THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Here’s some more information from IFAAB, based on a talk presented by Dr. Samuel Gosling at UT-Austin. He is studying personality in animals, and has looked at it in species as varied as hyenas and dumpling squid. (And yes, dumpling squid are just as cute as they sound).

He spoke briefly about the history of scientific attitudes toward personality in animals–at one point it was almost a dirty word, but in the last twenty years the term (and the concept) has become generally accepted.  (Although he mentioned one researcher who still uses the term “behavioral syndrome” to avoid sounding anthropomorphic.) I must admit, as a someone trained in science myself, I still find it remarkable that the concept of personality in animals was ever controversial. It is astounding how essential it is to many to keep the division between human and animal clear and strong.

Related to that, here are two quotes I use in the Introduction to my UW class on Human/Animal Relationships:

“…the delineation of human/animal relationships occurs in all cultures, and in all cultures, this boundary is of great significance.” (Arien Mack – Humans and Other Animals,  1995)

“Our culture and our dominant religions have tied human dignity and self-worth to our separation from nature and  distinctiveness from other animals.” Frans de Waal, Ape and the Sushi Master

So true.

However, the concept of personality even in people was controversial  to some behaviorists. Encouragingly, Gosling reported that journal articles using the word, both in studies on human and animal behavior have seen a large increase, especially in the last decade. It seems that the pendulum is finally swinging back to a reasonable place, where we can acknowledge that genetics and experience combine to create predictable behavior patterns in individuals, whether they are human, dog, horse or kangaroo.

Here’s an interesting study of Gosling’s that related to how owners view the personality of their dogs. He asked people at a dog park to fill out a questionnaire about their dogs, and then did some simple tests to learn a bit about the personalities of the owners. You guessed it, there was a strong correlation between how people themselves behaved and how they perceived their dogs. Agreeable dogs were more likely to have agreeable owners, neurotic owners more likely to have neurotic dogs, etc. … Hard to say what’s going on here: could be that we owners project our own tendencies onto our dogs, or perhaps we choose dogs with similar characteristics. Or do we and our dogs began to act like one another after being together long enough!?.

Most interestingly, he found that people were consistent in how they rated other people as well… in other words, if they saw a dog as being “agreeable” they tended to rate other people as agreeable as often as not. But he also found the independent observers tended to rate people’s dogs similarly as did the owners, so it is not as though the owners were totally off base….

Gosling also made the point that “Temperament” refers to the genetic predisposition of an individual to behave a certain way, while “Personality” refers to a predisposition influenced both by experience and by genetics. Thus, we really shouldn’t call them “Temperament Tests,” should we?

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Remember the photo of the ewe Spot getting shorn, with her pristine white belly appearing underneath her wool?  Well, that was then and this is now. I didn’t get a photo, but this morning I didn’t recognize a sheep in the pen at first, couldn’t figure out who was the little, brown ewe by the feeder?  Turns out it was Spot, covered in mud, literally from head to tail. The only explanation I can think of is that she was resting lying down and struggled in the mud to get up. Sheep can get in trouble if they lay down with their legs pointing uphill. Based on her complete coat of mud, II suspect tht she struggled a long time before she could get up. I couldn’t see any injuries, and she seemed hungry and not visibly the worse for wear, so I’ll keep an eye on her tonight and hope she’s fine. Poor little thing, she’s quite small and clearly the bottom of the hierarchy, I find I feel a bit protective of her.

Back to sunny Sunday, here’s Willie moving the sheep out of the barn after shearing. (don’t they look spiffy?)

In the next photo you can see the white version of Spot.  She is the one  at the very back.. with the, uh, Spot. Now she’s pretty much all dark brown…

Next is Will, trying to ignore Sushi while waiting to work the sheep….

First, thanks so much for your comments about the podcast, they are extremely helpful. Keep them coming, I’ll summarize what has come in at the end of next week (seems like one votes for one host or two hosts votes are about 50/50, same with whether the show could charge a fee or not….) I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s some more information from the IFAAB meetings in Tucson. There were two very interesting talks about breed recognition and breed-based behavior predictions. Victoria Voith, one of the first board certified veterinary behaviorists in the country, enrolled us in a study she is doing on breed identification. Given that breed bans are based on, well, breed identification, she and others are gathering breed identifications from a total of 1,000 people. We all took the survey, being shown about 25 or so photos of dogs, and were asked to identify the dog as a purebred or a mix. If we thought it was a mix, we were asked to identify the primary and (if relevant) secondary breeds contributing to the dog.

