THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Several readers have asked about the new product called “Dognition” that promises (quoting from the website), “You’ll learn your dog’s cognitive style by playing fun, science-based games — an experience that gives you the insight you need to make the most of your relationship with your best friend.” I was curious myself, given that the force behind the product is the work of scientist Brian Hare, whose relevant claim to fame is his research on the ability of dogs to inherently understand a person’s pointing gesture. I’ve argued that this claim needs more research, as does his suggestion that the long-standing relationship between dogs and people has resulted in the evolution of special communicatory skills in dogs (especially as regards to pointing). However, I love that his work has helped to energize research on canine cognition. (If you want to read more about whether dogs can inherently understand the pointing gesture of a person, see Do Dogs Inherently Understand Pointing Gestures? and  An Update on Pointing Gestures and Dogs.)

Dr. Hare has since come out with a new book, The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter Than You Think, and a product called the Dognition Assessment Toolkit. I haven’t read the book yet, but was intrigued by a set of games he has developed that are supposed to increase one’s understanding of their dog’s personality and cognition style. The perfect cabin-fever reliever perhaps? Even better, the website explains that all the results will be aggregated and used as an example of “citizen science.” It says: “By gathering this data we can begin to understand more about all dogs, much more quickly and on a broader scale than if scientists had to conduct this research themselves.”

I signed up Willie, Tootsie and Katie’s dog Leo at $59 each, passing up the $129 offer of the toolkit + one year’s annual membership. Katie and I began the games last week, and finally finished with Tootsie yesterday. I say “finally” with intention: I want to tell you that the games were incredibly fun and that I learned oodles that I didn’t know about Tootsie. Alas, here’s the bottom line: Sometimes the “games” were fun, sometimes they were tedious, sometimes they were mildly aversive (more on that later) and I’m afraid I didn’t learn much about Tootsie that I didn’t know. I had planned to finish the games with Willie today, but realized that rather than looking forward to it I was… what’s the right word? “Dreading it” is too strong, but it felt like a great burden that I would have to slog through. Then I realized that I didn’t need to finish the games with Willie at all; I already had learned what I needed to know to make my own evaluation of the project for this post, and didn’t have any expectation that I would learn anything especially useful about Willie that I didn’t know before. Before I continue, let me be absolutely clear: Others might find the exercises great fun and the eventual evaluation extremely useful in improving their relationship with their dog. But all I can give you is my honest assessment of my own experience, for whatever it is worth.

Here is a bit about how the program works: There are five categories of games, labeled Empathy, Communication, Cunning, Memory and Reasoning.  Before playing the games one fills out an extensive questionnaire. I’d give it kudos for being thorough, but many of the questions should be answered with “I don’t know” (which, good for them, is always an option). For example, you are asked if your dog “understands” the cue to sit. Without testing Tootsie a la Ian Dunbar’s game, and asking her to sit while she is already sitting or while lying down, I can’t answer that question. I can answer if she does sit when asked, but that is an entirely different question (which was also asked, I should note). However, many of the questions were easy to answer, like “Is Tootsie friendly to other dogs?” One could answer “All the time, Some of the time,” etc. I choose “Some of the time” for Willie often, given that his behavior is so context dependent.  After the questionnaire, you begin the games. With a few important exceptions noted below, they are explained very clearly. If you decide to play, be aware that you’ll need someone to help with all of them, a fact not made clear before you begin and that threw me off when I first tried to get started by myself one afternoon.

Many of the games involve putting a treat on the ground on one side of you or the other. The treats might be on the ground, inside a cup or under a piece of paper. Your dog has a variety of ways, over the course of the tests, to choose the “correct” side, based on your pointing toward it, showing your dog that it is in the cup before turning the cup over, etc. Each of the games that require a dog to “choose sides” do a good job of establishing first whether your dog has a side preference. (Both Willie and Tootsie more often went to my right side (their left), which fits with the knowledge that most dogs are “left pawed.”) Katie and I did quite a few of the games together, either with her as the helper for me and Tootsie, or vice versa for her and Leo. The biggest snag that we ran into was a discrepancy between what the dog did and how we were asked to record it.

Here’s an example: You define “left and right” with 3 sticky notes, one directly in front of you, one each to the right and left of you on the floor. With a helper holding your dog, you might point to a cup with a treat hidden underneath it on your right side. The instructions tell you to score your dog as “retrieving the treat” if you pointed to the treat on your right, and your dog went between the sticky notes in front and to the right of you. Thus, passing between 2 sticky notes on the ground on the same side as the treat meant your dog had “retrieved the treat.” (The word ‘retrieve’ was confusing to us…’chosen’ or ‘focused on’ would be more helpful.) But here is what sometimes happened: Imagine I placed 2 cups on the floor on either side of me, one with a treat, and pointed to the one with the treat while Tootsie watched me from about 6 feet away. Let’s say that the cup with the treat was on my right. Tootsie was released and wandered through the sticky notes to my right, but paid no attention at all to the cup with the treat underneath, and passed behind me to vigorously sniff at the (empty) cup on the left. Based on the instructions we were told to score that as “retrieved the treat,” but her behavior indicated she was focused on the cup without anything in it.

Other games require you to say something to your dog and then stay stock still and silent for up to two and a half minutes. This was the part that Katie and I found a bit tedious. Standing silent and motionless while looking directly at your dog is so unnatural I found it unnerving. (In one test you stand still and silent for 1 minute, then 1.5 minutes, then 2 minutes and then 2.5 minutes. Katie and I were both ridiculously relieved when it was over.) One could argue that science is not about having fun, but is about designing and conducting good experiments. However, anyone who has taken Experimental Psychology 101 knows that the behavior of the experimenter must be carefully controlled in any study. For the results to be lumped together and analyzed, either only one carefully trained “handler” would have to be the one cuing the dogs in exactly the same circumstances, or a few well-trained handlers would have to undergo extensive training and testing to ensure that their behavior was consistent. Thus, it is hard to know what the results of an aggregate of hundreds or thousands of dog owners doing these tests in their own homes would actually mean.

The mildly aversive section occurred when I was to put a treat on the ground, say “No” or “Leave It,” and then wait for an entire (endless) 90 seconds without moving or speaking. This was not a problem with Tootsie, who doesn’t know a Leave it cue, and who trotted toward the treat and gobbled it up. However, Willie does know Leave It, and I wish I had a video of his face staring at mine for 90 seconds after being told Leave It when I placed a dried turkey heart on the ground. That 90 seconds lasted at least an hour… he looked so confused and unsure after about 10 seconds that I could barely maintain my stance. Next you are instructed to put the treat down, say Leave It and turn around so that your back if facing your dog. Willie waited 1 minute and 17 seconds and then padded over and ate the treat. Next you are to hold your hands over your eyes, and this time he waited less than 20 seconds. I have never been so thankful to have a dog disobey a Leave It in my life. Both Katie and I (she acting as recorder and dog holder if needed) darn near cheered when Willie took the treat, so that we didn’t have to wait another endless 90 seconds. I suspect that reading this one could argue: “Really Trisha. Ninety seconds? Seriouslyy, how long is that really?” Answer: When you have to stand still and stare at your dog for that period of time, it feels much longer than one might think.) (Cautionary note: After those games I worked on Leave It with Willie, reinforcing him for avoiding a treat on the ground for 2, 4 and 6 seconds; the games being the perfect way to ruin a well-trained cue if you don’t do some clean up work afterward.)

