I Love Lassie

On the 15th of every month, Dog-a-Day features a special article that goes a little deeper. All the other daily entries are about specific breeds, but the special articles are about a group of breeds with something in common, or something related to a breed but not appropriate for the breed entry. The June 15 special is about the fictional dog Lassie and the place she holds in our subconscious.

A few days ago I was reading Jean Donaldson's book "The Culture Clash" (2012, 2nd ed.). I was struck by her comment "nobody wants B.F. Skinner's dog: the input-output black box," and buying into the Walt Disney dog "...has led to the death of countless dogs."

I learned about Skinner in my very first psychology class, and after reading "Walden Two," I was sold on behaviorism. I'm confident that Skinner was on the right track.

I understand Donaldson's point that expecting dogs to have a moral code telling them it's wrong to chew on furniture is completely unrealistic, and I wondered if I should revise the Lassie article to avoid encouraging that way of thinking.

But I disagree that people who abandon their dogs for behavior considered "bad" are doing so because they were misled by Lassie.

We all know Lassie was a fictional character, and a kind of superhero. I do agree that the image can create expectations in ways we don't notice, but the Lassie stories are doing something very different from what we use to judge behavior with our real dogs. The TV shows were about the family values of the 1950s, and the movies about the working family's conflicts with the aristocracy. And they were all about Timmy and how kids view the world.

I think we carry Lassie as a representation of the special relationship humans and dogs have had over the course of many centuries, not as a model of how dogs should behave. Reading over that June 15 article again, I don't think it needs to be changed.