Animals in Translation (24 page)

Anyone who interacts with animals has to know how to manage an animal's aggressive nature. Two actions are essential: make sure the
animal is properly socialized
to other animals,
and make sure the animal is properly socialized
to people.

You have to make sure animals are socialized to other animals, because most of what animals do in life they learn from other animals. Adults teach their young where to eat, what to eat, whom to socialize with, and whom to have sex with. The adults teach the young ones social rules and respect for their own kind. If an animal does not learn these rules when he's young, there may be many problem behaviors when he grows up.

One of the worst things you can do to any domestic animal is to rear it in isolation. Many people mistakenly believe that stallions are aggressive nutcases you can't handle, but that's true only because we make them that way. I remember being amazed when I walked into a holding pen at a Bureau of Land Management adoption center, which contained fifty wild stallions. The stallions were completely peaceful and quiet with almost no fighting. Every year the BLM gathers surplus wild horses and puts them up for adoption so that the horses don't over-graze the ranges, and people who visit the BLM pens find it hard to believe that fifty stallions can actually get along with one another. But that's the way well-socialized animals of any species usually behave. In the wild, constant fighting is not normal.

On the plains, subordinate stallions live together in bachelor groups. There's one dominant stallion who has all the mares to himself, like a harem; the rest of the stallions all band together and live in another group. The bachelor group tracks peacefully along with the harem group until the day when the dominant stallion has grown weak due to age or illness, and is ready to be replaced by a younger, stronger stallion. Only then does the younger stallion challenge him, not before.

Stallions would have to get along with one another to stay alive. Prey animals live in groups; that's how they survive. Wild horses in herds take turns sleeping and keeping watch for predators. If they had to live on their own they'd be killed in their sleep.

I mentioned this in the last chapter, and I'll say it again here: the modern fancy stable is a super-max prison for stallions. When a stallion is raised in solitary confinement he never learns normal social behavior, and that's what makes him dangerous to other males.

While they're growing up, young colts learn that there is a give-and-take to social interactions. They also learn exactly how horses establish and maintain a dominance hierarchy. All animals who live in groups—and that includes most mammals—form dominance hierarchies. It's universal. Researchers assume that dominance hierarchies evolved to keep the peace, because when each animal knows his place and sticks to it you have less fighting over food and mates.

No one ever knows for sure why one thing evolved and another didn't, but in the wild dominance hierarchies are usually stable once they've been established. Fighting levels drop and remain low until a new animal is introduced or an old dominant animal who has become weak is dethroned by a younger, stronger animal. If the animals in a dominance hierarchy are too evenly matched you might see a situation where no clear winner is able to emerge, so the animals keep fighting. That's not uncommon, but it's not the norm. Dominance hierarchies seem to minimize fighting.

Domestic animals are the same. Growing up with other horses, a young colt learns that once a stallion has achieved a certain position in the hierarchy he no longer has to keep kicking or biting the other horses. He also learns that no one challenges the dominant stallion unless he has a good chance of winning. Dominance hierarchies among horses are not like competitive sports in humans, where individual competitors or teams go head-to-head for the life of the athlete or the team. Subordinate horses don't keep on challenging the lead stallion day in and day out until somebody gets lucky and wins. They wait until the lead stallion is ready to be deposed. That's the rule.

But a horse isn't born knowing the rules; he has to be taught the rules by other horses. A stallion locked up in solitary confinement in a fancy show barn
is not normal.
He's especially likely to show abnormal aggression. There may be another reason for this, besides the fact that isolation-reared animals haven't learned proper social etiquette. Horses are social animals, and it's possible that a super-max stallion becomes a psycho fighter from emotional damage due to too much time spent alone. He might have more easily activated rage and fear circuits in the brain.

When I was in high school the myth that no stallion can get along with another male seemed true, because when my high school
brought a fine big stallion named Rusty to the stable, all hell broke loose. Up to that point they'd had only mares and geldings, who all got along.

These horses were in a large field where there was plenty of room to move away from each other, but Rusty would charge wildly and bite and kick at the other horses. Soon it became obvious that Rusty could not get along with the others, so he was banished to solitary confinement in a pen between the horse barn and the dairy barn. Rusty had not been raised in a social group when he was a colt, and he was abnormally aggressive.

Raising young stud colts in a pasture full of older geldings will teach them some manners and create a good stallion that you can ride like a normal horse. People with fancy horses are actually abusing them with too much care. Young horses need to get out and have a chance to be horses.

It's not just stallions who can become aggressive if they're raised alone. A few years ago, I bought a piece of property on the west side of Fort Collins that has a thirty-acre horse pasture. Today my assistant, Mark, lives on the place and grazes his horses there. After the sale closed, I discovered that the big fat black gelding that was being boarded at my place had lived alone in my pasture for his entire life. Blackie was seven or eight years old, fully mature, and very gentle with people. He really liked to be petted, and I wanted to keep Blackie as a boarder.

But there was one major problem. Blackie was antisocial and he tried to kill every horse that was put in with him, male or female. On the thirty-acre pasture he would back a horse into a corner and kick it repeatedly with both back feet. I think that since Blackie had never learned any social skills he had never learned that once he had achieved dominance he no longer had to keep fighting.

After Mark moved into the farmhouse and brought his own horses with him, I learned that Blackie was now attacking Mark's horses. There was no way we could continue to board him, so Mark called the owner to come and take Blackie away.

Even cats are developing problems I think are due to isolated rearing. At the Colorado State University Veterinary Hospital there have been several “cat explosions” where the staff was severely bit
ten. I've actually seen that written on the charts: “Assistant was carrying cat down hall when cat exploded.” This may be due to the cat leading a too sheltered life so kitty is seeing her first dog there at the veterinary clinic and she goes ballistic.

