How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain by Gregory Berns

Callie wagged her tail and licked the hot dog from his hand.
    I couldn’t believe how quickly Mark had gotten Callie where she needed to be.
    “How is the positioning?” he asked.
    Callie was lying down in a sphinx position in the coil. Her paws hung over the near edge. She would need to move back a little bit.
    “We’ll want her head in the center.” Mark nudged her back an inch and clicked.
    “You can shape her behavior at home too,” he said. “I think she’ll do really well with this.”
    A woman walked into CPT with a border collie.
    “This is Melissa Cate,” Mark said. “Melissa runs some of our agility classes at CPT. She’s interested in volunteering her dog for the MRI.”
    “Mark told me about the Dog Project.” Pointing to her dog, she said, “This is McKenzie.”
    McKenzie was Melissa’s three-year-old border collie. Melissahad begun agility competitions a few years earlier with her boxer, Zeke, who had reached the highest ranks. Zeke was now eight years old and slowing down a bit, so Melissa had gotten McKenzie as a puppy to keep competing in agility. They had been going strong ever since.
    McKenzie was leggy and lean, about thirty-five pounds, with a long, thin head that would easily fit in the head coil. She trotted over to me and stared long and hard. She quickly realized that I was not a herdable animal and moved on to check out Helen.
    Callie zoomed over and assumed a play bow with her front legs flat and her rump in the air, tail wagging like a vibrating string. We let the two dogs off-leash and they ran around the room. Callie did orbits around McKenzie, who seemed indifferent to the newbie dog.
    It was time for McKenzie’s try with the head coil. With a dog treat, Melissa had no trouble coaxing her into the coil. Nibbling the food out of Melissa’s hand, McKenzie appeared unaware of the coil altogether. In agility competition, the dogs run through a serpentine tunnel, and McKenzie was completely comfortable in an enclosed space.
    After a few minutes, Melissa commanded McKenzie to lie down. “
Platz
,” she said, using the German word for “down.” Mark explained that German words are commonly used in dog training because of the popular Schutzhund competitions. These began as training programs and tests for German shepherds but evolved into a full-fledged sport involving tracking, obedience, and protection phases.
    With McKenzie lying down in the head coil, Melissa backed away to the other side of the room. McKenzie didn’t budge. In fact, she stayed motionless for a solid minute. When I saw what a well-trained dog like McKenzie could do, I knew we could really do this. If the dogs would go into the head coil, they would go into the MRI.

    Melissa working with McKenzie in the head coil. Callie watches from across the room.
(Bryan Meltz)
    So far, Mark and Melissa had been using basic behaviorist techniques. The appeal of behaviorism in dog training is its simplicity. By making rewards like food and praise contingent on desired behaviors, dogs quickly learn what to do to get something they want. But what do dogs think of this? After all, they aren’t robots bumbling around the world, randomly doing things and finding out which behaviors result in food. Dogs show purposeful and consistent behavior whether humans are there or not. This suggests that dogs have some internal mental model of how things work in their world. It is a limited model, of course. For instance, they don’t understand technology like computers or television. But dogs do understand how to get along with each other and with other species like humans, which is not an insignificant skill, and they don’t need treats to learn how.
    While McKenzie remained still in the head coil, Callie watched with rapt attention. It’s possible she was interested in only the food being handed out, but her gaze wasn’t always tracking Melissa’s hands. Callie’s eyes darted back and forth between McKenzie and Melissa. You could