As often happens, a study on human behavior got me wondering about how it might relate to our relationship with our dogs. The study in question asked if emotions could be conveyed through body odor. The researchers asked 12 men with pads in their arm pits to watch videos that designed to elicit fear, happiness or a neutral reaction. After confirming that the videos did indeed influence the men's emotional states (the fearful videos induced "negative emotions" and happy ones elicited "positive emotions"), the pads taken from their arm pits were then presented to women. (Insert bad joke here about what emotion the smell of a man's arm pits would elicit automatically.) An analysis of the women's facial expressions found that the "happy sweat" induced more activity in facial muscles related Read More
Archives for 2015
I wish my dog knew. . .
I recently happened upon a news story that grabbed my heart, about Denver teacher, Kyle Schwartz, who asked her students to complete the sentence: "I wish my teacher knew...". Some of the answers are funny, and some will break your heart, like: "I wish my teacher knew sometimes my reading log isn't signed because my mom is not around a lot." The project was so compelling that it went viral on the Twitterverse, (#Iwishmyteacherknew). Which led to an outpouring of answers from students all around the country. ("... that the reason I talk and laugh a lot in class is because school is really the only place I can be happy.") This project reminds me of the book PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, initiated by Frank Warren for a community art project. Frank received more Read More
Spring Photo Album
It's all from the farm today: Lambs! Finally! Lady Baa Baa had two healthy, little ewe lambs last week. Yearling Pepper had an all white, frisky male Saturday night. I thought of last week's post about the healing powers of oxytocin while I watched them frolic this morning. I wish everyone could start their day watching lambs play; if they could I suspect the world would be a better place. Here is Lady Baa Baa and her two adorsable lambs. (No, that's not a typo. There's something about the non-word "adors-able" that fits with baby lambs.) Was I not writing about the power of oxytocin just last week? Willie and Maggie got in a lot of sheep work this weekend. Here Willie stalks up to the flock to get them moving toward me. I love seeing the sheep with the sky as the background. On Read More
The Healing Look of Love?
Years ago I did a personal growth workshop (The Hoffman Process: Amazing!) in which we were asked to look into another person's eyes for minutes at a time. Our "partner" was someone we had just met. At first it felt downright awkward, as you can imagine, but after a bit (30 seconds?), each of us began to feel a sense of overwhelming warmth and empathy for someone who was essentially a stranger. "Mutual gazing," as it is called, is a well-known social phenomenon which acts to bond mother to child, and partner to partner in romantic relationships. Indeed, one can evaluate the level of maternal bonding by measuring the length of mutual gazing, and predict the amount of gazing based on maternal oxytocin levels. Gazing and oxytocin levels appear to exist in a "positive loop," in which gazing Read More
Positive Reinforcement is Defined by the Receiver, Take Two
I've been thinking a lot lately about how important it is to remember that "reinforcement" and "punishment" are defined by the receiver. I'm not sure what got me thinking about it. Perhaps it was learning about a study that found cows perceived being yelled at as distressing as being shocked with an electric prod. Or perhaps it was realizing that Willie most likely doesn't enjoy practicing penning the sheep anymore (the most pressure-filled part of a sheepdog competition) because he doesn't like the pressure. (Thank you friend Donna for making the suggestion.) Or maybe it was while explaining to friends that getting a free trip to anywhere right now wouldn't be reinforcement, it would be punishment. This is not the first time I've broached this subject. Here's what I wrote in 2008 about Read More
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