No More Henrys
A headline a few weeks ago caught my eye: PetSmart, groomer are sued in death of dog. Obviously, this should never happen. Reading the article just made me sad, and angry. The dog, Henry, a year-old dachshund, went to the groomer to get his nails trimmed. He emerged, bloody, with two broken ribs and a punctured lung, struggling to breathe. He died soon after. The owners’ lawsuit seeks more than damages for their suffering and Henry’s. They want change. They want the state (it happened in California) to license groomers. Grooming… Continued
News Flash: Dogs Remember
Science has once again confirmed the obvious: Dogs can remember things. OK, maybe I am being a bit hard on the researchers. They were specifically interested in whether dogs have episodic memory. Well, they call it “episodic-like” memory, since some would argue that only humans can actually have episodic memory. I’ll leave that argument for another day. Episodic memory is remembering things that have happened to you or that you have observed directly — that is, remembering “episodes” from your own life. It differs from “semantic memory,” which is memory… Continued
That Loving Gaze
Oxytocin is a hormone that plays a role in social bonding, as implied by some of its nicknames: the love hormone, cuddle chemical, or bliss hormone. It’s also something that dogs and humans share. Studies published in 2009 found that, when dogs gazed at their owners — you know, that adoring gaze that says, “feed me; I’m yours,” owners had more oxytocin in their urine. This correlates with feeling affection and social connection. What about the dogs? There’s more to this story. A later study looked at more variables. For… Continued
What Most People Don’t Know About Dogs
It’s easy to forget that most people don’t know things that we might consider obvious about dogs. A friend was recently chatting with an experienced service dog trainer. The trainer, who will remain anonymous to reduce the potential humiliation, commented that “dogs don’t generalize.” This trainer should know better. A week or so ago, I heard an interview with author Tom Wolfe on NPR. In the interview, Wolfe said that no evidence of anything resembling a language has ever been seen in a non-human, and that therefore only humans can… Continued
Relationship Is Its Own Reward
A cardinal rule in education, dog training, anything where one person is trying to affect another’s (person’s or dog’s) behavior is that the trainee determines what the reward or motivator is. If I am not interested in food, I am not going to work hard for it, no matter how tasty you think it is. A newly published study suggests that many dogs regard us, yes, us humans, as a reward! How cool is that? The paper, published in the fall issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, is… Continued
A Crazy Quilt of Laws
I spent much of the day prepping for two short classes I am teaching on service dog access law. I am hoping to turn these presentations into PPG Webinars, so stay tuned! I’ve done this before, but most recently, I had an entire semester to teach students about access law and other dog-related laws. We spent seven weeks on the crazy quilt of federal laws that govern public access for people who have service dogs. Paring the vast amount of information down to two one-hour presentations is tough. I decided… Continued
It’s Official: Dogs Have Feelings
That dogs have feelings, emotions, and thoughts probably seems obvious to PPG members and readers of my Thinking Dog Blog and to most people who share their lives with pets. But, as I tell my students at Bergin U, sometimes things need the stamp of approval of science, via peer-reviewed research, to be fully accepted as Truth. Many, many studies of dogs’ behavior and cognitive abilities do not, actually, reveal anything that we didn’t already “know.” But these studies solidify that knowledge and induct it into the Body of Knowledge… Continued
Prettier by Another Name
How much does a dog’s breed matter, particularly when that dog is of mixed breed heritage? When people are seeking a pet dog, breed, or, more likely, what they think they know about various breeds, can heavily influence their choices. But in the end, knowing — or guessing at — the dog’s mix of breeds doesn’t tell you very much about an individual dog. A shelter in Costa Rica, as described in Bark magazine, took a creative approach to communicating this message. Working with marketing professionals, the shelter promoted each mixed-breed… Continued
Getting to Know You …
I’ve worked in the service dog field for a long time — as a trainer and as an educator, teaching future trainers. The burning question is and has always been: How do we choose appropriate dogs for training? This post is not going to discuss the merits and disadvantages of breeding for service dogs versus choosing shelter or other available dogs. Trainers have had varying degrees of success with both approaches. More to the point, all these trainers face the same question, whether evaluating a puppy or an adolescent or… Continued
Look at the Whole Dog
In a class I’m teaching on dog communication, we recently discussed a study on how well people interpret dog body language. The study, Description of the behaviour of domestic dog by experienced and inexperienced people, was published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 2009. We looked at some other sources as well, but the discussion of this study with a group of future dog behaviorists and trainers was particularly interesting. The study’s authors wanted to know whether the amount of dog experience a person had improved his or her skills… Continued
True Friends
It’s been a couple of years since Gregory Berns published his research that uses MRIs to show that dogs love their humans. Now, British and Brazilian researchers have published a paper showing that dogs recognize our emotions as well. Sure, dog lovers have many stories about dogs showing empathy or reacting to the anger, happiness, sadness, or other emotions in our tone of voice. But this study is the first to show that dogs actually make a connection between our facial expressions and the emotional qualities of our speech. The… Continued