After we all took the ‘test,’ Dr. Voith told us the results of DNA testing from the MARS breed identification tests (more on that later). First of all, we were all relieved when we were done… our brains were starting to fry. (We had a limited amount of time to make our guesses and it was hard work!) I was glad when we were done, not just because it was getting tiring (and I don’t think I have ever been very good at breed ID!), but also because the results confirmed my world view.. always reinforcing when that happens, isn’t it? Most of the dogs shown came up as mixes of mixes: 25% this, 12.5 % that.Very few came out as 50% of one breed and 50% of another.

I’ve always wondered why people tend to describe mixed breed dogs as the offspring of two pure bred parents, and I’ve long believed that it is VERY difficult to guess parentage of a mixed breed dog. I came to that conclusion after reading Scott and Fuller’s study, and looking at the photos they have of some of their crosses (beagle/cocker for example.) If you look at all their photos, some of the pups look like their father, some their mother, and others look like just about nothing at all (or another breed altogether.) Dogs are so structurally labile, surely it is truly hard to predict exactly what a mix is going to look like. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is fun, and sometimes useful to try to guess the parentage of a mixed breed dog, but I am often shocked at the dogs who’ve come into my office described as a 15 pound “German Shepherd/Terrier” cross, or a “Labrador/Border collie.” (If it’s over 30 pounds and is black and white and in Wisconsin, it is automatically a Labrador/Border collie cross…)

All this is good ammunition against breed bans… who can be sure a dog is a “pit bull” anyway? This study has the potential of providing good science that can be used to fight breed bans, which I am adamantly against.

Another study was presented by Dr. Amy Marder, another Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorist. She is now the Director of the Center for Shelter Dogs in Boston, a great use of her knowledge and experience. They sent in DNA samples, also to the MARS Wisdom panel, of dogs identified as “pit bulls.” Sure enough, they came back with some Am Staff yes, but also plenty of Viszla, Gordon Setter, Irish Setter, etc etc etc. In some of the truly ‘bully’ looking dogs, Am Staff wasn’t even present, or was present only as a ‘trace’ amount. She also showed a slide of a fuzzy, fluff ball spaniel-y looking thing, who turned out to have a signficiant amount of Am Staff… who would have guessed it? (Not me, neither did any of my colleagues).

Granted, we all agreed that DNA testing of dog breeds is a work in progress. Is it 100% accurate?  No, it truly isn’t, it is relatively new, and it is so complicated (after all, look at all the breeds that are less than 150 years old that were created from other breeds…), but it still can be interesting. Have any of you tried it? I’m tempted to send in some samples of mixes I know the parentage of, just to see what comes up….

Lastly,  Dr. Marder discussed a study (I’ll find out where it was published, think it was in 2007) in which they did behavior evaluations on 61 shelter dogs, 21 of whom had been identified as ‘pit bulls.’ The ‘pit bull’ types showed no more aggression over food  or handling than the ‘non-pit’ dogs, although the bully type dogs did test out as being more easily aroused. In my experience with bully breeds, (which is significant but not extensive), the arousal issue is an important one. A low threshold for arousal and difficulty de-arousing is perhaps the biggest (and only?) difference I’ve seen in bully breeds.

I truly disagree that ‘pit bulls’ are nothing like other dogs, and more and more the research seems to confirm that. Does that mean I think that “all it takes is love” to rehabilitate a dog with a shady past, and that you could send an ex-fighting pit to a naive family with 5 kids? No, of course not, but I do think that every dog should be evaluated as an individual. I have met stupid, slow Border collies, and incredibly aggressive Golden Retrievers, and yes, even people of English ancestory who are good cooks (that would be me, honest.)

