Dog Spies

The birds and the bees and the octopuses too

2012-02-28T05:53:00.009-09:00

Octopuses, bees and birds made an appearance in my life earlier this month. This is not the part in the blog where I recount my dreams -- although Gargamel and a giant bee used to chase me around the rings of Saturn.

As you might expect, bees are more than their sting, octopuses more than their alien appearance and birds more than their “bird brain.” That’s according to their human translators, a panel of experts brought to Hunter College in NYC by Thinking Animals, a group dedicated to sharing the cognitive and behavioral perspectives of non-human animals. Here are some of the highlights of the panel.

Bird brains
“HEY! Where’s my chocolate cake??!!??”

Inside the fridge, staring back at you, is the lack of chocolate gooiness, a gaping hole of emptiness where the chocolate cake should be. Your expectation has been violated, and you are affected by the lack of something. You set off to maim your brother, the obvious culprit.

In this context, behaviors associated with being startled, upset or confused actually tell us something. We would only expect to see behaviors associated with absence if an individual has the expectation or concept of presence.

What about birds? Dr. Irene Pepperberg, founder and President of The Alex Foundation, finds that parrots change their behavior when their expectations have been violated... minus the brother-maiming.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/profile-irene-pepperberg.html

In one test, Pepperberg pretended to hide a desirable cashew, but instead hid a normal nugget. When Alex and Griffin, two African grey parrots, discovered the pellet instead of the cashew, their behavior changed. “Alex... turned away, slit his eyes, puffed his feathers, slightly opened his wings, and lowered his head.... Griffin threw all the cups onto the floor” (Wise, 2002).

Not so “bird brained” after all.

Bees shakin’ that thang
If the fact that bees perform a waggle dance isn’t cool enough for you, the dance not only informs others in the hive where to find food, it also indicates food sweetness, distance, quantity, odor intensity and ease of extraction (apparently bees prefer long, thin tubes over wide shapes). And all this is conveyed through a dance! A DANCE! And from a being with a wee little brain!

http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/Class/IPHY3730/16migration.html
In this image, bees appear controlled by a godly ray of light. Watch the below video for a better explanation.

The dance explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg

According to Dr. Jim Gould, a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, “experiments suggest that recruits, having attended a dance in the hive specifying the distance and direction of a food source, can evaluate the ‘plausibility’ of the location without leaving the hive; this suggests a kind of imagination” (Gould, 1990).

Which of course makes me wonder about imagination in dogs, a topic recently discussed on a Scientific American blog post, Animal Imagination: The Dog That Pretended to Feed a Frog (and other tales).

Octopuses?
Difference in form doesn’t imply that a heck of a lot isn’t going on in the octopus world. For example, what about consciousness? That’s what Dr. David Edelman, our octopus translator and an Associate Fellow in Experimental Neurobiology at The Neuroscience Institute in San Diego, is considering.

Edelman suggests that consciousness could be investigated in widely different phyla. Why octopuses? In Dr. Edelman’s words, “If you wanted to test any invertebrate for what we might call consciousness, the octopus seems like a good bet, with about half a billion neurons in total and many hetreogeneous brain lobes. It’s an interesting animal with a very sophisticated set of sensorimotor adaptations, which look like a very good set of constituent elements that would go into a potentially conscious system.” **

So what do octopuses have up their tentacles? I’ll let these videos do the talking:

Social learning in octopuses? Check
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw

Image from the above social learning video

The ability to change color and texture to match surroundings? Check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmDTtkZlMwM
After watching this video you will have no choice but to share it on Twitter, Facebook, and weave it into any talk you give, even if it’s about breast feeding.

Looking ahead
And this is just the beginning. Over the next few months, Thinking Animals continues its lecture series. Join experts from across the globe to explore the worlds of non-human animals.

Up next!
Exploring Creative Minds with Marc Bekoff, Dorothy Fragaszy, Kevin McGowan, Diana Reiss & Moderator: Stuart Firestein
Hunter College in NYC
March 2, 2012 @ 7 PM
For example, what's behind dolphins' "perma-smile"?

Glorious references!
Gould, J., 1990. Honey bee cognition. Cognition 37, 83-103.

Wise, S., 2002. Drawing the line: science and the case for animal rights. p. 101-102.
**Google: Interviews on consciousness - Dr. David Edelman Cephalove

Why is a stranger’s crotch more interesting than mine? (Part 2)

2011-12-21T04:47:00.005-09:00

Here is a recap of the study we discussed in Part 1, Oh, hello! Why yes, that's my crotch *:

Crotch factoid #1: A dog enters a room, sees his owner lying on the floor, and he gives considerable attention to his owner's upper body.

Crotch factoid #2: A dog enters a room, sees a stranger lying on the floor, and he initially goes for the crotch.

Why the difference? Why is a stranger's crotch initially so much more interesting than mine?

Why is this so appealing?

Let's first consider why owners' crotches were initially not sniffed. It's possible that dogs do not sniff owners' crotches because owners have taught them not to!

For many humans, crotch sniffing is considered irritating, embarrassing and offensive. Not surprisingly, 1,009 people "like" the facebook page, I Hate Dogs That Sniff My Crotch.

http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42454&view=newest

In response, the web suggests ways to prevent crotch sniffing. Some suggest teaching the dog to perform a behavior incompatible with crotch sniffing (such as lying down) and others suggest using words or actions to dissuade the dog from crotch sniffing. Regardless of the training method, it is plausible owners could eliminate crotch sniffing from their dog's owner-directed behavioral repertoire.

At the same time, it seems highly unlikely that an owner would train a dog not to sniff the owner's own crotch, yet allow dogs to continue sniffing strangers' crotches. Since the study under consideration found lots of stranger-directed crotch action, what could be going on?

A better explanation comes from the olfactory content of the human body. We are aware of some of our odors, such as BO, and others evade our consciousness. This is where dogs come in.

http://exiledonline.com/dogs-can-sniff-your-crotch-for-cancer/

Dog + Stranger's Crotch
Upon coming across a stranger, dogs are interested in doing an ID check, similar to when you are at a holiday party and you ask someone for their business card. This little piece of thick paper (which you examine visually) provides initial information about the person standing before you. Putting the business card in your mouth or sniffing it offers no information about the other person. As a human, you can look, talk and listen to learn about others (although olfaction can play a role, particularly when someone puts on too much perfume, or, ahem, not enough).

For dogs, crotch sniffing had nothing to do with getting to third base. Instead, it is more akin to looking over a business card. One of the places we humans keep our business cards is in our crotches, in a set of glands called the apocrine glands. While apocrine glands are found in a number of hairy regions of the human body, they are heavily concentrated in the anogenital (crotch) region. These glands secrete pheromones **, chemicals that enable olfactory communication with others, particularly concerning identity. Investigating a stranger's crotch simply orients a dog to the individuality of that person.

Dog + Owner
On the other hand, when a dog enters a room and sees an owner, through the gift of sight, the dog registers, "Person I know well is right there!" The dog knows who they are dealing with and does not need to go for the crotch. They can move on and gather more general information about you, the owner, such as where you've been and how you're feeling (unlike teenagers, our bodies don't lie).

Of note, you the human reading this blog, release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs***. Your breath, for example, contains many many VOCs which are both generated by your own body and picked up from the environment at large. In a sense, you are a walking science experiment, picking up odors and producing them on your own, and a dog who knows you is immediately interested in smelling your chemicals.

Regardless of whether you are a stranger to a dog or it's owner, we humans are odorous sacks of information, and dogs will sniff many different parts of our bodies. But during an initial interaction with either a known or unknown person, dogs differ in their preliminary points of contact.

This holiday season, will you be sharing your business card with dogs?

Many thanks to Tom Brownlee for always setting me straight when it comes to scent and olfaction.

References
*Filiatre et al., 1991. Behavioural variability of olfactory exploration of the pet dog in relation to human adults. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 30, 341-350.

**Grammer et al., 2004. Human pheromones and sexual attraction. European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, 118, 135-142.

***Martin et al., 2010. Human breath analysis: methods for sample collection and reduction of localized background effects. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, 396, 739-750.

Oh, hello! Why yes, that’s my crotch! (Part 1)

2011-12-11T14:50:00.013-09:00

The holiday season is in full swing. But before you dive into Aunt Bessie’s famous cookies, you might have to get past a few pinched cheeks and possibly some bad breath.

You know what I'm talking about -- from handshakes and hand-kisses, to “man hugs" and double kisses, between now and New Years, we humans enter hardcore greeting mode.

Accompanying the acceptable greeting rituals noted above, we also engage in the more discrete variety: the up-and-down glance we get from our sister as we enter the party (I hope she didn’t notice that I’m wearing her bracelet!); the feeling that someone tried to get a look at your shoes without you noticing (of course you noticed). This is what we do. We check each other out.

http://thenextbend.com/DevilsTower.html

What about dogs? Come holiday season, any dog who’s a fan of people will most certainly put on his greeting hat. And when dogs are greeting people or checking people out, they tend to go for the crotch. Or do they?

The sniffing investigation
Back in 1991, Filiatre et al. published a study: Behavioural variability of olfactory exploration of the pet dog in relation to human adults. In English, this translates to: Do dogs differ in how they sniff their owners vs how they sniff strangers?

The researchers created a study with two parts. In part one, they observed pet dogs sniffing their owners. In part two, pet dogs sniffed an unknown person. The researchers then studied which human body parts received the most attention from the dogs and their sniffers.

The first thing you are probably wondering: how exactly were people sniffed? (not something you ask every day). For the sniffing simulation, the human subjects entered a test room where they lay motionless on the floor with their eyes closed. Once on the floor, the dog entered the room and was observed for 5 minutes.

