Want the Truth Ask your Dog!

Your dog loves it when you pet him, right? He loves the kids to pet and hug him too? Well maybe he does and maybe he doesnt. Maybe he likes some sorts of attention at some times and not at others. We have posted many times in our blog and on our Facebook page that dogs dont like hugs and kisses, especially from children. This has generated irate comments and even hate mail from people who are offended at the notion that dogs do not always just naturally love kids or love attention from their people.

If you want to know the truth about this from your dogs point of view, then ask him! Here is a great video that shows the difference between a dog who says "no" to petting and dog that says "yes". A dog that consistently says "no" and is ignored and forced to tolerate unwanted attention may eventually get to the point of growling or biting. A dog that invites attention and enjoys it is much less likely to bite.

Visit the Doggone Safe website to learn more about the signs that dogs give when they are uncomfortable.

Learn more  about dog body language with our online course, Basic Dog Body Language (qualifies for CEUs from major dog training certification organizations)

Be sure to visit the blog by Eileen, the author of the video for more insights!

Thanks to Jennifer Shryock of Family Paw Parent Education for bringing this video to our attention.

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Dog training How to practice your timing

Hi Mia!

I don’t even know where to begin. You sent another round of Tim Tams, and I am in chocolate heaven (the only trouble is that they bring out the hoarder in me, and I easily tell little white lies like, “They’re not open yet.” Typically I share my bounty, but this, not so much).

I adore Champagne Cartel! Great voices and a wide variety of topics. I’m very pleased you are part of that gaggle of women. You had a great Q&A with Amy McDonald on Everyday Yoga, and now because of you, I will keep worms.

Go Go Go!
It seems like you and I are in parallel lands of, “Go - Go - Go!” Julie Dog Updates:

• CHASER: Got to spend time with Chaser (Facebook/Twitter), the wordy dog, and I’ll report more on that soon. She and I see eye to eye (or maybe, I should say, she wants the ball behind my back).

Read this book

• CONFERENCES: Just came back from ISAZ and IAHAIO in Chicago. It was a check plus time with Anthrozoology and human-animal interaction researchers. Hal Herzog (Twitter), author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals is Professor of Psychology at Western Carolina University. He received the 2013 Distinguished Scholars Award. His talk explored the ultimate reasons behind pet keeping -- more on that another time (but in the meantime, his book should be read by all). Over at #SciAmBlogs, I took a moment to explore what Anthrozoology is all about (not the study of Ants, apparently). I got a little pronunciation assistance from your PhD supervisor. ;)

• MORE CONFERENCE!!: This weekend, I’m back on a plane to Boulder, CO for the 50th Annual Animal Behavior Society conference. On Sunday, July 28 I’m speaking at the Companion Animal Day at UC-Boulder. The topic: Creating Quality Lives for Dogs and Cats Through the Science of Animal Behavior. The event is free and open to the public! Here’s the lineup (who wins for longest title?):

- Patricia McConnell, Bring Out Your Inner Dr. Doolittle: Communication and Quality of Life
 
- Suzanne Hetts and Dan Estep, Can We Still Be Friends?: Helping Dogs and Cats Get Along
 
- Marc Bekoff, Animals at Play: What We’ve Learned From Dogs and Their Wild Relatives
 
- Julie Hecht, Get Into the Head of The Dog in Your Bed, and You’ll Both Be Happier: Updates on Canine Cognition Research
 
- Pamela Reid, When Dogs and Cats Have it Bad and It Ain’t Good: Behavior Rehabilitation of Abused Pets
 

Do you get the timing right?
Speaking of excitement, people were incredibly interested in Clare’s research on dog training!! The feedback on the DYBID Facebook was tremendous. Her main finding was, “To teach a new behavior, be fast on your feedback!” 
 
Masters research conducted by Lindsay Wood, now at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, had similar findings. In her research, when a dog was acquiring complex behaviors, a click was a better marker than a verbal stimulus such as, “Good.” 

Wood suggests, “The facilitation of learning provided by the clicker bridging stimulus has important implications for animal training, especially when professionals are confronted with time constraints. The potential of the clicker stimulus to improve animal learning throughout the entire process of a behavior may not only increase the rate of behavior acquisition, but also reduce animal frustration and further enhance the relationship between trainer and animal.”

MANY PEOPLE working with non-human (and human!) animals get their click on! The Shedd Aquarium, yes aqua-rium, recently added a dog show with shelter dogs trained via positive reinforcement, and I assume clicker training. 

Ken Ramirez, VP of animal collections and training, explains why they added a dog show: "We also want people to see that the techniques used to care for our dolphins, our wales and our sharks -- those training techniques can be useful tools in having a better behaved pet at home." 



How to work on YOUR training
The techniques of learning and training dont just apply to dogs. People can practice their training techniques with loads of other species like chickens and guinea pigs.

Chicken Camp, Terry Ryan



Guinea Pig Camp, Roger Abrantes



Well, thats all she wrote! Lets hear whats on your plate!!

Julie

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No Dogs in the Babys Room!

