THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

I re-read Seligman’s Authentic Happiness this weekend.  Ever read it? Seligman is one of the American Psychologists who decided to focus on mental health rather than mental illness, and yeah for him I say. I’m writing about it here because it got me thinking about our happiness and our dogs.

In the book, Seligman asks us to determine our “signature strengths,” and suggests that the road to happiness is to do what you are good at and what you love. (He has a questionnaire in the book to help you decide your strengths. Mine include Curiousity and Love of Learning. I’m not saying what my weaknesses are!)

So here’s my question related to dogs: Is that true of our dogs as well? Is their happiness, at least in part, related to having an opportunity to do what they love and what they are good at?  It seems intuitively that it must be true, and that like us, so many of our dogs are asked to do things that they aren’t good at. I know I spent a couple of years working with one of my Border Collies (Pippy Tay) on working sheep, until a sheep chased her across the field at a herding dog trial, and everyone in the stands laughed so hard they fell out of their seats. I may be indulging in inappropriate anthropomorphism, but I called Pip back to me and she walked back with her head and tail down, as if she was (dare I say it?).. ashamed.

I still feel guilty for not realizing sooner that, although she was brilliant at certain aspects of herding, she simply didn’t have the motivation and the courage to work sheep competively. I stopped training her on sheep, let her herd at home when it was fun and easy, and switched her to working with dog-dog aggressive dogs. She was brilliant at it, absolutely brilliant, and I truly believe she loved it.

As the years went on I saw so many people in my office who had dogs who, to me, didn’t enjoy agility or obedience or whatever, and yet their owners felt they “shouldn’t give up.” I’ll grant it can be a hard call to know if you should try to work through a problem, or decide that your dog just doesn’t enjoy a particular activity, but it seems to be an important one, yes?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: It snowed 3 or 4 inches, but compared to the blizzards and floods of other parts of the country, we can’t complain. The vegetation that has emerged is frozen solid, but tulip and other bulbs are amazing hardy, bless them, and I suspect they’ll be fine. But, with the snow, came new lambs… Lordy, lordy, I do love newborn lambs.

Here’s a bird’s eye view of Lady Godiva (daughter of Snickers and niece of Truffles, what else could I name her?) and her new born lambs. They are absolutely tiny (maybe 3-4 pounds?).. not so good when you are raising market lambs, but I love that they are all white and seem to be doing well.

Lady Godiva is a ewe lamb, meaning she’s just about one year old right now, and this is her first lambing season. What a good momma she though.. see how, in the photo below, she is flexing her back legs to make her udder more accessible to her lambs? Good girl!  The nursing lamb is wagging his tail–always a good sign, since they usually only do that when they are getting milk. The lamb on the ground has nursed less. I’m anxious to check him later this afternoon… he has some milk in his belly, but not as much as his brother. I’m hoping for a big, fat milk-filled belly this afternoon.

One last image from this morning,of the morning sunlight coming into the barn. Nothing special really, but I just love barns and old wood…

A few nights ago I took the dogs out for their last potty around 10 pm, and things didn’t go quite as planned. Instead of walking sleepily out of the house to his favorite place to pee, Will took one step into the fresh air and hurtled like a bullet into the dark behind the house. In a second, no more, I heard a cacophony of snarls, screams and growls. I knew instantly what it was: the local raccoon was raiding the bird feeder behind the house. I was sure this was the problem, since the big garbage can full of grain for the sheep had been raided for a few nights in a row until Jim got creative with bungi cords. The only critter big and strong enough to pry off a metal garbage can lid is a raccoon, and every year one trades wits with us over who gets to eat the grain, so I was sure that’s who Willie was tangling with–in the pitch dark, up the hill a good 50 yards away by now, with me in my slippers and bathrobe.

“WILL!!!” I yelled, “THAT’LL DO.”  Growls, hisses, snarls and screams streamed down the hill through the dark… but no sounds of Will running back down the hill to me. “WILL!!!” I screamed again, beginning to have panicked thoughts of Willie’s face looking like hamburger after losing the battle to the raccoon (not an uncommon result of a fight between a dog and a rac I’m afraid). ‘”THAT’LL DO!!!”