To collect the sniffing data, the human body was divided into 10 regions (see below). Researchers could then easily observe where dogs were directing their sniffing. I might add, this mock human has abnormally small feet and nice underwear.

The sniffing report
On the whole, dogs spent more time sniffing their owners than the strangers.

But there’s more!

Dogs differed in how they sniffed. When it came to sniffing their owners, dogs showed particular interest in the thorax and arms. On the other hand, in the presence of a stranger, dog focused more on the ano-genital area and thighs. Whether you are more familiar with the terms “privates”, “bits and pieces”, “caboose”, “backdoor”, “flower pot” or “Rocky Mountain Freeway”, no matter how you slice it, dogs were more into sniffing the crotch and thighs of strangers compared to the crotch and thighs of their owners.

For you visual learners, below is a picture detailing the movement of the dog’s muzzle over the body. Top image: sniffing a known person; Bottom Image: sniffing a stranger. Check out that crotch attention!

So why might your dog get all up in Aunt Bessie’s crotch during the holidays? Simply put, he hasn’t seen her in a year! But maybe if you invited her over for tea more often....

Tune in next time for Part 2: Why is a stranger’s crotch so much more interesting than mine?

Reference
Filiatre, J.C., Millot, J.L., Eckerlin, A., 1991. Behavioural variability of olfactory exploration of the pet dog in relation to human adults. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 30, 341-350

Fido never does that. This woman is crazy.

2011-10-13T11:07:00.005-08:00

I recently gave a public lecture at the Norman Rockwell Museum, What Dogs Know: A Scientific Guide to Understanding Your Canine Companion. Why did they let a dog nut like me into the museum? Because dogs abound in Rockwell’s canvases.

We look at Rockwell’s painting and think, “Of course a dog would be sleeping on his lap.”

http://www.nrm.org/

“Of course a dog would join the family in looking out the window”

http://www.nrm.org/

(and while the dog might not necessarily attach the same importance to the new Plymouth, he/she is certainly excited to participate in the excitement and join the family activity of looking out the window).

Rockwell captures how dogs seem to effortlessly join our activities, and I presented the science, not just the nostalgia, behind this relationship.

Public lectures remind me that in addition to (hopefully) listening to what I’m saying, people are comparing my words and information with their personal experiences of dogs.

“Yes! Banjo does that all the time! That’s so funny!” or “Fido never does that. This woman is crazy.”

And they would both be right (Except for the crazy bit. (No, even the crazy bit)).

The reason they would both be right is that canine behavioral researchers never say, “Every dog does (fill in the blank) every time.” In fact, researchers would never say that because that would make them liars.

For example, the below graph* shows how different species follow a human’s pointing gesture to a target location (the white and black bars represent different types of pointing gestures). Even though the graphs show the mean, you can see that no species follows the pointing gesture to the target location 100% of the time. That’s okay! What excites researchers is that these species follow the gesture above chance (which is the horizontal line at 50%).

http://familydogproject.elte.hu/Pdf/publikaciok/2006/miklosiS2006.pdf

Since we don’t find 100% compliance on the group level, you

would expect that individuals don’t perform at 100% either. In an earlier post, I described a study finding that dogs from cooperative worker breeds follow a human’s pointing gesture better than mutts or dogs bred to work independently**. And on a group level, that’s true. But individual variation within the groups is also true.

In that study, dogs saw 20 pointing gestures toward one of two bowls. If dogs went to the correct bowl, they received a treat, wrong bowl, no treat. The below graph shows a subset of the dog subjects.

http://www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com/content/5/1/31

You can see that on the group level, cooperative workers (on the right) followed the point and made the correct choice more often than independent workers (on the left). But on the individual level, Komondor #3 (on the left) did pretty well! In fact, Komondor #3 even out performed Border Collie #2 (on the right), a member of the more successful cooperative worker group.

When studies report differences at the group level, we most definitely will find individual variation within those groups.

To put it on our terms, like me, you are an individual. But we can also be placed into various groups. For example, I am part of a group of females with brown hair, straight top teeth who graduated from UW-Madison. If I were standing in a room of women, all members of this group, we would certainly find similarities and differences. In fact, some of us might even not like dogs.

References

* Miklósi, Á., Soproni, K. 2006. A comparative analysis of animals' understanding of the human pointing gesture. Animal Cognition, 9: 81-93.

** Gácsi, McGreevy, Kara and Ádám Miklósi, 2009. Effects of selection for cooperation and attention in dogs. Behavioral and Brain Functions

Where Should Dogs Put Their Tongues?

2011-09-27T14:05:00.003-08:00

"What happened at WoofStock?" you've been wondering. Unlike Woodstock, it did not rain for 3 days straight, although a number of dogs deemed the leg of my information booth an appropriate urination spot. Apart from that, Woofstock substantially differed from Woodstock.

WoofStock, on the bank of the Susquehanna River, provided a plethora of activities for dogs and people: all-day pet blessings, adoptable dogs running amuck, authors signing books, pet treats galore and pet safety tips with Harrison Forbes.

Observations from WoofStock:

I saw a greater number of Great Danes than would be expected.
I saw many small dogs in strollers (as would be expected).
I saw a number of dogs with physical characteristics not particularly in their best interests, either from human assistance (fat dogs) or genetic "assistance" (Pugs whose tongues don’t quite fit in their mouths).

Yes, that is his tongue.

I pushed through a crowd of people oohing over this “sooo cute” Pug and his enormous tongue. Researchers have actually been looking at this tongue for quite some time.

In 1963, Dr. M.W. Fox, a prominent animal behavior scientist and veterinarian, published the paper Developmental Abnormalities of the Canine Skull.* Over 40 years ago, he investigated the canine skull of brachycephalic dogs such as the Pug.

(Fun definition time: Brachycephalic ("brackee-seff-alik") dogs have broad and short heads."Brachy" means "short" and "cephalic" means "relating to the head”. Some examples are Boxers, Bulldogs, Bullmastifs, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, Chow-chows, French bulldogs, Newfoundlands, Pugs, Rottweillers and Shar peis).

Dr. Fox reported: “Due to the extreme reduction of the maxilary region, abnormal development of the nasal alae and turbinate bones may occur with subsequent respiratory dyspnoea. Secondary laryngeal collapse has been reported in relation to these conditions. Oversize of the tongue may occur, although the tongue would fit a skull of normal maxillary proportion".

In English, what is Dr. Fox saying about brachycephalic dogs? They have:

Abnormal development: Does not develop normally!

Respiratory dyspnoea: Shortness of breath!

Laryngeal collapse: Collapse of the voice box!

Oversize of the tongue: “Tongue-doesn’t-fit-in-mouth” syndrome! (my term)

Through decades of breeding, we created a dog who can have difficulty breathing and whose tongue doesn’t fit in his mouth. It's interesting that we do that because, for example, we don't breed humans to look like Massive Head-wound Harry. For a moment, let's consider the two parties involved in this story.

The dog's perspective: What would a Pug do in the heat if he experienced shortness of breath and a human weren't around to pick him up and carry him home?

The human's perspective: You bring a Pug into your life and then have to address medical conditions (like your dog having trouble breathing) which are dictated by his breed. You might even have to shell out big bucks for some sort of surgery to correct your dog’s inherited brachycephalic airways syndrome.

When picturing surgery, our minds tend to mull over things like, "How much will it cost?" and "What will the recovery look like?" We don't tend to conceptualize what is actually happening.

With the help of research from veterinary journals, I can show you what Canine Brachycephalic Airway Syndrome: Surgical Management*** looks like! Remember that the purpose of this procedure is simple: to help a dog breathe.

Prep for surgery
https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.prod.vetlearn.com/59/5cda70a41911e087120050568d3693/file/PV0511_Trappler2_CE.pdf

Above: Surgery makes the nostrils on the right (closed) become the ones on the left (open).

If I were a dog, I'd want to be born with the sniffer on the left! Come on in, air!

http://www.michvetanimalhospital.com/page/421552122

Above: Stenotic nares, before surgery (left) and after (right).

https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.prod.vetlearn.com/59/5cda70a41911e087120050568d3693/file/PV0511_Trappler2_CE.pdf

Voila! I give you breathing.

As we move into the 21st century, do breed standards continue to promote potential health problems for dogs? Are dogs breathing yet? In 2009, we find the paper, Inherited Defects in Pedigree Dogs. Part 1: Disorders Related to Breed Standards. Breathing difficulty isn't the only inherited health concern.

"Breeds with screw-tails or curly tails [like the Pug] are predisposed to spina bifida and hemivertebrae, but the breed standard for Pugs specifies that the tail should be ‘curled as tightly as possible over hip, double curl highly desirable’ (Kennel Club, 2008)".

What might the breeding community do with that knowledge?

"The Pug breed club in the UK is aware of the high incidence of hemivertebrae in Pugs and has recommended that all dogs should be X-rayed before breeding. This move is laudable but will not eliminate the disorder if the breed standard is not altered.”

The AKC Pug Breed Standard, procured from the Internet on 8.22.11, maintains similar standards: “The tail is curled as tightly as possible over the hip. The double curl is perfection.” The AKC Pug picture reifies this standard.

Today is not “Pick on Pugs” day. I am well aware that dogs, irrespective of breed standards, can have health issues.

For example, I recently received a heart-warming story about a dog born without his two front legs. Lacking front legs certainly constitutes a "health issue" and Kandu, of course that's his name, receives substantial care and attention.

But Kandu, the two-legged dog, is an anomaly. Kandu is not a breed standard. Brachycephalic dogs differ because they require surgery to reverse a physical trait that is dictated by their breeding.