By Hannah Branigan MS, CPDT-KA, KPA CTP


To keep everyone safe, we are establishing safe spaces for both the dogs and the baby. The dogs wont be allowed in the babys room, and the baby wont be allowed in the dog room. This will give the baby a safe, dog-free place to play and I wont have to worry about baby toys becoming dog toys.

We will use baby gates to help control access to parts of the house, especially while the baby is young, but its a good idea to have some training in place as well.

I want waiting outside the room to be easy and stress-free for the dogs, and I really want to avoid using any aversives on the dogs with the baby around, because I dont want any negative associations to form. So Im using clicker training and positive reinforcement to teach them to stay in the hall and not follow me in. Im not using a cue, because I want the behavior to be automatic, so I dont have to remember to say wait every time (and because I know for sure that my husband will forget).

More about Hannah and Wonderpups Training and Behavior

Obedience FUNdamentals DVD

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Ask scientific questions about dogs

Source

Hi Mia!

Glad to hear your meta-analysis pool is filled with data, or better said, 5,000+ salivary cortisol samples, translating to roughly 1.3 gallons of canine saliva. Never did I think I would see a sentence written about that much saliva, from dogs or any other species. 

Its amazing what we can learn just from studying dog spit. Somebody, somewhere had to think to themselves, "Hey! Why dont we examine hormone levels in spit?" And then, they had to create a system for doing so (and now, this field of research has gone so far as to have Spit Camp, where people learn how to collect saliva samples). This all kind of leads into what Ive recently been thinking about... 

Science = Questioning
One of the challenges of science is to question what we already think to be true, to challenge what is possible.

Neuroscientist Beau Lotto recently reminded me of this when I was watching his 2012 TED talk. He begins:

TED Talk Science is for everyone

“Perception is grander than our experience. The brain takes meaningless information and makes meaning out of it. Which means, we never see what’s there, we never see information, we only ever see what was useful to see in the past.

Perception underpins everything, our hopes, our dreams. If perception is grounded in our history it means we are only ever responding to what we’ve done before. But that creates a tremendous problem. Because how can we ever see differently?

All new perceptions begin the same way. They begin with a question.”

New perceptions begin with a question.

Questioning is especially relevant in The Age of Dog where so many of us wake up to a dog’s nose pressed into our face, and we spend countless hours telling tales about the dogs in our lives. And outside of our own experiences, we are bombarded by advertisements telling us, “This is who dogs are” followed by, “And this is what they want, so buy THIS product.”

As applied researchers, we ask scientific questions about our perceptions of dogs and the stories we tell about them. To name a few possible questions: Are we able to visually recognize a dog’s dominant breed? What is the welfare of working dogs? What are the mechanics behind dogs drinking water? What does the “guilty look” mean for dogs? Do dogs have paw preferences and if so, what might that mean? Do all dogs share the same rates of behavioral development?

By asking questions, we are trying to unearth dog perspectives and dog storylines.

Video about ScienceOnline Teen 2013

ScienceOnline Teen!
Which is why I am incredibly excited to participate in ScienceOnline Teen on April 13th (connection coming soon).

Beau Lotto reminds us that young people, in particular, are pretty awesome at asking questions, and significant questions at that.

ScienceOnline Teen is an “unconference conference”, where teens and people involved in science and scientific inquiry coming together “to build connections between students & teachers and the online scientific community and discuss how new media is changing the world of science.”

My hope is to remind teens that we can ask scientific questions not just about atoms and cancer cells but also about the species we interact with on a daily basis.

My short presentation at ScienceOnline Teen is Dogs: Science in Your Living Room. Sure, everyone blogs, tweets and posts pictures of cute dogs, but can our interest in dogs be part of an actual learning experience? The session discusses how a well-known and often beloved companion species, the domestic dog, can help everyone learn about science and scientific principles.

Your post last week on meta-analysis of salivary cortisol research is a prime example of the interplay between learning about dogs and learning about experimental design and data collection.

I’m also participating in the Women in Science Panel by Maia Winstock with Hilda Bastian, Krystal D’Costa, Cynthia Duggan, Delaram Kahrobaei, Gabrielle Rabinowitz, and Jayne Raper (Bios found here). Based on my early titrating challenges and fear of fire (and the Bunsen burner), its cool to see how much can changed.

Do you have a scientific question about dogs?
Which leads to my last thought: people of any age can ask scientific questions. So, people out there in Internet Land. What scientific questions about dogs do you have?

Bye for now!

Julie 

More reading
Cobb, M. 2013. Thinking laterality: steps, jumps and wonder-whorls. DYBID
Cobb, M. 2013. The heat(map) is on... The colours of canine welfare. DYBID
Cobb, M. 2013. Throw another dog in the (data) pool. DYBID
Hecht, J. 2012. The “guilty look” in dogs! [from a new angle]. Dog Spies
Hecht, J. 2012. What kinds of dogs are troubled by fireworks & what to do about it. DYBID
McConnell, P. 2009. Podcast report; Breed ban info; MARS Wisdom Panel. The Other End of the Leash

© 2013 Julie Hecht

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