Well, it didn’t do at all, at least not for the next ten-fifteen seconds or so. Will did come back after about 15 seconds, it’s true, and all injuries and further dramas were avoided, BUT he would’ve come back instantly if I hadn’t messed up and taken my own advice. How many  times have I said that it’s far more successful to first stop a dog when he’s tearing away from you than it is to ask, first thing, for him to come when called?  After all, when a dog is running full tilt away, he has to stop first before he can turn around and change direction, right?

Sure enough, I got my head on straight (and my dog back instantly) the next time it happened (last night). It is SO helpful to be mentally prepared, isn’t it? Will again tore out of the garage so fast he was 25 feet away, and a few feet from the raccoon before I could open my mouth. But this time, what came out of my mouth was the right cue. I said, simply, “NO.”  (Sometimes I say Whoa, I’m not sure Will can tell the difference!). It worked not because I said it in a loud, deep voice, but because I’ve taught Will to stop when I say “no”. It’s just one of his cues, one of the things I’ve taught him to do using positive reinforcement. It’s the easiest thing in the world to start: just say no, or whoa, or whoops, or whatever you want to say in a conversational voice. If your dog turns his head (which inherently means he has stopped doing what he was doing) or stops moving forward, shower him with praise (I ‘load’ “good boy” with tons of treats the first two weeks I’ve working with a dog) and reinforcement. Gradually work your way up to asking him to stop when he’s more and more distracted, always making the reward worth the effort. (I once gave Will an entire bait bag full of food for stopping instantly after flushing a deer). This is a very short description of how to teach your dog to stop doing something while still being positive and humane… you can read a more thorough one in Family Friendly Dog Training. (I also teach an “Emergency Lie Down…” but I didn’t want Will to lie down in the dark when I didn’t know where the raccoon was.)

Here are some thoughts to ponder: 1) I don’t think it’s inherently obvious to use Stop or Whoa or No to stop a dog when he or she is dashing away from us. I think we naturally tend to call them back, and in my experience, a recall isn’t as effective as a stop signal.  2) I’m curious how many readers have an “Emergency Stop” on their dogs. I couldn’t live without one, living in the country beside a county highway, but I’m interested in your experience. Do you also find it far more effective to stop a dog running away with a Stop or Lie Down than a recall? Do you buy my logic as to why it should be more effective?

On another note completely, here’s a laugh for you. (At least, it certainly was for me.) The following was part of a standard media release I was asked to sign:

For the purposes of clarity, I expressly waive any and all moral rights I may have in connection with my appearance/services.

Couldn’t be more clear, hey? Has anyone asked you to waive your ‘moral rights’ lately? (I crossed it out!)

Meanwhile, back at the farm: First, the FIRST flower at Redstart Farm! If you don’t live in the north, it’s hard to describe how color starved one gets in by the end of winter. The first flower brings more happiness than I can say.

And here’s Will trying to play fetch with a large, long branch from a tree (it’s much bigger than it looks, at least 15 feet long). First he tries to pick it up…

Next, he got it in his mouth but dropped it and play bowed …

Then he stopped and looked at me to solve the problem (a notable difference by the way between domestic dogs and wolves: dogs give up quickly and look to their owners to solve the problem, wolves keep trying by themselves, even if they are comfortable and familiar with the people standing beside them. Just more evidence that dogs are super smart!)

Here’s to nothing but flowers and fetch games for you over the weekend.  For us, Sunday is the first day of lambing… the cycle lasts 17 days, so who knows when they’ll come, but I always get excited about the propects! Wish us luck.. all healthy twins and contented momma’s.

I finished a book titled Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess. It’s an interesting book, although I admit to mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it is a fascinating account of a research project designed to determine if a language is a uniquely human trait, or is something that can be used and understood by a non-human primate. It was initiated by a Columbia University psychologist named Herbert Terrace. Terrace was interested in challenging Noam Chomsky’s  contention that language is exclusively human (thus the name of the chimp as Nim Chimpsky, I always did love the pun). Mind you, he was not talking about labeling objects or using sounds to communicate; specifically he argued that syntax, or the use of the order of words to create meaning, is uniquely  human.

