THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Here’s an interesting study that came out in 2010 comparing the perceptions, behavior and training of larger versus smaller dogs (“Behavior of smaller and larger dogs:  Effects of training methods, inconsistency of owner behavior and level of engagement in activities with dogs.” Arhant et. al. Appl An Beh Sci 123 (2010), 131-142.)

There’s a lot in this study, based on 1,276 questionnaires, but the part I want to talk about today relates to owner’s perceptions of dogs of different sizes. I’m always suspicious of data from surveys about behavior, since what we think an animal does and what it really does is often not the same, but because these surveys were about perceptions as well as behavior they definitely have some merit.

The authors found that, as they summarize in the abstract, “.. smaller dogs are seen as less obedient, more aggressive and excitable… and more anxious and fearful.” Note that this doesn’t mean that they are, but that they are perceived to be so. They also found, no surprise here, that owners report doing significantly less “training and play activities” with small dogs.

As I read the results, I find myself thinking of Tootise, and how I treat her compared to all the other dogs I’ve had (all medium to large dogs). And there is indeed a difference. When Tootsie first came I obsessively worked on 1) a response to her name, 2) coming when called and 3) house training. She’s done absolutely beautifully on all three, and focusing on them means she can go outside in the yard without a leash (although I watch her obsessively), comes running when called, ears flapping, and is as reliably house trained as any dog could possibly be. She’s also stopped barking for her dinner and to get me up in the morning (food prep now results in tiny, mouse-like squeaks), but we still are working on barking while being restricted in space when I’m in the house (rather than having a small, food-crazed bundle of fur dancing on the equipment while doing Willie’s exercises, for example). And now she has a stunning heel on the way to the barn and back, taught specifically to ensure that she’d stay by me and not run off toward the road. She can do it for short periods during off-the-farm walks, but I’d never trust it off leash around distractions. But still, damn she looks good trotting enthusiastically, head and tail up as go to the barn twice a day to feed the sheep.

However, here’s what I haven’t done: taught her to sit, down and stay. REALLY? If you’re surprised, (shocked?) you’re not as surprised as I am. If she was a BC or a Great Pyr, (or a Lab or an Aussie or a Wheaton or a…. fill in the blank) I guarantee you we’d have started that on day one.  It’s true that I have worked on sit a bit, and she is gradually getting the idea (although much slower than any other dog I’ve had.. she is 7 year old mill dog after all), but the fact is there just seem to be more important issues. And that is, no doubt, in part because of her size. She’s tiny, really truly small, and there’s just no way around the fact that her dancing, leaping and charging around the house just doesn’t feel as problematic as it would with a larger dog. And yet, she clearly needs to work on what I call “emotional control,” so now that she’s settling in, I do indeed think it’s time to start focusing on some cues that require her to inhibit herself a bit.

Here’s the connection between Tootsie and the research: Perhaps smaller dogs are indeed more excitable, and not just perceived as such, because, in part, they are not as often taught behaviors that lead to emotional control. Willie, along with all my BCs, was taught to sit, down and stay early on in their training, all behaviors that teach dogs to inhibit impulsiveness and control their own emotions. Tootsie, if anything, is encouraged to run crazily around the house with her ears flapping because 1) when she came she was a bit shut down, and 2) in all honesty, she’s so damn cute when she does so. Encourage Willie to run around the living crazily? Eeeps, not necessary. More than that,  hyping up is the last thing he needs… Willie does best if you spend your energy calming him down, not hyping him up.

And so I’m interested in your experience: If you’ve had both small and medium size or large dogs, do you find that you treat them differently? Expect different things out of them? All this relates nicely to the last post, about how our expectations and unconscious cues effect our dog’s behavior.  What is the interaction between our expectations, training and the behavior of small dogs? (I suppose we should define “small.” That’s an interesting question unto itself. How small does a dog have to be for you to call it “small?” I’d say less than 20 pounds? Or so? Tootsie is about 14….).

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. As Facebook readers know, the week had a tough beginning. On Monday evening, just back from Arizona, I found my favorite ewe, Dorothy, down and unable to get up in the mud in front of the barn door. I spent the evening trying to save her, but even with an emergency farm call from the vet it wasn’t possible. She was ancient, 13 years old (the equivalent of being in her 90s if she was human), frail and thin, and probably had pneumonia.  Sheep with pneumonia often show no signs of it at all, no coughing or respiratory distress, and Jim said Dorothy was eating at the feeder Monday morning. She must have gone down very fast. I’m just thankful she didn’t suffer any longer than she did. She was a long legged, elegant and gentle ewe who produced 22 beautiful lambs for me, and I will miss her.

Here she is last spring, she’s the grey beauty on the right, with her 2 lambs to the right of her. Rosebud is to her left, with her triplets. I’ve kept the 2 pintos from Rosebud (or piebald ones) and they look like they will have their own lambs this year.

And here’s part of the flock now, looking at Willie on the other side of the fence in the background. That’s Rosebud closest to Willie in the back, with her lambs Oreo and Butterfinger to her right (one feeding, one also looking at Willie.) Spot, Rosebud’s daughter from 4 years ago, is the tan, wooly sheep in the back. You can see 9 year old Barbie’s wool while she chows down at the feeder, and just barely make out the muzzle of Lady Godiva on the far left. Without Dorothy it’s the smallest flock I’ve had in years, just six ewes, with King Charles the ram living at his co-owner’s farm. Lambing is set to begin at the end of March, lambing prep will be job one at the farm when I get back from the Tucson Book Festival on Monday. If you’re coming this weekend, please come up and say hi. (And notice the hill behind the pen in the photo? Anyone want some firewood? Geesh, we’ve had a ton of downed trees in the last year; one actually landed on the fence, but is only partially cleared. The chain saw will be a humming soon.)

