Building the Bond: Living in Harmony With Your Dog

Dedication

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This book is dedicated to my wonderful Mum who we very sadly lost while this book was being written. She more than anyone else was the person who shaped my love of animals and who taught me how to be with them and be around them in a way that let their personalities shine through. Who showed me the wonder of creating bonds with the animals in our lives. Be it cattle, sheep or horses, cats, rats or dogs, Mum loved them all and passed that love on to me, for which I will always be grateful.

Foreword

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The notion of dog training is changing.

Previously, over the past forty years or so, the public had been advised that getting a well-trained and obedient dog was the most important priority. This has led to a very task orientated focus relying on a transactional relationship with the dog. That transaction based on providing something good to the dog for doing the task well or applying something less pleasant if they do not.

Much of this approach is underpinned by what is known as the Good-Bad behaviour continuum which most people are indoctrinated into from an early age. This implies that behaviour is on a spectrum from good through to bad and that we should seek to get more of the ‘good’ and less of the ‘bad’. This feeds into the drive to reward the good or punish/ignore the bad. That seems to be without question – we want more of the good don’t we, and less of the bad? However, if we ask a couple of simple questions this starts to unravel. Those questions are ‘Who is deciding what is good or bad?’ and ‘What did the behaviour being judged represent to that individual in relation to their internal physical or emotional state?’

Making judgement about the behaviour of another living sentient being, human or animal, is often unhelpful as one would be judging based on limited information about the lived emotional experience of those being judged. I might decide that the behaviour I observe in a dog is ‘bad’ and need correcting, but that bears no relation to what that dog might be experiencing and, importantly, what that dog might be trying to communicate.

Behaviour is often, especially in relation to dogs (and young children actually), a communication of need. That need is often about the need to feel safe, to seek connection (we are social species) and to find relief. Relief is, in my opinion, one of the most important principles in the psychology of behaviour. When we feel discomfort or pain, be it physical, emotional, or social, we are driven to find ways to relieve those feelings. Many of the most challenging behaviours we see presented by dogs are actually relief seeking behaviours.

I believe there are three things that we can recognise unites us all, including our dogs, and they are we all want to feel heard, especially when trying to communicate needs, to feel safe (physically, emotionally, and socially) and find relief when feeling discomfort.

I specialise in working with aggression and reactivity, with about half my workload being those dogs that many would see as dangerous. In the many years I have been working with these dogs I have not met one yet that was not in pain – physical pain often but also emotional or social pain as well.. Often, they have had their previous attempts to communicate shut down because the caregivers were unaware of the communication and had perceived the dog’s behaviour to be wrong, naughty, dominant or bad. They had often been given advice to apply punitive methods to ‘correct’ the dog, which has added to the dog’s inability to feel safe. So, these dogs have become more dangerous over time because they had not felt heard, felt safe or had struggled to find that important relief.

This then is the change that is happening. The progressive side of dog training and behaviour is moving away from a task-oriented approach to more of a ‘care’ approach, the difference being that we take the time to learn from the dog first. To learn what might be happening for them to have to exhibit the behaviour in the first place. To care more about their individual emotional experience covering their physical, emotional, and social needs. The big shift is a move away from the notion of putting obedience first with its focus on getting dogs to ‘behave’ to truly trying to understand what the behaviour represents for the dog. Also, when teaching new behaviours to try and ensure we are supporting the dog with behaviours that are likely to be intrinsically valuable to the dog and their need to feel safe and communicate needs.

In Building the Bond, Jay Gurden expertly guides the reader through this shift from task to care, offering real insight into the many aspects of the rich lived experience of the dogs we share our lives with. Leaving behind many of the old received wisdoms, Jay offers an evidence-based guide to learning more about what our dogs may be trying to communicate, so we can help them to feel safe, feel heard and find relief when they need it. In so doing, we can connect to our beloved companions on a very deep level indeed and truly build a bond that is based on mutual trust, compassion, and respect.

Andrew Hale BSc Certified Canine Behaviourist

Consultant for Pet Remedy, Expert advisor for Canine Arthritis Management

Creator of Dog Centred Care

Preface

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Dogs have been a consistent presence in our lives for a long time, evolving alongside humans as we have moved from prehistory to modern times. From ancient ancestors shared with wolves, to the amazing array of diverse types and breeds of dog we see today, these canine companions have been a constant partner in one way or another.

For a substantial proportion of our shared lives dogs have been alongside us in working roles, either carrying out important jobs like moving or guarding livestock, or as assistants in sporting activities such as shooting, guarding our homes and personal safety, keeping control of rats, rabbits, or other ‘vermin’ species, and many more. They have been our colleagues and co-workers in a wide variety of jobs.