The book describes the dramatic and often tragic life of a chimpanzee who was taken from what was basically a breeding farm for research primates and sent to well-intentioned people who clearly knew virtually nothing about chimpanzees. Neither did they seem to know much about American Sign Language, which was successfully being used by other researchers (Roger Fouts for example) to communicate with non-human primates.

To say that things often didn’t go well is an understatement. There were a long list of reasons for that, but Terrace himself is clearly part of the problem. (As are all the scientists described in the book, who come across as arrogant and difficult. Heaven knows I’ve met my share of the same, but I am a bit skeptical of some parts of the book, since all the scientists come off poorly and all of the caretakers much better.)

However, I can tell you that there is little disagreement in academia that Terrace’s project was poorly executed. After Nim was passed around from one exhausted caretaker to another, with literally dozens of different trainers who knew little about ASL themselves, Terrace wrote a hugely popular book, Nim. In it he concluded that, contrary to his expectations, chimps could NOT ever learn or use ‘real grammar’ or even understand the simplest concepts of human language.

Critical as it is, I wish that Hess’s book mentioned that Terrace’s conclusions slammed shut the funding for any more ape language studies for years, if not decades. I was at University when it came out, and was going to Animal Behavior Society meetings and listening to the few people trying to continue language studies commiserate that their funding had been pulled because of the book (including Irene Pepperberg with her parrot Alex) . Terrace seemed to take the relatively radical approach that not only was Nim incapable of understanding syntax, but that he didn’t even understand what the words symbolized. He argued that Nim was just mindlessly mimicking. (And yet, when poor Nim was returned to a clearly abusive environment, Terrace suggested that Nim himself be asked if he was happy there…!).

A reviewer on Amazon suggests that it is best to read both Hess’s and Terrace’s book to get the full picture. I agree, and I’d add a suggestion to read Roger Fouts’ book, Next of Kin as well. I wish the book Nim Chimpsky talked a bit more about the what the research was really about, and I wish there was more discussion of the impact of Terrace’s conclusion. But overall, it is a fascinating, compelling (and sad) read, a real page-turner, as well yet another story of how much pain and trouble can be caused by not taking the trouble to learn about a species, much less an individual, before you interact with them.

Meanwhile, back at the farm… Willie and I worked sheep on Saturday and glory be, no limp at all from his bad shoulder. I won’t bore you with the details, but the surgery scheduled for Thursday has been canceled, at least for now. Could it be that chinese herbs, homeopathic medicine and western medicine sans surgery could be enough to cure his shoulder? Cross your paws for us. I am going to continue to monitor him and if necessary, bite the bullet, do an MRI at the Vet School if necessary early in summer and go from there.

Other good news is that it was gloriously warm this weekend. Almost all the snow is gone, and look.. the bulbs are coming up at Redstart Farm!

And here’s Sushi on Jim on the couch in the sun… she thinks this warm, sunny weather is cat heaven.

Here’s some more information from IFAAB, based on a talk presented by Dr. Samuel Gosling at UT-Austin. He is studying personality in animals, and has looked at it in species as varied as hyenas and dumpling squid. (And yes, dumpling squid are just as cute as they sound).

He spoke briefly about the history of scientific attitudes toward personality in animals–at one point it was almost a dirty word, but in the last twenty years the term (and the concept) has become generally accepted.  (Although he mentioned one researcher who still uses the term “behavioral syndrome” to avoid sounding anthropomorphic.) I must admit, as a someone trained in science myself, I still find it remarkable that the concept of personality in animals was ever controversial. It is astounding how essential it is to many to keep the division between human and animal clear and strong.

