Introducing Your Dog to a Cat

By Suzanne Alicie

Some people are “cat people” while others are “dog people,” but what about those who love both? It’s always been a common belief that dogs and cats do not get along. In fact, many dogs and cats can be great friends. Ideally, puppies and kittens are introduced when young and grow up together. However, if that isn’t the situation and you want to introduce your dog to a cat in the hopes of adding a feline presence to your home, there are certain steps to take.

The first thing to understand is that both dogs and cats are territorial, and a dog that lives in your home will see the cat as an intruder. If the cat runs, then it is prey; this could get really messy if you don’t take precautions and introduce both animals slowly.  Keep in mind that the cat is not only meeting a larger, louder animal with teeth and claws who doesn’t want her there, but she is also being introduced into a new place and will be nervous and skittish.

To assist you with this introduction and prevent injury to the dog, cat and people, there are a few things you’ll need to have. The first is a secure cat carrier, preferably with holes too small for the cat to get a paw out. You will also need a harness, leash and muzzle for your dog as well as a second person to help with the introductions. Don’t forget to have some CANIDAE TidNips™ treats on hand. Reward the animals throughout the process for their good behavior and be sure to praise them both. Your voice will be calming and help both animals deal with the introduction.

Place the cat in the carrier and harness your dog before attaching the muzzle. Keep in mind you are dealing with nature: dogs bite, cats scratch…so do as much as possible to prevent any injury to either animal.

Once both animals are situated, choose an area to place the cat carrier and slowly allow your dog to sniff and inspect the carrier. Scent is very important to dogs, so introducing the scent of the cat to your dog first is a good idea. The cat may hiss and puff up its fur. This is a defensive measure, and by having the cat inside the carrier you’re saving your dog’s nose from those dangerous claws.  Allow both animals to smell and get used to one another. When your dog settles down and is willing to lie down or wander away from the carrier and when the cat stops hissing, that is an indicator they are accustomed to the scent and presence of one another.

However, this doesn’t mean they are ready to be friends! Close the doors to the room you are in so both animals are contained. Make sure someone has a very tight hold on the dog’s leash and that the muzzle is secure before you open the door to the cat carrier. Step several feet away from the carrier and allow the cat to come out on her own. Your dog may lunge toward the cat, but it is important to keep him back and allow the cat to wander around the room without the dog getting close enough to get swatted. This enables both the dog and cat to realize that there is another animal in the room, and the cat can explore the new area without anyone getting hurt.

The more trained your dog is and the better he follows commands, the better the introduction will go.  Learn more about dog training in this article on 11 Basic Commands by Linda Cole.

Sadly, there is a time when your dog will probably come into contact with claws and hissing. It’s almost unavoidable because as soon as the dog gets close enough to sniff and explore the cat, the cat will defend its personal space. Be patient and allow the animals to get accustomed to one another in a controlled environment.

It can take several days before you feel comfortable having the cat and dog in the same room without the dog being harnessed and even longer before you feel comfortable taking off the muzzle. When you do take off the muzzle, be sure to have someone ready to grab the cat and get it to safety in case the dog attacks. Before you plan to bring a cat into your home with a dog, make sure you have a way to keep them separated until they become used to each other.

While most dogs and cats will adapt, there are cases where a dog just can’t get over the urge to chase the cat, and there are cats whose nerves just can’t handle being around a dog. Observe your pets and make sure they are both happy, feel safe and are comfortable in their home. In cases where the animals just can’t adapt, it is important to find a safe home for one of the pets.  Being a responsible pet owner means preventing injury and unhappiness in your pets at all costs. A proper introduction is imperative if you wish to have a multi-species home.

Top photo by fazen
Bottom photo by Michelle Tribe

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Why Was a Dog Honored as Cat of the Year

By Linda Cole

Mozart, one of my cats, loves Dozer, a foster dog weve been caring for. Mozart follows Dozer around, giving him love bites, rubbing against him and standing on his hind legs to give him hugs. Its not uncommon for animals to form close bonds with different species. In 1998, a dog named Ginny was honored as “Cat of the Year” by the Westchester Feline Club, sponsor of the annual Westchester Cat Show, because of an extraordinary desire she had to rescue stray cats in desperate need of help.

