THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

I’ve loved your comments about play styles after the last post. Keep them coming. One of the points that was made by many of you, that I think bears repeating, is that many dogs can adapt and learn new play styles from others. This is especially true of stable, well-adjusted dogs who aren’t overly reactive to something new or challenging.

Along with chase games and wrestling, several of you mentioned hounds (and English Shepherds!) who like to play “catch the prey” by chasing, play biting and then mock attacks at the throat. Another mentioned a play style that I’ve also seen, that I consider truly problematic. In this case, the dog chases another dog until he catches up, and then bites the chasee, often in the back leg, and brings him or her down. Eeeps. I’ve seen this quite often, and it often appears to me that the dog in question has not learned about the importance of “self-handicapping.”  Some of them even seem to have switched from playing to predation. Of course, that’s one of the tricky things about play–it’s actually hard to define because most of the actions of play are seen in the context of fighting or predation.

However, in healthy play, the participants exhibit “self handicapping” so that they don’t injure or scare their play partner. (See my post on September 10th, 2009 for a discussion and video of self-handicapping). When I see it happen I intervene without question. I’ll first try a loud, abrupt yelp, as if there had been an injury. That will often interrupt play, and I’ve seen some dogs adjust their enthusiasm as if it was their play partner who had been injured. However, I’ve also seen plenty of dogs who did not respond to a yelp. In that case I’ve tried, sometimes successfully, intervening by moving as quickly as possible between the two and body blocking the transgressor. I’ll look directly at them, use a low voice, say absurd things that the dog couldn’t possibly understand but that feel good to say (”You are one total loser dog and are going to be in big trouble in a minute…”) and back them up a good ten feet or so (depending on the dog).  That has helped with several dogs, in that I can then use a verbal warning (”AH!”) when they open their mouths to bite.

I can’t tell you exactly how many dogs that has helped, but many dogs do learn to adjust their play styles, and I’ve had good luck with it with lots of dogs. It doesn’t work on all dogs with this particular behavioral problem, but it’s worth a try.

There’s so much to say about role reversals, play styles and social status, (and yes, I do want to address the issue of ’status’ soon), but here’s one point I’d like to bring up now: I talk more about role reversals in my Play Seminar DVD, but the research of Ward and Smuts found role reversals common in what they called “pushes, tackles, and chases.” They found almost no role reversals for “mounts, giving muzzle licks and receiving muzzle bites.”  There was (in keeping with some of your comments and with my observations over the years) no sex effect on type of play or on role reversals.  (However, female dogs did prefer to play with other females  within their own litters… interesting, hey?) They also found it common for one dog of a dyad to always be the one “on top” (in wrestling, for example), countering the hypothesis of some researchers that play always had to follow the “50/50 rule,” in which each player role reversed during each play session.

I think what’s most important is that play is a profoundly complex behavior, and that so much can be going on within it, depending on a dog’s breed predispositions, personality and experience. My favorite video of a play sequence, by the way, is from Pia Silvani, of two Terv’s meeting for the first time, and adjusting their play styles as they become more familiar. It’s truly a gorgeous example of healthy, appropriate play. It’s on the Dog Play DVD for those of you who haven’t seen it. I am ever grateful to Pia for letting me use it. (And it makes me all oxytocin-y too, it makes me want to get out some candles and a white table cloth for the 2 of them . . .)

Meanwhile, back on the farm: White white white. Snow snow snow. I’m about to take up luging. See that red sled by the barn . . . think I could make it down the hill behind the barn in record time in it?

In this next photo, Willie heard a truck on the road behind him. Interesting, I didn’t see his face as looking worried when I took the shot, but I do now. Humm, am I reading something into it?

A short post today, but with a pithy question generated from the last post on play. We all agree that different breeds of dogs tend to have different play styles, with herding dogs, for example, more likely to engage in run/chase games and bully breeds more likely to wrestle and body slam. Wrestling can include many behaviors, but a common goal of wrestling in any species is to pin another individual to the ground.

A lot of the wrestling/body slamming play in canines also includes chin over, leg over, vertical play and other movements that replicate the postures and gestures associated with high dogs seeking high social status.

