new study on ecollars for training recall, including (perhaps especially) from livestock! and it finds that ecollars, while doing the job, don’t do it any better or faster than either a) the exact same trainers training without ecollars (but with more physical contact) or b) reward based training.
which, as the UK-based authors point out, rather begs the question of why use them at all, if they’re not better than the alternatives and, improperly used, they carry the risk of negatively impacting the dog’s welfare
There are more than 70,000 dog books on Amazon, in every conceivable genre. What do they say about our relationship with these pets?
This is a rather thoughtful run down on how books about dogs have changed the past few years, and the increase in discoveries we are making!
I like this line in the opening paragraphs, “But by the end of the book, Grogan is almost entirely concerned with his Labrador Marley’s interior life — the way he thinks, feels and apprehends the world. “
The theme of books that become available really reflect our better understanding of dogs as we learn more and more about their internal workings, and then how this affects how we can work with them!
I’m sharing this snippet because it goes into some of the topics I’ve decided I will start seriously researching on.
The spate of dog mind-focused books raises the question: After at least 14,000 years of living with dogs, why are we only now getting around to considering what goes on inside their heads? There are many possible explanations, but one is that in the last two decades science has discovered more about dog cognition than in the previous two centuries combined.
From 1900 to 1999, most cognitive researchers dismissed dogs as uninteresting because they believed domestication had led to a hopeless dependence on humans. In 1931, the naturalist Frances Pitt scoffed that dogs lacked intelligence because “the rigorous tests imposed by nature, including that of ability to get a living, have been eliminated by human protection.” In 1971, the veterinarian Michael Fox went so far as to call dogs “Canis over-familiaris,” arguing that domestication had resulted in “psychosomatic symptoms such as depression and anorexia nervosa, asthma, diarrhea, convulsions or paralysis of the hind limbs.”
In the 1950s, cognitive experiments began to show the sophistication of animal intelligence. By the 1980s, a study found that dolphins could mimic computer sounds, then use these new sounds to label real-world objects. Pigeons could categorize objects from two-dimensional photographs.
There is almost nothing about dogs in the cognitive literature from the 1950s all the way to 2000.Then, suddenly, there was an explosion in the field of dog cognition, spanning the fields of psychology, anthropology and neuroscience. The psychologist Alexandra Horowitz’s “Inside of a Dog” (2009) was a landmark, providing crucial insights into how a dog experiences the world. Imagine being four feet closer to the ground, relying on smell at least as much as sight and picking up on every conscious or unconscious gesture of the person you love most. Horowitz manages to answer burning questions without being fanciful; from the point of view of a dog, she writes, “a rose is undistinguished from the rest of the plant matter surrounding it — unless it has been urinated upon by another dog.”
I’ve received a lot of books this year on dogs (primarily about aggression modification and detection) and my past books have primarily been around body/behavioural language and behavioural modification (BAT 2.0 guys!). I want more though, to break out of my “dog niche” so to speak.
Rambling thoughts under the read more
This article gives me a good starting place on cognition resources I can look into. I've been dragging my feet but late last year I decided I really want to work hard at moving forward from being rather traditional and old school into a more modern approach. I especially want to help my dogs to progress to less management and more flexibility in making their own decisions. This has been kind of hard with some of my IRL trainers as they are currently not very interested in trying alternative approaches. Which sucks as previously they had been so open to helping me explore different approaches and angles without fuss, but now they’re going through a really weird cultural shift thing.
So while I learn from them, there’s a lot of having to muddle along on my own. The muddling is going well enough, but inside me is a dog owning perfectionist who strives to be better. But it has also forced me in a way to find new places to train at to expand my skills, and this is being very challenging in a good way (the new advanced offlead lifeskill trust ur dog class, the DA social class, dancing with dogs etc)
Thus, books and research, to broaden my knowledge and skills! Plus, unlike my trainers, I can bookmark books and write on them...
There’s a lot of books to pick from in the link but I think I’m going to start with those that angle to cooporative care. I’ve been dragging my feet on that, but, well, Thistle is only getting older and all the necessary vet trips really did a number on our ability to go to the vet. Shut down and obedient =/= calm or safe :( . Our foundations are slowly recovering but her behaviour about the vet has gone so far back. So I really want to start working on procedures to build her calmness and confidence in this. Obedience positions, behaviour recognition and pressure training isn’t enough - although obviously I do enjoy these they are not enough. We need to dive more into improving her comfort levels and giving her some degree of control and chocie to improve the experience and make a better impact.
