THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

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

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.

Well, they’re not dogs. Or cats. Or domestic animals of any kind. But I spent two years working with Cotton Top Tamarins and hearing my university BFF describe how she is continuing her work with them was one of the highlights of my trip to Florida.

Anne Savage, Senior Conservation Biologist at Disney World, has been studying Cotton Top Tamarins in the wild since graduate school at UW-Madison. She and I worked together with the squirrel-sized monkeys in the lab of Charles Snowdon, who did non-intrusive behavioral research on their vocalizations and reproductive behavior. The lab was committed to letting them live in family groups (rare at the time) in enriched environments (also rare at the time) and Anne and I spent many a night planning how to improve their environment, help young mothers raise their babies (adolescents aren’t always so good at it in many species) and working with the vets to deal with illnesses and rare injuries. We designed probably the first functional incubator for rejected baby Cotton Tops and worked hard to eliminate the need for them in the first place.

The species has to work hard at reproduction: Female Cotton Tops usually have twins–rare for a monkey–and become pregnant just days after giving birth. So the females have to produce milk for twins while they are also gestating a new set, which is why the males do most of the carrying of the young. Chuck’s lab learned that the species must be kept in family groups to thrive, because adolescents have to learn to transfer and carry the infants before they give birth themselves or assist a female in raising the young. Watching youngsters figure out how to transfer a baby from one back to another provided endless amusement for us.

Here’s an old photo from the lab of a male carrying 2 very young infants on his back. (Did I mention they are the cutest monkeys that ever lived?) Those two little white triangles on either side of the male’s head are the babies clinging to his back. You can see from the photo that the monkeys had real wood to walk on (that was a fight with the authorities!), but by the time we left the entire cage was full of ropes and plants and toys. It was gratifying work and I learned so much doing it.

I worked with the monkeys for two years between undergrad and graduate school (when I studied vocalizations from professional animal handlers to working domestic animals), and Anne went on to do field work in Columbia on CT’s as an endangered species. If you ever meet her, ask her how she talked machine gun-toting rebels who invaded her research station and threatened to kill or kidnap her into helping her with the research instead. Seriously. That’s Anne.  She’s continued the research ever since, working toward conserving the forest for the monkeys by not just trying to discourage forest destruction, but by organizing economic opportunities for the locals to enable them to make a good living and still conserve the forest around them. You can read more about it on Proyecto Titi (Titi is the local name for CTs). One of the most impressive projects is organizing businesses for women making “eco-mochillas,” or environmentally friendly bags crocheted from the endless amount of plastic that pollutes the villages in Columbia (and Kenya, and Rwanda, etc etc etc). (I bought 2 in Disney World, and you could too when you go, or buy them off their website. I’m just saying….) So it helps conserve the forest, protects the Cotton Top Tamarins, provides an income for the residents and decreases pollution. I’d call that a win/win/win/win. Here’s a much better photo of a Cotton Top:

It was also fun to hear about the plans for an Avatar experience at Animal Kingdom. Now that will be worth checking out (2014 I think?). And there’s lots of other great research going on in the Conservation Biology Dept; check out this work that uses elephant’s dislike of bees to keep elephants from destroying crop land of villagers. Very creative.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. Willie and Tootsie are doing really well. Willie adored the male of the house sitting couple, and seems to be relaxed and back to himself. The sitter did say that he seemed obsessed with Sushi, but when I got back the issue went back to being easily managed. He’ll begin to stalk her but can be easily distracted and stays calm and relaxed once he is.  Willie’s leg and shoulder seem really good, although (of course), just when I was consciously thinking “Oh my, he really is almost sound again” this afternoon, he slid a bit on the snow and yelped, then held up his left paw. For a second I died a thousand deaths, but he went right back to using it normally again. I can’t find the slightest hitch in his gait, but of course, I’ll be extra careful tonight, and do lots of massage on it and hold off on his exercises until tomorrow.

Mostly, I just have to say that I truly enjoyed all the wonderful people I met in Florida and am grateful to so many people who made it a great experience AND I’m sooooo glad to be home!!!! I love my farm, I love my animals,  I love Wisconsin, and yes yes yes, right now, I love snow!