So here’s the question: Do the dogs (in general of course) who engage in body slam/wrestle play tend to be individuals who care more about social status? I’ll add more to this discussion next week, but tease you with research that shows that you see a lot of role reversals in chase games (one dog in front, then the other) but very few role reversals in other actions more related to mounting and vertical play.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: I admit it, I’m an Olympic junkie. I’m getting sleep deprived staying up at night for heaven’s sake. Luckily, Will has had lots of entertainment during the day–we’ve been working the sheep a lot because all 3 groups are overweight (me, Will and sheep) and slogging up the hill in the deep snow is a great work out plan; we’re working on new tricks, he’s had lots of dog friends come visit and we’re doing lots of cuddling while I obsess in front of the television. We also went into town to do an applied ethoogy demonstration for my UW class, a good experience for Willie and although I’m sure not especially enjoyable for sheep, safe and relatively stress free.

I am also hereby declaring I am sick of winter. Not the snow, not the cold, I’m just starved for color and some change to what’s going on outside. I’d never make it in Antarctica! But there is still beauty: here are some trees covered in frost one morning, not long ago. I love the contrast of the dark trunks and the crystal white ice:

Here’s a video of Willie playing with a Lily, a 4 month old female Dogo Argentino. He has just met her, and after a brief greeting by the farm house, we walked up the hill to the Orchard Pasture.

I love watching videos of dogs playing; it seems that you can see so much if you watch them repeatedly. Here are the two main events I find most notable about this episode of play (along with the fact that Willie is playing so well with her! Yeah Mr. Will, what a journey we’ve been on together!)

One, notice how Lily’s play is so often on a vertical plane. Even as a young pup, she spends a lot of energy moving upward, and trying to get on top of Will. You’ll see that especially at seconds 17, 23 and 34. There are other examples, but those are the first three that I noticed.

Secondly, notice how Willie always backs away when she gets a leg on top of him, and dashes off, trying to elicit chase/race games with her. Watch carefully at second 59, how he approaches, gets her attention and then runs away. Willie loves to play race/chase games, and it looks to me like he is trying to initiate them with her. It appears to me that Willie is specifically trying to teach her to chase. Of course, she’s small and the snow is deep for her, so there is no way she could keep up with Will, nor is that a play style that she may ever enjoy.

In addition, I suspect that his reaction to her attempts to mount is more than just trying to elicit a chase game. Willie is very uncomfortable when other dogs try to chin over, stand over or mount him. As a matter of fact, when we stopped playing up the hill and went into the house, Lily began not only to rough house with Will, but began to try even harder to get her front legs and head on top of him. Will couldn’t dash away anymore in the close quarters of the house, and his ears flattened, his eyes rounded, his commissure retracted, and he began an offensive pucker at the distal end of his lips. I immediately stepped between the two of them and asked Will if he wanted to crate up. He sped away from Lily, ran to the study and lept into his crate. Poor Will, such angst. He gets so nervous about other dogs when he can’t maintain control. He is a classic “Alpha Wanna-Bee.” He wants to be in control of everything, but is an insecure nervous wreck about doing so with an individual bigger and braver than he is.

Yesterday he played chase/race with his Doberman girlfriend Mishka, and was totally relaxed even in the house until she lept onto the couch and loomed over him. He tensed up and then ran to the study and hid behind the door. He only came out when Jim came out too, and hid behind Jim’s legs. Then we walked behind a big rocking chair, and stayed behind it until I called him to come to me. Oh Willie. He is trying to hard now to stay out of trouble, but it is so hard for him. I am so proud of him, though. (For those of you who haven’t followed the story, Willie was pathologically afraid of other dogs as a puppy, and went through a very aggressive period until we could get it turned around. He will never be a ‘dog park’ dog, but he’s done so well given who he is and what he started with.

Here’s the video: I’d love to hear what you see in it. I’ve only watched it a few times, and focused on the things I mentioned, who knows what else is going on!