You probably know the story of Clever Hans, the horse owned by a math teacher named von Osten who decided to teach his horse to do math in the same way that he did his pupils. After extensive training, Clever Hans appeared able to solve relatively advanced mathematical problems, including multiplication and long division. Clever Hans showcased his abilities around Europe, although von Osten never charged for an exhibition. His owner and trainer sincerely believed that his horse understood what he was being asked, and wanted the world to see it for themselves.

Scientists were so interested that a panel was formed, led by psychologist Carl Stumpf, which verified that no tricks were visibly involved, but passed the issue onto psychologist Oskar Pfungst. After an extensive series of tests, Pfungst found that Clever Hans was unconsciously being cued by his trainer. Hans could only answer questions if in visual range of a human who knew the answer. In other words, Pfungst found that Clever Hans was clever indeed, but in a different way than thought by his owner. The horse used subtle cues from humans (head tilt, eyebrow raise) to know when the correct number was coming, and thus when to stop pawing. (Hans communicated by pawing the ground; his answer to 2 + 2 was to paw the ground 4 times.)

I’m reprising this story, familiar to most of you, because of a great talk given by Dan Estep and Suzanne Hetts of Animal Behavior Associates at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior in Arizona last weekend. The owner of a dog named Sheba had asked for a “scientific investigation”  into his dog’s intelligence, and a local TV station asked Dan and Suzanne to look into it.

Sheba’s owner, Bob, was convinced that his dog was brilliant. Not smart, but brilliant. She knew just about everything about anything, and what’s more, she’d acquired this information all on her own; the owner swore he’d never taught her a thing except how to communicate. Sheba could answer yes/no questions with one paw or two, and multiple choice questions by pawing 1 to 4 times. Is it cold in the Arctic? Yup, answered Sheba, slapping her paw once onto her owner’s palm. Did the Green Bay Packer’s win the Super Bowl this year? Of course not, everyone knows that: Here’s two paw slaps for a resounding no.

Dan played the video tape of Sheba’s performance and we all watched, fascinated, while Sheba accurately answered question after question when asked by her owner. And then, predictably, it all fell apart when Sheba was asked to answer questions when her owner didn’t know the answer or she couldn’t see him.

But, of course, Sheba WAS brilliant, just brilliant at readings subtle cues that her owner wasn’t aware of. Imagine us at the meeting – a gloriously eclectic group made up of Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists, Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorists and some trainers brilliant in their own right – all straining forward, watching the video over and over, trying to figure out what cues Sheba was using to figure out the correct answer. We never did, and neither did Dan or Suzanne (although the best guess is a combination of tactile cues from his hand and visual cues from his face) because Bob refused them any chance to work with her some more. What a shame that instead of acknowledging Sheba’s intelligence, albeit not in the way he imagined, he sent them packing, insisting that they were wrong, that Sheba really did know that San Diego was south of San Fransisco. He also eventually admitted to them that Sheba was actually Albert Einstein reincarnated. Oh my.

There’s more to this than an amusing story. Dan used this case to remind us that the real Clever Hans taught us a lot more than “be aware that you might be cuing an animal in subtle ways.” Pfungst discovered not just that Clever Hans was astoundingly good at reading visual cues, but that it was almost impossible not to produce them. Once he figured out the cues that Hans was reading, he found that when he or others consciously tried their hardest to avoid creating them, they were unable to do so. In other words, even if you tried your hardest to stay absolutely still in every way, it was impossible NOT to cue Clever Hans if you knew the answer and he could see you. Wow. Think about that in relation to you and your own dog. (By the way, Pfungst’s book, Clever Hans, is available for free. I highly recommend it, it’s fascinating.)

As Sheba reminds us, it’s not just horses that read us like a book. Note a study by Lisa Lit that found that dog/handler scent detection teams reported finding scents 260 times (18 teams, each run 6 times) in areas in which there were NO scents planted. But the handlers had been told that scents had been planted, and that one room even had a red symbol marking its location. Mark Hines, who works with scent detection dogs all over the world (he works for Kong, encouraging the use of positive reinforcement in the training of military, detection and protection dogs; I call him The King of Kong) was in attendance at the meetings and said this was a common problem in detection dogs. Really good handlers and trainers are well aware of the problem, but it’s more extensive than you might think.

Those of you who studied psychology might be remembering the study by Rosenthal & Fode in 1963 in which experimenters were told that some rats were “Maze Bright” and others “Maze Dull.” That wasn’t true, the rats were actually all the same. And of course, when the rats ran the maze, the ones believed to be “bright” really did run the maze faster. (It turns out the experimenters handled and interacted with the “bright” ones more often.)

Now… think about your own dog, his or her behavior and your own expectations. How many times do you think you are unconsciously cuing your dog? Eeeeps, the mind boggles. How many tiny pupil dilations, head bobs or changes in scent do we make every day that communicate with our dog?  How many times do our beliefs about our dogs and our expectations of their behavior influence it?

I’d love to hear examples from you of when you think this might be relevant in your life. I’ll tell you when I think I most have to be aware of it: knowing Willie’s history with unfamiliar dogs, I have to be extra careful not to set him up to be tense during greetings. Perhaps this is why I’ve seen clients (and myself) have the best luck with classically counter conditioning both the handler and the dog to have a different response. Replacing an action on our part (rather than trying to just stand still like Pfungst did) with another behavior like signaling “Watch” or doing BAT or “Look at Me” changes our behavior as much as our dog’s.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I wrote most of this on Sunday afternoon on a plane from Denver to Madison on my way home from IFAAB, but now it’s Monday morning and it’s lovely to be home. Especially since I leave again on Friday for the Tucson Book Festival.  But as much as I love home, IFAAB was wonderful this year: interesting, interactive, inspiring and supportive, sort of an academic slumber party. I’ll write more about some of the other interesting talks I heard there as the weeks go on.

