Human-Canine Connections According to Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most influential, thought-provoking contemporary writers on humanity and society. In his bestselling books, he's written about the way social trends and behavior act like outbreaks of infectious disease (The Tipping Point); the impact of snap decisions (Blink); and what makes people of influence so extraordinary (Outliers). When he writes about dogs in his column in The New Yorker, pay attention.

Gladwell isn't one for sugarcoating any more than he's one for avoiding the hard questions. In a column from a few years ago, Troublemakers: What pit bulls can teach us about profiling, he took on the question of pit bull bans and racial stereotypes. At the beginning of the article, he points out a lot of breed traits stemming from the heritage of dogfighting that many well-meaning pit bull defenders might find hard to swallow. But stick with it, because he goes on to talk about why these characteristics don't make pit bulls the dangerous dogs people think they are, and why breed stereotypes don't work.

A pit bull is dangerous to people, then, not to the extent that it expresses its essential pit bullness but to the extent that it deviates from it. A pit bull ban is a generalization about a generalization about a trait that is not, in fact, general.

He makes the leap that many people won't, drawing the line between the failures of breed specific legislation and the failures of racial profiling.

The title article of Gladwell's new book, What the Dog Saw, was originally published in 2006. In this article, he profiles Cesar Millan through the lens of movement analysis, breaking down Cesar's instinct for carrying himself in a way that dogs respond to. It's a fascinating look at the subtleties of our subconscious movement, drawing parallels to recent Presidents and people who work with autistic children. When Cesar first got started, he had a lot to learn about the complexities of relating to other humans. It was only through marriage counseling that he realized he needed to work through the humans in order to train the dogs.

"Cesar could calm a stray off the street, yet, at least in the beginning, he did not grasp the simplest of truths about his own wife."

Gladwell's article intentionally stays away from the dicey territory of the debate over Cesar's methods. In a blog post shortly after the article was published, he responds to some of the feedback the article received and emphasized that the way Cesar carries himself is a key factor to his success.

"If you do what he says, and not what he does, I think you miss what makes him effective."

Gladwell says that the controversy is largely Cesar's own doing, due to an emphasis on the dramatic on his show and a focus, on TV and in his books, on owners establishing dominance over their dogs, which gives him a persona that doesn't match up with his off-screen personality. This gets to the crux of the debate: it's not about whether he is able to connect with dogs, whether he has ever made a difference, or whether all of his methods are negative. It's about whether or not he should be a role model for people who don't have the instinct for movement that he does.

I didn't include this article to reignite the Dog Whisperer Debate. No matter how you feel about Cesar, Gladwell's assessment of how the dogs see him and how movement impacts training is worthwhile for anyone who spends time with dogs. Canines are specialists in paying attention to humans, reading us in ways that even other primates do not.

His latest column featuring dogs was published in October: Offensive Play: How different are dogfighting and football? Gladwell investigates the occurrence of injury, particularly brain injury, in professional football players. He looks at the high incidence of brain damage and how much of it results from routine hits, not just competition-driven aggression, and poses the question as to whether these injuries are a side effect of the sport or central to the game, comparing it to dogfighting.

Part of what makes dog fighting so repulsive is the understanding that violence and injury cannot be removed from the sport. It's a feature of the sport that dogs almost always get hurt. Something like stock-car racing, by contrast, is dangerous, but not unavoidably so ... So what is football? Is it dogfighting or is it stock-car racing?

You'll notice that in each of these articles, Malcolm Gladwell compares human issues to dog issues. Many people shy away from this tactic, worried that it will seem unconvincing or offensive to those who aren't animal advocates. But Gladwell dives in headfirst, and he's brilliant at it. He reveals the secrets of human nature and dog nature, fitting them together in a way that's convincing for even the most skeptical of audiences. And I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

Photo credit: Gladwell.com/Brooke Williams