Throughout history, the role of companion has existed alongside these other roles, but, in more modern times, companion is perhaps the most common job our modern domestic dogs fulfil. With this shift from work to friend and family member has come a shift in how we view our dogs, and how we live together. Our dogs today are no longer viewed as being tools or just possessions, they are not an ‘it’ – they are members of our family. Our friends. Instead of control, we look for cooperation. Instead of obedience, we focus on connection, and on harmony.

This book looks at a range of factors which can influence the relationships we have with our dogs and how each area can contribute to this harmony. Each chapter looks at one aspect from training to play, sleep to communication, learning to canine emotions and how, when we combine all of these areas together, we can really look at the relationship and bond between human and dog and create the strongest partnership with the dogs in our lives and the dogs still to come in the future.

Decades of living with and working with dogs (including training and working with working sheepdogs) has instilled in me a deep passion for understanding these amazing creatures. A lifelong love of the written word and years of study in canine training and behaviour have taken that passion and shaped it into a love of education, of passing on the information I have learned over those years and helping other people to have the strongest possible relationships with their dogs.

Combined with my education role, tutoring courses for new trainers and behaviour professionals, I spend a lot of time discussing our relationships with our dogs with people who may be struggling with aspects of their lives with their dogs. Much of my work involves helping and supporting people with complex and sensitive dogs, who can struggle with aspects of their world. This has also reinforced my focus on the human-canine relationship, and finding the ways we can help and support our dogs to live the best lives in every conceivable way we can give them.

Helping you to live in harmony with your dog.

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The inspiration for everything that I do, the dogs with whom I currently share my life.

The History of the Canine-Human Bond

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The shared history of our two species goes back far into history. How did dogs come to gain the label of ‘man’s best friend’ and become the most popular companion animal in the world?

Approximately one in three households globally contain a dog, and many of these homes may house more than one dog. In the United Kingdom, according to the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association data for 2024, 36% of households include at least one dog to give a figure of around 13.5 million dogs living in a home as part of a human family. Dogs are also the most popular companion animal in the United States, with 65.1 million households with dogs according to a Forbes article updated in January 2024.

The definition of domestication is a species being altered, under human control, to fit a particular niche or role defined for them by humans, and it is this process of domestication that has formed the basis of the canine-human relationship and bond. Exactly when the relationship between humans and dogs began is a subject that causes a huge amount of debate, as does the topic of how and where the initial contact was made. This is the point at which the ancestor of our modern dog began to become domesticated. We do not, and perhaps never will, know exactly when or where this took place. There is, however, a growing body of research and archaeological evidence that is refining our understanding of how domestication began, and the first beginnings of this amazing interspecies relationship came into being. Here we are going to take a look at what we currently know and some of the theories that have been laid out about how dogs began to become domesticated.

The furthest history of the canine family goes back to around 45 million years ago and the Miacids. These small creatures lived in trees and, as well as being the ancestors of our modern dogs and the rest of their canine family, also provide the evolutionary roots of a number of other species including, among others, bears and raccoons.

The first real step in the canine evolutionary process from the Miacids is Hesperocyon, between 42.5 and 31 million years ago. This animal did not yet look much like a dog – to our modern eyes they would appear more like a raccoon or similar type of animal. Following Hesperocyon comes Borophaginae. They lived around 34 to 2.5 million years ago. Borophaginae’s appearance, broadly speaking, ranged from a fox-like animal to something more like a hyena, much more like a dog in appearance than those that came before them.

Both of these groups of animals have been extinct for a long time, but there is a third member of what are sometimes called the three great dog groups: Caninae. This is again split into a number of subtribes encompassing all of the species currently existing. One of these subtribes is Canina or Canis, the wolf and wolf-like canines, the group that includes our modern domestic dogs and their relatives. These relatives include golden jackals, coyotes, and wolves, including the dog’s closest living relative, the grey wolf.

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Domestication

So, when and how did the dog become the dog?

It starts with a now extinct ancient species of wolf whose descendants diverged into two different evolutionary paths that resulted in the animals we see today: the domestic dog and the grey wolf.

There are a number of theories on how the process first started. While we do not (and cannot), at least currently, know for sure which is correct, these are the potential theories that have, at times, been thought to have contributed to the relationship and links between us.

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Co-evolution

This describes a way in which humans and dogs evolved together. Under this theory any changes via evolution in one species will affect the other. Because of the way that humans have used the superior senses possessed by dogs, co-evolution would state that our senses have become duller and less sensitive as a result. We came to rely on the dog and their senses. At this time there is no evidence we have that obviously supports this theory.