Here’s a little contrast for you: First, the colors in Arizona on Sunday:

And here’s the colors here in Wisconsin:

Today, it’s all about the farm. I had a blog written about the effect of acoustic environments on us and our dogs, some new products available for us to use to calm our dogs, and some new results of “calming” music that Katie and I have seen with our dogs. And then I erased it all with one key stroke. I’m sure that has never happened to you….

So I’ll save that topic for later (and promise to catch up in the next month or so on other topics I’ve promised you, like exercises to calm the sympathetic nervous system, and the methods of the clicker versus no-clicker study ). Right now I have to get home to the dogs and work on the talk that Karen London and I are giving at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior next week in Phoenix. So here’s the second half of the blog, which I somehow magically managed not to erase:

BEST. NEWS. EVER. Willie worked long and hard in an unplanned emergency sheep herding session at the UW Stock Pavilion last Tuesday, and he came out of it none the worse for wear. I’d been easing him back into herding with 3-4 minute sessions and easy work, but had to quit 2 weeks ago when I sprained my Achilles tendon and couldn’t get up my own hill to work sheep. I tried to find friends to help with the sheepdog demonstration I do for my University of  Wisconsin class (“The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships”) but none could bring their own dogs. So I planned to do a shorter than usual demonstration with Willie to ensure that I wouldn’t set back a year’s investment in getting him sound again.

Everything went according to plan (famous last words) until it was time to put the sheep back in the truck. There’s no loading ramp, so this is not the easiest of maneuvers. You have to get the sheep right up to the truck bed while preventing them from going under the truck or squirting out the sides. A good number of students stayed to help, but I had put Willie in the truck to protect him from over-using his shoulder.

Long story short: After loading 2 of the larger ewes into the truck (not so easy without Willie to help), Rosebud and her lamb Oreo escaped between the fencing and the truck. Oh shoot. No way could we get her back without Willie, so I let him out and we set to work again. Even with him working hard, it wasn’t easy; Rosebud had little interest in coming back toward the truck and the students surrounding it. But finally we got her in the truck (I say “we” in the sense of nurses saying “It’s time for us to take our medicine again” — Jim and some very helpful students hefted her into the truck while I and my stupid ankle stood by uselessly). Whew, okay. Four down, one to go.

Now the only sheep left outside of the truck was Oreo, who promptly jumped the fence like a Dutch Warm Blood. And now I had a single, panicked ewe lamb in a dirt arena surrounded by cement bleachers. Not good. Single sheep are so frightened they are unmanageable; and it was clear that Oreo was considering a Mission Impossible suicide run up into the bleachers. I once watched a demonstration in which a single, panicked ewe died when she ran herself into a cement wall and broke her neck. Not a good image, but a good reminder to never, ever, ever try to work a single sheep who is truly panicked. Leave it alone, and go get the rest of the flock to pick her up like velcro.

With that in mind, Willie and I managed to cut off Oreo’s consideration of a Tom Cruise like escape, and keep her on solid ground.  Once we had her stopped, I yelled to Jim and others to “Let Rosebud out of the truck.” Believe me, “Let Rosebud out of the truck” is a figure of speech. At this point Rosebud had no interest in leaving the rest of the flock, so after the understandably stunned reaction of “You want us to WHAT?”, Jim lept into the truck and pushed poor Rosebud back out. As expected, Oreo ran right to mom, and calmed down considerably. But it took a tremendous effort from Willie, who was then joined by Jim and students to get the two back toward the truck and back inside.

The entire time my heart was in my throat. If a sheep was badly injured or killed I’d probably never do the demo again, and the students tell me it’s a highlight of the course. I’d never forgive myself if a student was injured. But Willie? Willie was cutting right, cutting left, working like a quarter horse to keep Rosebud & Oreo coming toward the truck. They’d dash one way and he’d have to counter, none of the rest of us was fast enough to stop her. It seemed to go on and on… was all this work going to set him back? Once we finally got everyone loaded, I drove home with my stomach twisted into knots.

Willie, on the other hand, sat in his crate on the way home with what I can only describe as a face radiating joy. His tongue stayed bright red for an hour after we got home, but his happy, happy face stayed on all night long. And I won’t say all that hard work didn’t affect his shoulder: he was reluctant to do his stretching exercises that night. But no limp, no favoring, no hiking of his shoulder, and the next day he stretched his leg out like a gymnast. He looks great, strong and sound, and he’s never looked happier.

I’ve got my dog back. My dog has his life back. Happy Dance.

Here’s a photo that shows Willie and the Stock Pavilion. Class hadn’t started yet, Willie and I were putting the sheep into the pen for safe keeping.

The truck is out of sight to your right. When we went to load them up Jim backed the truck up to the pen’s opening. The fence that Oreo lept over was the back of the pen. She ran to the other side of the arena, and stood on the right, eyeing a break in the railing that led up to the bleachers. The railings weren’t a barrier anyway, she easily could have gone under them.

Here’s the group during the demonstration: Rosebud is in the front, and her ewe lamb Oreo is the pinto in the middle, with the black forequarters and white hind. I’m thankful that they all seem none the worse for wear as well. They are all due to lamb at the end of March and early April, so I’m especially glad that they seem to be doing well once home and settled at the farm.