One of the segments on the BBC show The Secret Life of Dogs that generated several interesting comments was the segment that showed “Betsy,” (not her real name, you gotta love that some dogs now have ‘nom de plumes’) retrieving an object after being shown just a photograph of it. Wow. That truly is amazing. It got me to thinking about the trouble I had a year or so ago when I tried to teach Willie to discriminate between toys based on a name. For over a year he’d been told to “Go get your toy,” and he’d pick out whatever toy he liked best that was nearby.

When I tried to teach him to touch or pick up a toy based on a different word (”ball” or “rope”), he became hopelessly confused. He became so stressed over the entire operation that I dropped it and went on to teach him other things. My best guess is that he had categorized all signals as requests for action, not as labels of an object. That’s a pretty big frame shift to make. And yet, here is Betsy, able to pick out 250 different objects by name and by just looking at a 2-dimensional photograph (which dogs, by the way, were not supposed to be able to do). And of course, there’s Rico, the other famous BC, who could not only pick out hundreds of objects, he could get the larger of two versions, AND could ‘fast map,’ or be asked to retrieve something he’d never heard of or seen before, and deduce that it was the only unfamiliar object in a group of familiar toys. Wow. These are some smart dogs.

Will now has learned labels of living things: he knows “Jim” and “Trisha” and “Sushi.” I can say “Go to the Barn” or “Go up the hill” and he runs the right way, but I suspect he doesn’t think of the “barn” or “hill” as a label of the object itself, but rather of an action and direction. The BBC segment got me rethinking about what Willie understands as an action and what he understands as a label. He knows “get your toy”… and I suspect understands that “toy” relates to the objects he plays with, but does he see it as a label or as an action? Is it more about playing with anything in front of him, or the objects themselves?

I’m inspired now to start testing this out with Will. I’m going to write down every word and movement I make that I think might be a cue to him, and what I think it means to him. This, needless to say, is going to take some time, so stay tuned for what I come up with. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear from you. How much of what your dog understands relates to an action, and how much is it a label of an object? Is there any difference between learning to label a living thing versus an non-living object? Willie definitely knows “sheep” and “Sushi,” and I wonder if it matters that the ‘object’ of a label is living or not? He knew all the names of my other dogs, in that he’d turn and look at them if I said “Where’s Lassie?” He gets excited when I say “Dinner,” but does it mean the actual food itself, or the action of eating them? See how interesting this can get?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: We are all continuing to heal. Willie played for hours with his new friend, Max, an adolescent Border Collie who lives not far away. Watching them run and run and run huge circles around the Orchard Pasture cheered me up immensely. The best part of it was the way they played, because Willie didn’t always play as well with others. Willie would start running with another dog, then get in front and air snap toward their face to stop their forward movement. Then he’d stand still with a satisfied look on his face. Look what I accomplished! Boy, am I a good herding dog! Eventually the other dog would just stop running, because what was the point? However, recently the lovely Dobberman Mishka seemed to have taught Willie to stop playing by herding. Mishka put up with his “herding” two times, and then growl-charged at Willie. Totally appropriate, very controlled; I remember saying “Good girl!” I was so impressed. Willie backed off with that confused, silly look that male dogs get around females who discipline them, and never tried it again. They began racing instead and now it’s Willie’s favorite game.

It helps that Max is fast. Really fast, and so is Willie, but neither can really beat the other, so they run and run and run in the snow, stop and get their breath and then run some more. And you’d think that would have tired Willie out enough to sleep through the evening? Of course not, he kept dropping toys in our lap all evening long. I think it just warmed him up. Here’s some photos of Max and Willie playing. Not the best photographs, but I love how it shows the world we live in right now. Black and white (dogs). Black and white (everything else!)

As many of you know, Will has a bad shoulder and he can’t play fetch or flying disc without problems. If I just work him on sheep and take him on long walks we can keep it under control, but the “short stopping” associated with fetching aggravates whatever is wrong with his shoulder. (I haven’t discounted surgery completely, but we are still in the ‘gather information’ mode.) That means that most of his exercise is working sheep, which works great when I’m home and feel like scrambling up the hill. But when I’m gone? You can’t just have anyone go work your dog on sheep, that would be a disaster, so it is important to find ways to keep Willie exercised when I travel.