The results? We finished all the games with Tootsie (3 of 5 game categories are done with Willie) and immediately got her results. Tootsie was classified as a “Stargazer,” whose “unique genius lies in the mix of strategies that she uses to approach daily life… She certainly has a wild, wolf-like side that is especially useful in the environment of the rugged individual.” Labeling Tootsie, the 7-years-in-a-puppy-mill Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who wants nothing more than to eat (anything) and lie in one’s lap, as “wolf-like,” leaves me close to speechless. Her “empathy” scores were “off the charts,” even though it was Willie who yawned after I did and not Tootsie, yawning after seeing another yawn being indicative of empathy). Tootsie’s results also indicated that she is “highly collaborative;” I’m guessing that is because she did indeed focus on the food I pointed to in some of the tests. But categorizing her as such is a stretch, I’d argue. Tootsie is pretty much all about food, while Willie is often called “Trisha’s mood ring.” Willie appears to care deeply about how I am feeling, while Tootsie appears to care deeply about how quickly she can get the food out of my pocket. Of course, I could be wrong about my assessment and the tests could be more accurate, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

The one result that I found surprising, and thus interesting, was that Tootsie did indeed focus more on the treats on the ground if I pointed to them (but not when the treat wasn’t visible ). Willie, who has learned exactly what an outstretched and pointing arm means, appeared to pay no attention. I suspect that pointing to something in the distance, with one’s arm almost horizontal to the ground, is a very different signal than pointing almost straight down toward the ground, with one’s arm just a few inches away from the torso. That got me thinking that perhaps what we call “pointing” could actually involve several different visual signals that should be considered independently. (And one more pointing note, skip if all this pointing stuff is tiresome to you!: Dognition actually has you both point AND turn your head toward and look at the object in question. Thus, pointing, and gaze are confounded here. That’s a technical point, but an important one to those who study animal communication.)

At one point the evaluation interprets Tootsie’s inconsistent responses in a series of tests as “switching back and forth” between strategies, a behavior labeled as “impressive flexibility.” Another way to label this is “having no strategy at all.” I’m just saying. Reading their evaluation of Tootsie reminded me of schools in which all the students get A’s and blue ribbons because, well, they are there. On the plus side, it appears that the designers of Dognition are working hard to clarify that there are no ‘right or wrong’ answers, and that every dog is using a different kind of cognition strategy to make their way in the world. That’s important, and I credit them for it. This is not about whether your dog is a Good Dog or a Not So Good Dog, but about finding what’s going on between those furry ears of hers. Learning more about your dog is a wonderful thing; however my guess is that most people who are motivated to spend the money to play these games with their dog, and get through all 2.5 to 3 hours required, already know more about their dog than a product like this can teach them.

A few notes if you decide you want to play: 1) Don’t even think about doing this all at once. You and your dog will be toast if you do. The website is well designed to allow you to pause, and wisely encourages you to do so. We did Tootsie’s tests over 4 different sessions. 2) Round up an assistant before you start, you absolutely have to have one for almost all of the games. 3) You need to be right beside your computer to play. Laptops and iPads work great. 4) Take your own notes about your dog’s responses. You don’t get a summary of what they did (“followed point 2 out of 6 times, for example) and I’d love to see the actual data. 5) Careful of the treats: Your dog could end up getting a lot of them. Tootsie basically ate the equivalent of two dinners during the last session, even when she didn’t “get” the treat much of the time.

Have you played it yet? I’d love to hear if you have and what you thought of it. I truly wanted to write a positive review myself;  the Advisory Board on this project reads like a Who’s Who in canine cognition, including Dr. Juliane Kaminski, Dr Richard Wrangham, Dr. Adam Miklosi, Dr. Laurie  Santos and Dr. Josep Call as well as Dr. Brian Hare. I know some of these scientists and not only admire their work, I like them personally. But good science is about evaluating the facts, and it would be disingenuous of me not to be honest in my assessment. Let me know what you think.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. We’re melting! Finally finally finally the spring thaw has begun. It may be under freezing at night, and there is still plenty of snow and ice on the ground, but there are also patches of bare, spongy ground, and the air is rich with the songs of Redwing Blackbirds and the guttural calls of Sandhill Cranes.

The lambs are due to start dropping any day now, so Jim and I are busy in the barn. We had a lovely, long weekend at a friend’s cabin up north last weekend, and came home refreshed and ready for spring. I’m finishing up my Contemplative Photography course, which I’ve absolutely adored. Here are two of my photos for the the class, a Beech leaf and a scene from up the hill, just yesterday. Enjoy.

A long, long time ago I had an intact male Border Collie (my first BC ever, Drift), who appeared to be failing his job as a stud dog. Although his escort, the lovely Tib, could not have been more clear that she was ready to be bred, Drift couldn’t seem to get the job done. Tib would prance around Drift all shiny-eyed, literally throw her rump in his face and flag her tail so far over to the side that I wondered if it might break off. Drift behaved as though he got the message loud and clear, and would enthusiastically mount Tib from behind. But then he would make one or two thrusts, and his entire body would appear to deflate (not to mention his equipment) while he slumped off to the side. Tib would respond by again throwing her rump at his head and flagging (the clarity of a female dog’s intent when performing this action is impressive, if not almost embarrassing), Drift would mount her anew and again slide off as if someone put a pin in a balloon.

With time running out, female dogs don’t ovulate for all that long after all, I drove both dogs to the UW Vet School to see if something was wrong with Drift or Tib. Nope, they both checked out fine. One of the specialists there suggested I try artificial insemination, and proceeded to school me on how to do just that. If you want to know what it was like to have a 6’6″ man ask me if I knew how to “collect a sample,” and then use my thumb and his hand to demonstrate stimulating Drift to ejaculate, you will have to buy me a martini and ask after I’ve drunk the entire thing. Fast.

I never did have to collect a sample. I figured out the problem by putting on my ethologist’s hat and watching the two dogs carefully as they courted. Once I did, I noticed that right before Drift slumped off, his head turned one or two inches toward me. Humm. I moved to the other side, and sure enough, this time Drift’s head turned the other direction, but again toward me. I then put the two dogs in the garage and left them alone. When I came back in five minutes they were tied (and the breeding was indeed successful.) Here’s what I think was happening: Drift was a two-year old intact male when I got him, and just a few days after bringing him home he enthusiastically began to mount and thrust against the leg of a female friend of mine. I said “NO!” in surprise, and said the same a few weeks later when he tried it on another friend. I suspect that Drift remembered that I had corrected him for mounting, and did not distinguish between mounting my friend’s leg from mounting a female dog in heat.

I tell you this story because 1) it still amuses me even many years later, and 2) it illustrates that what we call “mounting” can occur in a variety of contexts and most probably has a variety of motivations. I am writing about this topic because it is one of the ones requested by readers, and I think it is a great one. One comment mentioned that “mounting” is often labeled as a sign of “dominance,” and yet the dog she has that does it most often is extremely submissive in all other contexts. The reader correctly questions whether mounting is really just about the D word…

Which brings up the question: Why do dogs mount others, anyway? Clearly Drift was mounting Tib to copulate with her, but why did he mount the legs of my girlfriends? Dominance? Mis-placed sexual stimulation? Doubtful on all counts. No one really knows why dogs mount others outside of reproductive activity, but here are the best guesses of a variety of experts:

1. Excitement or arousal: I love the way Peter Borchelt, a fellow CAAB, puts it: “There are only so many behaviors a dog has access to, and dogs do what is part of their species-typical behavior.” In other words, arousal causes individuals to want to do something, and since dogs can’t take photographs of each other or check email, one of the actions they can perform when they are excited is to mount each other. Arousal can be positive (yippee!) or negative (I’m so nervous), but it usually, like anger, asks for some kind of action.

2. Attention-getting or play solicitation: Notice me! Notice me! Surely it is hard to ignore a dog who is clasping your hindquarters…..

3. Status related: Certainly this could be true in some circumstances, especially if the mounter in question is also exhibiting postures usually associated with priority access to preferred resources (direct stares, high head and tail postures, etc.) However, Mark Bekoff, in his blog about mounting, mentioned that he found no correlation between mounting, clasping or humping & dominance in young dogs, coyotes and wolves. On the other hand, Camille Ward, in her PhD research, found that mounting was one of the few play behaviors she studied that was”asymmetric,” in that while two playing dogs alternated who chased whom, they did not alternate who mounted whom. Dog A may mount Dog B, but not vice versa.