Ginny and her three pups were discovered locked inside the closet of an abandoned apartment. She and her pups were taken to a shelter, but when vets saw her, they were afraid she was too far gone to be saved. They concluded it would be kinder to put her down. But something made them change their mind, and they decided she should be given a chance to recover, and did what they could to help her. Ginny did recover, and she and her pups were put up for adoption.

Philip Gonzalez had been wrestling with depression after he was injured on the job while working as a steamfitter in Manhattan. His right arm had been severely injured in the accident and he could barely use it. A determined neighbor told Gonzalez he should adopt a dog from the local shelter. He finally gave in and agreed. As they looked over the dogs at the shelter, a purebred Doberman caught Gonzalezs eye. But instead of pulling the Doberman out for Gonzalez to take out for a walk, a shelter employee handed him a leash attached to Ginny, a two year old Siberian Husky/Schnauzer mix, and invited him to walk her first.

Gonzalez wasnt happy; he wanted the Doberman, not some scruffy looking mixed breed, but he did what the worker asked. He tried to hurry Ginny along so he could get back to the Doberman. Now, you can call it fate or something else, but Ginny wasnt going to be rushed. She sat down in front of Gonzalez and refused to move. Sometimes its the dog that picks us. As he stood looking down into her eyes, something tugged at his heart and he forgot about the Doberman. He walked out of the shelter with Ginny. Gonzalez didnt know at the time how that little dog would change his life, and the lives of countless homeless cats.

It wasnt long, however, before Gonzalez discovered that Ginny had a unique ability to find stray and feral cats in peril. Three days after he brought her home, Ginny suddenly darted down an ally to rescue a kitten being abused by some men. She had a remarkable instinct to locate injured, sick and disabled cats living in feral colonies, in abandoned buildings, alleys and around construction sites. She could locate kittens and cats trapped in drain pipes, dumpsters, glove compartments in cars, and in hard to find places. She even dug through a pile of broken glass, ignoring her cut and bleeding paws to reach a kitten trapped under the glass. An astounded vet said the injured kitten would have died if Ginny hadnt found her.

The cats Ginny searched for, and found, were trapped in life and death struggles, and she was the only one who heard their cries for help. She led Gonzalez to them so he could rescue them, and he followed Ginny as she searched for cats in need.

Cats living in feral colonies are skittish. They dont give their trust to a human feeding them let alone a dog. The amazing thing about Ginny was her uncanny ability to instill calm and trust in a colony as she searched out the cats that needed medical attention for one reason or another. The cats acted like they knew her, and showed no signs of fear. Ginny sought out cats that were sick or injured, blind, deaf or had other disabilities. Somehow, she knew if they werent found, they would die.

No one really knows why or how Ginny was able to locate cats in peril. Animal behaviorists believe its possible her maternal instinct was overactive, and thats how she was able to create trust among the cats. Maybe it was because Ginny had been a stray herself, trapped in an abandoned apartment building trying to feed three hungry pups while she was starving. Gonzalez put it more simply as “her radar of the heart.”

Gonzalez estimates he and Ginny rescued 900 to 1,000 lost and feral cats, many of them disabled or close to death. Thats why Ginny was honored by the Westchester Feline Club as their pick for Cat of the Year in 1998. She risked her life at times to locate kittens and cats in dangerous situations.

Angels come in many shapes and sizes. Philip Gonzalez adopted Ginny in 1990 and found his calling because of her, and she saved stray and feral cats that society had turned its back on. Ginny did what she did on her own and without any training. She died August 25, 2005 at the age of 17.

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Cat and Dogs seeking solutions with sniffing canines and science

Hi Mia and Julie, 

First of all, I LOVE your blog! 

After meeting at SPARCS this past summer (summer for us in North America.. I take it summer is just beginning in Australia!), I’ve followed it closely. 

You do amazing things for the promotion of  canine science. Serious love.

A bit of background for the readers: I’m currently doing my PhD at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, under the supervision of Dr. Simon Gadbois. 

Dr. Gadbois has an amazing amount of knowledge and experience in the science of sniffing (just check out Gadbois & Reeve, 2014 link below!). 

He’s trained sniffer dogs for the conservation of ribbon snakes and wood turtles, to track coyotes, and to detect invasive pests in lumber. He and I have taken on a different type of project and are studying the intricacies of biomedical detection dogs, specifically, the very interesting phenomenon of Diabetic Alert Dogs. 