If you’ve been following last week’s blog and the comments, you know that there’s been an active discussion about whether dogs can (or can’t) form “true” friendships. This was motivated by an article in Time Magazine by Carl Zimmer that discussed the evidence of friendship in several species of mammals, including dolphins, baboons and horses. In spite of the irony of a cover photo that includes two dogs (and the photographer saying: “I actually had to make sure that the dogs coming in were actually friends.”), the article states “… most scientists think they [relationships between dogs] fall well short of true friendship.” I’m curious who the ‘most’ scientists are…

I suggested to the author that he might want to talk to scientists who study dogs like Barbara Smuts & Camille Ward. Barbara and Camille wrote an article in Bark magazine (Summer 2010) in which they summarize their research that makes it clear that dogs can form friendships. Keep in mind the Barbara Smuts is a well respected scientist whose work on baboons was essential in convincing other scientists that animals can form friendships. She defines friendships as relationships in which individuals choose to spend a lot of time together and engage in friendly, affiliative behaviors. Do we see that in dogs? Of course! So absolutely, I continue to go on record as believing that yes, dogs can form “true friendships.” Here’s some more of my arguments related to that belief.

First, we have to distinguish between intra and interspecific relationships; social relationships between individuals of the same species and those between members of 2 different species. I absolutely agree that, as interspecific relationships, our social bonds with dogs are more complicated than those between dogs. As thoughtfully mentioned in the comments, most of our domestic dogs are completely dependent upon us. We control their food intake, their elimination, who they play with, etc. Thus, the question is a good one as to whether a dog could consider us anything but “keepers” or “guardians,” but not true friends.

Certainly a balance of power does have a profound effect on a relationship, but I would argue that it is still possible to form a friendship with an individual who holds more of the cards than you do. After all, the scientific paper that Zimmer uses to base much of his article on argues that friendship most probably evolved from close relationships between mothers and their young. Even after the young mature, their mothers (in apes, for example), still have more power than their grown young do. But scientists call their close social bonds one of “friendship” nonetheless.

Second, I would argue that, in many cases, dogs may see themselves as having a tremendous amount of power. “Paw her and she’ll pet my head.” “Whine and she’ll give me a treat.” We could argue on and on about who has more power and when, and certainly it’s true that in most cases we control a dog’s access to food, etc, but the power differential isn’t always as black and white as one might think. As mentioned in the comments, our relationship with dogs is an example of a “symbiotic” relationship, but of a specific kind: a “mutualistic” relationship in which both parties receive benefits. (Parasitism is also a symbiotic relationship, but in that case only one member benefits.)

Third, if you look at the paper Zimmer uses as the basis for his article (Seyfarth and Cheney, “The Evolutionary Origins of Friendship.” Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2012. 63:153-177.), the authors define friendship as “enduring social bonds not directly related to mating.”  In most species, that includes grooming, play,  maintenance of proximity, and the formation of coalitions. If you look at the literature, time spent in proximity is the most universal feature of how “friendship” is defined. And although it’s true that there are many reasons a dog may choose to spend time close to one of his or her “humans,” including insecurity or the Stockholm effect, surely most of us have known dogs who happily and cheerfully chose to spend their time next to a particular person, and sought that person out from all others in a crowd.

Whether dogs can form “true” friendships with other dogs is another matter (although, of course, they are related). And here, again, I’ll argue that good science supports that contention. Zimmer states that “scientists don’t see friendships in wolf packs,” but I’d like to see what that is based upon. Show me the data, please. One argument Zimmer and others make is that most friendships seen in non-human animals are in species in which individuals have life-long relationships (dolphins, apes, etc.). The argument is then made that wolves disperse from their natal packs, and thus dogs have not evolved from a species predisposed to form friendships. But what of the huge packs that are found in Yellowstone Nat’l Park? As I understand it, most large packs are found to be made up of related individuals, exactly the same genetic make up of chimpanzee and dolphin groups. We can’t have it 2 ways here.

And again, (she says with a sigh), dogs are not wolves. They do not automatically attempt to rip the throat out of any canid that enters their territory, for example. Wolves and dogs both are, however, exceptionally social. Unlike most mammals, they live in groups, often defer reproduction to others, often raise the young of others cooperatively (this is often true in dogs, even if the feral males don’t provision their young; “Aunting” behavior is very common in dogs, my Pippy helped to raise all of Lassie’s puppies) and in wolves anyway, hunt together as a cooperative group.

Here’s a behavior not mentioned in Time or Seyfarth and Cheney’s article, but it could (and should) be a subject of study: Greeting behavior. One of the reason I argue so strongly that dogs can form friendships is the extreme variation seen in inter and intra specific greetings. As mentioned in the comments, there are endless examples of dogs who greet another dog or a person with an “over the moon, over the top” enthusiasm only seen to that particular individual. I once saw 2 dogs greet each other who had been apart for over six years and the dogs were border-line hysterical. The frequency and intensity of their whining, licking, leaping etc was several magnitudes their usual behavior. This canine equivalent of hugging, crying and kissing is universally understood as joy, and I would argue it is not anthropomorphic to presume that the emotions being experienced are exactly what we think they are.

This is not to say that friendship between people and dogs is exactly the same, and yes yes yes we need more research on the topic. But scientists are trained to that the simplest explanation should be the first one employed to explain a phenomenon (Occam’s razor), and I would argue that the simplest explanation to what looks like friendship in dogs is exactly that… friendship. That doesn’t mean that all dogs are friends, or that all dogs are friends with their humans. If that’s what we observed (all dogs treating all other dogs the same way), it would actually be evidence against friendship in dogs; the whole point of the concept is that it is a ‘special’ relationship above and beyond the other normal, social relationships, so we should expect to see it only between some individuals.

