Dogs in Review May 2013

Canine Science! Everywhere! AHHH! (source)

Hey Mia!

Didn’t May come and go in a flash? Is it possible to ask for an extension? The world of canine science was bopping last month, so here’s a review of things I would have liked to cover in more detail, if I were granted a two-week extension:

--> Dogs in Research

Dogs rocked peer-reviewed journals last month! As you mentioned, the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab published an article in a recent issue of Learning and Motivation. We looked at the olfactory experience of companion dogs, and Im sure Ill talk more about our paper later. The issue will include a number of dog-centric, peer-reviewed articles covering a variety of canine cognition topics such as olfaction, memory, physical cognition, and the influence of humans on dog behavior. Here’s a brief overview of a few of the studies:

MAGIC BONES

Pattison et al. The case of the magic bones: Dogs’ memory of the physical properties of objects.

How can I not mention a paper talking about magic bones? “Using a procedure popular with preverbal infant researchers, [the researchers] allowed dogs to initially observe a bone and then to subsequently view the bone changed in either size or color. Dogs gazed longer at a bone changed in either way, compared to a control presentation of an unchanged bone. Dogs apparently encoded and remembered both the size and color of the bone.” *

OLFACTION

Hall et al. Training domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) on a novel discrete trials odor-detection task.

“[Domestic] dogs can be trained to detect a distinct odor (anise) buried in pine shavings. However, it took dogs about 60 trials to reach an average performance level of 80% correct choices, and dogs learned much better when a human experimenter delivered food reward than when the reward was buried with the odor cue.” *

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Pongrácz et al. “We will work for you” – Social influence may suppress individual food preferences in a communicative situation in dogs.

“[Dogs] would repeatedly choose a bowl containing a carrot over a bowl containing preferred sausage if a human pointed to the carrot bowl. In a delayed response test, dogs regularly search at the location where they last saw food disappear.” *

DOGS AND WORDS

Pilley. Border collie comprehends sentences containing a prepositional object, verb, and direct object.

Chaser knows words (source)

A border collie named Chaser initially captured headlines in 2011 as “the smartest dog in the world” when research published in Behavioral Processes reported that she knew the names of over 1,000 different objects.

Pilley’s current article investigated Chaser’s attention to the syntactical relationships between words, like differentiating “to ball take Frisbee” from “to Frisbee take ball.”

What’s going on with “wordy dogs” like Chaser? How did they get this way? And how can we test whether the dogs in our homes understand our words as we intend them?

• Do Dogs Understand Our Words? The Dogs Weigh In. Scientific American

• Do Dogs Understand Our Words? The Bark Magazine 

PUPPY PROBLEMS?

In other canine science news, I was happy to see that the blog Companion Animal Psychology (twitter: @CompAnimalPsych) covered a recent publication by Frank McMillan et al investigating behavioral problems in puppies from pet stores vs puppies from non-commercial breeders. According to the study: What were the behavioral differences between pet store and breeder-obtained dogs? Read on!

YAWNING IN DOGS MEANS...

Over at Not bad science on Scientific American Blogs, @Felicity__M discusses a study of yawning behavior in dogs. Check out her coverage of the recent paper, Buttner et al. Contagious yawning, social cognition, and arousal: an investigation of the processes underlying shelter dogs’ responses to human yawns.

--> Dog Bite Prevention Week 2013
Apparently, the third full week of May is dog bite prevention week, but in my mind, every day is (or should be) dog bite prevention day. I don’t want to be bitten by a dog, and also I don’t want to give a dog the experience of biting me. So how do we prevent dog bites?

• My primary strategy to avoid being bitten is to not be a child. Yes, that is cheeky, but children are more likely than others to be bitten by dogs, which we’ve discussed in earlier posts, Dogs and babies: Not always cute and The Science Surrounding Children & Dogs: Part 3 (The Ugly).

• I also avoid bites by not interacting with dogs like this: 

Watch Sophia Yin Dog Bite Prevention Video

• Instead, I ask dogs whether they want to interact, as recommended in a great post by Khris Erickson, the Humane Educator at HAWS, Humane Animal Welfare Society in Wisconsin. 
  