4. Control: I consider this a very different category than the one above (although I notice that they are often mentioned together.) Here’s an example of what I think of as control-motivated mounting: Dog A observes two others playing enthusiastically, perhaps barking and growling while they do. Dog A is a sound-sensitive dog, or a dog who becomes anxious around increasing energy levels, and so moves in, mounts one dog as a way of stopping the action. We often call these dogs the “play police,” right?

There’s more to this story. How do you define mounting? Does mounting always include clasping and thrusting? What about what is called “Standing Over,” in which one dog stands at right angles to another and puts its forelegs over the shoulders of another dog. Is that a version of mounting, or something different altogether?

If you are interested in reading more about this topic, I refer you to the excellent article written by Julie Hecht (the author of the great blog Dogspies) in Bark magazine and a post by Mark Bekoff also about the topic. If you like watching and evaluating videos, here is one that includes both “standing over” and full scale “mounting” during plays sessions between Willie, and 2 young dogs. I’d love to hear what you think about what you are observing. I’ll check back early next week and chime in myself.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: If I was reading this blog I’d be getting tired of hearing complaints about the weather, and how it was 3 degrees Farenheit yesterday morning and we are all somewhat stunned at the relentless, and untimely grip of winter. So, no more complaints (although you noticed I already managed to do so?), but a few words of concern for the Redwing Blackbird and Starling males who have arrived back from the south in order to claim the best territory before the younger males arrive. They may get the best territory, but then, they may starve to death too, because there is pretty much nothing but snow and ice out there to eat right now. Normally it would be in the mid-40′s and things would be starting to thaw out and even grow.

Here IS some good news: Willie and I pushed the sheep up the snow-covered hill in a desperate attempt to try to work sheep again, weather be damned. The flock, understandably, would have preferred staying in the barn yard, thank you very much, and my lead ewe Barbie turned and faced off Willie, her head down and her message clear. “Come any closer and I’ll smash you.” Willie and Barbie have had a long history together, with Barbie getting the upper hand since his surgery, at least if she felt strongly about not going where Willie told her to. But this time Willie stood firm and met her challenge, and darn if she didn’t soon turn her head and stomp through the snow. Willie will never win points for his inherent bravery (me neither) but he beat her fair and square a few days ago and we both walked down the hill a bit taller than we had walked up it.

More good news, for me anyway, is that I’m going off the grid until Monday. It’s spring break at the university and I’ve decided to attempt to wean myself off my iPad and laptop and desk computer and all other devices that keep me connected to a wonderful world but make it harder sometimes to savor the world immediately around me. Katie will post blog and FB comments, I will absolutely adore reading them all when I return to cyberspace.

My photo for this week is one I took for my photo class, of Nellie looking out the garage window. I love how the “stair step” lines of her head and back follow the lines of the cardboard boxes.

We all know that different breeds of dogs elicit different perceptions about their personalities from the general public: Border Collies are all “smart,” and Golden Retrievers are all “friendly.” These perceptions are sometimes based on facts that are generally true. Border Collies are indeed often clever, and many Golden Retrievers are extremely friendly. However, we all also know that, although, breed stereotypes often have some basis of truth in them, they are just as often incorrect. For a number of years, I saw more Golden Retrievers for biting than any other breed, even though other breeds were as well represented in the local pet population.

We all know that different breeds of dogs elicit different perceptions about their personalities from the general public: Border Collies are all “smart,” and Golden Retrievers are all “friendly.” These perceptions are sometimes based on facts that are generally true. Border Collies are indeed often clever, and many Golden Retrievers are extremely friendly. However, we all also know that although breed stereotypes often have some basis of truth in them, they are often incorrect. For a number of years, I saw more Golden Retrievers for biting than any other breed, even though other breeds were as well represented in the local pet population. I’ve met a couple of Border Collies who appeared to be as intelligent as earthworms.

These stereotypes don’t just apply to positive traits like intelligence and friendliness: the general public attributes negative traits to some breeds, perceiving Miniature poodles, for example, to be foolish and mindless little dogs. At least that is the impression I get when I hear people talk about small poodles, when in my experience, they are smart as whips. Perhaps no breed elicits more stereotypical responses from the public than one of the bully breeds. Recent research by Lisa Gunter, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, presented at IFAAB in San Diego, (and soon to be presented at ISAZ) confirmed that people rated photos of a Labradors and a Border Collie as significantly “friendlier, approachable and adoptable” than a pit-bull type dog. All the dogs in the photos, by the way, had relaxed, “friendly” expressions on their face. The subjects (228 people) also rated the pit-bull type dog as higher on “aggressiveness” than the other two breeds. None of this is particularly surprising, given the public’s perception of bully breeds in general. Another study by Protopopova et al also found a negative perception of pit-type breeds (2012 on line): they found that teaching dogs to gaze into potential adopter’s eyes had no effect on rates of adoption, while breed, size, surrender versus stray, and location in the kennel did. “Fighting and Sporting breed” dogs stayed at the shelter longest, while “ratters and lap breeds” stayed the least  amount of time.  (Side note: Research related to adoptability of breeds and public perceptions about them brings up some interesting and  important questions about breed-related predispositions of a number of breeds–not just pit-type dogs. Are any breed stereotypes valid? Both positive and negative? What are the comfort levels in the field about discussing them? This discussion deserves its own post, so I’ll write about that in another article.)

Here is what is most important about Lisa Gunter’s work: After the initial results that rated the dogs of three breeds, subjects were asked to rate the same photo of the pit-bull type dog while sitting beside a variety of people. The subjects were asked to make the same ratings about the dog while sitting beside a young child, an elderly woman, a “rough” male, (the pits) and an “active male,” and a woman in a wheel chair (the BC and Lab). Sure enough, pairing a young child or an elderly woman beside the pit-type dogs changed people’s rating of them. Sitting beside a young child increased the perceptions of the dog’s intelligence, friendliness and adoptability, while decreasing the predictions of “training difficulties and aggressiveness”. Significant changes were found in increased friendliness and decreased aggressiveness. The “rough male” photograph actually decreased the subject’s perception of the dog as friendly, but increased their perception of the dog as intelligent, and the elderly woman had the strongest effect on adoptability. (The “rough male” finding is perhaps the least relevant to applying these results to increasing adoptability of dogs on websites, but I find it interesting. Especially since we joked at IFAAB that the male didn’t look at that “rough” to us. I thought he was sorta hot… just saying.)

Here is the photo of the pit-type dog used in the study:

Here is the same dog beside a child and an “elderly” woman (who looks to be in great shape to me!):

Ideally, some of the variables would have been controlled: same photo of dog, standing versus sitting, etc, but the work does a good job of showing definitively that a particular dog can look more attractive to viewers depending on the photo, and that placement beside a particular type of person appears to have a strong effect.

The practical implications for this are huge, and not just related to any one breed. What this research has shown (along with a similar study by Walsh et al on Labradors, German Shepherd Dogs and Airedales) is that the details of dog’s photograph, say in Petfinders or on a Humane Society website, could have a profound effect on how the dog is perceived, and potentially whether it is adopted or not. We’ve all known (or assumed) that a sharp, clear, color photo of a friendly-looking dog increases a dog’s chance of being adopted, but this research adds an entirely new wrinkle to the mix. Could one increase a dog’s chance of being adopted by showing a photo of it sitting beside a child? Of course, this study didn’t look at actual adoptions, and there is a chance that a perception of friendliness and adoptability won’t translate into more adoptions, but it surely would increase the odds. Kudos for Gunter and Walsh for doing the research they did; I hope it leads to even more studies that expand our understanding that most complex and compelling of topics: the relationship between people and dogs.

