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There are many examples of how [our behavioural heritage from chimpanzees] can create trouble in our relationships with dogs. For example, humans love to hug. It's called "ventral-ventral contact" in the primate literature, and chimps and bonobos love to do it too. They hug their babies, and babies hug them. Adolescent chimps hug each other, and so do adult chimps when they're reconciling from conflict. (..). Try telling an adolescent girl, or any four-year-old, not to hug her beloved dog. Good luck. But dogs don't hug. (..). Dogs are just as social as we are, veritable social butterflies who can't live a normal life without a lot of social interaction. But they don't hug. And they often don't react kindly to those who do. Your own dog may benevolently put up with it, but I've seen hundreds of dogs who growled or bit when someone hugged them.

— The Other End of the Leash by Patricia B. McConnell (Page 1)

We are often oblivious to how we're moving around our dogs. It seems to be very human to not know what we're doing with our body, unconscious of where our hands are or that we just tilted our head. We radiate random signals like some crazed semaphore flag, while our dogs watch in confusion, their eyes rolling around in circles like cartoon dogs.

— The Other End of the Leash by Patricia B. McConnell (Page 1)

All dogs are brilliant at perceiving the slightest movement that we make, and they assume that each tiny motion has meaning. So do we humans, if you think about it. Remember that minuscule turn of the head that caught your attention when you were dating? Think about how little someone's lips have to move to change a sweet smile into a smirk. How far does an eyebrow have to rise to change the message we read from the face it's on—a tenth of an inch? You'd think we would automatically generalize this common knowledge to our interactions with our dogs. But we don't.

— The Other End of the Leash by Patricia B. McConnell (Page 1)

Arousal of the FEAR system eventually leads to excessive production of cortisol. Under optimal conditions, when an animal is afraid, the secretion of cortisol mobilizes glucose as an energy supply for the skeletal muscles in case the animal decides to flee. In this way, cortisol secretion is beneficial. However, excessive secretion can begin to damage the body if elevations are sustained for too long. Normally, when cortisol has circulated through the blood back up to the brain, the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus exerts an inhibitory effect that stops further release of cortisol. If, however, a person or animal is subjected to an excessive amount of stress — when they are chronically frightened or anxious — the PVN may not be able to stop the production of cortisol. (..). all visceral organs and many areas of the brain, as well as the immune system, can be adversely affected by a prolonged excess of cortisol.

— Archaeology of Mind by Jaak Panksepp, Lucy Biven (2%)

Even though work on kindred animals has been so crucial to the development of affective neuroscience, Jaak Panskepp started his work with an interest primarily in human emotions, especially their disturbances in clinical disorders. He soon realized that deep neuroscientific understanding could not be achieved without appropriate animal models. This position has changed somewhat with the emergence of modern brain imaging, but not much if one wants to really understand the evolved functional network of the brain. It is rather difficult to have intense emotions while lying still within brain scanners that make measurements that cannot tolerate movement. (..). The primary-process emotions are all connected to movements, and the evidence now indicates that raw emotional feelings arise from the same ancient brain networks that control our instinctual emotional life.

— Archaeology of Mind by Jaak Panksepp, Lucy Biven (2%)