Related to that, here are two quotes I use in the Introduction to my UW class on Human/Animal Relationships:

“…the delineation of human/animal relationships occurs in all cultures, and in all cultures, this boundary is of great significance.” (Arien Mack – Humans and Other Animals,  1995)

“Our culture and our dominant religions have tied human dignity and self-worth to our separation from nature and  distinctiveness from other animals.” Frans de Waal, Ape and the Sushi Master

So true.

However, the concept of personality even in people was controversial  to some behaviorists. Encouragingly, Gosling reported that journal articles using the word, both in studies on human and animal behavior have seen a large increase, especially in the last decade. It seems that the pendulum is finally swinging back to a reasonable place, where we can acknowledge that genetics and experience combine to create predictable behavior patterns in individuals, whether they are human, dog, horse or kangaroo.

Here’s an interesting study of Gosling’s that related to how owners view the personality of their dogs. He asked people at a dog park to fill out a questionnaire about their dogs, and then did some simple tests to learn a bit about the personalities of the owners. You guessed it, there was a strong correlation between how people themselves behaved and how they perceived their dogs. Agreeable dogs were more likely to have agreeable owners, neurotic owners more likely to have neurotic dogs, etc. … Hard to say what’s going on here: could be that we owners project our own tendencies onto our dogs, or perhaps we choose dogs with similar characteristics. Or do we and our dogs began to act like one another after being together long enough!?.

Most interestingly, he found that people were consistent in how they rated other people as well… in other words, if they saw a dog as being “agreeable” they tended to rate other people as agreeable as often as not. But he also found the independent observers tended to rate people’s dogs similarly as did the owners, so it is not as though the owners were totally off base….

Gosling also made the point that “Temperament” refers to the genetic predisposition of an individual to behave a certain way, while “Personality” refers to a predisposition influenced both by experience and by genetics. Thus, we really shouldn’t call them “Temperament Tests,” should we?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Remember the photo of the ewe Spot getting shorn, with her pristine white belly appearing underneath her wool?  Well, that was then and this is now. I didn’t get a photo, but this morning I didn’t recognize a sheep in the pen at first, couldn’t figure out who was the little, brown ewe by the feeder?  Turns out it was Spot, covered in mud, literally from head to tail. The only explanation I can think of is that she was resting lying down and struggled in the mud to get up. Sheep can get in trouble if they lay down with their legs pointing uphill. Based on her complete coat of mud, II suspect tht she struggled a long time before she could get up. I couldn’t see any injuries, and she seemed hungry and not visibly the worse for wear, so I’ll keep an eye on her tonight and hope she’s fine. Poor little thing, she’s quite small and clearly the bottom of the hierarchy, I find I feel a bit protective of her.

Back to sunny Sunday, here’s Willie moving the sheep out of the barn after shearing. (don’t they look spiffy?)

In the next photo you can see the white version of Spot.  She is the one  at the very back.. with the, uh, Spot. Now she’s pretty much all dark brown…

Next is Will, trying to ignore Sushi while waiting to work the sheep….

One of my favorite games with Willie is to put him on sit/stay and then hide one of his toys in another room. I release him and tell him to go find his toy. We both think it’s a hoot and get all waggy from the shoulders back together. We’ve played it on and off for months, but I started doing it on a daily basis in preparation for his surgery and restricted exercise. Until recently, Willie always looked for the hidden toy. It was overwhelmingly clear that he was using his eyes, and if he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t find it. However, after about a week and a half of playing the game 4-5 times in a row every evening, Willie completely switched strategies and started using his nose. The switch was absolutely obvious: he’d trot out of the room he’d been in with his nose in the air, sniffing with his nostrils flaring and his head up. Once I noticed his busy nose, I started hiding the toy in harder and harder places, where he couldn’t see the toy at all (or barely.. my favorite is to slide a thin, narrow toy between books in a book case).

Not atypically for a Border collie,  Willie has always used his eyes or his memory to find things. Of course he uses his nose a lot, but this change in “find the toy” strategy seems to delight him as much as it does me. What I love most about it is how it reminds me daily of the ‘wonderful world of scent’— without having to lay a track. (I took one tracking class and was uproariously incompetent. My best skill was cracking up the entire class by wrapping myself up in the lead while juggling my map and flags and trying to place my feet in only the right places. Too bad there was no video, it was a Lucy O’Ball-ish moment of the highest calibar!)