A last comment about friendships: Here’s a rather lovely saying about it I found while working on this topic: “Love is blind. Friendships tries not to notice.” Anonymous. Love it.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I’d love to tell you that Willie and Tootsie are friends, but they still pretend the other isn’t there, even when their heads are smashed together when they greet us or ask for petting. But they both gave us over the moon receptions when we returned from the Dog Writer’s Association of America in New York. (Love Has No Age Limit won two awards, very gratifying!) I’ve got 2 heavenly weekends at home, then off to Phoenix one weekend (invited talk at the Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior, not open to the public I’m afraid) and Tucson for the Tucson Book Festival the next weekend in early March. If you’re in southern Arizona, come to the book festival March 10-11th!

Here’s a photo I snapped last Saturday from the Empire State Building. I’ve been to NYC several times, but never made it up to the observation deck, and in spite of a brutally cold wind, it was truly fun. I rented the audio tour and learned all kinds of great things about the city, and loved being able to see a complete view of Manhattan. This is me on the observation tower: Brrrr. Wow!  Brrrr. Wow!  Brrrr. Wow! (etc.)

I love visiting the Big Apple, but always soooo good to get back to the farm!

I had an entirely different blog written and about to be posted, but there’s a swirl of discussion going on right now about an article that came out in Time Magazine by Carl Zimmer about “friendships” in animals. He has lots of good information from researchers who argue that true friendships are formed in many social species, including horses, dolphins, and baboons. I was a tad irritated at suggestions that “we” (scientists) haven’t accepted that friendships can be found in other animals until just recently…” look at the writings of Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal for example for exceptions to that…  but in general it’s a truly good article.

But imagine my surprise when he writes that evidence of true friendships can not be found in dogs.  He says: “.. most scientists think [they...dogs] fall short of true friendship….. noting a lack of evidence in dogs of constancy, reciprocity and mutual defense…” found in other species. In other words, dogs can’t form true friendships with us, or other dogs. It is true that dogs are less studied than many other species regarding their social relationships and that we can’t use anecdotal observations as substitutes for good data. But the article doesn’t say that there is not enough evidence to make conclusions about the social relationships of domestic dogs. It says “…most scientists think they [dogs] fall short of true friendship.” It also says “… dogs have become capable of being sweet and loyal to humans, but it’s likely that they treat us more as guardians than friends.” It is one thing to say that we don’t yet have the evidence, and yet another to make conclusions based on a lack of data-driven research.

If you want to read more about, this, go to my Facebook page. Carl has been good enough to join the conversation, which I greatly appreciate.  My argument is that, if as the article states, true friendship requires “constancy, reciprocity and mutual defense,” then at least observationally we have ample suggestions that social relationships between some dogs are as strong as social relationships between some horses. I suggested on FB that the reason many scientists are hesitant to attribute “friendship” to dogs is not just the lack of data, but rather a scientific bias against domestic, familiar animals. “Familiarity breeds contempt” is as true in science as it is elsewhere.

As someone who has observed and worked with domestic dogs for over twenty three years, it is hard for me to imagine arguing that they can’t form social relationships analogous to friendships in our and other species. Lassie appeared to fall in love with Luke the day she met him, followed him everywhere, groomed him daily, paid attention to no other dogs and sank into what looked like a depressions when he died. That’s not data, but neither does it suggest that dogs aren’t capable of forming true friendships. I find myself somewhat amazed that we are even arguing this point. Of course we need more data, those of you who know me know I’ve been encouraging good research on canine behavior for 23 years, but concluding without data that dogs probably can’t form “real friendships?”  Given that there is no data behind that either, I don’t see it as a supportable or reasonable conclusion. Especially given our observations, which may be anecdotal, but still are valuable (as were Jane Goodall’s observations of chimps.) If the article had said: “Although it appears that dogs form strong friendships, we need the same kind of data collected on them as we have of other species,” I’d have no problem with it.

Jump onto Facebook if you want to read Carl’s and others comments. I expect he is busy answering no small amount of email and comments on the subject!

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. WILLIE IS WORKING SHEEP!!! Be still my heart, that’s about all I have to say. Granted, the sessions are short, painfully so, but he looks sound so far and he’s working as if he’d never had a year long break (it was a year ago last week he was injured) and it’s so much fun for both of us that we can hardly stand it. When I say “That’ll do” he runs to me, spins in happy circles and I clap my hands and we grin at each other and somehow my heart gets bigger in my chest and we float back to the house and life is good. I’ll never be able to work him for very long, and I’m sure we’ll have set backs, but just being able to work a little bit is more wonderful than I can say.

No work this weekend though, we’re off to the Big Apple for the Dog Writer’s of Association of America annual awards. Love Has No Age Limit is up for an award, as is a column that co-author Karen London and I wrote for the APDT Chronicle.  FB readers have suggested I not wear jeans and my usual plaid shirts from LL Bean or Land’s End. Okay, I promise I’ll get the straw out of my hair, but I’m not wearing black. I just can’t understand why all black is so chic when it’s the “color” that oppressed women are forced to wear all over the world. I’m wearing orange, and NYC will just have to deal with it. The banquet is Sunday night, Saturday we’re going to see the play Memphis on Broadway. All very fun and exciting… but when do I get to work Willie on sheep again?

And apologies for no new photo today: I’ve spent all my time on the first blog (next week!) and the article about friendship and now have to pack, clean the house for the sitter, write out my lengthy set of instructions, etc etc.  Just too much to do today! I’ll make up for it next week!