Cat Reeve at #SPARCS2014 where she won the Best Emerging Researcher prize

I say interesting because there’s anecdotal evidence suggesting that some dogs alert their owners to hypoglycemic events (low blood sugar). In 2008, Deborah Wells published a series of case studies where dogs were reported as signalling (barking, licking, pawing etc. the individual) while their owners were awake, while they were sleeping, and even when their owners were in a different room with the door closed! And this is with no previous training! 

Isn’t this fantastic! Severe hypoglycemic events can be extremely dangerous for individuals with diabetes. If not treated, they can lead to seizures, comas, and even death. The fact that dogs may be able to alert an individual before a serious hypoglycemic event means less worry about hypoglycaemia unawareness, and blood sugar dropping over night when individuals are unconscious.

Given that dogs are signalling through closed doors, it is assumed that the dogs smell something that alerts them to a change in the physiology of their owner (as opposed to behavioural cues, as is believed to be the case with seizure alert dogs). There are many companies that have taken advantage of this supposed ability, and have trained Diabetic Alert Dogs (DADs) to sell to individuals with diabetes. 

In my own searches, I have found no company that publicly provides information as to how they train their dogs. However, according to recent studies (see Gonder-Frederick et al., 2013 and Rooney et al., 2011 below) these trained DADs dogs contribute greatly to the families of individuals’ with diabetes; they signal consistently and, consequently, significantly reduce the number of hypoglycemic events an individual experiences. 

Now, if it is in fact an olfactory cue that dogs use to identify a drop in blood sugar in their owners, one would expect that if you presented one of these trained DADs with the “scent” of hypoglycemia without the individual present (just like having the owner with diabetes on the other side of a door), the dog would still signal. 

Dehlinger and colleagues recently tested three DADs in a lab setting, presenting the dogs with human biological samples that were obtained identically to the way the samples used to train the dogs were obtained. In this study, none of the three dogs could pick out a hypoglycemic sample from a normoglycemic sample! DARN!

So what is it that these dogs smell? How is it that some DADs are accurate at signalling hypoglycaemia but evidently cannot signal in the lab? 

Enter ME! This is what I’m trying to figure out!

One possibility is that, at least in the study outlined above, the use of sweat samples was misguided. Maybe the volatiles are more strongly present in an individual’s breath. I am currently in the process of testing whether there is one channel more likely than others to expel the volatiles needed to detect a change in blood sugar, i.e. breath, sweat, or saliva. 

So far we’ve found that, after being trained to detect extremely low saliency scents, our dogs can detect and discriminate between human breath samples with incredible ease and accuracy (see the video of Koda discriminating between breath samples). 

Little Koda discriminating between breath samples. The jar that has the check mark on it is the target sample. The jar with the x+ is a different breath sample. When Koda first enters the room, he smells a jar that is the “sample” (it matches the target sample)... This is the smell we want him to find amongst the three jars that are closer to the camera. He chooses the right one!

Preliminary tests with patient samples suggest that our dogs can also tell the difference between breath samples taken from the same individual when their blood sugar was low, when it was normal, and when it was high (unpublished). 

Also, it’s possible that in the Dehlinger et al. (2013) study, the sample collection procedure was simply not sufficient enough to contain the volatiles produced during a hypoglycemic event. With the help of a fantastic chemist at Dalhousie (Dr. Peter Wentzell), we have perfected a procedure that coats cotton balls in silicone oil. This is believed to help contain the volatiles through the *magic of chemistry.  

*may actually be science, not magic - check with the chemists

Another potential is that these DADs are simply responding to a general stress response in the body. It’s possible that DADs (and untrained dogs who signal to their owners) are picking up on the physiological change associated with stress (changes in cortisol, adrenaline etc.). Kind of how people say animals can smell when you’re scared. 

If this is truly what’s happening, you would expect to see DADs giving a lot of false alarms. 

And in fact, personal communication with friends of friends who own DADs tell me that their DADs alert to not only hypoglycemic events, but to asthma attacks, anxiety attacks, etc. If you read carefully, few studies ask owners of DADs if their dog gives a lot of false alarm signals (dog signals to their owner and after the owner checks their blood sugar, they discover that they are not low). 

Isn’t this fascinating? 