Julie, the lady who does my Web page, got a severely infected hand from one of these “fear kitties.” She had adopted a friendly shy cat and one day when it saw a dog it instantly turned into super-fuzz-ball Halloween cat and bit her wrist to the bone. That cat needed to see some dogs at an early age so she could get used to them. But today fewer and fewer house cats are learning about dogs. Some animal shelters even make adoptive owners promise never to let their cats out of the house. That might keep the cat from getting run over, but what happens when you take him to the vet? Pet owners need to socialize new kittens and new puppies to other animals not long after they bring them home. If they reach adulthood without being exposed to other animals, it's probably too late.

I think dogs may be starting to have aggression problems due to overly isolated rearing, too. All of the leash laws towns have passed may be having some adverse effects on dog socialization, because unless the owner makes an effort, many dogs do not get properly socialized to other dogs, or to other people. We need these laws, because stray dogs running loose can be dangerous, especially if a group of stray dogs starts thinking of itself as a pack. Several dogs together are more dangerous than one dog on its own, because
pack mentality
can set in. But leash laws have probably had a cost.

When I was a child all the dogs ran loose in the neighborhood and there were very few dog fights (and almost no dog bites to humans) as a result. Our golden retriever Lannie was subordinate to Lightning, who lived next door. Lannie knew his place, and when Lightning came near he calmly rolled over in submission. I never saw Lightning bite him. All the neighborhood dogs were socialized to one another, and they knew their place in the hierarchy.

The breeds were Labrador, golden retriever, German shepherd, and mongrel. No pit bulls or Rottweilers. The scariest dog in the neighborhood was a Weimaraner, who went stir-crazy in his owner's house. Butch did not get enough exercise and he was absolutely hyper from being locked up all day alone in the house. Anytime you
rang the doorbell Butch flung himself at the window beside the front door.

Butch turned out to be a killer of other dogs. One day Butch and the police department's German shepherd police dog were being walked in the park by their owners. Butch broke away and killed the policeman's dog. This is an unfortunate example of what can happen when a dog is not socialized to other dogs when he is young.

I'm a little concerned that leash laws may encourage dog-on-dog aggression even in dogs who
have
been well socialized to other dogs. One of my friends owns a highly dominant seventy-pound male mutt, and her next-door neighbor owns an eighty-pound male golden retriever who is also highly dominant. The two dogs played together throughout puppyhood, and were close friends. But as soon as their testosterone kicked in they began to fight, and they continued to fight even after both dogs had been neutered. They've had two battles now, both resulting in injuries bad enough that a veterinarian had to stitch them back up. Even worse, the owners had to break up both fights at high risk to themselves, because neither dog yielded. These are two well-socialized, well-cared-for, normal, healthy dogs who played together as puppies living next door to each other. And now they're trying to kill each other. That never happened in my neighborhood when I was growing up.

I should probably add that the fact that the mutt is just as aggressive as the golden retriever doesn't say anything about mutts versus purebreds, because the selection pressures on mutts should make them better socialized to
humans,
not to other dogs. This particular mutt is perfectly behaved with his human family and their friends and relatives. It's other dogs he has a problem with.

The reason I think leash laws may be part of the problem is that both dogs are kept inside their respective yards at all times. I'm guessing that leash laws may be short-circuiting some core principle of animal behavior in the wild. In nature, where animals are free to come and go, animals almost never seriously injure other animals who are familiar to them. But I've found that dogs living side by side in fenced yards often
do
hurt each other if they can, even when they've known each other for years. This may be a case where proper
socialization won't help. The dogs
have
been properly socialized, but their environment—a fenced-in yard—is “improper.”

O
RPHANS AND
O
THERS

Animal rescue programs also have had terrible problems with aggression, because the young animals they save are usually orphans. There've been horrible problems with orphaned elephants who did not have the opportunity to grow up with their own kind and learn proper elephant social ways. The males are the worst. When they grow up without an older experienced male to guide them, their behaviors become vicious and bizarre. Turning young orphan male elephants back into the wild has been a disaster. They will sometimes seek out rhinos and either kill them or try to mate with them. Their behavior is completely off-the-wall.

An animal who hasn't been properly socialized to his peers isn't dangerous only to other animals. He can be dangerous to humans, too. In social grazing animals such as horses, deer, and cattle, the hand-raised pet bull often becomes the most dangerous. The problem there is mistaken identity. A hand-raised bull calf thinks he's a person instead of a calf.

That's fine until he becomes sexually mature at age two, and instead of going out and fighting another bull to establish his dominance, he attacks the person who raised him. Bulls establish dominance by butting each other with their heads, and no human can survive being head-butted by a thousand-pound animal. It's essential that bull calves not get confused about their identity. They are cattle, not people.

Ranchers can prevent their cattle from identifying with humans by rearing calves with their mothers inside a herd of cattle. A study done by Ed Price at the University of California indicated that Hereford bull calves raised by their mothers almost never attacked people, but calves raised alone in small pens often attacked people when they grew up.
¹⁹

When I visited Australia I heard a tragic story about a person who hand-raised a deer fawn to adulthood. One day when the
owner knelt down to photograph him, the deer interpreted the man's kneeling down posture as the head-bowing behavior of another bull challenging him. He charged and gored the owner to death with his antlers. It's so important to raise calves with their mothers. When a young bull calf or buck deer fawn is raised with his own species he'll direct dominance attacks toward his own species instead of toward people.