Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University, the author of 10 books and an internationally sought-after speaker. As if that weren’t enough, she also happens to have accomplished all this while negotiating autism.
An animal ethics reformer, Grandin is something of a Doctor Dolittle, but rather than talking with the animals, she possesses the ability to think like the animals — in pictures.
“Autism made school and social life hard,” said Grandin, “but made (understanding) animals easy,”
Grandin, with Catherine Johnson, previously wrote the groundbreaking “Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior.” The collaboration, Grandin said, involved “zillions and zillions of hours on the phone.”
Earlier this year, the duo published “Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals.” Grandin got thrown a large literary bone in the form of finding her book listed for four weeks on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. The book also made the leading best-seller list in Canada.
Inside the book jacket, Grandin is pictured with three smiling golden retrievers. Alas, the author has no pets.
“I wish they were my dogs, but goldens need people all the time,” she said. “I’m traveling 85 percent of the time. I live on the road. There’s no way I can have pets. I miss having a pet. I miss hands-on work with animals all the time,” said Grandin, who through the ’70s and ’80s handled cattle and devised pragmatic approaches to improve their living conditions.
Autism assisted Grandin not only in understanding animals but also communicating across professional aisles, braiding neuroscience with veterinary medicine and agricultural literature.
“I cross the divide between scientific and practical approaches,” she said. “My whole career has been across disciplines.”
Grandin cooperates the way animals might. “There is some altruism in animals,” she said. “Elephants will help another animals.”
She hopes, ultimately, to help humans understand animals and why they do what they do.
Grandin, whose first name is an old family surname, is 62.
“I’m in the ‘transferring of knowledge’ part of my career. I want to mentor students and get students turned on to field work, doing practical things.”
In her book and in the interview, Grandin expressed impassioned concern about the lack of people working in the field. “Who is going to be our next Jane Goodall?”
In addition to field work, Grandin reads avidly. She rattled off a laundry list of science magazines, business journals and newspapers. “I don’t read the ladies’ magazines. They’re a bore,” Grandin said.
On long flights, she often turns to fiction. Her tastes run to Stephen King, John Grish- am or Michael Crichton.
If Temple Grandin were a dog, she’d like to be a black Labrador retriever.
“But not one locked in a crate in an apartment,” said Grandin. “I’d want to be a high-energy Lab, out doing lots of different things.”
Grandin’s book devotes a chapter to dogs, as well as cats, horses, cows, pigs, poultry, wildlife and zoos. She highlights four animal emotions: seeking, fear, panic and rage.
Grandin has some rage of her own, much of it aimed at current financial scandals and the overall lack of common sense. She spoke rapid-fire and with a tone of indignation about a number of issues, offering impassioned opinions on the following matters.
Conflicts between people and wildlife: “We have more and more serious clashes with wildlife because we have urban areas in the woods. People want to live in the natural world but don’t like the consequences. A few deer on the front lawn are nice, but 20 deer that eat all the decorative plants is not so nice.
“Human behavior has caused a lot of problems. We have to coexist, but it would be nice to have large reserve areas where animals are natural and there’s no camping, and bikes and jogging are banned.”
Pit-bull bans: “The problem with outlawing pit bulls is that criminals will just breed something else vicious. Now there’s a mix of Akita and pit bull, so you have both guarding and territorial instincts with aggressiveness. It’s like making a gun without a safety.”
Coyotes in Greenwood Village: “I’d keep the good coyotes killing ground squirrels, but you have to take out the bad coyotes harassing kids or killing Dachshunds and Pomeranians. They have to be shot because they will teach other coyotes the bad behavior the same way that bears have learned that backpacks equal food and mountain lions know that humans are made of meat.”
Dog clothing: “Dogs can learn to tolerate all kinds of things. Dogs need to have doggie social time with other dogs off-leash. I’m more concerned about that than dressing dogs up.
“Give the dog a chance to be a dog with other dogs. Take it to a dog park and take the clothes off during that social time. Dogs can make a distinction, the same way a service dog knows that when the vest is on, it’s working.”
Dog racing: “It won’t hurt a greyhound to run around a track, but they better not be doing live coursing, training dogs to run after live lures: kittens or rabbits. That’s totally awful.
“When not racing, these dogs live locked up in kennels all day, and that’s a rotten life for a dog. They need to be taken out for at least an hour of interaction and play to have any quality of life.”
Horse racing: “I have no problem with racing horses, but I have a big problem with them starting horses too young — like Barbaro. And they’re breeding giant, muscled bodies on little stick legs, overloading the biological system.”
Zoos: “Zoos have a valuable function: They get kids interested in animals. Some animals adapt better than others. Animals that graze adapt well. Larger animals do not. Elephants in zoos should be limited to rescues.”
Circuses: “It’s OK to use animals for entertainment. Horses are fine, but I’ve seen polar bears in the circus living in cages where they couldn’t turn around.
“It’s ethical to breed and raise animals, to use them for sport and work and entertainment and eating, but we have to do it in an ethical manner.
“It all comes down to how you treat the animals. We have to give animals a decent life.”
Colleen Smith blogs at
nonfiction
Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals, by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, $26
Books by Temple Grandin
•”Emergence Labeled Autistic”
•”Livestock Handling and Transport”
•”Thinking in Pictures”
•”Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals”
•”Animals in Translation”
•”Developing Talents”
•”Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships”
•”Humane Livestock Handling”
•”The Way I See It”
•”Animals Make Us Human”