Last night I hid the toy behind some objects behind a door, and at first Willie moved away from the door, part way up the stairs. I realized immediately that the currents in the house were blowing the scent through the crack in the door, through the living room and up the stair case. Will got about halfway up, found that the scent was disappearing and then followed it back down into the right room and xero-ed in on the toy right away. Too cool.

Shearing went really well.  I have a great shearer, and I pay him almost double to come because he is so kind to the sheep. Once they’ve been shorn once, if it was by a skilled shearer, they don’t seem to mind all that much. I’m sure they’d rather not have it done, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t feel good to them to have all that wool taken off. The weather cooperated… it is sunny and warm and will be all week. That is such a relief, you never know what it will be this time of year.

After being shorn, every year, the sheep seem to behave toward one another as if they have just been introduced. Here are some photos of a great shearer, Jerry Ace just starting to shear the belly of yearling Spot. Look at how white it is under the clippers!  The next photos are of Dorothy and Truffles competing for status, just like a couple of rams out of a Natural Geographic special.

Here are the battling ewes:  Dorothy is the grey–the oldest of the herd and the one I have thought of as the lead ewe. Truffles is the brown one (a hair sheep, starting to shed on her own) with the white tail. Truffles is much younger (and the mother of White Dude) but is no shrinking violet. Willie faced her down on shearing day in a small, confined space and I was OH SO PROUD of him….Dorothy has just backed up and it starting to ram Truffles.

I the next photo the girls have rammed heads, and then slid sideways (I imagine to soften the blow a bit). Look at Truffles hind quarters, they are completely off the ground. Clearly she is not giving in much to Dorothy.

After 5 or 6 rammings, they began to just push against each other, and then would stand leaning against each other like tired boxers in a ring. What I love about this next photo is that the rest of the flock is watching just as closely as Willie and I were. (And the question, of course is: who won?  I’m not sure, although I’m sure that they are! I’ll keep watching….)

First, thanks so much for your comments about the podcast, they are extremely helpful. Keep them coming, I’ll summarize what has come in at the end of next week (seems like one votes for one host or two hosts votes are about 50/50, same with whether the show could charge a fee or not….) I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s some more information from the IFAAB meetings in Tucson. There were two very interesting talks about breed recognition and breed-based behavior predictions. Victoria Voith, one of the first board certified veterinary behaviorists in the country, enrolled us in a study she is doing on breed identification. Given that breed bans are based on, well, breed identification, she and others are gathering breed identifications from a total of 1,000 people. We all took the survey, being shown about 25 or so photos of dogs, and were asked to identify the dog as a purebred or a mix. If we thought it was a mix, we were asked to identify the primary and (if relevant) secondary breeds contributing to the dog.

After we all took the ‘test,’ Dr. Voith told us the results of DNA testing from the MARS breed identification tests (more on that later). First of all, we were all relieved when we were done… our brains were starting to fry. (We had a limited amount of time to make our guesses and it was hard work!) I was glad when we were done, not just because it was getting tiring (and I don’t think I have ever been very good at breed ID!), but also because the results confirmed my world view.. always reinforcing when that happens, isn’t it? Most of the dogs shown came up as mixes of mixes: 25% this, 12.5 % that.Very few came out as 50% of one breed and 50% of another.

I’ve always wondered why people tend to describe mixed breed dogs as the offspring of two pure bred parents, and I’ve long believed that it is VERY difficult to guess parentage of a mixed breed dog. I came to that conclusion after reading Scott and Fuller’s study, and looking at the photos they have of some of their crosses (beagle/cocker for example.) If you look at all their photos, some of the pups look like their father, some their mother, and others look like just about nothing at all (or another breed altogether.) Dogs are so structurally labile, surely it is truly hard to predict exactly what a mix is going to look like. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is fun, and sometimes useful to try to guess the parentage of a mixed breed dog, but I am often shocked at the dogs who’ve come into my office described as a 15 pound “German Shepherd/Terrier” cross, or a “Labrador/Border collie.” (If it’s over 30 pounds and is black and white and in Wisconsin, it is automatically a Labrador/Border collie cross…)

All this is good ammunition against breed bans… who can be sure a dog is a “pit bull” anyway? This study has the potential of providing good science that can be used to fight breed bans, which I am adamantly against.