There’s Nothing Simple about Dog Play
Dogs’ play behavior has, over time, been attributed to a variety of factors. It provides puppies practice for adult behaviors. Play with humans is about “dominance.” Play with other dogs is about “dominance” or “status.” It’s a replacement behavior for hunting and killing prey. It’s a way to learn about your environment. Etc. Turns out they are all wrong. Or partly right. Play can be any of these — depending on which dog is playing and when. “Why Do Adult Dogs Play?” an article published by John Bradshaw in Behavioural… Continued
Learning from Real Dogs
I read a lot of academic studies of dogs. My students often enjoy dissecting these studies and figuring out better ways to investigate the same questions. Oftentimes, their ideas come from their extensive observation of real dogs doing real dog things — with other dogs. Researcher and writer Carl Safina makes this point convincingly and with regard to many more species than dogs. His wonderful book on animal communication and thought, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, gently skewers academics for some of absurdly human-centered studies and the equally… Continued
Teaching Thinking Dogs
A study that was published recently by an Oregon State University researcher compared wolves with dogs … and many people reading the conclusions appear to have understood the study to mean that we teach dogs to be stupid. The study tested pet dogs’, shelter dogs’, and wolves’ ability to open a container that had sausage in it. The dogs mostly sniffed around, then sought help from the nearest human. The wolves tried harder to open the container. The dogs and wolves were all tested under two conditions: alone and with… Continued
Working Dogs Want to Have Fun, Too
Off-duty working dogs enjoy many of the same dog sports as pet dogs … but training for and competing with a career dog raises some interesting questions. Deni Elliott, whose guide dog, Alberta, has nearly earned her Rally Advanced Excellent title, but their start in the sport was a bit bumpy. Deni needs a sighted guide (human) to read the signs to her, but that was the easy part. The biggest adjustment was for Alberta, who had to figure out that, not only was she not supposed to guide Deni… Continued
Get Healthy, Get a Dog
I was excited when I read about Get Healthy, Get a Dog, a new report from the Harvard Medical School that describes the connections between life with a dog (or dogs) and better health. The article I read was very enthusiastic, and I immediately purchased a copy of the report, a collaboration between Harvard Medical School and Angell Animal Medical Center (in Boston). A few days later, I settled in to read the whole 50-page document … and was deeply disappointed . It’s not that the report contains anything negative.… Continued
Wanna Play?
Humans and dogs love to play together; from recent research, it seems that this shared love for play has been a key element in shaping our close bond. While there is still a question as to whether shared play creates a solid relationship between a person and a dog or it merely adds to an already strong bond, what’s certain is that people who play frequently and intensively with their dogs enjoy those relationships more — as do the dogs. A recent paper by John Bradshaw, “Who do adult dogs ‘play’?”… Continued
The Nose Knows
A well-known test devised in 1970 by psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. is used to determine whether an animal recognizes himself in a mirror. This “mirror test” is widely regarded as the “gold standard” for determining whether an animal is self-aware, that is, recognizes himself as a distinct individual and has a concept of self. This test may very well do that — sometimes, for some animals. Chimpanzees and some other primates pass easily; elephants and dolphins also pass. Most dogs do not, and, for many scientists, this is held up… Continued
Very Clear on the Concept
Jana started learning concepts and putting things into categories way back when she was a puppy, before Chaser was even born. Chaser is the most famous “categorizing” dog; she has learned the names of well over 1,000 items and can group them into the right categories: toys, balls, Frisbees, etc. In addition, she has demonstrated an understanding of grammar, correctly taking one item to another, for example. She also can watch, remember, and imitate complex strings of behaviors. Chaser’s story is told in Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who… Continued
Are We Dogs’ Best Friends?
My blog is called The Thinking Dog, so it doesn’t take a canine Einstein to figure out that I take dogs’ thinking ability seriously. But what does it mean to talk about thinking dogs? How do dogs think? What do they think about? While human thinking tends to occur primarily in words, and maybe images, what about dogs? While most dogs learn to understand many words, it’s unlikely that they think in words. Their thinking and memories are more likely to be tied to scent, which is their dominant sense,… Continued
May Your Bowl Always Be More Than Half-Full
Can dogs be optimists? Pessimists? Many people see dogs as natural optimists. After all, dogs are very loving and amazingly forgiving of human foibles (and worse — just look at all the mistreated dogs who still love humans). Many dogs greet every stranger as a new best friend. And some dogs are sure that a car ride means fun for dogs! Cali is one of those naturally sunny, cheerful, affectionate optimists, as I wrote recently on my Thinking Dog Blog. Her mission in life is to greet every single human on… Continued
The Dignity of Being an Individual
By Pamela S. Hogle It’s hardly a new idea: Treat dogs as individuals. In 1963, Clarence Pfaffenberger wrote a book called The New Knowledge of Dog Behavior. A line in that book eloquently states what I see as the ideal approach to educating dogs. Pfaffenberger writes that the first time a puppy is removed from his or her litter, separated from his or her littermates for training, the puppy is given “the dignity of being an individual.” He means, I believe, that a trainer who is focused on a single dog — not… Continued
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