The other angle, because who has the attention span to only go one approach? The other angle is I want to learn more about teaching the dogs to communicate choices to me. I only really thought about this last night when looking and the unlikely tricksters. I’m honestly going into this whole horse coat thing with some scepticalness on my part but re-reading the study last night and viewing the recordings they made - I’m cautiously optimistic that this is something we can maybe integrate into our life. I don’t really know much about it at all lmao, I’m treating the horse study as a cooking recipe almost. Following each step one by one.
But if it is something we can teach and achieve, it would be so much better than the current game of charades. (Where they stare at me and I follow them around trying to guess what it is they desire. Thyme is especially good at this and it is hilarious. Thistle...Thistle is not. Thistle will just wait and I have to go off her behaviour and remember to take her out for frequent breaks. On the cranky growling day I basically worked our way through the hierarchy of needs to try and identify what was ‘wrong’. She improved pretty much immediately after having the coat put on. However she does not enjoy the act of putting the coat on so simply holding the coat up does not tell me much.)
This combined with the start/stop button I’ve seen referenced for cooperative care, where the animal can indicate when it’s ready for the unpleasant exercise versus when it needs a break? It would really add an extra layer to our communication.
Although it is definitely stretching my mind to try and comprehend the idea of dogs communicating choices to us in such a way instead of behaviour reading and guessing about needs. My little brain, ouch! Baby steps, definitely need to read more into this.
Definitely going to be a neat exercise. I’ll try to keep my actual posts on that more coherent. This is more excited to be learning ramblings, hah!
Do Human-Grade Dog Foods Improve Dogs' Skin Health?
Human-grade pet foods are becoming increasingly popular. I have written about this category of foods on several occasions and have reviewed several studies of how these food tend perform when fed to dogs.
MILDLY- COOKED, HUMAN-GRADE DOG FOOD
What do we currently know?
To date, we know a few things about human-grade dog foods:
Higher Digestibility Values: Human-grade dog foods are more…
Big dogs face more joint problems if neutered early
Study provides guidance on best age to neuter mixed breeds by weight
Heavier mixed-breed dogs have higher health risks if neutered or spayed early, according to a new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis. The study found mixed-breed dogs weighing more than 44 pounds (19kg) as adults are at higher risk for one or more joint disorders if neutered before 1 year of age. Dogs weighing up to 43 pounds had no increased risk for joint problems. The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science.
My biggest pet peeve when reading research about dogs is the lack of attention paid to breed in most general studies. Like, I understand if you’ve got a large mix of dogs, most of whom might have rescue backgrounds, that breed can be hard to determine but would it really kill you to put that in somewhere? I mean it’s not like particular breeds have different physical structures, genetic pools, or were bred for entirely different things (/sarcasm)
Dogs and humans more similar than we think; Even our gut microbiomes are alike!
Dogs and humans more similar than we think; Even our gut microbiomes are alike!
Dogs and humans more similar than we think; Even our gut microbiomes are alike!
Has anyone ever told you that you look like your dog? Well, dogs and humans may be more similar than we previously thought! Even your gut may be just like your dogs!
We have lived alongside dogs for many years now. At least 20,000 years and probably a lot longer. Dogs have become extremely important to humans, both as…
Photo by Deni Elliott A newly published study finds that dogs pay attention to both the way we talk to them and to what we say. Alex Benjamin and Katie Slocombe’s ‘Who’s a good boy?!’ Dogs prefer naturalistic dog‑directed speech looked at what they term “dog-directed speech,” or DDS, which is similar in tone and affect to baby talk. Their canine test subjects were all adult dog guests of a…
We love our dogs and want to give them as happy a life as possible. But just what makes dogs happy? We asked Dr Melissa Starling to give us some tips on making dogs happy…
Making dogs happy
We dog owners are attached to our dogs. We love them like family. So, it’s no great surprise that we want our dogs to be happy, just like we would want our human loved ones to be happy above all else. Our…