As many of you know, I did a seminar on new research on canine behavior in Madison last October. (Oh, and by the way, have I mentioned it is now available as a DVD — hot off the press? Tee Hee, we’re pretty excited about it!)  It was a great experience for me, because like all teachers do, I ended up learning even more than I had hoped to learn about the topic myself. One of the findings most interesting to me relates to how we respond to a correct response from our dogs. Two studies suggested we would be wise to be thoughtful about how we do so:

First, Lindsay Wood did research at Hunter College comparing 20 dogs who were trained to nose a target using either a clicker as a marker, or the word “good.” Not surprisingly, the clicker trained dogs were significantly faster to reach criterion than the dogs who heard “good” rather than “click” before they received the food reinforcement. I say not surprisingly, because first, acoustically the sound of a click is better at getting an animal’s attention  because of it’s abrupt onset and offset, and also because it is a “broad band” sound, meaning it stimulates a large range of acoustic sensors in the brain. In addition, clicks are unique in the “sound scape,” unlike words like “good,” and can be produced consistently, whereas speech tends to vary depending on a variety of factors.

But get this: Another study by Smith and Davis, published in Applied Animal Behavior Science (2008) taught Basenji’s to target an object using either a 1) Clicker + Food or 2) Silence + Food. In this case, the click of the clicker was NOT more effective. The dogs who received no acoustic marker after the behavior learned at the same rate [note I've edited this from my first post. See subsequent posts later in the month for more of this. The plot thickens!]  the group in the standard “click/treat” category.

I’d love to hear your interpretation of this finding. Here’s mine, feel free too add (or subtract): In the case above, the dog was asked to do a relatively simple behavior, touching nose to cone. In that case, any sound was simply a distraction and the dog did better if there was nothing between the action and the primary reinforcement, the food. However, I would argue that if the behavior being trained is more complicated, and requires shaping and precise timing of the marker, then a clicker would be more effective. As I thought about it, I realized that’s exactly how I use clickers myself: not for simple actions like sit and lie down, but for more complicated behaviors that have to be divided into steps. Make sense?

[Again, more to come on this! I'm re-reading the study and going over the methods, and as I said earlier, the plot thickens!]

In this same study, note that the dogs who were clicker trained were more resistant to extinction, but note that “extinction trials” took away the primary reinforcer (food), but not the secondary one (the click). Compared with silence, it makes all the sense in the world that dogs would continue nosing the object if they heard a click afterward than silence, yes?

I’d love to hear your thoughts… or any more research you know about that might be relevant. Research like this is what made the Madison Seminar such a hoot to do. We reviewed the DVD and Tawzer video did a super job recording the seminar, hope you enjoy if you are so inclined.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I’m back in pre-seminar mode, about to leave the office to get ready to do a day-long seminar on canine behavior at UW-Madison. I’m speaking to vet students, vets and vet techs, and very much looking forward to it. (I’m giving them a case study to work on: It’s Willie, so that’ll be interesting, hey?) It’s ridiculously warm here still, in the 30′s and 40′s during the day, but it freezes at night and produces lots of problematic ice. Most of the ice has melted though in front of the farm house, so I don’t worry as much about Willie slipping on it as I did. Whew.

Here’s what we’ve been doing when we weren’t working at our jobs, exercising us or the dogs or doing chores: working on a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle for the last 2 weeks. (Talk about the addiction of intermittant reinforcement! I hereby admit to becoming addicted to this puzzle; every night I’d say: “I’ll just find one more piece to fit in, then I’ll stop.” Fifteen minutes later…..). The night we finished it I ordered 2 more (love the company, Pomegranate, which makes high quality puzzles and cards) because, for me, jigsaw puzzles are a “flow” exercise, in which I think about nothing but what I’m doing, rather than “monkey-minding” and thinking about work, chores, etc etc…..). Sort of like meditating for lazy people.

Part of the fun of preparing for the seminar I did in Orlando was working on the canine olfaction section. The overall topic of the day was Canine Communication (often compared to primates like us), and most discussions in this vein emphasize visual communication. That’s all well and good, I’m a visual signal groupie from way back, but I loved beginning the day talking about scent, and imagining what it would be like to be able to use one’s nose like a dog. We all know, intellectually anyway, how important smell is to dogs, but because we tend to be so oblivious to it, it is hard for us to imagine (Example of our obliviousness: What’s the common word used to described people who can’t smell?  Yup, there isn’t one.)

Hard to imagine what it’s like to be a dog (okay, impossible), but here are helpful hints, many of which I learned from Susannah Charleson, author of Scent of the Missing: Dogs can sort out individual scents just as you can visually distinguish different pieces that make up a stew. There are the carrots, the onions, the beef…. And if you are trained, you can taste the gravy and notice the hint of rosemary and thyme. Just as we can sort out visual stimuli, dogs can separate out all the components that make up one particular smell. What we don’t know (we know shockingly little about the world of scent to a dog) is what scents they perceive and notice in the environment, especially as it relates to other dogs. Does a good whiff in the grass relate to “Hmmm, a little female poodle, a large neutered boxer…”, or something more along the lines of “Female, slightly nervous, ate fish last night, having kidney trouble apparently…”

When working with tracking or trailing dogs, you also learn that scents are like objects in that they have a shape and a physical presence–imagine them as an oddly shaped balloon, whose shape depends on the soil moisture, wind currents etc. When dogs are searching for a scent (or just blunder into one), you can tell when they first discover the “edge of the envelope.” Of course, all dogs are different, but most dogs pause for a microsecond, and their posture changes: their tail might go up, or perhaps their head. It is usually quite clear when a dog first discovers the ‘edge’ of a scent. I saw Susannah illustrate this in human terms last November in Austin, and she graciously has allowed me to pass it on. I love doing so, because it is yet another way of trying to bridge the gap between canine and primate, my favorite game in life.