Now for the good news! Pugs don’t have to continue to look the way they do!
A) The brachycephalic form does not serve a particular function. Pugs are not herding, sporting or working dogs. Their sole function is that of companionship (AKC). If we alter the breed standard so that Pugs do not require surgery, where they could breathe from the get-go, Pugs could still serve their function . . . of companionship!
B) Today’s Pug does not have to look like tomorrow’s Pug! Tomorrow’s Pug could even be featured in a paper titled, No Developmental Skull Abnormalities. This Dog Can Breathe!
Shouldn't that be a reasonable goal for our companion dogs?

References
* Fox (1963). Developmental Abnormalities of the Canine Skull. Canadian Journal of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Science. 219-222.
**Asher et al. (2009). Inherited defects in pedigree dogs. Part 1: Disorders related to breed standards.The Veterinary Journal. 402–411.
*** Trappler and Moore. (2011) Canine Brachycephalic Syndrome: Surgical Management. VetLearn. https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.prod.vetlearn.com/59/5cda70a41911e087120050568d3693/file/PV0511_Trappler2_CE.pdf

Like Father Like Daughter... Off to WoofStock!

2011-09-17T19:28:00.000-08:00

Sunday, September 18th! WoofStock 2011 in Harrisburg, PA! Join us!
http://www.cpaawoofstock.com/index.html

My dad's a big music fan, so it's no surprise that he attended Woodstock. He often jokes that he was the only accountant in attendance.

I am proud to be upholding our family tradition by attending my version of Woodstock, WoofStock! Just like Woodstock needed an accountant, WoofStock needs someone to talk dog science!

My dad abandoned his car and hiked into Woodstock, and tomorrow, with the help of Amtrak (and not the help of the L train which is not running this weekend... boo), I venture to the land of Harrisburg, PA.

If you happen to be passing through Harrisburg, PA tomorrow, Sunday, September 18th from 11 AM - 5 PM, stop by the 7th Annual WoofStock celebration!

http://www.cpaawoofstock.com/2011WhosComing.html

Hurricanes Hurt! Animals + Natural Disaster = Biting

2011-08-29T18:13:00.001-08:00

Years ago I saw a video of an animal rescue gone wrong. A dog thrashed about in icy water as firefighters raced over to save her. As a rescuer knelt on the ice and bent down to her, the dog leapt up and bit him in the face. Ouch!

While upsetting and graphic, this is a helpful reminder about assessing animals from their perspective. Us humans often bring our anthropocentric goggles to the table. After all, we know this tale well: the humans come to rescue the cold, struggling dog. The rescuer scoops the dog out of the water, and the dog is returned to her owners or adopted by a family that “couldn’t be happier with their new best friend!” A short piece about the heroic rescuer and the “grateful” dog graces local newspaper covers. The End.

How humans typically perceive animal rescue
http://1000firestations.com/DogSaysThankYou.htm

The dog didn’t get the memo. The dog in the water was in an incredibly stressed, frightened and probably pained state. She could have resorted to fight-or-flight behavior, either increasing distance, or in this case, attacking.

This video always made me wonder whether more animal bites occur during natural disasters, a situation that is incredibly stressful, frightening and painful for humans and non-humans alike.

During natural disasters, animals can confront new and scary situations, such as quickly being put in a weird small box (aka crate), hanging out with unfamiliar people (rescuers) or interacting with an owner who is incredibly scared, stressed and exhibiting atypical body movements. Natural disasters create a situation where much can go wrong between animals and their human companions.

A recent study* examined the prevalence of domestic animal bites following Hurricane Ike in September 2008. It turns out that bites from domestic animals were one of the top three trauma complaints at disaster medical facilities.

Bites were inflicted by non-rabid pets
55% were from dogs, 40% from cats and 5% from snakes
80% were bitten by their own dog or cat
100% knew the dog or cat who bit them
Most of the bites were severe and occurred within the first 72 hours after the hurricane
Most bites involved the hands

According to the study, people described their bites as being “unprovoked and unanticipated from a pet that typically was non-aggressive.”

Really? During natural disasters, well-behaved dogs and cats suddenly bite owners in the hand for seemingly no reason? What is up with that? Most likely, in a stressful situation, humans are trying to grab or manipulate animals in atypical ways (probably to get them to safety) and animals are “freaking out” and “acting out of character.”

Today, we are not going to address whether or not the people could have examined the animal’s behavior to anticipate or prevent the bite (they probably could have, but let’s not blame the victim for now). Since people believe that animals’ “normal” behavior goes out the window during natural disasters, here are some ways to keep animals non-aggressive, even during an incredibly stressful event:

1) Prepare animals for a natural disaster! Do not simply explain to them how the elementary school gymnasium will be their new home during the storm -- show them what to expect! You can do this by getting animals accustomed to storm materials such as a crate or carrier.

Possible crates!
http://www.petstrends.com/2007/11/19/dog-crates-sofkrate/

Shoving an animal into a box does not qualify as “getting them accustomed.” Training an animal to enter a crate/carrier is easy peasy, and here are some wonderful instructional videos.

Introducing dog to crate (Click on the top video with 4 stars)

Introducing cat to carrier

Main point: train animals before the need arises! When emergency sirens blow, you point to the crate, Fido goes in, gets a cong to chew on and you both leave the house in peace!

2) Think about your behavior!

When interacting with an animal during a natural disaster, you might be freaking out -- it’s an emergency after all! Customarily a-okay interactions could be problematic during this stressful event. GO SLOW!

Maybe don't respond this way...
http://www.badgerflats.com/blog/2011/03/letter-to-judge-kirihara/scared/

Dr. Sophia Yin, a Veterinary Behaviorist, reminds us How to Prevent a Bite and How to Greet a Dog. You might not think this is relevant for you and your own dog; after all, you know your dog! But hurricanes change things, and it's awesome to be aware of how your behavior can impact your pet's behavior.

While most emergency preparation focuses on getting animals to safety, how you handle animals while getting them to safety is just as important.

This weekend, I and the rest of north Brooklyn were relatively unscathed by Hurricane Irene. This time, the storm turned out to have more bark than bite.

*Warner, G.S., 2010. Increased Incidence of Domestic Animal Bites following a Disaster Due to Natural Hazards. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine.

Thanks to Kristen Collins of the ASPCA for input on this post!

”Dog People” are from Pluto, and “Cat People” are from Jupiter?

2011-07-28T14:59:00.013-08:00

Some folks think of themselves as “dog people,” and others swear allegiance to cats. Venture into other countries, and you’ll find similar discourse: in Hungary, people proclaim themselves “macskás vagyok” or “kutyás vagyok” (kutya means dog), and in France they say “je suis un homme de chien”.

A "dog person" in the making?
http://www.stefanitadio.com/2006/06/dog-person.html

Together time!
http://www.takomapork.com/takomaporkspring2007issue/2007_05_fieldguide.html

But behind self-proclamations, we don’t have many concrete answers. Are there really personality differences between dog people and cat people? And, if so, can empirical investigation reveal these differences? (Hint: the answer is yes!)

Enter Samuel Gosling.

I tend towards mild obsessions. Back in third grade, it was Alcatraz (the bird man in particular). Then I moved back to land and was all about earthquakes and the Richter scale. Then it was Leonardo DiCaprio.

Awww
http://knighted-princess.blogspot.com/2010/11/romeo-juliet.html

Since joining the dog cognition field, I continue with this tendency, and today’s target is Dr. Samuel Gosling, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas-Austin.

Gosling’s research on ‘what your stuff says about you’ was highlighted in Malcom Gladwell’s book, Blink. But today, we’re not discussing the dirty underwear on the back of your chair, we’re talking about Gosling’s 2010 paper in Anthrozoös, Personalities of Self-Identified “Dog People” and “Cat People”.

Gosling is notable because he practices quality science while making you smile. He begins his paper with, “Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later.” (Mary Bly).

Taking a mental message
http://godslittlepeople.blogspot.com/2009_05_05_archive.html

Dogs and cats are quite different from one another, both behaviorally and physiologically. It is widely believed that a person’s preference for either Canis lupus familiaris or Felis catus says something about who you are. For example, one big difference is that cats aren’t hyper social and dogs are. (See Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin for an awesome description of various species’ needs and differences).

Behaviorally different!
http://dashdogrunning.wordpress.com/rates/

Behaviorally different!
http://1funny.com/lazy-cat/

Gosling et al., set out to examine: Are there personality differences between "dog people" and "cat people"?

Study methods

Gosling’s large-scale study included 4,565 online participants, ages 10 to 95, from many countries and many ethnicities. Participants completed an online questionnaire, The Big Five Personality Test (view test here). This Test was developed in the 1970s by researchers who found that personality traits could be boiled down to five broad dimensions, regardless of language or culture (awesome!).

In research circles, The Big Five is the most widely accepted model to assess personality. The dimensions are:

Extraversion - talkative, energetic, assertive
Agreeableness - sympathetic, kind, affectionate
Conscientiousness - organized, thorough
Neuroticism - tense, moody, anxious
Openness - having wide interests, being imaginative

In Gosling’s study, people completed The Big Five Personality Test and then self-identified as a cat person, a dog person, both, or neither.

Slight digression

You may be thinking, “What? Nobody investigated this topic prior to 2010? This is wack! Obviously dog people are different from cat people!” (insert whatever stereotypes you have in your head).