Here are 2 videos of the game I’ve talked about in earlier posts. It’s really not that new, just another version of the inside “Go find it!” game that Karen London and I talk about in Play Together, Stay Together. However, being just as dense at generalizing from one context to another as any dog, it took awhile for me to think of playing the game outside. Now we do it every morning and I’m not sure who enjoys it more, me or Will.

I put Will on a stay, and then move to where he can’t see me and hide a toy. One week when we first started, I hid a stick I had handled in a huge pile of brush in the orchard pasture. It was fascinating to watching Will switch from using his eyes to using his nose–all sticks looking pretty much alike after all, and an entirely different proposition outdoors in a breeze.  It took him a good 3 minutes to find the stick, but when he did I’m not sure who was thrilled the most, him or me. Playing this game with your dog will teach you more about how dogs perceive the world than anything I can think of. Susannah gives the best analogy of dogs searching out a scent that I’ve ever heard in The Scent of the Missing, in which she asks you to imagine walking down a quiet street at night and hearing the faint sound of music, coming from… where? Dogs track down scent much the way we track down sound.. moving toward it, playing the “louder, softer, louder” game of localizing sound by moving toward the area where the sound (or smell) is strongest. But although sound can move through space differently depending on the environment, it is no where near as plastic as scent, which wafts on the breeze and flows this way and that like a smoke. How scent travels is affected by temperature, humidity and a butterfly in China for all I know.

I can illustrate far better than describe:  This first video is of Willie finding the toy in a ditch. The toy is completely out of sight, and I thought this would be a hard ‘find’  because I’ve never hidden toys in this area before and it seemed to me that the scent would stay in the ditch and not rise above the vegetation. More proof of what a total novice I am at scent work….

Here’s Willie searching for a toy that a novice to dog training (of any kind) might think is an easy find. After all, the toy is in full view (for us! It’s the blue disc in the shrub about 3 feet up). But, it’s above Willie’s head and dogs don’t tend to look up until they’ve been trained, as most trainers well know. Will’s first hidden object that was over his head was last week, and it took him three times as long a time to find the toy. He followed his nose all the way to it. In this video, it seems to me that he actually does see the toy as he’s turning back toward the scent. Trackers? Trailers? SAR experts? I’d love to hear any comments from experts on scent work about what Will is doing. I am LOVING learning about the world of scent (beyond my personal girlie obsession with lavendar and myrrh!)

True confession: I haven’t finished the book The Wolf in the Parlor. I might not, at least not in the near future. Here’s why:

As I said in my last post, the author’s thesis is that “people and dogs, around 12,000 years ago, linked their evolutionary paths together and evolved socially and physically to take on supportive roles. He argues, according to the reviews, that humans lost some of our brain power because dogs took over those functions, and dogs lost some of theirs because we became their protectors and nurturers.” It seems downright churlish of me to stop reading before I read for myself the full extent of his argument, but what I’ve read in the first 60 pages has put me off a bit.

I mentioned earlier that the thesis itself sounded a bit simplistic, but I love speculation and the more the merrier if it’s based on good, solid information. But Franklin’s supporting information seems thin, at best. Here’s an example: Interested in the early evolution of the domestic dog, the author goes to his local library. But he finds little of value, he tells us. He says “Some of the more promising works included a few generalized remarks about the development of the dog; they all sounded the same, and had a ‘just so’ tone to them.” He goes on later to say that the books he ended up checking out were also a disappointment. “Most were superficial, showed some misunderstanding of biology, or were otherwise unsuitable…”. Never in this section does he mention other ways of researching the topic.. he writes as though he accepts that his library has all material relevant to his question. As a lover of libraries, I can tell you that even really, really good ones can only house a small portion of relevant books, and many of those are profoudly out of date. As a science writer, I would assume he is adept at internet searches…?

