C. RUDOLF

Wolf in Wax.  This wolf will be cast in bronze as part of the Encounter sculpture. 

Working on a new superhero trading card.  The collection now has 40 cards!  See the rest of them on my website here.  And if you’d like to be a superhero, send me an email @ info@colleenrudolf.com

An animation of my cow marionette. 

Creatures of Habit

I heard Dan Gottlieb discuss habits last week on his radio show Voices in the Family and it struck me that there are many similarities between breaking down and understanding our own behaviors and understanding how to train a dog.  Both dogs and humans seem to have similar patterns of “cue (trigger for the behavior to start), automatic behavior and reward (how your brain learns to encode that behavior in the future).”  If you want a change in the behavior, identifying what the cues and the rewards are is critical for affecting that transformation, in both dogs and humans. 

The program is worth listening to in its entirety here, but below is an excerpt that I found most compelling. 

“….Because of the human capacity to imagine our world and imagine our self, we can actually change the response to those neurotransmitters, simply by deciding to do so.”

“Once we move into advanced societies, why do we form habits around working hard or exercising?  With exercising there are neurotransmitters, endorphins that give us sense of pleasure.   But why do a lot of people automatically get into the habit of working hard?  Here, the reward is a sense of esteem, a sense of satisfaction of getting something done, that your life has purpose.  We as humans have an amazing ability to make something rewarding by deciding that it is rewarding.  And that is a really powerful capacity, because it gives us the ability to shape what behaviors will become automatic through choice as opposed to being victims of chemistry.”

We differ from dogs in this way.  This is why it becomes our responsibility to train them.  If we are asking canines to live with us in our society, we must do the work of shaping their behavior so that they may enjoy greater freedoms and not ever be deemed a nuisance.  I recently was informed of a surgical procedure called devocalization where the animal’s vocal chords are removed.  You can read more about it here. Now I suppose there at some point might be a reason for this kind of surgery, perhaps a cancer spreading?   But as a way to deal with an animal that is being too noisy???  Incredible what methods we humans will choose over working with the animal. 

By recognizing cues and rewards in whatever form that they might take, we can change behavior.  In this way and with this effort, we will begin to provide the compassion we all seek. 

A week in Maine does a body good, especially when you have four four-leggers guiding you. 

Always willing to walk to the point, go for a drive, climb Dorr Mountain or take a snooz in the sunshine, the dogs remind me how to live in the present moment, how to try even though it might be hard and how not to worry about digestive issues brought on by sea grass.   

Thank you Maine and all that you’ve given us!  Until next time   :)

Some selected photos from an event that I attended in Narberth.  It was called the Narbark dog parade and was a very curious event. 

Although I applaud the support of the local rescue organization ARF SEPA “that rescues dogs and cats from public shelters that otherwise would have been euthanized due to lack of space,”  I found there to be a conspicuous lack of understanding of canine behavior in an event that’s designed to celebrate the species. 

It seems testament to the dog’s ability and willingness to tolerate and adjust that we find ourselves outfitting them in tutus and hats.  However, I wonder what this does for people’s expectations for all dogs?  I’m afraid that events like this push dogs that are not as comfortable to the outside, or worse yet force a dog into an uncomfortable position because the human wants to participate.  

I’d like to see more reciprocal relationships between dogs and humans. 

I have spent much time examining and reflecting upon the human relationship to pigeons.  I came across this article in my research.

How Pigeons Became Rats: The Cultural-Spatial Logic of Problem Animals

“Such studies on the problematization of animals demonstrate how sociological insights gained by looking at human deviance (Becker 1963) and social problems (Best 1995) can be extended to animals.  There are issues of interests, authority, and power that go a long way in determining which animals become elevated to the status of a public problem (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988).”

It is a dense article but definitely worth reading as it reminds me that our treatment and judgement of other creatures reveals more about us than it does them. 

Taken with instagram