Of course you are right! Other studies investigated this topic, but there are issues with previous work:

Non-diverse sample size - Some studies only relied on college-educated people, pet owners or women and this could generate selection bias. For example, I do not presently reside with animals (apart from a human animal), but I definitely have an opinion on this topic. If only pet owners are surveyed, my opinion would not be included. Gosling surveyed from the internet, attaining a more diverse sample.
Small sample size - If you want to make a statement about the personality differences between dog and cat people, you need to look at more than 163 people.
Contrasting results - Because previous studies used a wide variety of scales with various definitions and measures, sometimes the results were at odds with one another. One study found male dog lovers were aggressive and another study found that those who preferred a pet dog were less hostile than those who preferred a pet cat.

Why Gosling’s study rocks

A of all, Gosling’s study did a great job of assessing people’s personality by utilizing the validated Big Five Personality Test. (Awesome!)

B of all, people who participated in Gosling’s study didn’t know the researchers were examining their attitudes about dogs or cats!! Instead, people came to the website because they wanted to complete a personality questionnaire, which they completed. Then, (sneaky sneaky!) tacked on at the end, were questions asking participants to self-identify with dog, cats, both or neither!

People did not complete the questionnaire thinking, “I love cats and want to make sure I frame myself as an extrovert to change any stereotype that cat people are not extroverted!!”

So what did Gosling et al., find?

Dog people - 2,088 (45.7%)

Cat people - 527 (11.5%)

Both - 1,264 (27.7%)

Neither - 686 (15%) (clearly they like rabbits, or maybe robots)

Now you'll all become "rabbit people"
http://www.pluspets.net/angora-rabbit-pet/

Gosling found "dog people" were more extroverted, conscientious and agreeable and "cat people" were more open and neurotic. (Definitions of terms)

Main point!

A validated questionnaire reveals personality differences between self-proclaiming "dog people" and "cat people"!

Now what!

We are all left wondering: What contributes to our self-identification as dog or cat people?

What is it about dogs that attracts “extroverted, conscientious and agreeable” people?
What is it about cats that attracts “open and neurotic” people?
Why are dog people more “extroverted” but less “open”?
Could living with a particular species during childhood affect later preference?
Does an animal attack move us far away from the attacking species?
Could our personalities be shaped by our experiences with animals?
Can you change from a “cat person” to a “dog person” (or vice versa) over time? How? Why?
Why are there no “frog people”? Dogs are cuddly, look at our eyes, walk next to us and snuggle with us, and frogs are more slimy and tend to hop away. Do the behaviors and physical attributes of animals enable us to feel more connected to particular species, and as a result, we attribute particular emotional or spiritual qualities to them?

But, it’s not all about me and what I think (even though I’m an only child)!

Now you be the scientist!

What do you think are factors that contribute to someone affiliating as a “dog person” or a “cat person”?

Don't just talk amongst yourselves! Share with the group!

Research discussed:

Gosling et al., 2010. Personalities of Self-Identified “Dog People” and “Cat People”. Anthrozoös 23, 213-222.

Johnson, Oliver P. Berkeley Personality Lab. The Big Five Inventory. Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved July 27, 2011 from http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~johnlab/bfi.htm

Srivastava, S. 2011. Measuring the Big Five Personality Factors. Retrieved July 27, 2011 from http://www.uoregon.edu/~sanjay/bigfive.html

Thank you!
Barbara Gáspár and Max Lullier of the Family Dog Project for their French and Hungarian translation! Mike Bagley, the inspiration for this post!

Should the roses stay or go? A study about cats and their litter

2011-07-20T10:39:00.009-08:00

I recently went to St. Louis and saw half the arch.

That’s what happens when you fly into a city on a Thursday and out on a Saturday -- you don’t have time to visit the local attractions and instead, you catch a glimpse from between two large buildings. I have to assume from what the internet tells me that the other half is exactly the same.

Regardless, I wasn’t in St. Louis to see the arch; I was there to present my dog “guilty” behavior research at the 2011 Veterinary Behavior Conference!

Veterinary Behavior Conference 2001

Various professionals convened at the conference -- veterinarians, trainers, vet technicians and researchers -- and the talks were not only about dogs. Horses, cats and parrots made an appearance. One study in particular piqued my interest as it pertains to one of my favorite topics, animal eliminations!

While some dogs perform their digestive duties on wee wee pads, the majority of house-dwelling dogs rely on outside walks as the proper place to relieve themselves of urine and feces.

How can he possibly see straight?
http://blog.petsolutions.com/blog/2011/06/dogs/using-wee-wee-pads-with-a-puppy-or-adult-dog/

On the other hand, most cats are not outfitted with a leash and taken for a morning constitution. Instead, cats find bladder and colon relief with the help of a litterbox placed within the home environment.

A determined kitten makes her way in the world.

A quick walk around the Internet finds there is nothing straightforward about a cat and her litterbox. These are just a few of the widely discussed topics:

- Structure of Litter Box (top on, top off)

- Type of litter (regular clay, clumping cat litter, biodegradable etc.)

- Placement of litterbox

- Size of litterbox

Pet companies often speak on behalf of cats, informing owners that cats love this product and surely hate that one. Obviously, their "information" should be taken with many grains of salt.

Dr. Jacqueline Neilson, on the other hand, looked at cat behavior to let cats “do the talking”. At the 2011 Veterinary Behavior Conference, Dr. Neilson presented her study, Litter Preference In Cats: Scented vs. Unscented. Here's what happened...

Methods

The study included 35 neutered adult cats living in colony rooms at the Oregon Humane Society Animal Shelter. On four consecutive nights, cats were presented with two litterboxes, one box contained clay-clumping, floral-scented litter and the other contained no added flavor (this sounds like a cereal commercial). The two litterboxes were placed next to one another, their placement was varied from night to night and an overhead camera captured cat litterbox usage.

Data collected

- Cat identity

- Elimination type - urine or feces

- Elimination location - scented or unscented litter box

Where do they go when they go?

277 elimination events were considered in the results.

134 eliminations went to the Scented Litter

- 84 urinations

- 50 defecations

143 eliminations went to the Unscented Litter

- 90 urinations

- 53 defecations

Population level results

This population of cats did not exhibit a preference for either scented or unscented litter.

Individual level results

At the same time, there may have been individual preferences for one litter over the other, although not necessarily statistically significant.

- 16 unscented preference

- 12 scented preference

- 7 no preference

And the study limitations?

In the world of research, you consider the limitations of your study. In this case, the author mentioned that prior excrement deposits in one of the boxes could have influenced later deposits.

Dr. Neilson notes, “If a cat deposited an odiferous fecal deposit in the unscented box, the next cat needing to eliminate may have been driven to use the scented box simply to avoid the malodor associated with the fecal deposit”.

Possibly, when a cat faces floral-scented litter and unscented litter that is now home to a massive poop, floral-scented wins. But, if the massive deposit were absent, the cat might have selected the technically unscented litter. (The human comparison might be walking into your favorite bathroom stall at work and being smacked in the face by someone's steak dinner. You would certainly retreat in a flash).

Also worth considering -- study subjects were shelter cats with unknown histories. As a result, this study does not know the types of litter cats were exposed to early in life, nor whether that could make a difference in their litter usage during the study.

What this study does show, and what is not commonly thought, is that when presented with both scented and unscented litter, cats are not averse to using scented.

Regardless of how much we investigate the placement of cat urine and feces, we will probably never surpass a dog's insights in this area.

Just enjoying a mid-afternoon snack.

All in a day’s work - Saving lives and picking up pens (Etta part 3)

2011-07-10T16:34:00.006-08:00

Men surely using an expensive pen

Some pens enable me to write like the adult that I am. With other pens, I turn into a 7-year-old still learning to scribble coherently.

Pen companies exploit our unique needs and preferences and price pens accordingly. Some of us are even willing to shell out $98 for the Surefire Writing Pen with Clicking Mechanism.

Unlike humans, dogs tend to be generalists when it comes to pens. For most dogs, a pen or pencil on the floor is quickly welcomed into a dog’s domain of “chewable items”.

Chewable item made its way into dog's stomach

But not for Etta. You’ll remember Etta as the protagonist from the last two blog posts. In addition to excelling in bite work and narcotics detection, Etta is trained in assistance work, and she performs various tasks, such as picking up pens!

ETTA!!!

As you read through some of Etta’s assistance dog competencies, please remember, Etta does not have opposable thumbs.

Certified mobility assistance level 1

Object discrimination - Pretty nifty; Etta can discriminate objects by name. To teach this task, you decide on the objects that are important to the person the dog would serve, and the dog learns to discriminate those objects from other objects. A dog might learn glasses or pants or phone. If it were my list of objects, the dog would learn to discriminate the nuances of my different cans of chickpeas (I REALLY LIKE CHICKPEAS!!).

I love you

Site discrimination - Also nifty. “Go get my meds” means go to the “meds” place and bring me whatever is there. You can see this type of learning differs from object discrimination.

Familiar with adaptive technologies like wheelchairs and walkers.

Returns a dropped leash on command.

Solicits help from the nearest person. “What in the world?!” you ask. How do you teach a dog to “solicit help”? To begin, you’ll need two people and a dog. Person A says to the dog, “Go get help!” Person B calls the dog over. The dog goes to Person B who then brings the dog back to Person A where the dog receives a treat. The dog learns that they get good stuff when they go to another person and bring the other person back to the original person. Again, nifty!

Assistance dog level 2 (there is no level 3)

These are considered the assistance dog

“Rin Tin Tin” abilities.

Perform in-home fire drill. This does not refer to the often-performed-by-teenagers fire drill. In this task, the dog alerts the handler to a fire and/or fire alarm. The dog brings the person a blanket, fire extinguisher and phone. The dog opens the door and gets the person out of the house. Most humans wouldn’t know what to do if a fire broke out and here is Etta, potentially saving your life! No promises that she’ll do mouth to mouth...