Eventually, in the books he checks out (we never know which books those are), he finds references to a paleontologist named Stanley Olsen, who spent decades finding and measuring fossils of domestic dogs (dogs can be distinguished from wolves by their shorter muzzles and smaller teeth). He published some of this work in 1974, and Franklin moved heaven and earth to find a copy (The Origins of the Domestic Dog: The Fossil Record) and traveled to the University of Arizona to interview Olsen. Let me be clear: I’d give a lot to interview Olsen myself, he sounds absolutely fascinating and extremely knowledgeable. But 1974 is 35 years ago, and what we’ve learned about the fossil record since then is astounding.  Still, I love that Franklin went to meet him–but what about other sources of information about the evolution of the domestic dog? Surely Franklin found many interesting books on that topic? And what books did he read? He is a science writer after all, so I expected him to clearly list his sources.

I turned to the back to see if he had read, for example, Ray and Lorna Coppinger’s book Dogs, its subtitle being “A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution.” But there is no bibliography or reference section, a surprise unto itself. I turned to the index, and Coppinger is indeed mentioned, but only briefly, and only in regard to a discussion about dogs losing the terminal portion of the hunting sequence inhibited (find, chase but don’t kill and eat). Franklin loves Coppinger’s suggestion that dogs are wolves with the ‘kill’ portion of their behavior inhibited, but adds that other scientists “. . . criticized Coppinger’s idea for various technical reasons, …” but doesn’t tell us what those were. Neither had he read Coppinger’s book; he learned about him in a manuscript being edited by James Serpell (now that’s a book I can’t wait to read, I’ll alert you as soon as I find it, don’t know if it’s out yet.)

There are some wonderful sections of The Wolf in the Parlor. Franklin clearly adores dogs and the connection between them and people. He is not only smitten with his current Standard Poodle, he credits him for saving his life (I skipped to the end). If I had no other books to read I’d finish the entire book, and someday I imagine I will. But right now Horowitz’s Inside of a Dog is luring me in, and I just got a book written about a search and rescue dog that looks like a page turner. The wolves in the parlor are just going to have to lie down and stay for awhile.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: It rained! Oh boy oh boy, it finally rained, after almost 3 weeks of no rain. I’m the first to admit 3 weeks isn’t long in many areas of the drought-stricken country, and I know it’s flooding right now in some areas, but we really, really needed the rain and just looking at the moisture soaking into the ground feels so nurturing and good. Willie and I got to go to a new place to work sheep; a good friend and neighbor’s not far away just got a small flock to work her rescue BC on. We had a ball; Will was wonderful, I was a bit slow–not being used to faster reacting sheep, but a good time was had by all. Well, maybe not the sheep, but Will was excellent around them and worked them very quietly. The trick with Will is balancing his speed with his lack of confidence (too slow and he loses power and confidence, too fast and he starts the sheep running.) We’ll be back soon I’m sure!

Here’s a video I took this morning, in the rain by the way, of Willie & Lassie playing with their Chewber. At first you’ll just see Willie, while I make silly noises to hype him up and get him exercising without having to stress his shoulder by fetching or leaping. It takes him longer to get moving than usual (because I have the camera?), but you can see how he runs and shakes the Chewber as if he was trying to kill it. (What was that about the final stage of the hunt being inhibited? Just kidding, I think Coppinger is right to some extent on that; I don’t think I’d use a wolf as a herding partner!).

As I do every morning, I asked Will to lie down and let Lassie get the toy. Watch how she turns and looks at him when she returns. Anthropomorphically, I always imagine her saying “I’ve got the toy-oy. Nee Nee Nee Boo Boo!”

Here’s a video of Self Handicapping that I took 3 years ago, when Will was a young pup and Lassie was the stronger of the two. It’s a lovely illustration of appropriate dog play, showing how the stronger dog self handicaps to avoid overwhelming the weaker player.  Lassie, even now, is capable of pulling with a great deal of strength, but in this video she clearly damps down both the power of her pull and intensity used when she shakes her head. She moves more slowly and with less power than she would when playing with me.

There’s another piece to this video that I  just love: when Lassie decides she is done playing she gives Willie a very clear signal that play time is over. (Not long after she looks at me when I say “Jim! Turn the TV down” in the background!). She gives a second (more obvious) signal when Willie doesn’t seem to get the message… did you see the first one?