I’d love to hear your take on this: What drew you to the dog(s) you have now? Did you find the dog on a website and were drawn to a particular photograph? If so, do you know why?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Busy times, beginning to get ready for lambing, even though the ground is still frozen solid and we still live in a sea of white. But tomorrow we’ll be mucking out the barn (with the help of some young, strong neighbors, bless them) and I’ll be ordering lambing supplies. The first due date is April 1st, and that is going to come up fast. Usually there is green grass by then, but the chances of that seem to be slight at this point, winter is just not letting go this year.

Willie and I said the heck with winter and worked the sheep up in the high pasture yesterday, it being light enough after I got back from teaching to do so because of the time change. The snow was a bit deep in places, but we moved the girls slowly and I don’t think it stressed them in the least. As a matter of fact, I suspect they need the exercise. Willie and I had a great time, and I’d bet the farm that when we trotted down the farm road to the barn, through the grey-brown and inky black tree trunks, his high tail and head signified something akin to pride.

Before mucking out the barn I’ll go to my Contemplative Photography class. This week’s assignment was on texture. Here is some of my ‘homework,’ taken at a friend’s chicken house when I went to pick up fresh eggs (Thank you Sandi!)

Seek and ye shall find.  What a great list of topics that blog and Facebook readers came up with! There were over 100 topics suggested, many of them addressing excellent questions. For example: What does it mean if a dog greets other dogs with a high head and tail, and yet lets all the other dogs rule the roost? Why do dogs mount other dogs–is it really just about social status? Do dogs learn best through a particular sensory modality, given that people tend to be “visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners?”

These topics, along with posts about recent research, videos and case studies, should keep us all happily discussing dogs and their humans for a long time to come. I thought you all might be interested in the topics and had considered listing them for you, but a full list of 100 separate issues might be a tad, uh, boring and I found the prospect of writing them all out a bit daunting. However, here are the categories, and number of requests, that the topics fall into:

• Behavior and Training Problems 50
• Relationships and Behavior Between Dogs: 18
• Canine Behavioral in General 17
• Communication Between People and Dogs 11
• Health and Behavior 9
• More Videos 3
• Dogs and Cats 2
• Case Studies 1
• Cat Behavior 1

It might be helpful for new readers to know that several of the behavior and training topics requested are addressed in some way in the Reading Room on my website. For example, you can read about Separation Anxiety and Thunder Phobia under Solving Behavioral Problems, and a comparison of different types of Training Methods by searching “Training Methods” in the search bar.

That said, you have all given me lots to think about and research in preparation for blogs to come. Someone asked me once, in all seriousness, if I wouldn’t get bored with canine behavior after a few years? Answer: Nope.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: We’re still under a white blanket of snow, although the last two days have been well over freezing so the snow is gradually changing from “Don’t even think about going outside without knee-high boots or snow shoes” to “You can manage with regular boots if you walk in the tracks you’ve made before.” Willie was in heaven because for a few days the snow was so deep that we could actually play frisbee if I kept the disc low to the ground. Now the snow depth is down to 5-6 inches so I’m afraid we’ll have to go back to playing “Find It.”

Tootsie has become quite the snow dog. The morning after the last big snow she ran full speed smack into a wall of snow pushed up by the plow. I wish I had had a camera because she basically disappeared into a wall for snow for a moment.  Think Harry Potter at the train station. She emerged none the worse for wear and continued her ear-flapping, ridiculously endearing, full-bore run toward her favorite place on the farm, the barn. (Well, and the couch. And the bed.  And my lap.)

The cats seem almost oblivious to the snow, dashing into snow as high as their necks with abandon. Polly, with her all-white coat, reminds me of an Arctic Fox or an Ermine in their winter wear. Why is it that White-on-White is such an attractive “color” combination?

Speaking of color, or lack of it, I am beginning a “Contemplative Photography” course. (The link is to the method in general, not to the course I am taking specifically.) I missed the first class last week because of IFAAB, but got my assignment and sent in my first photographs to our instructor. The goal of contemplative photography is to see the world in a fresh and new way, which is especially appealing to me given that I’m suffering from cabin fever and the same-old, same-old view out the window of white and grey. Thankfully, our assignments the first week was to photograph color such that the object is irrelevant and it is the color that catches and keeps your attention. Color is what I’m missing, so this assignment was the best homework I’ve ever had.

Here are three of my photos for the first class:

Okay, this is on the borderline of not meeting the criteria, because the objects are pretty obvious, but still … I just love the color here. And the paws.

I’ll tell you what the instructor says next week!

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Answer: We don’t know, but some research discussed Friday at IFAAB by Dr. Anneke Lisberg might have shed some light on the topic. Those of you who have been following the blog for awhile know that Anneke is one of the few people studying chemical communication in domestic dogs. Although chemical communication is central to communication in many species, including our dogs, it is exceptionally difficult to study and very few people have made the attempt. It doesn’t help that we primates are primarily visual and most of our chemical communication is unconscious.

In previous studies (Lisberg and Snowdon 2009), Dr. Lisberg found that males and females both investigated the urine marks of either sex, although neutered males were less interested in urine from females than from males. Urine produced by intact dogs got more attention than urine from dogs who were spayed or neutered, and unfamiliar urine got more attention than urine from familiar dogs. In addition, dogs who approached the scents with “low- tail positions” spent longer investigating the samples than dogs who approached with high tails.

Lisberg also had found that dogs with high-tail positions were the dogs most likely to get priority access to food if it was tossed inside a circle of familiar dogs. That, by the way, is the standard biological definition of the often mis-used word, “dominance,” which simply indicates which individual animal is going to get  something that everyone wants, usually without fighting about it.

In a more recent study Lisberg collected urine from intact male dogs, some who had approached the urine of other dogs with high tails, some with their tail held parallel to the ground or lower. Thirty intact dogs (15 males, 15 females) were then led to two wooden stakes at ground level, each saturated with urine from a high or low-tailed dog. Order was controlled, so that some dogs encountered the high-tailed urine first and others the opposite.  That is standard methodology to ensure that order itself doesn’t confound the results: an important detail here as you’ll see in a minute.

At first there seemed to be no difference in the dog’s responses to the two samples of urine, but when the data were analyzed with presentation order as a factor, there was an interesting interaction between the kind of urine presented and when it was presented.  Urine from high-tailed dogs, if presented first, got a lot more attention than the other sample. Both male and female dogs spent a lot more time sniffing it than the second sample from the low-tailed dog. However, it did not get more (or less) attention if it was encountered after the first sample. This showed that dogs can smell the difference between urine from high-tailed and low-tailed males, but that they only seem to be taking that difference seriously if the high-tailed urine is encountered first.

Besides duration of sniffing, the study also recorded whether dogs overmarked or not, asking did they respond to the urine by urinating themselves, either directly on top of the urine (overmark) or right beside it (adjacent mark)? Of the 15 males, 7 males overmarked directly onto the urine but only one of those was when the high-tail urine was presented first. (No females overmarked,but several adjacent marked). There appears to be a tendency, both in this research and previous research, to overmark urine from dogs with low-tail positions.  Her previous work (2011) showed that high-tailed males overmarked more than low-tailed males, which suggested that overmarking may be a competitive signal.

In the new study, of the 7 males given the high-tailed urine first, only 1 overmarked, and he overmarked the urine from the low-tailed dog. In contrast, 5 of the 8 males encountering the low-tail urine first overmarked. The trend was only of marginal significance, but the sample is still small and the results suggest that males may be inhibited from overmarking by the extra-strength signal of high-tailed urine.

One of her conclusions is that the overmarking of male urine by other males  likely has a competitive function, and that there is a potential competitive advantage to having one’s urine be discovered first. This makes great sense if you look at dogs as we look at all other territorial species, who often compete both for mates and for territory.  It could enforce the “honesty’ of the signal itself, since it suggests that the mark has been successful at maintaining access to that space: no one else has successfully come through and chased them off or overmarked their marks. That fact that our domestic dogs don’t need to do that as often anymore doesn’t mean it has been eliminated from their repertoire completely.