“Call for help”. Let’s say a person and their service dog have gone on an errand and the person falls down. The dog is taught to return to the vehicle, go into the vehicle, retrieve an emergency phone and bring the phone back to the person. Etta learned to perform this task when the person has fallen at a number of distances from the car.

Go shopping. The dog practices taking items off a shelf 100 times in an eight-hour shopping day. During training, the dog also completes eight full-day shopping sprees. This training task assures that if a dog has to go shopping with its owner for a long time, it will perform its duties and not get bored. (I hate shopping and would fail this task).

Shopping dog!

Aid in transactions at a store. Indeed this means Etta can place cash, credit card OR check on the counter for the clerk. She can then take the item or package from the clerk or counter and hand it over to her handler, placing it in their hand or lap as needed. For those of you out there with kids, can you even train your kid to do this?

Pick things up. This might consist of picking up a dropped pen, checkbook or credit card off a flat surface (and remember, no thumbs and she doesn’t chew the items as many many many dogs would!!)

Etta is not the only dog who benefitted from Tom Brownlee’s tutelage. Most recently, Tom trained Chesty, a yellow Lab, for the Wounded Warrior Project. The article, Dog gone good, details Chesty’s training and placement with a Marine who returned from Iraq both physically and emotionally changed.

Chesty opens a door!

Hope you've enjoyed learning about Super Dog, Etta -- a dog who could catch a criminal, find their stash of dope and then save them from a burning building!

Tom and Etta!

“Find the dope, Etta!” (Part 2)

2011-06-26T19:24:00.005-08:00

Etta and Tom at work

Maybe you’ve never said this to a dog, but Tom Brownlee says it all the time to Etta, his 8.5 year old Border Collie. You’ll remember them from my last post; Tom is a Master Trainer with the ASCT and an instructor at the Human-Animal Bond Program at Carroll College. Etta, the dog, is trained in bite work and assistance-dog work.

Then there’s the dope.

Etta is trained to detect narcotics. Tom recently shared the intricate details of training and working with a narcotics dog. And nobody gets high!

Julie and Tom hide the dope

In the dryer!

Julie Hecht, Dog Spies (JH): Which narcotics can Etta sniff out?

Tom Brownlee, Master Trainer (TB): Marijuana, cocaine, heroine and methamphetamine.

JH: What drug quantities can Etta detect? For example, would she let you know when trace elements of pot were in the area?

TB: She is trained to indicate on quantities of one gram or more as this amount is prosecutable in almost every jurisdiction. This means she will give a full-blown indication on one gram or more. On less than a gram, she will give an alert.

JH: Ooh, new words! Can you explain the difference between an Alert and an Indication?

TB: Yes! These are key words in tracking and detection work and often misused. An alert is a change in a dog’s behavior when coming upon an odor of interest. It’s the handler’s job to notice the dog’s change in behavior. In narcotics work, alert behavior can include:

Head jerk - head moves in a particular direction when they first detect the odor

Rapid sniff - yes, you know what that means

Rapid sniff with purge - dog gives a sharp exhale to bring a new air sample into the nose

Nose press - dog presses nose against a surface

Pop jaw - jaw opens slightly and brings air into mouth to the vomeronasal, to help sample more air.

Each dog alerts to scents slightly different from one another, but the general trend is to move from general olfactory behavior to rapid sniff to rapid sniff with purge, all signifying the dog is getting closer and closer to the source.

Finding the dope!

The other term, indication, differs from alert. A dog indicates when locating the specific source of the odor, and dogs vary in the behaviors they show when indicating. Because dogs who perform narcotics detection are high-energy, excited dogs, they very often perform an aggressive indication, meaning they scratch intently at the source of the smell. This type if indication makes sense if you picture the scene. The dog just found the item of interest and their reward (probably getting to play with their favorite tug toy) is just moments away. This dog is very, very excited and he’ll show it! On the flip side, dogs could also give a passive indication; the dog sits and points with either its nose or eyes at the source of the smell. As you would imagine, a passive indication is much less common in narcotics detection.

Also worth noting, an aggressive indication has the potential to be problematic if you consider where the dog could be when indicating. Imagine a dog is on the top of or in the backseat of a car, and she located the source of a smell. An aggressive indication, scratching intensely, could produce a very damaged paint job or destroyed upholstery. That’s why, if a dog is an aggressive indicator, the handler has to assure that when the dog indicates, she’s right! This comes from intense training and monitoring dog behavior. If she’s right in her indication, you don’t have to pay for the damage to the paint job or upholstery!

JH: We all know a dog’s tongue and nose assist in olfactory processing. How do dogs engage these body parts during detection work?

TB: The design of the dog’s nose greatly assists its ability to retain smell. For example, during an exhale, a nasal pocket allows the scent molecules to accumulate, so a dog can continue sampling a scent even while sniffing and exhalation occur.

Meet a dog's nose

Meet a dog's tongue

If dogs are at a tracking school where other dogs are in the area, you might notice a really small tongue flick. By doing this, a dog is sampling the air which carries the scent to the vomeronasal (found on the roof of the mouth) where pheromones are detected. You’re likely to see a tongue flick when other dogs are in the area because a dog is smelling information about the other dogs. This behavior has little to do with the target odor and everything to do with noticing other dogs.

JH: Let’s back up a second... How do you train a dog to find dope?

TB: It’s simple discrimination-learning made possible because successful dope-dogs are almost manic about finding dope. Not all dogs fit the bill; dope has to be the coolest thing ever, the most fun the dog has ever had and definitely more interesting than McDonalds fries or burgers that could be stashed nearby as a distraction. Ordinarily, really high-drive dogs will go past human and dog food to get to the dope because after the dope, they are rewarded with their favorite thing, a tug toy like a Kong on a rope!

Example of what a Kong on a rope could look like

JH: A Kong on a rope?

TB: Yup, that’s how I reward Etta when she successfully indicates on dope. When you begin training, you try out different toys and find which one ramps the dog up the most. That is deemed their favorite toy and is set aside just for dope work; it becomes their reward when they locate and indicate correctly on a source. This type of reward is also easier than say, throwing a ball for a dog. Imagine you are working traffic and your dog finds dope. You can’t just stop and throw a ball in the middle of traffic, you need control of the dog. Also, because a Kong on a rope is interactive with the handler, the desirability is increased by a factor of ten.

Kong on a rope!

JH: People in the “real world” are hiding drugs. How do you emulate real-life situations when practicing detection work?

TB: As a handler, you begin training by hiding the drugs yourself so you learn the particular alerts your dog gives when in the presence of drugs. Then you bring in helpers to hide the drugs so you are ignorant of the drug’s location. This forces you to practice reading the dog. The helpers also need to pollute the area, meaning they touch lots of objects and places in addition to where they plant the drugs. In real-world situations, an entire area might be contaminated with drug residue. As a handler, you have to learn how a dog reacts to residue.

JH: Why might Etta not succeed in a search?

TB: One possible reason is if dope is no longer there. If someone stored dope in one location for a really long time, that might trip the dog up, even though they are trained not to hit residue. Another possibility, sometimes people pour bleach in an area to screw up the dog’s nasal passages. If you go into a vehicle and smell bleach, get the dog out and you go in and find the dope! Also, sometimes people try and mask the smell and that is something we train extensively on. It is impossible to mask the smell or hide dope because of molecular movement. So if you combine dope in coffee, they will smell the coffee and the dope. Also, there is no such thing as an airtight container.

Bowie is a narcotics detection dog found at Savin’em All Animal Rescue

JH: Which dogs are used in narcotics work? How are they bred or selected for this job?

TB: If you want a dog just for narcotic detection, you want a high-speed, active dog, a full-sized dog with a traditional pointed snout. One option -- go to the local pound and find a hyper Lab that was dropped off for being just that, a hyper Lab. If you want the dog to give passive alerts, train her immediately to perform ‘sit’. Since good things come after she sits, she’s more likely to give passive alerts!

JH: The drugs that Etta can sniff out, marijuana, cocaine, heroine and methamphetamine, why were those drugs chosen?

TB: They are the most prevalent on the streets. Since I don’t have a DEA license and can’t legally work with the real substances, I buy a pseudo form of these drugs to use when training and practicing detection work.

JH: A drug pseudo form? Explain.

TB: Sigma Aldrich is a chemical company with state-of-the-art capabilities to make pseudo-narcotics. These narcotics have exactly the same formula as real drugs, same molecular weight and same chemical formula; everything is the same except the angle on the atomic bonds is changed to render them non-psychoactive. I work with pseudo forms of marijuana, cocaine and heroine, but a pseudo form of methamphetamine is not available.

Dogs trained to perform detection work on pseudo narcotics can detect the real thing. When I’m with someone who is licensed to carry drugs, we can alternate dogs searching for the pseudo and the real form. Dogs can’t tell a difference; they detect both.

JH: How do you store pseudo drugs?

TB: If you freeze them in Ziplock bags, they have a shelf life of about 2 to 3 years. Keep each substance away from one another to prevent cross contamination.

Etta and Tom at work

JH: Let’s end with the car. What is Etta doing on top of the car? I assume this has something to do with air movement?

TB: You got it. Look at the picture; the window of the car is cracked open on both sides. When dope starts to move, the scent travels out an opening, spins over the top and goes in the other window. We keep the car as found and don’t change the airflow. After the dog indicates on a window, open the door slightly, snake the dog in and she can hit the airstream back to the source. If you fling the door open, it takes longer for her to find. By maintaining the airflow, the dog will usually find the dope in about a minute.

JH: I lied; one more question. What do you want people to take away about narcotics detection?