  
• If dogs indicate that they are not into interacting, then we dont interact. Its that simple. What I sometimes find is that owners of "so friendly" dogs want to push an interaction even if the dog is giving "not right now" indications. A dog can still be "uber-friendly" without wanting to interact all the time with everyone. Ive been thinking about this a lot recently as NYC enters summer and dogs are looking hotter and hotter, and potentially experiencing some physical discomfort.
  
  
• I also think about context, practicing interventions and what a leash can (and can’t) prevent. Patricia McConnell, CAAB, offers in-depth insights into this topic over at her blog, The Other End of the Leash, in the post Dog Bite Prevention 2013.
  
  
• When it comes to preventing dog bites, I frequently check out The Blue Dog, a website aimed at educating children about dogs. I first learned about The Blue Dog at the 2nd Canine Science Forum. The website houses resources and research on children and dog bites, in addition to providing general dog information:
• Research on dog bites

• Research on dog bite prevention

--> Up next: Some of the leading canine science researchers will be presenting at a Canine Science Conference, SPARCS, June 28-30, 2013. The best part is, anyone in the world can join, either in a conference hall in Redmond, WA, or streaming live to your living room. 

(source)

I recently covered the SPARCS conference on #SciAmBlogs, who will be there & what to expect, at You’re invited to a canine science conference. Take a look!

I know your life is currently heavily focused on The Big W, and I’m not talking about the best movie ever, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Hoping for an update on working dog welfare!

Cheers!

Julie

* summary by Macpherson K. & Roberts W.A. (2013). Exploring the canine mind: Studies of dog cognition, Learning and Motivation, DOI: 10.1016/j.lmot.2013.04.006

© 2013 Julie Hecht

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What music do dogs prefer Bach vs Snoop Dogg

Hey Julie,

I hope youve had a fun week.

I saw a new in-press publication with your name on it - "Smelling more or less: Investigating the olfactory experience of the domestic dog" - looks like a really great study, and so timely after my last post about dogs and olfactory enrichment! 

Looking forward to reading it (and all those other cool Learning and Motivation articles) over the weekend.

So did you do your homework? Did you watch this clip from the Sydney Opera Houses Ship Song Project? 

I wanted you to watch this clip, and more importantly, LISTEN to it, because it features lots of different musical styles. I dont know about you, but I certainly have a different reaction to the different styles. Some appeal to me more than others. Some I find relaxing, while others make me want to nod my head to keep the beat or even hum along.  I was talking about this clip recently with my friend Mark (from SARC, in my head that always runs together "Mark-from-SARC") and of course we shifted to talking about dogs and music. As you do. Thats normal - right?!

What kind of music do dogs prefer?

As part of my PhD research into kennel enrichment, I looked into this very question. 
The research in this area has been conducted in two kennel environments.  

Headphones on dog = silly (they hear around x4 better than us!) source

In the first study, scientists played five different recordings to dogs housed in a shelter kennel: 

- a control (nothing) 

- human speech

- classical music

- pop music

- heavy metal music

to the dogs and recorded the behaviours of the dogs using an ethogram. Then they looked at the differences in the behaviour of the dogs during each condition.
 
The dogs were significantly more likely to run around barking when the heavy metal music was played; and lie down, apparently resting quietly, when the classical music was on. 

There was no difference to their behaviour when the control, human speech or pop music were played. The second study showed similar results, with classical music linked to more sleeping and heavy metal correlating with more body shaking.

(source)

Its probably worth noting that these changes in behaviour may not reflect dogs actual PREFERENCE for music. To assess that, wed need to set up a study design that offered dogs a choice of multiple sound environments. But it certainly suggests that if we want to encourage behaviours associated with relaxation, like lying down, not barking, and sleeping; we should be piping some gentle classical music to the environment our dogs are in. I reckon my dogs quite like Chopins Nocturnes, but maybe thats just me.

The Australian ABCs fabulous science program, Catalyst, have a great (~6min) story about this research that you might enjoy watching here.

(cant embed their vid, but click this pic to go to video)

Have a great weekend, I look forward to hearing what else is going on with you now those students have been set free!

Mia

Further reading:

Hubrecht, R. C. (1995). The welfare of dogs in human care. Chapter in Serpells book: The domestic dog, its evolution, behavior and interactions with people, 179-198.