The dogs I work with are incredible (shout out to the amazing owners that let me work with their dogs every week), and have incredible work ethic and sniffers. 

Our dogs are extremely motivated to work (because we make it super fun!). This is Nutella on her “break”. She doesn’t want a break. She wants to keep working! She’s whining and pawing at the door of the work room.

With the assistance of these amazing dogs, hopefully Dr. Gadbois and myself will be able to shed light on how exactly DADs do their job in the near future - Ill let you know how we go!


Cat Reeve
PhD Candidate
Dalhousie University
CANADA

Follow Cat on Twitter

Follow the Dalhousie Canid Behaviour Research Team on Facebook

Check out #DogsOfDal on Instagram

Further reading:

Brown S.W. & Strong V. (2001). The use of seizure-alert dogs, Seizure, 10 (1) 39-41. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/seiz.2000.0481 

Dehlinger, K., Tarnowski, K., House, J.L., Los, E., Hanavan, K., Bustamante, B., Ahmann, A.J., & Ward, W.K. (2013). Can trained dogs detect a hypoglycemic scent in patients with Type 1 Diabetes? Diabetes Care (Observations), 36, 98-99. 

Fier, B.M. (2004). Morbidity of hypoglycaemia in type 1 diabetes. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 65, 47-52. 

Gadbois, S., & Reeve, C. (2014). Canine Olfaction: Scent, Sign and Situation. In A.  Horowitz (ed.). Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior. New York: Springer. 

Gonder-Frederick L., D. Warren, K. Vajda & J. Shepard (2013). Diabetic Alert Dogs: A Preliminary Survey of Current Users, Diabetes Care, 36 (4) e47-e47. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/dc12-1998  

Rooney N.J., Morant, S. & Guest, C. (2013). Investigation into the Value of Trained Glycaemia Alert Dogs to Clients with Type I Diabetes, PLoS ONE, 8 (8) e69921. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069921

Matyka K.A. (2002). Sweet dreams? - nocturnal hypoglycemia in children with type 1 diabetes, Pediatric Diabetes, 3 (2) 74-81. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1034/j.1399-5448.2002.30203.x   

Wells D.L., Lawson S.W. & Siriwardena A.N. Canine responses to hypoglycemia in patients with type 1 diabetes., Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.), PMID: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19040375

© Cat Reeve | Do You Believe in Dog? 2014

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Preventing dog bites when you dont have a hero cat

(source)

Hey Julie!

So much going on I need to take three deep breaths to calm down!

Firstly - we have a winner! Actually - thanks to the awesome crew at SPARCS, we have two! Very excited to meet Marsha P and Kristi M at #SPARCS2014 and want to thank all the excellent people who responded to our giveaway shoutout on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. We hope those of your who werent successful will consider still coming along or joining us on the livestream broadcast.

Secondly - I loved learning about the differences in UK and US shelter workers perceptions of pit bulls and all the associated bits and pieces that went along with that in our latest guest post by Dr Christy Hoffman. Really, really interesting research and I look forward to the next piece of the puzzle (aka new science) in that area.

Thirdly - its dog bite prevention week in the USA right now! We cant all own Tara the Hero Cat (and to be fair, as much as she is worthy of her notoriety and 20million+ hits on the viral video showcasing her ninja skills, she didnt actually prevent the bite - although Im pretty confident she helped prevent it being a whole lot worse). If you somehow missed what on earth Im talking about - check out this clip of amazing Tara (but a warning, it does show security camera footage of a child being attacked by a dog and the subsequent wounds):

Which brings us back to Dog Bite Prevention Week. We dont have a week like this in Australia, so I did some web trawling to check out what you guys have going on over there. 

The AVMA have put up a whole lot of great information and resources about dog bite prevention, including this neat summary infographic:

I was really pleased to see this analysis of information about the role of breed in dog bite risk and prevention, which reminded me of this piece on The Conversation by researcher Dr Rachel Casey from Bristol University in the UK, who has been part of a team investigating aggressive behaviour in dogs.

The broader research in this area (see below for references) highlights similarities across Australia, the UK and the US with most serious dog bites occurring to children by a known dog in a familiar area without direct adult supervision at the time of the attack. But of course - as Hero Cat Tara has shown us this week, not all dogs stick to these trends.