Another study was presented by Dr. Amy Marder, another Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorist. She is now the Director of the Center for Shelter Dogs in Boston, a great use of her knowledge and experience. They sent in DNA samples, also to the MARS Wisdom panel, of dogs identified as “pit bulls.” Sure enough, they came back with some Am Staff yes, but also plenty of Viszla, Gordon Setter, Irish Setter, etc etc etc. In some of the truly ‘bully’ looking dogs, Am Staff wasn’t even present, or was present only as a ‘trace’ amount. She also showed a slide of a fuzzy, fluff ball spaniel-y looking thing, who turned out to have a signficiant amount of Am Staff… who would have guessed it? (Not me, neither did any of my colleagues).

Granted, we all agreed that DNA testing of dog breeds is a work in progress. Is it 100% accurate?  No, it truly isn’t, it is relatively new, and it is so complicated (after all, look at all the breeds that are less than 150 years old that were created from other breeds…), but it still can be interesting. Have any of you tried it? I’m tempted to send in some samples of mixes I know the parentage of, just to see what comes up….

Lastly,  Dr. Marder discussed a study (I’ll find out where it was published, think it was in 2007) in which they did behavior evaluations on 61 shelter dogs, 21 of whom had been identified as ‘pit bulls.’ The ‘pit bull’ types showed no more aggression over food  or handling than the ‘non-pit’ dogs, although the bully type dogs did test out as being more easily aroused. In my experience with bully breeds, (which is significant but not extensive), the arousal issue is an important one. A low threshold for arousal and difficulty de-arousing is perhaps the biggest (and only?) difference I’ve seen in bully breeds.

I truly disagree that ‘pit bulls’ are nothing like other dogs, and more and more the research seems to confirm that. Does that mean I think that “all it takes is love” to rehabilitate a dog with a shady past, and that you could send an ex-fighting pit to a naive family with 5 kids? No, of course not, but I do think that every dog should be evaluated as an individual. I have met stupid, slow Border collies, and incredibly aggressive Golden Retrievers, and yes, even people of English ancestory who are good cooks (that would be me, honest.)

Meanwhile, it’s going to be 50 degrees tomorrow, which means lots of mud but a tempting appetizer of spring. The sheep get shorn Sunday morning, can’t wait to see how they look out from under their wool coats.

Here’s a photo of Will and Lassie taken about one minute ago by the back door to the office. Poor Lassie looks like she can barely wait another minute to get home! It’s almost 5:30 pm and we are all more than ready to leave the office, get home to the farm, eat dinner (beef, a sardine, cooked oatmeal, broccoli, green beans and carrots for them tonight, don’t know about me but it probably won’t be as healthy!) and go on a walk.  This will be my first weekend in a month in which I wasn’t either working all weekend or super sick… oh boy! Yippee! (I’m going to stay off line this weekend, so I’ll post your comments Monday morning, need a few days to forgot all about computers!)

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

I’m working with some wonderful folks to get a web/pod cast radio show going, and would love to hear from you about it. First… what the heck should we name it?  We can’t, obviously, use Calling All Pets.  We had talked about Calling All Critters or Calling All Animals, but we are going to have to start simple, on a shoe string, so are only going to be able to answer email questions rather than phone calls. Thus, “Calling All.. ” doesn’t make sense any more. The plan is to start with a half hour ‘show,’ with a guest interview as before, and me answering a few questions about training and behavior. Any ideas about what to name the show?

Here’s another question for you: Although Larry Meiller wouldn’t be available as a co-host, there is someone else who could act as co-host, sort of an “everyman” foil to the trainer/expert voice that I would provide. What do you think.. should I be the only host, or do you like the interchange between two people? (I do myself, but am concerned about it on a half hour show….).

