Originally published in
slightly different form on July 20, 2012 at PsychologyToday.com.
Dr. Stanley Coren has done
a very interesting study showing that people who are told that a dog has a
tough-sounding name, like Killer or Bruiser, are more likely to see dog’s
behavior as aggressive than if the dog has a cozier name, like Buddy or Champ.
Dr. Coren enlisted 291
university students. Each volunteer was given a booklet which read: “We are
interested in your ability to determine the personality and intentions of dogs
by simply looking at their behavior. We will show you a brief video clip of a
dog … interacting with a person. Watch the dog carefully because we will be
asking you some questions about [its] behavior.” However the dog’s name was not the
same in all of the test booklets. Half of the booklets gave the dog’s name as Ripper,
Killer, Assassin, Butcher, Gangster and so forth. The other half gave more
positive names like Champ, Teddy, Happy, Buddy, Lucky, etc.
The observers were then
shown a short video clip, taken from a television series starring a German
shepherd: A man walks into view, then from off screen we hear some barking. The
dog appears on screen and runs up to the man. There’s a close up of the dog
barking at the man. Then the dog jumps up and places its paws on the man’s
shoulders. The man pushes the dog away and the dog runs out of the scene,
barking.
Once the volunteers had
seen the clip, they looked in their booklets and found a list of words like
friendly, sociable, cordial or playful on the one hand, and aggressive,
threatening, hostile, or dangerous on the other. When volunteers thought the
dog had a tough name were three times more likely to describe the dog’s
behavior as hostile or menacing than when they thought he had a more positive
and less threatening name.
As Dr. Coren suggests,
this tendency to read aggressive behavior into dogs with tough-sounding names
probably wouldn’t have quite the same effect with a Yorkie or Pomeranian. But
it shows that names can have a powerful effect on how people perceive a dog’s
personality and behavior.
This brings up an
interesting question. Can a dog’s name have an effect on how its owners
perceive the dog’s behavior?
On the Street Where
You Live
People sometimes ask me
for advice on what to name their new puppy or rescue dog. I always tell them
that it should be short, just one or two syllables, and that it should conjure
up strong positive associations.
When I first inherited my
Dalmatian Fred, I disliked the name. His original owner had gotten him at a pet
store near where I lived on the Upper West Side, and Freddie had been given his
name by the store’s manager, someone I had strong negative feelings about at
the time. So while I was madly in love with Fred the dog, I had trouble calling
him that name because of these negative associations.
I tried changing it, but
“Fred” had stuck. It was the only name he’d respond to. Still, I knew that if I
wanted to have a completely pleasurable relationship with Freddie I had to get
rid of whatever negative feelings I had about his name. So I racked my brain to
think of a Fred in history or literature whom I admired, or least felt good
about.
I settled on a character
in My Fair Lady named Freddy.
There’s nothing particularly endearing about him; he’s good natured, but a bit
of a twit. Still, he sings one of my favorite songs from that show, “On the
Street Where You Live.” Once I was able to associate my dog Freddie with a song
that I love, it was clear sailing.
Closing Pandora’s
Box
A dog’s name can not only
influence how you feel about your dog, I think it can influence the dog’s
behavior as well. I’ve often come across dogs with behavioral problems that I
thought might have been the result—if only partially—of giving the dog a name
that carries negative connotations. I find this to be particularly true of
names from ancient myth like “Faust,” “Pandora,” “Achilles,” and “Loki.”
When I was a kid, growing
up in Southern California, our neighbors across the street got a new dog, a
shepherd mix named Loki. A few months later our family got a beagle that my
younger brother James named Roman.
Loki, like his namesake,
was always causing mischief while Roman liked to escape and go roamin’ around
the neighborhood. This could have just been a strange coincidence. But since
much of the relationship we have with our dogs takes place on an unconscious
emotional level—where Freud and Jung say we also relate to mythical
archetypes—I think it’s best to stick to names that don’t conjure up negative
feelings for us, however unconscious they might be.
I’ve tried on numerous
occasions to convince an owner to change their dog’s name from something like
Pandora to something that sounds similar yet has only neutral or positive
connotations, like Andora or just Pandy, but I’ve rarely been successful.
It might be interesting to
do a study like Dr. Coren’s, where instead of telling total strangers that a
dog is named “Killer,” etc., we would find people who’ve given their dogs
not-so-nice names, do a behavioral analysis of the dog, convince the owners to
change the dog’s name, just for the purpose of the study, and see if some of
the dog’s bad behaviors start to disappear after the new name has been used for
a few months.
The results might show
some behavioral improvements if not a complete change in personality, based
just on changing the dog’s name.
You’re the Most
Irresponsible Dog I’ve Ever Known!
In my experience, when a
dog owner assigns certain character traits to his or her dog, this can also
have an adverse effect on the dog’s behavior.
Years ago I knew a young woman with a Weimeraner named Flash. She was an actress and
dancer, and was the daughter of a brilliant and very famous show business
figure, someone who was equally well-known for being rather careless and
immature.
I liked Flash. He seemed
like an ordinary dog, happy and playful. But his owner was always scolding him
for being “irresponsible.” If he wandered off too far or did anything that made
her nervous, she would grab his collar and say, “Do you know how irresponsible
you are? You are the most irresponsible dog I have ever known!”
This seemed very odd to
me, until she told me that she’d named the dog Flash because that was one of
her father’s nicknames. It was her father she was upset with. Her dog had
nothing to do with it!
A few weeks ago I was
having a sidewalk conversation with a very nice older lady who walks dogs not
far from where I live. She was out with her own dog, a miniature schnauzer
named Muffin. I was finishing up a training session with another schnauzer named Odysseus.
At one point the woman
asked Muffin to sit, but the dog ignored her. The woman got frustrated
and said, “She’s hard-headed.”
“Really? Maybe she’s just
not motivated.”
“No, that’s the way she
is. Hard-headed.”
Something in the way she
said it reminded me of Flash and his owner. It also felt like that she’d
learned the phrase hard-headed from her mother.
“The thing is, if you say
she’s hard-headed, then that’s the end of it. You don’t have anything to work
with. You’ve closed the door on poor Muffin. But if you talk in terms of how
she might be feeling at a given moment, rather than in terms of character
traits that are set in stone, then you can work on getting the kinds of
behaviors you want out of her.”
Luckily, my saying this
made the woman smile at her dog. “So you’re not hard-headed after all, huh Muffin?
You’re just not motivated?”
It’s not always easy, but
once I can get people to see that their dog might be feeling anxious, or
nervous or stressed, only then can they see the possibility for changing the
dog’s behaviors. As long as that personality label is attached, the possibility
for changing the dog’s behavior, let alone his or her emotional problems,
doesn’t exist.
So the next time you tell
someone about your dog’s personality traits, ask yourself if assigning such
labels is helping or hurting your dog.
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”
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