeling. It’s hard to have an animal cooperate with what you’re trying to achieve when you yourself cannot understand the behavior that that animal is showing. When brainstorming for this book report I decided to focus mainly on one subject from Culture Clash which was the discussion on aggressive behavior in dogs. Aggression in dogs is very confusing as to where it comes from and why. I really wanted to figure out where the clash between humans and dogs really is when the dog is the aggressor. After reading Culture Clash it definitely made it more clear.

Aggressive Behavior in Dogs and Cats by Peter L. Borchelt and Victoria L. Voith and Culture Clash had a lot of the same view on aggressive behavior in dogs, but also a lot of differing views. Culture Clash definitely went more in depth as far as reasons for aggression and how to solve such aggression in dogs especially. One of the subjects that the two do not agree so much on is the fact that aggression is hard to define. Culture Clash labels aggression as biting, growling, snarling, injury etc. In Aggressive Behavior in Dogs and Cats by Borchelt, aggression is rarely used in those terms. Most of the time the dog is being aggressive because it is frightened. Humans can overpower an animal and make it feel inferior. When this happens an animal, such as a dog, may growl or snarl only because it feels vulnerable. The cowering sign that dogs do when the owner may walk into a mess is only a sign of fear. This is a common misconception in humans. I don’t feel that the two texts differ, but I do think that the Borchelt piece has a lot better understanding and easier knowledge about dog’s aggression towards people, other animals etc. Culture Clash has a lot of the same information on aggressive behavior as well, but a lot harder to understand. Without having a background class in psychology, I probably wouldn’t have known a lot of the information being given in Culture Clash. “There is some research that suggests stress during pregnancy, can potentiate stress over responsiveness in adult offspring.” (Donaldson 55) Both Culture Clash and the Borchelt article had a section referring to aggression during pregnancy. The mother dog can become very protective of her litter and may snarl or growl at passers. This is a natural behavior but can be mistaken for being very aggressive towards humans. I really enjoyed how in Culture Clash there was a list of things that even humans can do that may or may not be taken as being aggressive. It really made me wonder whether dogs are really trying to be aggressive when they act in certain ways. One of the examples used was a boy swatting at a wasp and proceeding to get stung. Normally this would not be seen as an aggressive behavior just like a mother dog protecting her young shouldn’t be seen as an aggressive behavior. There’s a very fine line as to what is and what isn’t being aggressive for a dog.

Outside of class I have heard and seen many different aspects of canine behavior. One of the things that everyone has grown up seeing is Lassie and how wonderful of a dog she is. When in reality I don’t think any dog could react like that in a situation without being trained. My neighbors also have not set a very good example when it comes to taking care of a dog. He’s a hunter so the dogs are hunting dogs, but he treats them more like hunter than he does a dog. All animals need a sense of compassion and love from an owner to know they are wanted and like, but my neighbor doesn’t seem to do that very well with his dogs. The dogs are always kept outside and bark and bark and bark. From the looks of it they are not very loved which is a very upsetting thing to see. Watching movies have also given me a bad perception on certain breeds of dogs. The Sandlot is one movie that has always made me afraid to be around big dogs. To this day being around big dogs has always made me nervous. The thing that’s so funny is that if a Chihuahua were bigger than it was, it could also be a very vicious dog. The size doesn’t necessarily matter. If the dog is vicious then it’s going to be vicious no matter what size. Sandlot gave me the impression that this huge dog was a man-eater and killed kids. Having that type of entertainment