Here’s the demo: Have one member of the group volunteer to leave the room. Turn on a long playing piece of music (yup, music, bear with me) on a small device like an iPod or iPad. Turn it down so low that it can barely be heard, but is still clearly discernible if you are close enough, and hide the music somewhere in the room. When the volunteer returns, ask them to locate the music. People search for sound just the same as dogs search for scent, moving around until they …Ah! …think they might have heard something, and then gradually work their way closer and closer until it gets louder and louder, just as scent gets stronger and stronger. Of course, the music won’t be as affected by wind currents (I love how you can follow wind currents by watching a dog search for an object), but it is fascinating to watch a person try to localize sound, and clearly indicate, just as dogs do when they first discover a scent, that they have found it’s ‘edge.’

We did this demonstration in Orlando at the Communication Seminar (DVD coming in a few months if you missed it!) and it was truly great fun. You can do this with any group of people, it could even be fun in a basic dog training class if there was time. By the way, I learned so much about scent work, and loved Susannah’s writing so much, that we are selling her book, Scent of the Missing, on the website.  You might want to check it out. And stay tuned, I mentioned earlier that a TV show is in the works right now, based on Puzzle and Susannah and a cast of other S & R team members. (And yes, there’s a really hunky guy in it. Of course!)

What about you? Do you have any ‘scent games’ you play with dog owners to help them understand the umwelt of a dog? I’d love to hear about them. This sense of dogs is so important, and yet we so easily ignore it. I see it relevant in so many aggression cases (Ex: Willie once attacked a dog for ‘no reason’.. until I remembered that the dog’s house mate had attacked Willie once, so the scent of trouble was there all along.) I’d love to hear your perspective.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. Willie is just back from PT, and Courtney is thrilled with his progress. We did have a set back early this week–running in semi-deep snow made him lame that night, but he recovered 95% in 2 days and that’s good. I am still working on accepting that this is just what it is, that just like my body, sometimes Willie’s is going to bother him. We’ll just make a note of it and avoid that activity if we can, and if not, then just let him rest up whenever he needs it. He’s just simply never going to be sound, but then, neither am I (neck, back, knee, spine, I could go on…..) but who cares! We just learn what works and what doesn’t and manage around it.

We have the go ahead to VERY VERY cautiously begin working sheep again.  Be still my heart. Of course, only a minute amount at first. A short little drive here. Then rest. Then maybe a very short, simple outrun and fetch on very quiet sheep there. There won’t be much sheep work now though, because it’s icy in some spots (the absolute worst for Willie; he even has to heel beside me all the way to the barn now, the driveway is a skating rink) and I don’t want to work in him snow deeper than two inches or so. He’ll wear his hobbles and I’ll set it up as carefully as I can, hold onto to my heart and go from there. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s a photo that is, uh, a little out of the ordinary for this blog. It’s me mum as a little girl,  (yes, she was English), illustrating her love for animals at an early age. Mom has been gone a long time, but she adored animals, dogs especially, and somehow it just seemed right that she had a place here. I loved animals too even when I was tiny. I had 52 stuffed animals at one count, and refused dolls (because they weren’t soft and cuddly.) Anyone else crazed for stuffed animals when they were little?

As many of you know I recently presented a seminar on animal assisted therapy in Naples Florida. (Yes, it’ll be out as a DVD later this winter. Happy Dance!) One of the motivations for doing the seminar was the number of clients I had who wanted me to help them prepare their dog for therapy work. Sometimes it was like swimming downstream on a warm, cozy river. Their dog was a perfect fit and ended up doing wonderful work in the community. Other times… well,  it was reminiscent of trying to paddle up a cold, frothy waterfall. The fact is, therapy work can be hard work, and it takes a special kind of dog to be both good at it and to enjoy it. The directors of AAA and AAT (AAActivities and AATherapy) will tell you that one of their greatest challenges is working with people who want to volunteer but whose dogs just don’t qualify. Here’s a summary of the characteristics of a good therapy dog prospect, in hopes it will be helpful for those who are interested in doing this wonderful work:

Affiliative: This seems like a no-brainer, but the fact is that many dogs are presented for therapy work who really don’t like strangers all that much. They love their owners and good friends, but aren’t all that interested in other people. Good therapy dogs need to be the kind of dogs who ADORE people, all people, and want nothing more than to connect with them. It is, after all, the emotional connection that is often the therapeutic part of AAA and AAT.  It seems to me that dogs sort into 4 categories: 1) adore people, care little for other dogs, 2) adore dogs, care little for unfamiliar people, 3) adore members of both species and are thrilled to meet new ones and 4) adore neither dogs or people, except maybe their owner. Needless to say, only categories 1 and 3 are good therapy prospects.

Physically Calm: Many of the dogs who think all people hung the moon regrettably don’t fit into this category. Leaping, licking, pawing and body slamming just don’t work in senior centers and hospitals. This is why so many dogs don’t qualify when they are young, but could be great prospects when they are older. I wrote a chapter with Aubrey Fine for his great book The Handbook of Animal Assisted Therapy, and we had a long discussion about how many dogs would be GREAT for therapy work when they are six. Or eight. Or ten, but their owners get them evaluated at the age of two, the dogs are not “passed” and their owners never try again.

Psychologically Sound and Non-reactive: It doesn’t matter how much training or conditioning you do, therapy dogs need a certain level of rock solid soundness to be good prospects. Of course, the context does matter: some dogs are great in senior centers but are uncomfortable around children and would be disasters in a children’s hospital. It’s important to remember that AAA and AAT include a vast range of experiences, so every dog must be evaluated based on what they are going to be doing.  But it’s still essential to keep in mind that although your job is in part to protect your dog, once you are inside a facility you will have limited control over what happens. And what can happen (someone grabbing your dog, weird noisy medical equipment coming on, a medical crisis that results in tremendous chaos) is sometimes enough to terrify a sensitive dog.

Included in this category, although albeit somewhat different conceptually, is the state of being “emotionally mature” or able to handle frustration and deal with the world with a calm, measured demeanor. Again, just as in people, sometimes this takes several years to master.