It seems that there are many commonalities to serious dog bites that we can all be aware of to help reduce the risk, given that any dog can bite:

• Supervise children <14yo around dogs, even known dogs
• Dont try to pat a dog you dont know, even if it is on the other side of a fence
• Make sure your dog is well socialised and trained in basic commands
• Keep your dog healthy
• Teach your children to be mindful and careful of their actions around dogs, especially when the dog is tied up, eating or sleeping
• If you are threatened by a dog, remain still and calm with your hands balled by your sides - dont run
• If you are attacked by a dog, curl up in a ball and protect your face

Im off to reinforce messages of safe dog interacting with my pre-school aged daughter now - hope you have a great week. 

Only one month til #SPARCS2014! Squee!

Mia

 

Further reading:

Meints K. & de Keuster T. (2009). Brief Report: Dont Kiss a Sleeping Dog: The First Assessment of "The Blue Dog" Bite Prevention Program, Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 34 (10) 1084-1090. DOI: 10.1093/jpepsy/jsp053

Schalamon J., Ainoedhofer H., Singer G., Petnehazy T., Mayr J., Kiss K. & Höllwarth M.E. (2006) Analysis of dog bites in children who are younger than 17 years., Pediatrics, PMID: 16510617 

Keuster T.D., Lamoureux J. & Kahn A. (2006). Epidemiology of dog bites: A Belgian experience of canine behaviour and public health concerns, The Veterinary Journal, 172 (3) 482-487. DOI: 10.1016/j.tvjl.2005.04.024 

Langley R.L. (2009). Human Fatalities Resulting From Dog Attacks in the United States, 1979–2005, Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 20 (1) 19-25. DOI: 10.1580/08-WEME-OR-213.1 

Ozanne-Smith J. (2001)  Dog bite and injury prevention--analysis, critical review, and research agenda, Injury Prevention, 7 (4) 321-326. DOI: 10.1136/ip.7.4.321

Thompson P. (1997). The public health impact of dog attacks in a major Australian city., The Medical Journal of Australia, 167 (3) 129-132. PMID: 9269266 

© Do You Believe in Dog? 2014

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Science wants to know about the dog in your bed

Guest post by: Dr Bradley Smith BPsych(Hons) PhD 

Hi Mia and Julie,

Out of all the potential sleeping places in the house, I’m pretty sure your four-legged companion would prefer to sleep in your bed! Does yours?

The decision to let your pet into your bed is a topic that often divides owners, but it might just be more common than you think. Around half of pet owners sleep alongside their pets. The luckiest seem to be dogs (although Great Danes probably miss out here) and cats. It is believed that around 40-50% of pet owners sleep alongside their pets - many of whom, go to extreme lengths to accommodate them (like the guy below). 

Yet for such a common practice, we know relatively little about how and why people do it, or the implications. Do dog and cat owners jeopardise their sleep quality to accommodate their animal companions in their bed or bedroom? Think about when your dog needs to go out for a pee at 2am, or wakes you before your alarm goes off in the morning because they are ready to play, or hungry for breakfast. Or what about the point in the night when the cat decides your face is the most comfortable place to sleep? After all, dogs and cat have completely different sleep needs and circadian rhythms to humans, and are much more sensitive to stimuli, even when asleep. 

A lot of the information that exists on this topic tends to focus on the health and hygiene implications (e.g. transfer of diseases, asthma and allergies). This is something I can related to. The day my wife and I watched our border collie roll around in fresh poo was the day we knew she was never going to join us in our bed…ever! But in reality, there is no real health risks, so long as you keep your pet clean and healthy.

I have been involved in several studies with colleague of mine, Dr Kirrilly Thompson, seeking to gain an understanding of this topic. First, in a survey of the sleep behaviours of 10,000 Australians, we gained some preliminary insight. We found that around 1 in 10 Australians bed-shared with their pet (this excluded those that allow their animals to sleep on the bedroom floor). 

We found 3 ways that human sleep practices were impacted:

1. It took pet bed-sharers longer than non-pet bed-sharers to get to sleep 
2. Pet bed-sharers woke up more tired, and 
3. Pet bed-sharers were more likely to be woken during the night from dogs barking and animal noises.

It seems that there is a lot to this relationship, and many people are willing to make sacrifices to their own sleep. Maybe its because our pets provide us with a sense of security and comfort, or perhaps it’s the only way to keep the animal from causing more problems!