The implications and applications here are many: For our domestic dogs, it is a reminder of how important chemical communication is between individual dogs. After hearing Lisberg’s first talks on her research I began letting reactive dogs first smell the urine of another dog long before they ever encountered them visually. For wild canids, such as wolves and African Wild Dogs, it might be that the thoughtful placement of urine could encourage individuals of a protected species back into protected areas. (The wolves of Yellowstone, for example, sometimes leave the park where they are protected into areas where they can be killed. Perhaps wildlife biologists could use urine to encourage them back into protected areas?)

In addition, if having one’s urine encountered first matters, perhaps we might have a bit more understanding of why male dogs lift their legs so often on walks, some of them almost obsessively. Most importantly, this research emphasizes how much we have to learn about chemical communication in our dogs, and how wonderful it is that good science is being done (finally!) on the animals that we share our lives with.

MEANWHILE, I’m not on the farm, but I have a question for you. . .

             Can you find 10 things that are different in these pictures?

                       Thursday morning I was in Wisconsin

                                     A few hours later I was in San Diego

Surely our mutual love of play is one of the reasons that dogs and people get along so well. As Karen London and I write in Play Together, Stay Together, “Play is powerful stuff. It influences so many things, including development, motivation, emotions, physiology, communication and behavior. Wow! That’s an impressive list.”

After years working as Applied Behaviorists, it was clear to Karen and I that play has the power to strengthen one’s relationship with a dog, or alternatively, to destroy it. You can use play to teach self control and good manners, or to inadvertently teach a lack of frustration tolerance and a lot of rude behavior that ends up getting a dog into trouble. You can use play to allow a dog to release tension, to learn a behavior incompatible with a problematic one, or to become wound up and hyper-reactive. The list goes on and on. Play is so important that one of my favorite seminars is one I did on play (Dog Play DVD), talking about both between dogs and between people and dogs.

So here’s the question, How do YOU play with your dog?

Willie and I have several different ways to play that have become incorporated into our daily routine. After the chores are done (dogs, cats, sheep and birds fed), Willie and I play with one of his favorite toys, usually an old plastic disc. Because of his shoulder we can’t play his favorite game of all, which is a classic run and fetch game (he’d love NOTHING more than to catch the frisbee in the air but those days are long over), so we’ve evolved into either 1) he runs around in silly circles with the frisbee in his mouth while I clap and encourage him, 2) I put him on a stay and throw it and then release him to go get it once it’s landed (but this only if there is a lot of snow on the ground, and only 3 to 4 times at most) or 3) he goes on a stay and then I hide his toy somewhere in the front yard. We always play some hide and seek games, because it gets him running around without stressing his shoulder.

Later in the day we play lots of object-related games in the house. Our favorite are tug games. It’s great exercise for him (and me) and we combine it with lots of exercises in self control like “get back” and “drop.” Then we’ll usually do a round of tricks, also in the evening. Usually earlier we’ll have been on a walk up the hill, and in better weather it might include working him on sheep, but that’s just not possible right now.

As I write this I realize that Willie loves two kinds of play: Object play with me (which he also plays by himself, tossing objects into the air and running around the house) and playing chase games with other dogs. Willie doesn’t like rough and tumble play or any kind of play with lots of contact with other dogs: he wants to run and run and run and run, and sometimes I think nothing in the world makes him happier. I wish I could run as fast as he. If I could, we’d dash around the pasture together like foals in springtime. Alas, I’m built like a sturdy hiker and not a runner, so that’s just never gonna’ happen.

I’m not the only one interested in how you play with your dog. There’s an interesting study ongoing at the The Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Columbia University (Barnard College) about how people play with their dogs, and they (and I!) would love it if you would participate. The study, run by Alexandra Horowitz (author of The Inside of a Dog) and Julie Hecht (author of the fantastic blog, dogspies, will investigate interspecific play between people and dogs by collecting videos of people playing with their dogs for future analysis. You can learn more about it by going to a brief description of the study and what you have to do to participate.

I’m going to send in a video of me and Willie playing tug, because we both seem to enjoy it so much. It’s hard to choose though, because we do have so many different ways of playing. By the way, I’m focusing on Willie because Tootsie simply never plays with anything. At all. I don’t worry about it for a moment. She wants food and cuddles (in that order), and loves sniffing around outside now that she’s discovered she’s a spaniel (and eating cat poop now that she’s discovered she’s a dog). It would be lovely if she and Willie would play, but then, it would be lovely if I had arms like Angelina Jolie, and both of those have about equal chances of happening and both Tootsie and I are pretty happy anyway.

Here’s the video I’m sending to the Horowitz lab:

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Snow snow snow snow. Did I mention it’s snowing? It’s snowed here almost every other day, although yesterday it began as rain. That’s the worst possible weather scenario you can get this time of year: first it gets everything wet and super slippery, then it freezes into ice and then snows on top of it. It makes everything extra dangerous (the hospital emergency rooms were full to the brim from falls), and creates a hard coating of ice between layers of snow. But I’m still happy we are getting the moisture and that we have a real winter this year. I will admit I’m getting a little cabin fever-y, but I’m so glad that the earth is getting back some of the moisture that we missed last year. We were 12 inches down and in “severe drought” through fall, so I hope that all this snow will soak into the ground come mud season. But right now it’s all about the snow. We didn’t get the huge storm that is probably hitting the East coast right now, just got 3-4 inches yesterday, but it’s still basically a white and blue/grey world out there. I love the way the snow tops off the fence posts, like whipped cream on a sundae:

We all know that dogs are wolves in one sense (can reproduce and their young are reproductively viable) and, as importantly, that dogs aren’t wolves at all. Just try to teach a wolf “leave it” if you happen upon a dead rabbit.

Here are two new studies that shed light on the social systems of the domestic dog, and might help some of us decide what we need to be feeding our dogs. First, Erik Axelsson and colleagues compared the genes of wolves and domestic dogs and found some very interesting differences. One of the differences is related to diet: dogs have three genes that wolves do not that play an important role in the digestion of starch (for those of you who are interested, the genes are AMY2B, MGAM and SGLT1). This result supports the “village dog” hypothesis, (of Coppinger and others) that dogs derived from wolves who began exploiting a new ecological niche: human garbage dumps. And not just any garbage dump, but possibly dumps containing food remains that correlate with the beginning of the domestication of plants. Here’s a quote from the paper itself:  “In light of previous results describing the timing and location of dog domestication, our findings may suggest that the development of agriculture catalysed the domestication of dogs.”

This is obviously of great interest to geneticists and evolutionary biologists, but also to those of us who are feeding domestic dogs on a daily basis. As you all are well aware, some argue that wolves primarily eat meat, raw meat at that, and we should use the diet of wild wolves to direct the menus of our companion dogs. At the risk of stirring the pot (so to speak!), about ideal diets for dogs, we would be wise to use the study above to remind ourselves that dogs evolved as omnivores who ate a little bit of just about everything 10 to 12,000 years ago. That does NOT mean that individual dogs do not do better on a particular diet. There is no question that some dogs do better eating “A,” and other dogs can’t handle “A” and do better eating “B.” I’d say the take away messages are to 1) know your dog and 2) don’t be seduced into claims that a new dog food is best for your dog because “it replicates the diet of a wolf.”