Ridiculously clean and healthy: Unless you work in health care facilities it is easy to forget how differently sanitation needs to be handled in facilities and hospitals than it does in your own home. Pet Pals here in Madison, which organizes visits to the Children’s Hospital through the UW Vet School, requires that all dogs in the program go through extensive veterinary evaluations twice a year. This includes an entire day of testing for a vast range of diseases, from salmonella to MRSA. In this case the dogs are visiting children who are often immune compromised, and so their requirements are more stringent than some, but any facility, from a senior center to a hospital, is a very, very different place than your home. Germs love the kind of places that therapy dogs go to visit, and they can move around like wild-fire within very vulnerable populations.

Aware of their Job? This is gravy, pure gravy, but the fact is that some dogs do more than happily sit with strangers or participate in structured therapy treatment plans, as beneficial as that can be to some people. These dogs seem to sense why they are there, and seek out people who are especially needy, and make an emotional connection with them that changes their life. These connections happen, and hearing about them is enough to make you all gooey-eyed. Special stuff indeed.

I’ll leave the training and evaluations required to be a registered therapy team for another blog, but I thought it’d be interesting to ask all of you to add to this list–specifically, what type of personality do you think a therapy dog needs to be successful? If you’ve either had a working AAA or AAT dog, or been the beneficiary of one, I’d love to hear what criteria you’d put on the list. FYI, I’ll write another time about what the handler at the other end of the leash needs (a list too often ignored!), and some good books for people interested in getting involved, but right now I’d like to think about the dogs themselves. Aside from training for specific cues and conditioning to things like medical equipment, what traits do you think good therapy dogs need?

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: It was eight below (Fahrenheit) when I got up yesterday morning, three below today. I think the high is expected to be around eight or so, and we’re expecting 2 to 7 inches of snow tomorrow (2 to 7? that’s a big difference!).  I wish I didn’t have to drive to town to get ready to start teaching at the university (“The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships”), but still it’ll be sort of fun to get the snow. If it had been snowing all winter I’d be tired of it, but we’ve hardly had any winter at all til now, so it feels sort of good in some strange, possibly masochistic kind of way.

The great news is that Tootsie, who began her life here explaining to me that her paws did not participate in wet or cold, now trots happily outside in the worst of weather, does her business and then runs, ears flapping and tongue lolling, back into the garage. When we got her as a puppy mill dog she understandably had no concept of going outside and eliminating on cue right away, and then going right back in if the weather was inclement. She’d stand at the end of the garage and look plaintive and miserable, but refuse to go out. And even in great weather, once out she’d sniff and sniff and sniff and sniff… you get the idea.  What a great reminder of how handy it is to put peeing and pooping on cue.

And now you should see her! Out she runs, does her business and then runs back in… while Willie stays outside and looks at me like “WHAT? Go back inside now? Whatever for?” So Tootsie goes back inside and Willie and I play outside for awhile. I should tell you though that yesterday there was one time, during the coldest part of the morning, when she did refuse to go out. But she’d been outside to pee recently, and I took it as “Truly, I don’t have to go at all, and it’s really, really cold. Would it work for you if I stayed inside this time?” And indeed it did. Honor your dog, right? The next time I took her out her bladder was fuller, and out she went, did her business and ran to me for her treat. Now, I just have to work on her barking if she sees me and Willie outside through the window… One thing at a time!

Willie is good good good. His shoulder seems good (almost afraid to write that) and he’s loving everyone he meets lately. He still isn’t buddies with Tootsie. They STILL ignore each other, it’s a bit strange sometimes, but he is very tolerant of her and the only sign of problems I see is when I come home she has taken over our greeting rituals. Rather than being all over me, Willie runs to get a toy and lets her get the first attention. I’m not liking that, I think he is a bit frustrated, but doesn’t like competing with Tootsie for attention, and unwilling to get into any conflict about it… I’ll be working on that in the near future too. Never a dull moment with dogs, hey?

Why do I live in a place that can be colder in the winter than the inside of your freezer? Here’s the reason: Sunrise yesterday.  Eight below. And a sky simply too beautiful for words…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Home Sweet Home!! Florida was great is so many ways (thank you everyone!), but I have to admit I am sooo happy to be home. Willie and Tootsie are great, Sushi and the sheep too, the snow (finally!) didn’t delay our planes and it is heaven to be back in Wisconsin. I’m planning on 2 blogs next week on 1) the results of our survey in Orlando about the emotional state of the dog in Michelle Wan’s video and 2) what kind of dog is most qualified to do AAA and AAT work. And then there’s so much I want to talk about from Kathy  Sdao’s seminar on Sunday on Orlando… And then there’s talking about my BFF from graduate school, Disney World’s Sr Conservation Biologist Anne Savage, who is doing kick ass research/economic enrichment in Columbia as well as other places… so many topics, so little time!

But for now I need to get my paws back on the ground, play with the dogs, and get a bit of rest. I’m a tad tuckered from doing 2 new seminars and a fund raising speech in Naples (accompanied by music from the wedding reception beside us… talking about the human/animal bond with the song YMCA blasting in the background is an interesting experience).

Here, though, is one of my favorite parts of Disney World: The Tree of Life. It’s a constructed “tree” that is 14 stories high and 50 feet wide, with animals sculpted into the bark.  This is the whole tree:

And here’s a close up of just a part of it: how many animals can you find in the bark? (Okay, I know, it’s sort of goofy, but Jim and I had a ball trying to find them all.) And I’d love to hear from others about their favorite parts of the Animal Kingdom park at Disney World. I have a few… I’ll tell you about them next week, but I’d love to hear yours!