TB: The number one thing is that training has to be fun. Period. If it’s not fun for the dog you’re doing it wrong. It has to be fun in a big way.

This has been great! Thanks, Tom!

Tug Toy + You = Most Fun! (Etta Part 1)

2011-06-13T08:34:00.009-08:00

Julie Hecht (human) and Etta (dog) enjoy bite work (Photo by Tom Brownlee)

As a kid, no one ever called out to me, “Julie! Stop that roughhousing!” Without younger relations to inflict terror upon or older siblings to run from, an only child like me can easily miss out on this interactive activity (unless, of course, the only child develops a complex relationship with their imaginary friends). I excelled in solitary activities; I conversed with my dolls, built intricate Lego forts and never had to share. My roughhousing with humans never officially started, and neither did my roughhousing with dogs.

But somewhere along the line, something changed because I eagerly agreed to meet Tom Brownlee to do bite work with Etta.

Tom Brownlee is a Master Trainer with the American Society of Canine Trainers (ASCT). They are considered the most technically advanced Law Enforcement Canine Training and Certifying Organization in the USA (do inspect their website).

Tom’s training reaches not only dogs but also the students of the Human-Animal Bond Program at Carroll College (HAB). After gaining a foundation in canine physiology and cognition, students train dogs for various competencies like how to detect narcotics, alert when insulin levels drop in diabetic patients and turn off light switches.

Dogs like Etta, an 8.5 year old Border Collie who lives and works with Tom, play an instrumental role in the education of HAB students.

Tom's dogs - Pearl (left) and Etta (right) (Photo by Tom Brownlee)

We all know that even “ordinary” dogs have jobs. For example, prior to flopping down, Hudson here assigned herself the job of household ball retriever and door barker.

Hudson taking a break from her "jobs"

But dog like Etta are in a different camp. She excels in narcotics detection, assistance work, bite work and suspect apprehension. Etta is a model for HAB students because they learn how to work alongside her as a handler, read her behavior and train other dogs in her image.

Working dogs like Etta recently gained intense scrutiny and praise since a “war dog” was linked to Bin Laden’s final take down. To date, War Dog, a photo essay released on May 4th, has received 86,174 ‘likes’ on facebook. These working dogs are described as having almost other-worldly abilities, parachuting in tandem, using their sniffers to detect anything and everything from people to bombs, and attacking and releasing on command.

Scent work http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/04/war_dog?page=0,7

While Etta is trained to perform service assistance tasks, energy oozes from her body. She is an active dog attracted to motion. Unfortunately, most assistance tasks, besides “get help!” and “fire!”, are not about speed and motion. But bite work fits the bill.

For many people, the word “bite work” might make little sense. After all, biting is thought by many to convey aggression and it certainly doesn't seem like work. Biting is bad, dangerous and to be avoided, right? Ask people what they picture when you say “bite work”, and they’ll probably describe an imagine of a malicious German Shepard soaring through the air with lots and lots of teeth exposed. It is a scene of fear, teeth and aggression, and maybe even some blood thrown on top.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/pawsfurthought/category/german-shepherd/

And of course, they’ve got it all wrong. Bite work is about tapping into a dog’s interest in seeking, biting and shaking, all conducted in a controlled and organized fashion. It is also an activity that not all dogs are interested in. I am sure some people would be surprised to hear that Etta, a Border Collie, is a bite work fanatic.

While most people are comfortable watching a dog grab onto a rope and biting and shaking, bite work, where a person wears a protective sleeve and the dog bites and shakes the sleeve, is less popular. But are the sleeve and the rope really different?

To better understand bite work, let’s learn how it is trained. First engage a dog with a tug toy. Then morph the fixation onto a protective sleeve that the human wears on his/her arm.

http://www.belgian-malinois-dog-breed-store.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=203
Terminator body not included

The human becomes an interactive tug toy. Trainers can leave the dog on what is called “equipment fixation” so the game is not about tugging on a pant leg or an arm that is not equipped with the sleeve; the game is about the sleeve. The dog sees the sleeve and that’s where the fun is! They bite onto the sleeve and there is tugging, shaking and pulling. If the dog is to be used in real-world suspect apprehension, the dog moves off the equipment fixation and onto a hidden sleeve so they learn to latch onto parts of the body other than the sleeve.

As Tom notes, “people think you are training a dog to be aggressive. This is the most fun thing in Etta’s life.”

And that’s why I excitedly met Tom and Etta and put on a sleeve. And it was the most fun for Etta and the most fun for me.

Bite work in action (Photo by Tom Brownlee)

Hello New Yorkers! We have opinions about everything. Now weigh in on Dog Behavior Research

2011-05-31T16:14:00.003-08:00

When I present dog behavior research, I can tell the wheels are spinning in the minds of audience members. My guess is, one quarter of their mind is considering the research I just shared and the other three quarters of their mind is dedicated to, "What does my dog, Smookie, do in that situation? How does Fido fit in?"

If you are a New Yorker, now you can find out where your dog fits in!

The Barnard Dog Cognition Lab, run by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, is looking for dogs and their owners to participate in a number of behavioral studies.

Dog requirements to participate

~ Comfortable with people and dogs

~ Enjoys treats and no food allergies

How you can get involved!

1. Join our next study!

Date: Friday, June 3 **

Study duration: 15 minutes

Time: Time slots between 4 and 6:30 pm

Location: Animal Haven, 251 Centre Street (in Soho)

Participants receive a “doggie-bag” of yummy treats!

Dogs in this study are asked to sit in front of a trainer for a treat. They are then asked to approach one of two trainers. We're interested in which trainer they approach! Very simple!

To sign up for a slot, contact: dogcognitionstudy@gmail.com

In your email, please include: Your dogʼs name and age and a good contact phone number and email.

2. Participate in future studies

Complete an online participation form, and a Dog Lab member will contact you! Our studies take place at various venues throughout New York City.

3. Follow us on facebook

4. Follow our blog
Lab members and owner participants share their dog behavior research experiences!

As Lab Manager, I look forward to meeting you and your dog!

Julie

Cow Spies

2011-05-21T21:01:00.004-08:00

Hello faithful Dog Spies readers! My name is Priya Motupalli, and I’m a PhD student at Harper Adams University College in the UK.

I’m not a dog-spy by profession, although in a sense, we are all dog spies; I am still trying to figure out how my 13-year-old Dachshund manages to take up ALL the space in my bed. He’s a miniature, but somehow his lil’ body stretches diagonally across the bed and although by all basic laws of physical science he can’t POSSIBLY use up all the space, he does. I let him. Fail.

I’m what is known as a cow-spy, and I’m particularly interested in the preference of dairy cows for access to pasture. It’s seems like a weird thing to be studying as most people that have any affinity for animals would think it’s pretty obvious that cows “prefer” to graze, and “prefer” to be outdoors. I mean I’d prefer to be outdoors rather than sitting in my office on a Saturday morning pretending to write my thesis.

The image in our heads of “happy cows” in California (my home state-yay!) grazing over acres and acres of sunny fields makes us happy, therefore it MUST make the cows happy. For companion animals (dogs, cats, etc.), scientists and pet-owners alike use terms like “happy,” “sad,” etc. with relative ease and acceptance, but try and present research at a scientific conference about “happy cows,” and you’ll be bombarded with a million hands all asking “but how are you quantifying happiness?”

Here in lies the problem for all farm animal or behaviorist or welfare scientists. We can’t necessarily quantify happiness in other animals based on how we as human animals feel, because how we feel may not have precise parallels to how non-human animals feel.

I read something by Marc Bekoff suggesting that anthropomorphism - in its most basic sense an attribution of human characteristics to non-human animals - is a very common-sense way for humans to relate to the world of animals. This is a very interesting notion, and negates everything students will ever be taught about behavioral science.

We are taught on day 1, that anthropomorphism is EVIL and WRONG and UNSCIENTIFIC and we’ll go BLIND if we so much as THINK about doing it. I mean sure, as Julie mentioned in one her posts, like all other sciences, studying behaviour and welfare MUST be quantifiable and measurable to reap unbiased results that can be trusted as fact.

But do we REALLY need to keep funding studies that tell us that if we stand outside in the cold for ages we’ll most likely catch a cold?? NO! The answer is NO!

Common sense dictates that if I don’t have sufficient protection against the cold, my body cannot thermoregulate properly, my immune system is compromised and therefore I’m more susceptible to whatever beasties want to invade my poor, weak, freezing body. What I’m trying to say here, is that I believe it is okay to look your dog in the face and say “you know what, his eyes have got a bit of a sparkle in them…I do believe he’s happy,” without running a bunch of statistical tests on dogs that have sparkly eyes.

However, here’s where I cleverly go back to spying on cows, the perception that cows who have access to pasture, an outdoor environment where cows can eat grass, are happier, could be a bit of a misnomer, and sometimes we need to look beyond what makes us happy to understand what makes animals happy. Let’s take a look:

~ High-yielding dairy cows (Dairy breeds like Holsteins that can potentially produce up to 10 gallons of milk/day) have very complex nutritional demands. In particular, because they are expected to produce such large quantities of milk, as well as continually get pregnant in order to produce this milk, there are very specific ratios of Energy, Proteins, Minerals and Vitamins that need to be managed during different stages of their life. Interestingly, these animals may have difficulty meeting their nutritional demands on grass alone (Charlton et al., 2011). This is so weird, considering grass is supposed to be their “natural” food, but is a symptom of the changes that have occurred in dairy cattle through very specific breeding practices to get cows that have incredibly high genetic potential for milk production. Simply stated, you get cows that are constantly hungry, and that lose body condition (a state of health or physical fitness) (Kristensen et al., 2007) which in turn compromises the welfare of these animals.

