By SUE MANNING
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The next
time you start shaking your finger and shouting "Shame on you!"
because your dog chewed up your favorite fuzzy slippers, just remember that no
matter how guilty your dog looks, it doesn't know what your rant is about.
Behaviorists insist dogs lack
shame. The guilty look - head cowered, ears back, eyes droopy - is a reaction
to the tantrum you are throwing now over the damage they did hours earlier.
"Just get over it and
remind yourself not to put temptation in the way next time," said Dr.
Bonnie Beaver, a professor at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary
Medicine and executive director of the American College of Veterinary
Behaviorists.
But scientific findings have
not put a dent in the popularity of online dog shaming sites like
dogshaming.com and shameyourpet.com or videos like those posted on
youtube.com/crackrockcandy. In the photos and videos, dogs wear humorous
written "confessions" and often are surrounded by the remnants of
their misdeeds. There is no question that in some photos, they look guilty of
eating, drinking, chewing, licking or destroying something they shouldn't have.
Dogshaming.com was the first
and is among the most popular sites. Since Pascale Lemire started it in August
2012, it has received more than 58 million page views and more than 65,000
submissions. A submission has to come with a photo showing the dog's guilty
look.
Lemire, who lives in Vancouver,
British Columbia, also published a book called "Dog Shaming," which
hit the New York Times best-seller list in January.
"I don't think dogs
actually feel shame," Lemire said. "I think they know how to placate
us with this sad puppy-dog look that makes us think they're ashamed of what
they've done. My guess is that their thinking is: 'Oh man, my owner is super
mad about something, but I don't know what, but he seems to calm down when I
give him the sad face, so let's try that again.'"
She thinks the online dog
shaming memes are all in good fun.
"People come for a laugh
and camaraderie," Lemire said. "They see that their dog isn't the
only one who does awful things. People don't shame their dogs out of anger,
they do it out of love."
Another dog owner helped get
celebrities into the trend. In late 2011, Jeremy Lakaszcyck of Boston started
putting shaming videos of his lemon beagle, Maymo, on YouTube. Four months
later, Ellen DeGeneres ran one of them on her show and comedian Ricky Gervais
tweeted it. The popularity of the videos soared, Lakaszcyck said.
He also submitted photos to
Lemire for dogshaming.com, which made Maymo even more famous.
Maymo has a naturally sad or
guilty face and senses something is wrong if Lakaszcyck speaks in a stern
voice. "They know when their owners are angry.
"Maymo can sit for quite a
while looking sad because he's a ham. It's natural, and he knows a treat is
coming. His tail usually wags through the wait. It's like he's happy on one end
and sad on the other," he said.
One of the first scientific
studies on the "guilty dog look" was conducted in 2009 by Alexandra
Horowitz, an associate professor of psychology at Barnard College in New York
City. One of her books, "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and
Know," included the findings.
In the study, she used 14 dogs,
videotaping them in a series of trials and studying how they reacted when an
owner left the room after telling them not to eat a treat. When the owners
returned, sometimes they knew what the dogs had done and sometimes they didn't
and sometimes the dogs had eaten the treats and sometimes they hadn't.
"I found that the 'look'
appeared most often when owners scolded their dogs, regardless of whether the
dog had disobeyed or did something for which they might or should feel guilty.
It wasn't 'guilt' but a reaction to the owner that prompted the look,"
Horowitz said.
"I am not saying that dogs
might not feel guilt, just that the 'guilty look' is not an indication of
it," she added. She also believes there is a difference between guilt and
shame.
Dogs can certainly learn from
bad behavior, but rewards or punishment are most effective right after the
wrongdoing, said Beaver, the veterinary professor. "The farther it gets
from that, the less connection is made with the behavior," she said.
At some point, your dog will
probably cower, waiting for you to complete your meltdown, ditch the negative
voice and lose the nasty body language, Beaver said.
But you do wonder what other
emotions dogs lack besides guilt.
"Humans have a natural
desire to know what an animal is thinking, and yet we are limited to reading
body language and measuring physiological reactions," Beaver said. The
bottom line is: "We will never truly know because we cannot ask
them."