A short post today, but with a pithy question generated from the last post on play. We all agree that different breeds of dogs tend to have different play styles, with herding dogs, for example, more likely to engage in run/chase games and bully breeds more likely to wrestle and body slam. Wrestling can include many behaviors, but a common goal of wrestling in any species is to pin another individual to the ground. A lot of the wrestling/body slamming play in canines also includes chin over, leg over, vertical play and other movements that replicate the postures and gestures associated with high dogs seeking high social status. So here's the question: Do the dogs (in general of course) who engage in body slam/wrestle play tend to be individuals who care more about social status? I'll add Read More
Interesting Play Styles
Here's a video of Willie playing with a Lily, a 4 month old female Dogo Argentino. He has just met her, and after a brief greeting by the farm house, we walked up the hill to the Orchard Pasture. I love watching videos of dogs playing; it seems that you can see so much if you watch them repeatedly. Here are the two main events I find most notable about this episode of play (along with the fact that Willie is playing so well with her! Yeah Mr. Will, what a journey we've been on together!) One, notice how Lily's play is so often on a vertical plane. Even as a young pup, she spends a lot of energy moving upward, and trying to get on top of Will. You'll see that especially at seconds 17, 23 and 34. There are other examples, but those are the first three that I noticed. Secondly, Read More
What the Dog Knew Part I
Here's one small aspect related to the question of how dogs interpret our cues: I started listing the cues that Will responds to, asking myself if he saw them as verbs or nouns (good point by one of the readers that humans can use one word for both, as in "snow.") I didn't get very far before things got interesting. Remember that game that Ian Dunbar used to do in working seminars? Testing out what cues really mean to your dog? It came to mind when I started working with Will, and I asked him to Sit when he was already sitting. He immediately lay down. Of course, you can teach through this, but I never have because I haven't needed to. So right there.... Will and I have not defined sit the same way. I think Will defines it as an action similar to: "Go down toward the ground," while Read More
What Do Words Mean to Dogs?
One of the segments on the BBC show The Secret Life of Dogs that generated several interesting comments was the segment that showed "Betsy," (not her real name, you gotta love that some dogs now have 'nom de plumes') retrieving an object after being shown just a photograph of it. Wow. That truly is amazing. It got me to thinking about the trouble I had a year or so ago when I tried to teach Willie to discriminate between toys based on a name. For over a year he'd been told to "Go get your toy," and he'd pick out whatever toy he liked best that was nearby. When I tried to teach him to touch or pick up a toy based on a different word ("ball" or "rope"), he became hopelessly confused. He became so stressed over the entire operation that I dropped it and went on to teach him other things. My Read More
The Secret Life of Dogs
There is a great BBC special on dogs on YouTube, (sent to me by an alert reader, thank you!). I spend so much time in front of my computer that I rarely want to watch an hour long show on it . . but this time I sat down and didn't move for 60 minutes. It's called The Secret Life of Dogs, and it's great. Hands (and paws) down, great. It has sections on Miklosi's work on dog barks (people are very good at discriminating between barks given in 6 different contexts), Juliane Kaminksi's work on the ability of dogs to follow a pointing gesture (which chimps and wolves do not seem able to do), Belyaev's & Trut's work on selection for docility in foxes (resulting in a profound number of physical as well as behavioral changes which basically result in domesticated foxes in 20 generations), and Read More