~ Animals raised without access to grazing land are fed a TMR, or a total mixed ration. They receive all the nutrients they need, providing satiation and a chance to maintain body condition. A colleague once compared TMR to indulgence food, while fresh grass was like a lovely salad. If you’ve got a huge plate of (insert whatever you eat when you are being really bad—for me it would be peanut butter and banana sandwiches) in front of you, would you really make the decision to walk allll the way outside to get a salad? This is a bit of a bad comparison, since TMR isn’t actually bad for cows as it does meet their nutritional demands, but they don’t have to expend really any energy to get the feed as it’s right in front of them! (So you get kinda fat, lazy animals that probably aren’t motivated to get off their considerably large bums and go outside to eat).

In a study conducted at Reaseheath College in the UK, dairy cows spent over 20 hours indoors when given the choice between staying indoors with TMR, or going outside with access to grazing land (Charlton et al., 2011). Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that cows don’t want to be outside period, it just means that under these experimental conditions, with this particular set of animals it seems to be that dairy cows prefer to be indoors. There are a NUMBER of factors influencing this decision: individual differences (cow personality); weather; experience of grazing (sticking with what you know); distance to grazing land (maybe being outside is nice, but not worth walking forever to get there)! The list goes on and on…this is what I’m going to be doing. Trying to figure out what exactly is important to these animals, and what influences their decisions to be outside vs. inside.

I’m really interested in looking at the time cows spent outdoors actually EATING vs. doing other things like lying down and time spent indoors eating. Maybe cows do want to be outdoors, just to get a bit of sun and fresh air and exercise, but they’re not that picky about needing to eat grass all day long.

This research will have very meaningful implications regarding animal welfare policy in the UK. UK dairies are looking to house cows indoors continuously throughout the year (as done in many other countries including the US), and although we have an understanding of the physical consequences that dairy cows endure when denied pasture access (higher incidences of hoof disorders and lameness (Olmos et al., 2009); increased levels of mastitis, or a potentially fatal infection of the mammary gland (Washburn et al., 2002) as well as consequences regarding the nutritional quality of the milk they produce (basically cows that eat more grass produce better milk (Butler et al., 2011)) we have yet to fully understand the behavioural motivation for accessing pasture.

So, question to ponder: Is grass really better? Some people think so...

~ Priya

Butler, G., Stergiadis, S., Eyre S.M., Leifert, C. 2011. Fat composition of organic and conventional retail milk in northeast England. J. Dairy Sci.94:24-36

Charlton, G., Rutter, S.M., East, M. and Sinclair, L.A. 2011. Preference of dairy cows: Indoor cubicle housing with access to a total mixed ration vs. access to pasture. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. doi: 10.106/j.applanim.2010.2010.11.018.

Kristensen T., Oudshoorn, F., Munksgaard, L., Seegaard, K. 2007. Effect of time at pasture combined with restricted indoors feeding on production and behaviour in dairy cows. Animal I. 439-448.

Olmos, G.L., Boyle, L., Hanlon, A., Patton, J, Murphy, J.J. and Mee, J.F. 2009. Hoof disorders, locomotion ability, and lying times of cubicle –housed compared to pasture-based dairy cattle. Livest. Sci 125:199-30

Washburn, S.P., White, S.L., Green Jr, J.T. and Benson, G.A. 2002. Reproduction, mastitis and body condition of seasonally calved Holstein and Jersey cows in confinement or pasture systems. J. Dairy Sci. 85:105-111

Do you want to play fetch with my cow?

2011-05-19T20:27:00.002-08:00

A 9th grader recently asked me what my favorite animal was. Even after talking about dogs for 45 minutes, I couldn’t give a straight answer; “I’d really like to get to know pigs better,” I said. “And cows are awesomely interesting. Oh! And turkeys.”

I guess I’m no longer in 4th grade where my favorite color is blue and I like the number 7.

As an animal behavior researcher, the more I learn about non-human animals, the more I realize I don’t have a “favorite” animal. I'm always fascinated by the next animal who makes his way into my life. It’s also particularly exciting when we find that the boundaries of our interactions with animals are always expanding in new and unexpected ways.

Take the recent story of Regina and Luna, an unconventional story of “man’s best friend” because there is no man and there is no dog; Regina is a girl and Luna is a cow.

According to Regina, when her parents wouldn’t get her a horse, she made one out of a cow. Regina started walking in the woods with Luna, the cow, and getting her accustomed to human contact and riding equipment. Two years later, Luna is clearing jumps and the duo are making international news. This cow, to everyone’s surprise, was doing much more then living to produce milk or steak.

For a dog spy like me, there was a lesson here: The activities we humans assign to other species are not necessarily an accurate representation of their full range of capabilities or possibilities.

Regina comments that, “Luna thinks she is a horse.” Well, no. Luna is a cow who behaves in a way typically associated with how horses can or should behave.

Maybe, like Luna, more cows could be prepped to go out for a ride. Maybe there could be cow jumping and agility competitions. Maybe there are! Maybe there could be Sunday strolls in the woods with Bessie and Wilma. Would there be a mental shift away from eating cows if we engaged in more coordinated and intimate activities with them, like walks or rides the woods?

Speaking of pushing the envelope of interspecific activities (activities between members of two different species), I came across an Alpaca who was introduced to surfing.

Photo via Pilar Olivares / Reuters

The restrictions, limitations and stereotypes we make about the nature of our relationships with other species are potentially just that, restrictions, limitations and stereotypes.

Let's not pigeon hole animals, whether they be dogs, alpacas, cows or even pigeons.

Dog Spies pays a visit to ohmidog!

2011-05-09T19:38:00.007-08:00

John Woestendiek's blog, ohmidog!, makes me laugh. It makes me think. It has awesome pictures of dogs. And Walter the Farting Dog appears on the recommended reading list.

Woestendiek's background is real-world investigative journalism. Not Zoolander faux investigatory journalism; his is the real deal. Back in 1987, Woestendiek won a Pulitzer Prize for proving that a man convicted of murder was innocent. Kind of a big deal.

Post-Pulitzer, he wrote Dog Inc., detailing the somewhat wacky, yet incredibly human, story of how dogs entered the world of cloning (I'm on page 63, more comments to come). He now travels the country with his dog Ace, blogging about Ace and other dogs and animal issues that come his way.
Woestendiek sees himself as an alternative to the mainstream news media which, "has never taken dogs and the dog-human relationship, seriously enough". If you read my last two blog entires, you can see why I like this man.

Woestendiek recently dedicated more than a few words on his blog to covering Dog Spies and the dog "guilty look". Thank you for deeming scientific inquiry into the "guilty look" worthy of serious consideration!

“Guilt” Part 2 - "She greeted me showing guilty behavior! She gave herself away!"

2011-04-27T12:33:00.001-08:00

If you haven’t watched Is Denver Really Guilty? or read “Guilt” Part 1, please take a peek. We’re covering the “guilty look” in a series format, like Harry Potter but with less magic and more dogs!

Today’s post explores BadSpottedDog’s comment on my Youtube video:

BadSpottedDog:

“Ok, so how do you explain dogs who do something wrong, and act guilty even when no one says or does anything? My guilty dog LeeLoo exhibits this behavior when we don't know she's done something wrong. This makes us have to go looking for the offense. She gives herself away. Out of all the ‘experts’ making comments on my video, it seems someone would address this.”

BadSpottedDog is not the only one wondering about this. The “guilty look” in this context was the focus of my Masters research at the Family Dog Project, and this question was running through many peoples’ minds.

If you cruise the internet, you’ll find that when dogs display unprompted “guilty” behavior, owners say, “She gave herself away” and “She knows she did something wrong, we weren’t even scolding her!”

Why do dogs show this behavior? Let’s consider two hypotheses:

Hypothesis One: Dogs show “guilty” behaviors before owners discover the misdeed because dogs know they have done something wrong. This hypothesis suggests, you come home, a dog knows she has done something wrong so she shows you apologetic behavior preemptively. Her behavior is perceived as a white flag, “I know I have lost. You will soon find 3 pairs of your underwear on the couch. They are blue and I like the way they smell! Don’t shoot!”

Hypothesis Two: Dogs show “guilty” behaviors before owners are aware of a mess out of fear/anticipation of some combination of punishment/scolding/disapproving owner.

How can we differentiate between a dog’s fear of punishment and its knowledge of a misdeed? Let’s take a look:

In one experiment*, Nicki, a 1-year old Siberian Husky, had the habit of shredding paper when left alone. This upset her owner, who thought spite was behind her actions. Upon finding his reading material torn to bits, he would punish and lecture her.

In this experiment, the owner was instructed to shred the paper himself when Nicki was out of the house. After letting Nicki into the house, the owner stayed out of the house for ~15 minutes. Although Nicki did not touch the shredded paper in her owner’s absence, when the owner returned, Nicki displayed behaviors associated with “guilt”. According to the owner, “It was as though the dog herself had shredded the paper.”

The results look like this:

Mess + Dog who did not make the mess = Dog displaying “guilty” behavior.

Imagine if Nicki had not shown “guilty” behavior in this experimental condition. If this were the case, we would be more likely to consider Hypothesis One because Nicki knows she didn’t shred the paper, so why should she look guilty? If Hypothesis One were to explain Nicki’s behavior, she should only look guilty when she herself had performed the misdeed.

But Nicki did show “guilty” behavior! Even thought she didn't shred, say, the Style section of the New York Times (I too don’t always agree with fashion trends). This suggests that labeling Nicki’s behavior as guilty, at least according to the idea that she is knowledgeable of her own misdeed, is an incorrect interpretation of her behavior.