A second study, published in Ethology, compared the development of wolf and domestic dog pups, and concluded that differences in the period of socialization and the development of the senses might, at least in part, explain why dogs are so much easier to socialize that wolves. Kathryn Lord, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, suggests the different behaviors are related to the animals’ earliest sensory experiences and the critical period of socialization. You can read a summary of it in Science Daily, but here’s the bottom line: Although both dogs and wolves develop the ability to smell, see and hear around the same time, she argues, the critical period of socialization for wolves is a full two weeks earlier than in dogs. Most importantly, wolf pups are much more active at two weeks of age, while dog pups are pretty much lumps of cuteness. Incredibly cute, but basically non-functional, as every breeder knows. Wolf pups begin their “critical period” around two weeks of age, when they are also extremely active. Lord noted that wolf pups begin exploring their environment at two weeks of age, when they aren’t able to process sensory information–they were basically exploring an environment while being deaf and blind. Perhaps not surprising then that the wolf pups reacted with a great deal of fear when they were first able to see and hear stimuli.

On the other hand, dog pups began their activity around four weeks of age, and in general did not react to stimuli with much fear until much later in their development. This is an interesting finding, but I suspect there is a lot more to it. For one thing, Lord argues that dog pups can’t hear until four weeks of age, and that’s not quite accurate. As I understand it, the auditory canal begins to open around day 13-15, and pups begin to respond to sounds soon after that. They probably can’t hear very well until three to four weeks of age, but there’s no question they can hear something earlier than that.

What’s new about Lord’s study (and yeah for her for doing it) are her observations comparing the “fear factor” in wolf and domestic dog pups. We’ve known for a long time that wolves are much more neophobic than dogs, (afraid of new things), and Lord’s observations certainly add to our understanding of what drives that behavioral difference. Interesting stuff… here’s hoping more comes out of the same laboratory.

MEANWHILE, A DIVERSION! We’ve been having a great time on Facebook with a contest we started called “Take the Pledge.” We photographed Willie and Katie’s Lily “taking the pledge” to be the best dogs they can be in 2013, and asked Facebook readers to email photos of their dogs doing the same. We picked ten of the best photos, and posted them on Facebook. The owner (and dog) of the photo that receives the most “likes” wins a specially signed copy of For the Love of  Dog and one of Willie’s favorite toys. (Don’t worry, he’s got lots of them.) Voting ends Monday, January 28, so be sure to join in on the fun soon. Even if you’re not on Facebook, the pictures are still worth a look to get your daily dose of Oxytocin. Here are just a few to make you smile…

We all know about the “Black Dog Syndrome,” the belief that all black dogs are harder to place from shelters and rescues than dogs of other colorations. I’ll admit that when I first heard about it I didn’t question whether it was true. For one thing, when I bred Border Collie puppies I saw a strong bias for pups with white on them and against all black pups. Every once in a while a buyer would tell me that they especially loved the looks of the “plain,” all black pup, but they were the exception, not the rule. The second reason I assumed the Black Dog syndrome was true was that so many people in shelters told me they experienced it at their facility, that indeed, in their experience, all black dogs were harder to place than others.

However, I just read an interesting blog on the ASPCA site about the issue, written by Dr. Emily Weiss. In it she recounts the result of a study done by PhD psychologist Lucinda Woodward et al, and published in Society and Animals in early 2012. In summary, they found that breed had a significant effect on participant’s perception of the dogs, but color did not. As a matter of fact, in a study looking at breed versus color effect, black labs were rated as significantly more friendly, less dominant and more submissive dogs of dogs of seven other breeds, with only the Golden retriever rated more highly. (The breeds were: Border collie, Boxer, German shepherd, Golden retriever, Black Lab, Pit bull, Standard Poodle and Rottweiler.)

This is not surprising when you think of it, given that black labs are the most popular breed in the U.S. last I looked. (Which in itself should give us all pause about the “black dog syndrome.”)

In addition, in a related study that focused on color and size in just one breed, all black poodles were judged to be friendlier than all white ones (and small white poodles were categorized as the least friendly!). These results suggest that color might not be as important a factor as we have assumed. Rather, the fact that so many black dogs hang out for long periods in shelters may be attributed to the fact that there are simply more of them.

Clearly we need a lot more research on this topic. Although this study is interesting, and I would argue important, in that it gets us into a conversation about what makes dogs attractive to people (which could help shelters place more dogs), it is just one study. It’s conclusions are indirect: just because a group of people rated some dogs as more friendly than others doesn’t mean they would necessarily adopt them from a shelter. But it is a good start.

I have two questions I’d love to ask of you: One is directed to shelter and rescue workers: What is your own experience? Think hard about the relationship between breed, size and color, related to the number of dogs that enter your care and the number that go out. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Secondly, what about you? I’m getting personal here: Do you have certain colors of fur that you like better? I do, although it feels almost shameful to admit it. I hereby admit to liking some colors better than others. For example, I was hoping for a Blenheim Cavalier when working with Cav rescue groups, and I admit to really, really wanting one. I just love looking at that particular color pattern. And then Tootsie showed up and was friendly, and sweet and cuddly and no one else seemed to want her and how could I possibly pass her up because she didn’t look exactly like I wanted her to? Of course I did adopt her, and I’m glad every day that I did. This morning I laughed out loud watching her ears flying as she ran to the barn. But I still admit that some  colors make my eyes happier than others. Anyone else willing to admit to same?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Most of the snow is gone now, and what remains is patchy, frozen solid and difficult to walk on. It’s not very pretty, but more than that, the snow that remains resembles slippery cement more than anything else, and I worry about Willie’s shoulder on a daily basis. His “slow down” cue comes in handy here and I probably use it 20 times a day. Then again, I expect I’ll be asking Willie to slow down until the day he dies.

The good part about the snow having partially disappeared is that the upper pasture, which is in full sun all day, is now completely clear, so Willie and I got to work sheep for the first time since November. We had great fun, but I found I needed to remind myself to tell Willie if he was right or wrong, rather than telling him what to do. Old habits die hard, hey? The bad part about the snow melt is that it is supposed to get bitter cold in a few days, which will be hard on the plants without an insulating cover of snow. Not to mention that my desire to be outside wanes as the thermometer goes below zero Fahrenheit.

Here’s an area beside the driveway that gets some sun during the day, but only a few hours worth. Not especially scenic, but then, it’s not always a calendar cover out in the country.

I played a bit with my new camera this morning. Here’s Mr. Willie helping me out. I changed the auto focus to focus only on the center point, and not to average all the focal points as most cameras do unless you set them differently. I like the results, although it looks to me as though I focused more on the middle of his face rather than his eyes. Gotta work on that.

By the way, speaking of pictures… check out Facebook next week when we post the 5 finalists for the “Take the Pledge” contest. Here’s Willie taking the pledge to be a good, good dog in 2013!

Last weekend Jim, Willie, Tootsie and I stayed in a lovely log cabin owned by friends in the woods in eastern Wisconsin. I mention that because for the first time in her nine years of life, Tootsie got to run off leash in an unfenced area off the farm. Wooo Hooo! Some people might not understand what a huge step that was for a little puppy mill dog, but I’m guessing that many of you get it completely. I was over the moon with happiness that I could unsnap the lead, and trust that she would stop when told, come when called, and as importantly, get to sniff and explore with more freedom than she’s ever had in her nine years of life.

The decision I made got me thinking about the issue in general: When IS it safe to let a dog off leash? What do you need to know to evaluate the risk and decide whether to take it? I thought it might be an interesting exercise to list some of my criteria and decision points in regards to Tootsie, and to hear your thoughts and experiences in addition.