I showed this at the seminar on Dog Play (Dog Play DVD)  to illustrate appropriate and inappropriate play and followed it with a second video thatmakes me all gooey whenever I watch it. It was taken 2 years later, and shows the now grown up, and very strong Willie self handicapping while playing tug with Lassie, who at 14 is now the weaker one. I can’t tell you why, but it makes everyone who sees the comparison feel all oxytocin-y and big of heart.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Or, rather, back at the office right before I drive away to pick up Willie from his FIVE AND A HALF HOUR root canal. I have been flipping out over here… five + hours under anesthesia? Oh lordy, be still my heart. (I know, I know, I am such a wuss. It’s pathetic. Talk about oxytocin! Is there such a thing as oxytocin poisoning?)

Wheeeee, the new 1/2 day seminar on play that I did in California a few weeks ago is out now on DVD, thanks to lots of hard work by Alta at Tawzer Videos. You can learn more about Dog Play on my website, but here’s the summary:

The seminar focused on three aspects of canine play:

1) The Natural History of Play: What IS play after all? Who plays and Why? (Those questions turn out to be much more complicated than you might think and have all kinds of interesting implications for us and our dogs!)

2) Play Between Dogs: What do we know about the development of play in dogs? The seminar includes new research out of Barbara Smut’s lab in Michigan about the development of play in dogs and what is “natural” and what is not. It also includes an in-depth discussion, with lots of videos, about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate play.

3) Play Between Dogs and People: This section summarizes the good, the bad and the ugly about play between two species, who are both attracted by our shared high levels of play as adults, and troubled by mis-communications that occur when members of two different species don’t learn one another’s play signals and play styles.

The DVD is about three hours long, and although I guarantee you that it’s not perfect, I am a little embarrassed to admit how much time was spent tweaking edits, smoothing transitions and dying a thousand deaths while watching myself, my double chin and my silly hair do. If you think you don’t like photographs of yourself, try watching yourself on video. But what’s important is the content, and I’m pleased to say that people at the seminar seemed to find it interesting and enjoyable. I love the topic myself, and love the interplay of science and daily life with dogs. I hope you enjoy it too.

Meanwhile, when you read this we’ll be on our way to the Maasai Mara, staying at Tipilikwani Camp right by the river. On the drive there from Amboseli, we’ll stop to get gas, discover that our urine does not fall straight out of our bodies as we try to aim for a tiny hole in the ground in the “rest room,” and no doubt watch some typical ‘village’ dogs hang out in the shade. Here’s some from a previous trip, showing the universal display of status and active submission seen in dogs around the world:

Much warmer now, might even be up to 20 degrees. Wow, feels like an entirely different place. The lambs are doing beautifully. On Sunday Jim and I opened up the panel dividing the two ewes with lambs and let them all in together. We wanted to wait to be sure that the lambs were well bonded to their moms (and vice versa) and that they were stable and healthy enough to tolerate being shoved around a bit by the ewe that wasn’t their mom. Given how vigorous Snickers was (I am being so kind here, using the word vigorous instead of several others I can think of) when she was trying to reject her own little ewe lamb, I didn’t want to subject the single lamb to that kind of abuse. However, we don’t call him White Dude for nothing. He looks like he’s in training for a starring role in professional wrestling, so we figured he would be able to handle some ‘nudges’ from Snickers.

(You should know that lots of sheep people will be laughing right now… getting shoved away by sheep that aren’t your mom is just part and parcel of being a lamb.  Granted, I was being a bit, uh, cautious, partly because of the cold, party because Snickers seems out-of-the-box aggressive to other lambs, and partly because, okay, I’m a wuss.) After a few minutes of confused lambs and indignant ewes, everyone seemed to get it all sorted out. Whew. Now the lambs are able to play together and have more space to run around. Ideally, they’d be frolicking on emerald green pastures up the hill, but the grass is  under about a foot of ice and snow.