How does that relate to you and your dog? When you scold or become disappointed in your dog upon finding a mess they made, your dog is not necessarily learning not to make a mess. She could just be learning to put on these behaviors to minimize your behavior. She could even learn to offer these behaviors preemptively before you have found the mess.

You know how you go to the dog cookie jar (or your version of this) and a dog will come over to you and sit even before you ask her to? This is a similar idea of dogs offering behaviors preemptively. But you wouldn’t say your dog is trying to please you, she just knows that certain behaviors on her part accompany certain actions on your part.

Human goes to dog cookie jar + Dog sits (either prompted or on her own) = Dog gets dog cookie. Dogs presenting the “guilty look” before you have found their misdeed could be similar!

Let’s also consider that not all dogs show the “guilty look” in the anecdote under consideration.

For every dog who explores toilet paper and Q-tips in the bathroom trash and then greets an owner showing “guilty” behavior, there is another dog who gives the toilet paper and Q-tips the same thorough examination and does not greet the owner showing any behavioral signs of “guilt”. This means, in the context raised by BadSpottedDog, dogs vary in their presentation of the “guilty look”.

Researchers are still investigating the reasons behind this individual variation in dog presentation of “guilty” behavior; is it related to dog personality, dog obedience training or even dog exposure to different methods of scolding or punishment?

A final food for thought: Dogs and their wolf-like ancestors are social mammals. Us humans are also social mammals. This is key because social animals are dependent on one another and use behaviors and vocalizations to communicate with members of their family, whether this family be human or non-human. Many dogs are members of human social families and therefore direct their dogcentric behaviors in our direction.

The question today is: Are we reading dogs’ behaviors on their terms or on our terms?

* Vollmer, P., 1977. Do mischievous dogs reveal their "guilt"? Vet. Med. Sm. Anim. Clin. 72, 1002-1005.

"Guilt" Part 1 - Is Denver the dog really guilty?

2011-03-27T19:09:00.029-08:00

We have Denver, Masey and a consumed bag of cat treats. These are the key players in the youtube video “Guilty!”. In this home video, Denver is deemed guilty of a ‘cat treat eating’ infraction due to what many humans perceive as her incredibly cute guilty behavior. Since its posting on March 8, the video has received over 5 million hits, and the phenomenon now includes a web site that features bandanas and t-shirts of Denver and her guiltiness.

Last week, Denver, Masey and their human companions joined the ABC morning show. According to the dictionary, “news” is “information about recent events or happenings”. I did not see any news during that morning show. Instead, I saw a bunch of morning personalities throwing out assumptions and offering the audience pleasing banter and humorous judgments about dogs. They provide no real information or "news" about what happened to the cat treats.

The takeaway messages from the morning show are:

1) Denver must have eaten the cat treats because when shown the empty bag and asked, “Did you do this?” Denver displays squinting eyes, thumping tail, looking away and presenting teeth;

2) Masey, the other dog in the room, does not show such behaviors and is deemed innocent;

3) The owners proclaim that both Denver and Masey are sneaky;

4) The owners also say that Denver displays these behaviors when she has misbehaved. According to them, she tries hard to please them and knows when she has disappointed them.

So there you have it! Solved! The story of Guilty Denver as told by ABC News and this guy:

As you can tell, I have some qualms with the reporting. This youtube video provided a venue to explore what we know and don’t know about dogs, their behavioral displays and their emotional experiences. ABC News did not discuss any of this.

What we know:

Research finds that dog owners ascribe guilt to dogs. There is a reason this video received more than 5 million hits. Dog owners observe particular behaviors* - such as "avoiding eye contact, lying down and rolling to the side or onto the back, dropping the tail, wagging low and quickly, holding one’s ears down or head down, moving away from the owner, raising a paw and licking" - and owners believe these behaviors correspond with a dog's feeling of guilty. In a 2008 research paper**, 74% of dog owners attribute guilt to dogs (as an FYI, the next highest attribution of guilt was made by horse owners at 36%). Additionally, dog owners believe that when dogs show “guilty” behaviors, dogs KNOW they have done something owners disapprove of. To spell it out, owners believe that “guilty” behavior corresponds with knowledge of a misdeed.

Had ABC conducted any investigatory journalism, they’d have found that scientific research to date does not support the idea that “guilty-looking” behavior necessarily corresponds with knowledge of a misdeed.

The New York Times piece, “It’s an Owner’s Scolding That Makes a ‘Guilty’ Dog”, covered Dr. Alexandra Horowitz's research into the “guilty look”.

This research found that if you scold a dog, you could see “guilty” behaviors. Dr. Horowitz said that the results show that dogs have learned to act in a certain way in response to their owners’ behavior: "We’ve trained them that when they see us angry, they give us that guilty look. I’m not saying they don’t feel guilt," she added. "I can’t test that yet. But we generate the context that prompts them to produce this look"

To repeat: “guilty-looking” behavior does not necessarily correspond with a dog's knowledge of a misdeed.

What we don’t know:

Do dogs experience guilt? In humans, we know guilt is a secondary evaluative emotion that is assumed to require self-consiousness. Guilt stems from a self-perceived violation against an established rule to which one has chosen to adhere. But, as children, conformity to ethical standards lacks a moral basis and therefore is “only indicative of submission to authority rather than acceptance of it” - Ausubel***. Accordingly, it is possible for humans to display guilty behavior without possessing an internal moral code. The same could be said for dogs.

Scientists assume non-human vertebrates have primary emotions such as fear because they serve an evolutionary, fight-or-flight function. But, secondary emotions are not confirmed.

Back to the case at hand, Denver and Masey. You may be wondering a) why do dogs show these behaviors if they are not “guilty”; and b) in the case of Denver and Masey, why does Denver show these behaviors and Masey does not?

A) Why do dogs show these behaviors if they are not “guilty”

We don’t know if dogs feel guilt, but we do know that they show submissive behavior. Submission serves to keep a social group together, to foster group cohesion. Depending on the context, such displays are called appeasement behavior, "behavior that inhibits or neutralizes aggression in a behavioral partner". Consider dogs and humans: could a scolding human be deemed an aggressive behavioral partner? Could dogs be trying to inhibit or neutralize aggression? There are many instances where dogs exhibit such displays, and it doesn’t have to be because they experience the secondary evaluative emotion of guilt.

When we describe a dog as guilty, maybe we’re taking a perfectly normal dog behavior and anthropomorphizing it into guilt. In America, dogs are incredibly intertwined in our households. In many cases, we’re actively choosing, through breeding or training, dogs that have behavioral traits and morphologies that help them integrate into our society. Imagine if you scold a dog and it attacks you. That dog’s breeding potential will probably decrease. Imagine if you scold a dog and it shows submissive displays. That dog could be more successful in passing on its genes (unless of course, the dog is speutered, but that’s a whole ’nother story).

Researcher James Serpell addresses this issue using the concept of anthropomorphic selection****, which is “selection in favor of physical and behavioral traits that facilitate the attribution of human mental states to nonhumans”. For example, we often prefer dogs with big, forward facing eyes, which also then makes it easier for us to say, "Oh, look at those guilty eyes!"

Let's consider this attribution from an evolutionary perspective. Wolves, dogs’ wild-type progenitor, show submissive behavior. As in dogs, these behaviors function in wolves to keep the group together. I’ve asked wolf experts about guilt in wolves and received blank stares (don't ask this question of wolf experts, it will not make you popular). So why do we ascribe guilt to dogs but not guilt to wolves? Is it possible that dogs evolved this secondary emotion through the domestication process? Possibly. Or is it that we make this attribution because dogs are part of our social environment and wolves are not? One has access to cuddling in our bed one minute and raiding our pantry the next, and the other, not so much.

B) In the case of Denver and Masey, why does Denver show these behaviors and Masey does not?

First off, maybe Denver shows submissive displays because that's what she does. Every dog in the presence of a scolding owner responds differently. Some only show it in particular situations regardless whether they performed a misdeed. Just because Denver shows these behaviors, does not necessarily mean she transgressed.

And what about Masey? Why is she so cool and collected in front of a scolding owner? Guess what! Research finds that not all dogs show the guilty look, even when they have misbehaved (I’ll share my own research in this area soon!).

In order to assess the Guilty Denver video, ABC should have asked about Denver and Masey’s history. If Masey never displays the "guilty look", regardless of what she has done, her behavior can’t be used as a reliable clue. Until you set up a video camera, you won't find out what really happened in your absence!

Many people shared Denver's guilty video with me. It was best described as “funny, cute and sad all rolled into one!” When Denver shows these behaviors, some people think, “Aww, cute, she’s apologizing”. But we’re also watching a dog get scolded and show submissive behaviors. Is that cute? Kind of, but given everything I've talked about, maybe it’s a bit more sad.

Now turn that frown upside down! We can be thankful this video was posted on youtube! It provides lots of food for thought and potential research questions. A major takeaway should be, who do you want to hear dog analysis from? Julie or this guy?

* Horowitz, A., 2009. Disambiguating the "guilty look": Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour. Behav. Process. 81, 447-452.

** Morris, P.H., Doe, C., Godsell, E., 2008. Secondary emotions in non-primate species? Behavioural reports and subjective claims by animal owners. Cognition Emotion 22, 3.

*** Ausubel, D.P, 1952. Ego Development and the Personality Disorders. A Developmental Approach to Psychopathology. Grune and Stratton, Inc., New York.

**** Serpell, J., 2003. Anthropomorphism and anthropomorphic selection - beyond the "cute response". Society and Animals 11, 83-100.