Dog Cognition

It seems these days that just about anyone can write a book, put a picture of a dog on the cover, and it will sell to an eagerly awaiting audience of pet lover and dog trainers.   And of course we can all enjoy hearty laughter with a book like Marley and Me by John Grogan.  Those with years of dog experience just slide along as we watch John lead Marley down a path of ever increasing wildness with "Oh no, John - don't do that!" and "I warned you".

But come now and be honest, we've all had easy dogs that won our hearts, those that rescued us, and if you've had enough dogs sooner or later you will get a difficult dog that just challenges in ways we can't seem to find an answer for --- the dog that's got a screw loose.  So it's back to the drawing board (training plans) for some of us.  Sadly for some folks, it's back to the shelter for the dog.   For me, it's back to the pro's for advice.

For me, pros come in many styles.  There are people with a lifetime of experience who have demonstrated skills beyond what others have achieved.  And I've found they usually have special perception of the animal that they are working with.   Another kind of pros are those academically trained, who may earn a living by some aspect of their behavior studies.  And then there are a lot of people in between, combining the advice of many others.

Monty Roberts is this first kind of pro with horses. In his book with From My Hand to Yours.  Lessons from a Lifetime of Training Championship Horses  he first tells you in Chapter 1 The Nature of Equus about how the horse sees his world.  He build from this to communication: listening to the horse's body language and sending signals to the horse.  No wonder he's known as the Horse Whisperer.  And the amazing and generous way in which he has used his skills to build an International Learning Center.  And watching the students at Flag is Up Farm in Solvang CA work a new horse and achieve the first "join-up" is just as amazing.

Inside of a Dog.  What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz is just the kind of book we need to understand what the dog perceives and have a common basis for talking about dogs.   A.H. did her graduate studies at UCSanDiego and is now at the Dept. of Psychology at Barnard.  One of the first thing that A.H. warns us is not to anthropomorphize.  As she says, don't assume sad eyes mean depression and therefore give the dog and antidepressant.  Her book helps us to take a look at the "umvelt" of the dog.  That is, to see the world from the "dog's point of nose".  The dog's world has elements of the past in the form of trace scents mixed with the present.  The meaning of objects in the sense of what they are for is very different to a dog.  So we might well expect the dog to respond differently to them tha we do.   A chair leg is a stick and it is good for chewing, and it is not relevant to supporting a place to sit [my doggie umwelt observation].  Only after a good solid dose of dog sensations, does A.H. tell to go ahead and anthropomorphize with umwelt in mind.

So next time you hear "the dog did it because..."   backup and get into a doggie umwelt and try again.

Wolves - Why not start a blog about dog science with a note about wolves?

Let's start with the wolf.  If for no other reason than the first animal domesticated by mankind was a wolf - or was it a wolf-dog?  It is now believed that domestication occurred sometime between 15,000 and 100,000 years ago, and, finally, DNA studies suggest that it was from wolves.  We can come back to the DNA details at a later issue.  For now lets admit that wolves and other canine relatives have fascinated man for years and continue to do so.  I would be remiss if I didn't confess that I was first thoroughly enthralled with Hope Ryden's story of 2 years observing a coyote family God's Dog: A Celebration of the North American Coyote (original 1975, now reprinted 2005).  Or that I fell in love with White Fang.  Or that my dog is truely fascinated by PBS Nature's In the Valley of the Wolves   http://video.pbs.org/video/1206056119/

For years many dog experts have attributed so-called "alpha" behavior to inherited patterns that come from a wolf.  And more recently, many dog trainers have debated the alpha-dog theory.  But what do most of us really know about wolves?  Personally, I've never spent a day with a wolf.  A college roommate of mine had a German Shepherd mix that was purportedly a 1/4 wolf; and she was a bit aloof - the dog that is - and she rarely barked.   And of course another expert friend of mine said "no-way".  The closest I've ever been to real wolf was last year at the San Diego Zoo.  I had hoped to spend the day watching a pen of wolves, but there was no such exhibit.  The wolf, its calming buddy, a rescued Golden retriever, and of course their handlers were found, by happenstance, out for a walk along the sidewalks near but not quite among the visitors.   Really, I think the Golden was running interference to keep bold visitors like me back a bit from the more shy/nervous wolf.

Fortunately at San Diego Zoo Safari Park (in Escondido) gift shop I did find a wonderful text Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation edited by L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani.  University of Chicago Press 448 pp.  2003.   This book "combines the 350 person-years of research with, and knowledge of, wolves that our authors bring to the project".  This book is excellent for the conditions of the studies and self-evaluation of the meaning of the observations.  The techniques also represent increasing scientific methods of tracking, sampling and analysis.  Yet this book has genuine thought provoking interpretations that perhaps dog folks should also consider.  For just one example, "it is not dominance, but rather the presdipostion of each individual to escalate or reduce conflict in specific social contexts, that is heritable" (on page 55).

What behavioral traits do the wolf and dog share or inherit?  And have some of them been bred out of the dog?  The recent studies of domestication of Siberian foxes to become pets in roughly 16 generations show the remarkably fast change that can be accomplished just through behavioral selection.   https://johnwade.ca/attachments/article/359/russianfoxfarmstudy.pdf  

Is not behavior modification also what we have done with many of our dog breeds?  Is all this diversity and flexibility in the SINES?  http://www.ohmidog.com/2011/11/03/how-did-dogs-get-so-diverse/    Can SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) really make the difference between retrieving, pointing and herding?   http://www.broadinstitute.org/education/high-school-educational-outreach/summer-internship/alison

So much more to learn and to be discovered...