I should probably mention here that it is my belief that one of the things dogs want more than anything in the world is a certain amount of autonomy. Some dogs have a ton of it, others almost none, but surely every dog wants to be able to do what she wants to do, when she wants to do it at least some of the time. Being off leash fulfills that to a great extent, but it also puts dogs at the potential of risk. So how does one decide when to unsnap the lead? Here are at least some of the things that need to be considered:

CONTROL: It is something of an irony that the more control we have over our dogs, the more freedom we can give them. Never is that more true when asking if a dog can be safe off leash, and it was the question I asked myself late Friday night when I decided it was 99.999% a sure thing that once off leash and out of the car, Tootsie would sniff around, relieve herself and then immediately come when I called. But how does one know if a dog will come when called in any context?  Ah, you don’t, not 100%, but here’s what I think you need to get to 99.9999%:

STOP ON A DIME: People often assume that all one needs to manage an off leash dog is a good recall, but I’m a big proponent of first teaching a dog to stop on cue. Asking a dog to stop on a dime might be critical for the dog’s safety, and if you think about it, that’s a very different exercise than asking a dog to come back to you. I can’t count the number of times I asked Willie to stop and stand still (I use “Stand,” a cue common in sheep herding that asks a dog to do exactly that: don’t lie down, but stop moving). Perhaps he was starting to sniff beside a partially frozen stream, or I wanted him to wait for me to catch up before he went around a corner on a trail we were walking.

Besides being a handy cue, I’ve learned it is much more effective to ask a dog to stop first before calling him to come back to you, especially if he is moving fast in another direction. Think about it: If a dog is running away from you, in order to back to you she has to 1) stop, 2) turn around and 3) come back to you. That’s three things, right? I’ve found it far more effective, especially with dogs who love to run, to teach them first to stop on cue before asking them to do a recall. It’s not all that hard to do: Just let your dog get a step or two ahead of you and say “Whoa!” or “Stand” and then reinforce with something ridiculously wonderful. Gradually use the cue when the dog is either 1) farther away from you and 2) moving faster. Try to keep those 2 components separate as much as you can, and gradually build up to asking the dog to stop while tearing off in another direction. Manage this carefully though and set your dog up to win: don’t yell “Whoa” when  your beagle is disappearing into the woods after a rabbit if you haven’t gotten full compliance at a much easier level. However, a good stop is not enough…. you also need:

A RIDICULOUSLY GOOD RECALL: Coming when called when there’s no environmental competition simply doesn’t count as a “good enough recall”. One of the reasons I decided to let Tootsie off leash in the woods last weekend is because we have spent several months working on her coming when called while running away from me at a dead run toward something she really, really wanted. I’ve worked on her recall ever since I got her a year and a half ago (if you missed those blogs, she had been a puppy mill brood bitch for 7 years). It took me months to let her off leash at the farm, and then only in specific contexts in which I felt her behavior was completely predictable. But it’s one thing to have a dog come when called in a predictable and consistent context. It’s an entirely different matter to be able to get a dog to come to you when it is already dashing away toward something it wants.

I was lucky here, because the farm provided the perfect set up. First, I have several fenced areas where I could safely let Tootsie off leash and work on her recall. The area around the house and barn is not fenced however, and has a road that runs by about 75 yards from the house, so I was much more cautious about letting her off leash there. In that context I first worked on teaching Tootsie to heel beside me as we walked from the house to the barn. She adores food, and so it didn’t take long to get a reliable response. Then I began asking her to stop or recall when I released her from the heel. I knew she would run straight to the barn, so I had no worries about her safety. I had her favorite food (chicken) in my pocket and asked her to stop the first time when she had just barely left my side. Gradually I began to give the cue when she was farther and farther away from me. Once I could get to her turn on a dime and run back to me even when twenty yards away I began to test it in other contexts. And sure enough, she flipped her little body in mid-air and came running.

CONTEXT: Location, Location, Location. Realtors aren’t the only ones who emphasize the importance of location. There are simply many places I would never let Tootsie off leash. Here’s an example: we went recently to visit a friend who lives in a suburb, with a small lawn between the house and the road. I asked her to potty before we went inside, and never would have considered letting her off leash in that context. Why? Because first, we were just too close to a road for comfort, she could have gotten into the road before I could blurt out a cue. Second, what would be the point? The cost/benefit balance was skewed far to the negative: the risk in no way was worth the pay off. At the cabin however, the closest road was a good 600 yards away,  and the payoff was huge. She got to be a dog off the farm for the first time in her little life, and although I’m sure some people would argue one should never take any risk at all, I’m not one of them. The only 100% guarantee of safety for Tootsie was to live in a cage, and she’d already done that for seven years. Enough is enough.

WHO’S YOUR DOG? If asked to name three things we all needed to consider before letting our dogs off leash, I’d say knowing each dog as a personality is the third. Tootsie spent 7 years in a cage, and didn’t know that the noises people made were meaningful for most of her life. She’s come incredibly far, but she’s still a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that I got at age 7 who had never been trained to do anything for most of her life. Willie, on the other hand, came with recall software pre-installed. I could just about take him anywhere and let him off leash, although I still don’t take chances, because, really, what’s the point?

NEVER DONE: One last point: Don’t ever stop “training your dog to come.” I still often reinforce Willie for coming when called, sometimes with voice, sometimes with the toss of a toy or letting him chase me as I run away from him.  And I’ll never stop watching Tootsie like a hawk if she is off leash, and reminding her how very, very fun it is to come when called.

Here’s the little girl now, rounding the corner of the barn when I called her back to me from a dead sprint. She looks so serious, doesn’t she? But damn, she sure comes running!

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: A bit of a sad day. We’ve had a doe fawn living in the Orchard Pasture all spring and summer. Something was terribly wrong with her, she clearly wasn’t able to cope with living on her own. She would run smack into the fences at a dead run and was never able to jump them like all the other deer. She did well over the summer when there was a lot of food, but because she stayed in a very small area there was no way she was going to make it through the winter. There was also the concern about coyotes; eventually they would have found her and killed her. And so I contacted a DNR warden who came out, agreed that she was probably blind, and that she would slowly starve over the winter. Deer can’t be captured and re-located (they die of stress, it is horrifically cruel to try to capture and relocate them), and it was inevitable that the coyotes would find and kill her. The warden agreed that she should be put down, and did so humanely with one perfect shot. I know it was the right thing to do, and I know that deer are as common out here as beetles, but oh lordy they are lovely animals, and I’m feeling a big of sadness that such a beautiful thing didn’t make it.

Here she was yesterday:

I recently read an interesting study about the effect of different types of music on kenneled dogs. (“Behavioral effect of auditory stimulation on kenneled dogs,” by Kogan, Schoenfeld-Tacher & Simon, J of Veterinary Behavior 7, 2012, 268-275.) The authors’ goal was to determine if different types of music, as has been reported in other species, had different types of effects on dogs, and the results indeed confirmed that this was true. The results suggested that 1) “classical music” increases the amount of time the dogs spent sleeping, and 2) “heavy metal” music increased body shaking (or trembling). Surprisingly however, “psychoacoustically designed” music, a piano piece specifically designed to calm dogs, resulted in no statistically significant change in behavior from silence.

First off, I want to acknowledge Kogan et al for doing important research on the effects of the acoustic environment on domestic dogs. We so often focus on other aspects of their environment–Is their dog bed comfy? Does it look pretty to us?–and fail to attend to the impact of sound on our dog’s environment (not to mention our own). This is by no means the first study to look at the responses of dog to sound or music, but it is an important step toward a more complete and nuanced understanding of how dogs respond to different types of sound, a topic near and dear to my heart.

Many of you know that my dissertation research was about the effect of different types of sounds on working domestic animals, and so it’s not surprising that I am especially interested in this topic. My study found that short, rapidly-repeated notes increased motor activity in dogs, and that long, continuous notes were universally used to soothe or calm working dogs and horses (Perspectives in Ethology, Vol 9, 1991). In another study, Wells found no observable changes in behavior in shelter dogs listening to human speech, “pop music” or no music, but increases in resting postures and decreased barking to “classical music,” while heavy metal music elicited increased barking and rising to a stand (2000, 2002, Applied Animal Behavior Science).