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Wolf Cubs

Another theory states that humans selected and captured young wolves from wild packs and bred these animals together to develop an animal closer to what we would recognise as a dog. This once popular theory was considered less feasible for some time with our understanding of the differences between dog and wolf, and the thinking that capturing more cubs generation after generation would result in animals partially socialised to human contact, but that each cub captured would be starting from the same wild baseline. In recent years, however, some researchers are revisiting opinions on this theory based on current knowledge of human hunter-gatherer societies.

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Cultural Evolution

This is the ‘working’ theory of how domestication took place, with the evolution of our two species moving in parallel as our human ancestors created roles for the ancestors of our dogs. Dogs were shaped into a kind of tool to carry out or help in a variety of jobs that made our lives easier. This could have included, in the early stages of our lives together, viewing dogs as a potential source of food (now, thankfully, not the case except for in a few places where the custom sadly lingers). The number of working and assistance roles dogs are employed in today, and their adaptability in learning new jobs to help us, do give some support to this theory and it could also fit alongside some of the other theories to give the full picture.

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Population Selection

This is also known as the ‘commensal scavenger’ theory. The Oxford English dictionary defines commensal as the state of two organisms having an association in which one benefits, and the other is not harmed but does not benefit. Under the commensal scavenger theory, it is said that the ancient wolf scavenged for food in the waste dumps at the edges of human settlements. While doing so, some theorise that this prehistoric ancestor, at least to some extent, domesticated themselves. The proximity to people needed to be able to access the waste dumps would mean that the less bold and more fearful animals would move away far quicker and further than the bolder ones and take longer to return. This gave a distinct advantage to those braver animals of much greater access to the food source.

As these bolder animals bred through the generations, they became more relaxed and tolerant of being around people and so eventually joined human communities and began living permanently alongside them. For a long time, this has been the most widely supported and shared theory. More recently, however, questions have been raised around the amount of waste that would be generated by hunter/gatherer societies. Would anything that could provide nutrition have been discarded given the pressures of hunting and seasonal nature of gathering and the difficulty of sourcing enough food for the human communities to survive and thrive?

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With the amount of discussion that surrounds the question of how domestication began, it is difficult to see if we will ever have a clear single idea of exactly how it happened.

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From Wolf to Companion

The other questions whose answers elude us when it comes to the beginning of the canine-human bond are when and where the special relationship between us began. There are, again, a number of theories on the where and when. Archaeological evidence is cited as going as far back as 30,000 years ago by some, with ancient dogs or dog-like creatures being found buried in a way that suggests human involvement, or burial alongside humans. It is commonly accepted that domestication took place at least 15,000 years ago, and there is increasing evidence being found that points to multiple locations in which it began, rather than just a single event in one place.

One particularly striking example of burial alongside humans comes from a grave found in Bonn-Oberkassel, in Germany. This grave dates back over 14,000 years, so definitely well within the window of time in which dogs are known to have been domesticated. Buried alongside the bodies of two humans (and later found to have the remains of a second dog, making this the first grave to contain two dogs alongside humans) were the remains of a juvenile dog, estimated to be between twenty-seven and twenty-eight weeks old.

What makes this combined human and dog burial so important is the fact that the remains show that the dog had been seriously ill multiple times, with what evidence suggests was canine distemper. Three lines on the teeth, suggestive of lesions that can occur in distemper, show that the dog was ill at approximately nineteen, twenty-one and twenty-three weeks of age. A dog with the degree of illness this evidence suggests could not have survived without care, and a young dog with a serious illness such as distemper can serve no useful purposes. The Bonn-Oberkassel grave is the first known example of a dog being cared for with no particular purpose in mind. The ill young dog was cared for physically, and quite possibly emotionally, and this discovery gives us our first real glimpse of dogs as our companion rather than as tools.

We do know that dogs were the first animals to be domesticated, far before horses or livestock species. Our co-habitation and connection pre-date agriculture, with dogs already living alongside us when those first farms were established. One of the differences seen between modern domestic dogs and today’s grey wolf is the ability to process dietary starch. Wolves do not eat a large amount of starch in their diet, and do not show evidence of the alterations in their digestive system that are seen in dogs. An increased number of copies of a particular gene, ANY2B, that results in increased starch processing capability, is seen in dogs. While the exact numbers can vary between breeds of dog, the number is universally higher than is seen in wolves, and hints at a dietary adaptation in dogs that has come from living