Last question, I promise: Even though we’ll start the show on a shoe string, there are still costs involved. Is this something you would consider paying for, something like down loading music? Should we take ads? Should we just count on winning the lottery and do a show a day for the fun of it? (The plan is to do a 1/2 hour podcast every week, starting in early June.)

I am sincerely interested in your thoughts, and greatly appreciate all the support so many of you have sent over the months since WPR canceled Calling All Pets.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: It’s cold again, was windy and under 10 degrees (but at least no snow) this morning. We did have an ice storm Sunday night, lost power for 5-6 hours, right in the middle of a great documentary… darn. But it’s sunny now, so good to finally see the sun again. It’s going to warm up soon, a good thing, because my wooly sheep are getting shorn on Sunday. I’ll post photos, it’s quite the annual ritual. I love the seasonal nature of it, I love the feel and smell of the wool, I love watching the previously hidden bodies of each of the ewes appear from under their blanket of wool. Then just a few weeks til the next batch of lambs. Lambs! Oh boy…. lordy I do love them.

Here’s Sushi this morning at the top of the stairs, reminding me that both she and I need to go on a diet. I tried to get rid of  her eye shine and ended up making her look like an animal from a horror movie. “When Cats Go Bad” or something… I was going to switch it but it made me laugh, thought it might you too. And here’s a photo of Lassie and Will at bottom of the stairs, wondering no doubt what the heck I was doing with Sushi at the top.

(more…)

Great comments about who goes when and where, keep it up. I love hearing from you. It is truly amazing how little we know about dog behavior, isn’t it? But here’s some more of Anneke’s results, this time from good-ole-fashioned, ethological studies observing animals in their natural environment–in this case, the dog park.

Dr. Lisberg observed olfactory investigation and urination at the entrance to a popular dog park, recording who urinated  when and where, and who did Ano-Genital investigation (AG), or sniffed each other’s butts. She found that males and females were equally likely to urinate immediately upon entering the park, but that males often urinated more frequently than females.  No surprise there. “Resident” males (dogs already there) counter marked (over or adjacent marked) more than females and also spent more time investigating the urine of dogs entering the park.

Within each sex, tail base position was correlated with urination and sniffing: Animals with high tail base position did more marking and investigating that those with low; as a matter of fact no females in the study with a “low tail base position” urinated when entering the park, or counter marked the urine of those who had.

To me the most interesting result relates to Anneke’s observations on urine marking and Ano-Genital investigation. AG was done more by the residents than the individuals entering, and was done more by dogs with relaxed postures. However, there was no relation of sex or social status on AG rates.

Here’s the part I find most interesting: Entering dogs, as we all would predict, were often swamped by ‘residents’ doing AG investigation. We all know that this is a potentially tense situation for the entering dog…i.e, everyone wants to know everything about you, but they have to get their nose under your tail to find it out. Anneke found a strong tendency for dogs who were subjected to  AG investigation to trot a few feet away and urinate. The residents would then sniff the urine (rather than the dog) and the close contact would terminate. Dr. Lisberg has speculated that urine marking is a good way for dogs to convey social information to other dogs while breaking off the tension involved in the close body contact involved in AG investigation between strangers. Sort of chemical Facebook page that prevents too much intimacy too soon.

That makes me wonder about situations in which dogs are forced to greet one another without being given a chance to urinate (on sidewalks on leash, inside at doggy day care). We all know that many dogs seem to have no social problems when off leash, but are problematic on leash. There are many reasons for that, no doubt, and I talked about many of them in Feisty Fido. However, until Anneke’s results came out I hadn’t thought about the importance of dogs being able to communicate necessary social information through urine rather than encounters in which the dogs are forced into close contact.

So much to thing about… I am so glad that Anneke is at UW-Whitewater and is continuing her studies. Look for her sometime soon, I hope, speaking somewhere like APDT..