Kogan L.R., Schoenfeld-Tacher R. & Simon A.A. (2012). Behavioral effects of auditory stimulation on kenneled dogs, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 7 (5) 268-275. DOI: 10.1016/j.jveb.2011.11.002 

Wells D., Graham L. & Hepper P. (2002). The influence of auditory stimulation on the behaviour of dogs housed in a rescue shelter., Animal Welfare, 11 (4) 385-393. Other: Link

© 2013 Mia Cobb

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Dogs Cats Cats Working Dogs Working Dogs Emotions

Hi Julie!

What a busy week I’ve found myself having! 

Very productive indeed, with a lot of this:

and some more of that:

 Fuelled by a ton of this:

But I did take time to notice that your cat Josh broke something new.  Oh Josh! 

Thanks for telling me about your ISHAR presentation about dogs and cats in the home.  I can definitely relate to the importance of early socialisation = best chance at harmony. Take my dog Elke, for example.

As a pup, she met and spent time around mature cat Bobby (who opted to ignore her for the most part).

Elke grew up around cats and kittens.

Then she helped me raise a bunch of Shelter foster kittens until they were old enough to be adopted.

By the time Tonto came to live with us as permanent family member, she was an old hand in living around cats. And when Caleb later joined us as a young adult dog, Tonto was pretty relaxed around dogs. He tended to be confident in interactions; not running away (importantly, not triggering any chase responses from our new dog).

Elke ably demonstrating in top image that a cat is not worth waking up for.

Gidget and some enthusiastic GDs

This was also true when we brought a new kennel cat into the Training Kennel and Vet Clinic facility I managed at Guide Dogs Victoria (GDV). We selected a kitten from the Shelter who was outgoing and confident around people and dogs. We then set her up in the main foyer of our facility to have a slow and positive introduction to the visiting puppies and dogs that we could control to maximise the positives for all the animals. 

Gidget now plays an important role at GDV helping to desensitise the dogs to cats by reducing their level of interest and distraction. If their key learning experiences about cats with Gidget are boring, they associate future cats with boring and will be less likely to want to chase them. 

Important when you are a working Guide Dog. Or a Police Dog. Or any number of other types of working dogs. Working Dog kennel cats are really common!

(source)

GDV Puppy Class (source)

Gidget also attends the puppy socialisation classes, wearing her harness and lead so puppies can be encouraged at an early age to stay calm around cats. A resident kennel cat also means that a friendly cat is readily available to assess a dog’s level of cat distraction or participate in training sessions to improve Guide Dog-appropriate responses to the presence of a cat.  

Or help out with photo shoots around Valentines Day. You know how it goes!

(source) Gidget loves photo shoots. Even if they arent (supposed to be) about her!

Gidget would spend her downtime in my office, asleep next to my computer monitor. We were good workmates and I miss her jaunty greetings and blissed out purrs! 

My regular desktop view when working at GDV

One thing about not sharing an office with Gidget any more is that it’s giving me more time to analyse all my PhD data about working dogs in kennel facilities. 

I’ve been busy number-crunching this week ahead of the RSPCA Australia Scientific Seminar later this month. My presentation is titled ‘Working Like a Dog – Affectively’. I’ll be talking about how affective states (a.k.a emotions) relate to working dogs, their welfare and performance. What is the affective experience for a working dog?  How can we tell? What things should we be considering to give working dogs a ‘life worth living’ (or better!) while they are working to help us humans?

RSPCA Scientific Seminar 2013

Professor David Mellor will be chairing the seminar and giving a presentation titled ‘Coping, cognition and quality of life improvement’ which I’m looking forward to hearing. Mellor’s based in New Zealand and I’ve enjoyed listening to him at other conferences. I am very interested in the work he’s been involved with in translating animal welfare science into practical animal welfare standards and outcomes in collaboration with the NZ government. It’s going to be a fun day!

Speaking of fun – aren’t you at Science Online’s 2013 event this week? I’m following #scio13 on Twitter and pretending I’m there too!

Mia

Further reading:

Mellor D.J. & Bayvel A.C.D. (2008). New Zealands inclusive science-based system for setting animal welfare standards, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 113 (4) 313-329. DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2008.01.010

Mellor D. (2012). Animal emotions, behaviour and the promotion of positive welfare states, New Zealand Veterinary Journal, 60 (1) 1-8. DOI: 10.1080/00480169.2011.619047

© Mia Cobb 2012

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