Meanwhile, it’s going to be 50 degrees tomorrow, which means lots of mud but a tempting appetizer of spring. The sheep get shorn Sunday morning, can’t wait to see how they look out from under their wool coats.

Here’s a photo of Will and Lassie taken about one minute ago by the back door to the office. Poor Lassie looks like she can barely wait another minute to get home! It’s almost 5:30 pm and we are all more than ready to leave the office, get home to the farm, eat dinner (beef, a sardine, cooked oatmeal, broccoli, green beans and carrots for them tonight, don’t know about me but it probably won’t be as healthy!) and go on a walk.  This will be my first weekend in a month in which I wasn’t either working all weekend or super sick… oh boy! Yippee! (I’m going to stay off line this weekend, so I’ll post your comments Monday morning, need a few days to forgot all about computers!)

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Here’s a brief post from one of the many fascinating talks at IFAAB… brief because I’m afraid I came home with a killer influenza, couldn’t even stand up on Tuesday, much less sit up.  So boring to be sick, seems like I’ve been sick that too much this winter. Enough already.

One of the best talks at IFAAB (Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior) was from Dr. Anneke Lisberg whose dissertation was on scent marking and urine investigation in dogs. [And was also my Teaching Assistant for several years, a truly great house sitter and now a dear friend and colleague, so am I objective? Not even close. But based on the comments after her talk, I'm quite sure the rest of the group concurs with my assessment.]

Anneke and I talked long and hard about what she should study for her dissertation, and I suggested she look at scent marking, because it seemed we know so little about it. She looked at the literature and was stunned to discover how little research has actually been done on it. Dr. Ian Dunbar did work years ago on scent marking, and found that females did little marking and showed little interest in the urine of others–at least compared to males. However, this work was on beagles who were familiar and housed together. It was a great start, yeah for Ian for doing it when most people didn’t consider dog behavior to be of any interest at all. (I actually had a scientist tell me, immediately after I passed my dissertation defense, that he previously didn’t think you could actually do research on dogs. I replied: “Well, Darwin thought so.  Who are we to quibble?”)

Anneke presented urine-soaked, short wooden stakes to all 4 categories of dogs: intact male, intact female, neutered male and spayed female, and recorded the  behavior of the same 4 categories of dogs allowed to investigate the stakes. Her results will be published soon in Animal Behavior, but in brief, she found that females indeed spent a lot of time investigating the urine of unfamiliar dogs (we are not surprised, are we!), that males investigated the urine of unfamiliar males most, while females were interested in urine from both sexes.

Individuals with the highest base of the tail position (more on that later) spent the least time sniffing the scents, while those with low tail positions spent the most time (risk assessment?). However, dogs with the highest tail base position (which correlated with the dogs most likely to get a tossed food-stuffed toy in a group of dogs) did the most overmarking, or urinating directly over the urine of another dog. In her study, females never overmarked, they did what she terms “adjacent marked” or urinated directly after sniffing the urine of others, but a good 4 to 5 feet away. I’ll tell you more next post about another one of her studies that suggests that ‘overmarking’ and ‘adjacent marking’ are different responses based on different motivations.

I should add here, that haven’t not read Anneke’s dissertation, my old Lassie girl still over marks the urine of one other dog in the house. Right now there’s just Willie, and she literally waits for him to pee, then goes over and urinates directly on top of it. When Pip was alive she did it over Pips’. When I say “Go Pee,” Lassie turns her head toward Willie to track where he is going to go. And yet, if you dropped a chunk of chicken between the two of them, Lassie would defer to Willie.

What does that mean?  Got me, but I’m thrilled that someone is finally doing good science on a very, very interesting and important aspect of canine behavior. I’m so curious about your own experience… tell me what patterns you’ve observed.  If you have a multi-dog household, is there a pattern about who goes where and when?

I’ll write next post about the second phase of her research, and more about some of the other interesting talks. I’ll catch up on answering your comments someday, I promise. Gotta go now to give my students their exam, and then go home to collapse.  (But hey, I’ve read every magazine in the house.. a rare event!)

Oh no, I just erased (as spam) two lovely comments…. SO sorry! If your comment isn’t here, please send again.  Running off to dinner with IFAAB group, will report on day’s talks soon…