Here’s the lambs from this weekend:

You can see how big White Dude is in this photo of him and the little ewe lamb:

Meanwhile, Willie and Lassie are warming my heart. They started playing in the living room Saturday night, and I was completely transfixed while watching them. First Willie threw himself in front of Lassie, with his head held high, his ears up at the base, with the rest of the pinna (ear flap) flattened against his head. His legs were erect and stiff, and he stood still as if frozen for a moment, then threw himself down in a play bow in front of Lassie. She responded with her “play bark,” (only heard while she’s playing, one WOOF, repeated about every 3 or 4 seconds) and picked up their favorite tug toy.  They proceded to play tug for several minutes, while I was transported away from huddling in the cold on the couch, blue snow, frozen ice buckets and bitter winds.  I imagined that they were individuals of a wild species that one rarely sees… imagine how enchanted you’d be if you’d never seen a dog and all of sudden there were 2 of them, playing this amazing game right in front of you. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that they were in my life, and that by simply doing what dogs do, I could be elevated and warmed with amazement and appreciation. Those of us lucky enough to have dogs are lucky indeed.

Camille Ward and  Barbara Smuts gave a fascinating talk at the APDT Play Symposium on “Play and the Development of Social Relationships in Litters of Domestic Dogs.” Their research (and that of their colleague, Erika Bauer) has focused on play in the domestic dog. They discussed two issues related to play in both puppies and adult dogs:

50/50 Rule: Years ago a scientist hypothesized that, for play fighting to work, the participants would have to switch roles about 50 % of the time. In other words, related to dogs, half the time one pup  should be on top in the “assertive position,” and the other pup should be on top the rest of the time. As Camille explained to us, this speculation, as often happens in science and other fields, slowly turned into “fact” (without the benefit of any actual observations or research!)

For example, look at this quote from “The Development of Aggression” by Tremblay, Hartup and Archer, 2005:

“For play fighting to remain playful, it needs to follow the 50:50 rule (Aldis 1975; Altmann 1962). That is, each pairmate has to win close to 50% of the playful encounters.”

Camille and Barbara tested this assumption in 3 litters which were observed as they developed in about 2,000 instances of play between two individuals (at 3-8 weeks, and at 10-23 weeks for 2 litters, and the third litter also at 27-40 weeks). They found that the 50/50 rule did NOT apply–12 of the 15 pairs in the first 2 litters observed did not reverse roles symmetrically. As a matter of fact, one female from the third litter was ‘on top’ 100% of the time, but her litter mate still initiated play preferentially with her.

In an earlier study, Dr. Erika Bauer and Dr. Smuts also tested the 50/50 rule in adult dogs at a dog park, and Dr. Smuts reported that there too, the 50/50 rule was not upheld. (By the way, it wasn’t reported at APDT, but this work also found that role reversals…. you mount me and then I mount you back….occurred during certain types of play, but not others. Chases and tackles were initiated by either partner, but mounts, muzzle bites and muzzle licks were consistently performed by the same dog. Perhaps certain types of play may be good indicators of social relationships between dogs?  Let me know if this fits with your own observations of play between your dogs or your dog and friends at the dog park.

Another aspect of Dr. Ward’s talk was about partner preferences. She found that (out of 1,300 instances of play initiation), the young puppies from 3 to 8 weeks showed no partner preference, the 10-23 week old pups the same, but the older juveniles (27-40 weeks) began to show strong preferences to play with one other individual from their litter. This preference was stable across time periods, and suggests that dog often form long lasting bonds with other dogs that should be acknowledged. The fact that some of our dogs become close friends with other dogs is, of course, not news to us, but I think it is important to remind ourselves that long-term stable relationships with another dog might be important to the dogs who live with people but not another member of the same species.

I think about that with my Will, who plays with Lassie several times a day, but I wouldn’t say they are close friends.  Will adores a  young Cavalier King Charles Spaniel… Brody, who comes to visit on occassion, but is moving to Florida soon. I’d love to get Will  a play mate, but hesitate to get another dog during Lassie’s last years. I am pretty darn sure she is not interested in sharing any more of  my attention… it’s tough, isn’t it, when you know one dog needs something that is the opposite of what the other dogs needs.  Will does have some other play buddies, but I think I should go out of my way to find him more; he and Brody seemed to have a special connection. I wonder if he will miss him? (I will! Not to mention missing his human!)

Speaking of play–here’s my colleague and dear friend Dr. Karen London, ‘playing’ on our way to dinner in downtown Louisvile.