单项选择题

Animal Behavior
Euthanasia(安乐死) is the number-one killers of dogs and cats in the U. S.--responsible for more deaths that all infectious diseases combined. And behavior problems are the number-one reason that animals are turned in to animal shelters. When pets become destructive, aggressive or cause major inconveniences, some owners feel that parting with the animal is the only solution. The good news is that help is available. To keep you from reaching the end of your rope, here are a few things you should know about your animal’s behavior.
When a dog or cat does something upsetting to an owner, very often the event was just the animal’s normal behavior. But the owner may misread the situation, react inappropriately and worsen the problem.
Consider the following example. Dogs don’t like to go out in heavy rain or snow any more than we do. One morning, an owner gets up and lets his dog outside to urine(排尿). Since his dog does not really want to get wet, he sits by the door waiting to get back inside. He did not eliminate while outside, but his owner does not know this. Later in the morning, when his urge to eliminate is overwhelming, the dog urinates on the kitchen floor.
The owner comes home and assumes the dog eliminated in the house to "get even" with him for not petting him enough or for some other action. The owner then punishes the dog.
Now, after several consecutive days of bad weather, the dog quickly learns to associate the combined presence of the owner and the smell of urine with punishment. The dog’s resulting hesitant behavior around his owner is interpreted as a "guilty" expression instead of a submissive one. This misunderstanding can lead to less interaction between owner and dog and to more negative feelings toward the animal.
In another example, a cat may sharpen his claws on his owner’s new sofa because its texture is highly desirable. Because the old sofa was the cat’s favorite daytime napping spot, the owner may assume that the cat is "getting even" with him for replacing the sofa. This inaccurate assumption can lead to the cat being, punished for merely looking at the new sofa.
In both these situations, there are two major misunderstandings. The first is that an animal would exhibit a particular behavior as revenge (报复) for something his owner did. In the dog’s case, he was merely expressing normal behavior in response to a particular environmental situation--the bad weather.
Normally the dog knows that the preferred location for elimination is outdoors. But when it was raining hard he hurried back inside. Naturally, when his need to go became overwhelming, he soiled in the house. Hardly an act of revenge! And the cat’s claw sharpening was completely normal cat behavior that may even have been tolerated on the old sofa. Why then should the cat differentiate the old sofa from the new one, or why should the cat know that the highly attractive fabric on the new sofa is to be left alone.
The second misunderstanding in these cases is that many pet owners do not understand that punishment for animals is only associated with the event of the moment. Delayed interactions or ones that are really not connected to the problem are not effective. They only serve to express the owner’s frustration and are not really punishment in the classic sense. In the dog’s case, his owner’s action is interpreted by the dog as punishment for walking up to the owner, not as punishment for eliminating in the house several hours earlier. That dog learned that owner + odor = punishment, not that it is unacceptable to eliminate in the house, regardless of the weather.
And, because the cat owner is not around 24 hours a day to make the cat’s punishment consistent, the cat learns to avoid the owner in the room with the sofa, since owner + sofa = punishment. The lessons these owners think are being taught through words and punishment are not the lessons the animals learn.
For this reason, it is better to look for ways to avoid the original event--a positive rather than negative approach.
A positive approach for the dog’s problem is for a family member to go out with the dog to be sure that elimination occurs. That way the dog will not have an urge to eliminate inside, when his owner is gone. The cat’s owner can cover the problem sofa and place an appropriate scratching post near the problem area so the cat will learn what is an acceptable clawing area. Eventually both animals can be trusted and the household can return to normal.
It is possible that an owner can reward undesirable behavior with too much attention. Barking at night is disturbing, so an owner yells at his dog to be quiet. The dog associates human contact with barking and is encouraged to bark again for more attention. If loud enough or long enough, the barking may actually drive an owner to bring an outdoor dog into the house, where he gets lots of human contact. Since barking is often a response to a brief disturbance, it will usually stop on its own. Unfortunately once the behavior is rewarded with attention, it can take longer to stop by simply remain resolute in their goal since occasional rewards prolong the behavior even more.
Dog and cat owners have many valuable resources for understanding their animal’s behavior in their veterinariana (兽医) and local animal shelter. Some veterinarian clinics, local humane societies and community dog training schools offer puppy kindergarten classes to start off the new family member right. If there is a behavior you do not understand in your pet, be sure to ask questions. Explain and describe any small problem, as many problems are easier to correct in their mild form and more difficult to stop once they have developped. Dogs with fear to approaching thunderstorms, dogs that have too much energy, cats that raid the kitchen counters, and many other problems can be helped. Your veterinarian or humane society can refer you to veterinary specialists or other appropriate people for particularly complicated problems. What do people usually do when their pets are thought to have behavior problems

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