Kogan’s research replicates those findings (with an exception discussed below), but a conversation with Primatologist Charles Snowdon, PhD and an expert on animals and their responses to sound, reminded me of an important point. Kogan refers to “classical music” as resulting in more frequent observations of dog sleeping, but as Dr. Snowdon reminded me, “classical music”  includes a broad range of pieces, from soothing selections like “Moonlight Sonata” (one of the pieces played to the dogs in Kogan’s study) to the 1812 Overture, which one would hardly describe as “soothing,” at least not to humans. Thus, it is not the classification of the music that matters, but the features of each piece that make the difference. Leave it to some monkeys to emphasize that point for us . . .

In one of the decade’s most innovative pieces of research, Snowdon used his knowledge of Cotton Top Tamarin vocalizations to ask what effect human music would have on another primate species. He first found that “human” music had little observable effect on the monkeys, but when his collaborator, cellist and composer David Teie, modified the music based on the pitches and tempos of the vocal repertoire of the tamarins, they discovered that the monkey’s responses followed what appear to be common, if not universal, mammalian responses to certain aspects of music. Here’s a link to samples of the modified music.

Snowdon’s & Teie’s work reminds us that what is important is not whether the music is “classical” or “heavy metal,” but whether it includes a set of acoustic features that appear to be universally associated with soothing or stimulating internal states. Those features include:

1) Longer notes tend to be calming, staccato (short, repeated) notes stimulating (think saying “Sta-a-a-a-a-y” to a dog versus “Pup-pup-pup-pup” when calling to come).

2) Pure tones & regular rhythms are associated with positive states, harsh, noisy ones & irregular rhythms with negatives states (think about a high, clear repeated whine from a puppy who wants attention versus a low, “noisy” growl from a dog warning another off a bone.)

3) A tempo matching an animal’s resting heart rate (or respiration) tends to be calming.

All of this suggests that it can indeed be valuable to play certain types of music to individual dogs or dogs in kenneled situations. However, if you recall, Kogan’s work did not find that the “psychoacoustically designed” music had an effect on the dog’s behavior when compared to other pieces or to no music at all. The particular piece of music used in the study was a section of Music to Calm Your Canine  Companion, music included in the book Through a Dog’s Ear. We sell it on our website, and is also available separately as a CD.

Although I’m not qualified to analyze all the acoustic changes Leeds and Wagner made to make music especially soothing to dogs, the basic principles followed what we have learned about how sound effects the animal who hears it. The music (all piano played by musician Lisa Spector) is modified from “classical” pieces that follow the criteria above, so why wouldn’t it be equally effective at soothing the dogs who heard it?

I talked to Kogan about her results, and she too was surprised by the dog’s responses to the “Dog’s Ear” music. She felt confident that the results were robust, in that they made thousands of observations and the results were consistent.  For example, during the presentation of “classical music,” (Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, Blue Danube Waltz & Air on a G String) the dogs were observed sleeping 3.7 to 6.0 % of the time. That compares with 1.1 % of the time during periods of no music and 1.4 % of the time during the presentation of the Dog’s Ear music. (On the other hand, she reported that in as many as 71.2 % of the observational periods a dog was observed shaking (as if visibly nervous) during only the heavy metal music, a fact which makes me want to run back in time, turn off the music and give the dogs a belly rub.)

What could possibly explain these results? After all, the Dog’s Ear music is sold as having proven effects on dogs, and large numbers of people have reported that the music is helpful to their dogs. You can listen to some samples here. It also follows many of the criteria listed above. I spoke to author and musicologist Joshua Leeds about Kogan’s results, and he too admitted to being surprised at the outcome. His best guesses as to the lack of effect of Dog’s Ear music were 1) Acoustics: Sound is conveyed differently by different types of equipment and through different environments. Perhaps the speakers used conveyed the music of a full orchestra better than simple piano music? However, two of the “classical” pieces used in the Kogan et al study were also piano music, so that’s probably not the answer. However, his pieces are ‘simplified,” they have fewer notes and perhaps might be differentially affected by the speakers and room acoustics. 2) His pieces are designed as progressions, but in the study a short section of “Dog’s Ear” music was put on a tape loop and played repeatedly. Leeds modifies three factors in his music for calming dogs: tone (resonance), tempo (entrainment) and pattern. He modified the music he selected by eliminating certain frequencies, “simplifying” the music to make it more relaxing to the brain, and decreasing the beats per minute, and it is designed to be played in full, not in small, repeated units. To his credit, he and his colleagues did a pilot study that was supportive of the desired results (calmer dogs) but as is true for all pilot studies, it had some holes and wasn’t by any means the “definitive study.” But all we can do is speculate about the lack of effect of the Dog’s Ear music in Kogan’s study. It may be that the music truly doesn’t have any calming effect on dogs when tested objectively, but it also may be that there are other factors we don’t yet understand that are skewing the results.

What about you? I’m truly curious about your experience if you’ve tried any of the CDs from Through a Dog’s Ear. Have you tried it? If so, what was your experience? Katie here at the office saw no observable effect when her Dogo was an adolescent, but found that Lily dozed off as if on sleeping pills not too long ago when she heard the Dog’s Ear CD play. I tried it with Willie during acupuncture, and found no observable change in his behavior, but Lassie seemed to relax especially fast during acupuncture treatments if I played it to her. These are of course, only  anecdotal reports, but all of our observations can still be extremely valuable. I’d love to hear about your experience.

Here’s what we do know for sure: Some kinds of music or other sounds do indeed seem to have a positive effect on kenneled dogs, especially sounds with long, extended notes, pure tones and relatively slow tempos. We also know, from Snowdon’s research, that we need to look at the acoustic range and vocal repertoire of each species before we make too many assumptions about what kind of sounds have what effect. Here’s what we don’t know: exactly what are all the best acoustic features to calm and soothe dogs in over stimulating environments? How effective is music “simplified” and modified based on theory but not yet a lot of data? I’ll leave you with one very important comment made by Lori Kogan when I interviewed her about the study: It’s not just the dogs we want to think about. If the people who come to visit a shelter are in an attractive, pleasing environment, one that is playing pleasant, soothing music, surely they would be more likely to stay longer at minimum, and perhaps more likely to adopt?  A great point I think, and another reminder of the importance of the acoustic environment around us and our dogs.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Tootsie has been learning that leaping up and pawing at the gate to Willie’s crate is not the way to get a treat in her own kennel. Last week I realized I was mindlessly (but gently) pushing her off of Willie’s crate as I was closing his door in preparation to taking Tootsie to her own crate. Willie would enthusiastically run into his crate, Tootsie would dance and leap as I shut his door in excited anticipation of what was to come (a treat for her in her own crate.) Ah, a perfect opportunity to let Tootsie figure it out on her own. This week when she leaps up I simply stand up and go still. I reinforced her for standing four on the floor by moving one step toward her crate and sure enough, the leaping and pawing is almost gone. I’d say we are half way to her linking my shutting Willie’s crate as a cue for her to run into hers. I’ll keep you posted.

Winter is certainly here, it was quite a bit below zero (Farenheit) here a few mornings ago. The kitties are staying warm by cuddling together in a dog bed I bought for Tootsie (who still has more than she needs, believe me) which is placed inside of blankets and cardboard boxes in the garage. Not very fancy, but toasty warm and makes for one very adorable picture every morning when I open the farm house door to see Nellie and Polly cuddled up together. Tootsie has become one very hardy little Cavalier, she pounces around in the snow like an Arctic fox, although if it’s below 10 degrees I don’t take her out for long. Willie, not surprisingly, is oblivious. He’ll hold up a paw if it is truly bitter after we’ve been out awhile, and I am careful to avoid the potential of frost bite, but he basically adores cold weather and snow and probably thinks it was all created just for him.

Photos of Cardinals in winter are so common they are trite, but they are common for a reason. There’s little more cheerful than red birds with a background of evergreens and white snow. Most of the photos are of the strikingly colored males, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the females, their colors are so nuanced. Here’s one this morning:

And here she is flying to the feeder, directly toward me and my lens.

These photos are okay, but I can’t wait for my new camera! I’m counting the days til it arrives.