Meanwhile, right now it is Wisconsin at its worst. Rainy, muddy, icy, cold, damp, dark, brown… not much to enjoy outside except the  knowledge that this is the only road to spring.  Here’s Lassie and Willie after asked to “go pee” before I left home for the office to post this. This scene replicates itself on a daily basis, like clockwork: I say “Dogs, go pee. Willie goes and urinates while Lassie stands and watches him. As he leaves, she goes over and urinates, not always exactly on top, but where her nose is directly above his urine. (Does she think she is over marking exactly? Does she know her urine comes out a good foot behind her nose?! Does she care!?)

Willie is almost done, Lassie walks up toward him:

Not totally done yet, Lassie just has to wait:

This time Lassie does seem to be going exactly on top of Willie’s urine. Maybe I need to watch more closely…. Hummm.

Here’s a brief post from one of the many fascinating talks at IFAAB… brief because I’m afraid I came home with a killer influenza, couldn’t even stand up on Tuesday, much less sit up.  So boring to be sick, seems like I’ve been sick that too much this winter. Enough already.

One of the best talks at IFAAB (Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior) was from Dr. Anneke Lisberg whose dissertation was on scent marking and urine investigation in dogs. [And was also my Teaching Assistant for several years, a truly great house sitter and now a dear friend and colleague, so am I objective? Not even close. But based on the comments after her talk, I'm quite sure the rest of the group concurs with my assessment.]

Anneke and I talked long and hard about what she should study for her dissertation, and I suggested she look at scent marking, because it seemed we know so little about it. She looked at the literature and was stunned to discover how little research has actually been done on it. Dr. Ian Dunbar did work years ago on scent marking, and found that females did little marking and showed little interest in the urine of others–at least compared to males. However, this work was on beagles who were familiar and housed together. It was a great start, yeah for Ian for doing it when most people didn’t consider dog behavior to be of any interest at all. (I actually had a scientist tell me, immediately after I passed my dissertation defense, that he previously didn’t think you could actually do research on dogs. I replied: “Well, Darwin thought so.  Who are we to quibble?”)

Anneke presented urine-soaked, short wooden stakes to all 4 categories of dogs: intact male, intact female, neutered male and spayed female, and recorded the  behavior of the same 4 categories of dogs allowed to investigate the stakes. Her results will be published soon in Animal Behavior, but in brief, she found that females indeed spent a lot of time investigating the urine of unfamiliar dogs (we are not surprised, are we!), that males investigated the urine of unfamiliar males most, while females were interested in urine from both sexes.

Individuals with the highest base of the tail position (more on that later) spent the least time sniffing the scents, while those with low tail positions spent the most time (risk assessment?). However, dogs with the highest tail base position (which correlated with the dogs most likely to get a tossed food-stuffed toy in a group of dogs) did the most overmarking, or urinating directly over the urine of another dog. In her study, females never overmarked, they did what she terms “adjacent marked” or urinated directly after sniffing the urine of others, but a good 4 to 5 feet away. I’ll tell you more next post about another one of her studies that suggests that ‘overmarking’ and ‘adjacent marking’ are different responses based on different motivations.

I should add here, that haven’t not read Anneke’s dissertation, my old Lassie girl still over marks the urine of one other dog in the house. Right now there’s just Willie, and she literally waits for him to pee, then goes over and urinates directly on top of it. When Pip was alive she did it over Pips’. When I say “Go Pee,” Lassie turns her head toward Willie to track where he is going to go. And yet, if you dropped a chunk of chicken between the two of them, Lassie would defer to Willie.

What does that mean?  Got me, but I’m thrilled that someone is finally doing good science on a very, very interesting and important aspect of canine behavior. I’m so curious about your own experience… tell me what patterns you’ve observed.  If you have a multi-dog household, is there a pattern about who goes where and when?

I’ll write next post about the second phase of her research, and more about some of the other interesting talks. I’ll catch up on answering your comments someday, I promise. Gotta go now to give my students their exam, and then go home to collapse.  (But hey, I’ve read every magazine in the house.. a rare event!)