In a follow-up study, with our honours student Peta Hazelton, we conducted the first in-depth look into human-dog co-sleeping. The study, which included an Australian only sample, revealed the rate of human-dog co-sleeping was high (69%) amongst the 1,328 dog owners we sampled.

The most common dog sleeping location was in the bedroom, on top of the covers (34%), followed by in the bedroom on the floor (22%), in the house but not in the bedroom (21%), in the bed and under the covers (13%), and 10% of dogs slept outside. Heat map images revealed when two people are in a double (or larger) bed, dogs frequently slept between, or at the feet of couple. When one person is in a double (or larger) bed, dogs generally slept at chest level, presumably opposite participants. For those in a single bed, the dog often slept on the floor beside the bed.

So why do dog owners choose to bed share? 

The study revealed that peoples motivations to co-sleep are diverse, with responses including for dog behavioural issues (barking or destructive behaviours if not in the bedroom), health reasons (needed to keep seizure alert dog nearby), owner’s attitude (viewing the dog as a family member or ‘pack’), factors out of their control (participant’s human sleeping partner or the dog made the decision), logistics (nowhere else for the dog to sleep), routine or habit (not wanting to disrupt the dog’s nightly routine), and becoming dependant on the dog’s presence to sleep (as well as feeling the dog did not disrupt sleep, therefore no need to alter the arrangement).

But not all dog owners felt the same, with many reasons given as to why they chose not to co-sleep with their dog. These included, dog behavioural issues (wanting to avoid the dog developing dominant or dependent behaviour), health (co-sleeping would provoke allergies or is unhygienic), disruptive behaviours (the dog is too restless), interpersonal relationships (human sleeping partner would not allow it or it would impede intimacy), dog characteristics (size of the dog), owner’s attitude (the dog doesn’t belong in the house), and logistics (owning too many dogs to co-sleep).  

Location of dog’s sleeping position (chest) for participants that slept on a double, queen or king size bed and two people in the bed, n = 517

In the end, co-sleeping (with whatever species) naturally disturbs our sleep, yet people continue to do it. But given all the health benefits of pet ownership, the good certainly outweighs the bad. It’s up to the individual owner whether they choose to co-sleep with their animal/s, or not.

We are currently in the process of conducting another study (with our honours student Jessica Mack), this time focussing on the impact of co-sleeping on sleep quality and quantity. 

If you are one of the many dog owners that bed-share with your dog, we would love if you could complete our online survey and share it with others who might be interested.

Access the survey here: tinyurl.com/humandogcosleeping

Tell us - where did your dog sleep last night?

Dr Bradley Smith BPsych(Hons) PhD 

Lecturer & Senior Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Appleton Institute, School of Human Health & Social Sciences 

CQUniversity Adelaide, Australia

Email:  b.p.smith@cqu.edu.au
Twitter: @howlingdingo
Web:  www.howlingdingo.com.au 

If you found this interesting, you may also enjoy our previous guest post by Bradley Smith: Take a walk on the wild side: Dingo science, or see all of our guest contributors.

Further information:

Thompson, K., & Smith, B. (2014). Should we let sleeping dogs lie…with us? Synthesizing the literature and setting the agenda for research on human-animalco-sleeping practices. Humanimalia, 6 (1), 114-127. 

Smith, B., Thompson, K., Clarkson, L., Dawson, D. (2014). The prevalence and implicationsof human-animal co-sleeping in an Australian sample. Anthrozoös, 27 (4), 543–551.

There is a Channel 7 Today Tonight segment relating to human-animal co-sleeping that aired on Jan 29, 2015:

 © 2015 Bradley Smith | Do You Believe in Dog?

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Do As I Do Copy Cat Social Imitation in Dog Training

Join us for another guest post, this time from Claudia Fugazza of the Family Dog Project in Budapest. Claudias here to discuss her recent publication in Applied Animal Behaviour Science on the efficiency of new methods in dog training.

Hi Mia and Julie,

Formal training methods used until now rely mainly on the well-known rules of individual associative learning. These methods work perfectly well for a very wide range of animals — pigeons, rats, dogs and even crabs — and human and non-human animals can learn by ‘click and treat,’ as noted in the popular training book by Karen Pryor.

However, recent research has found substantial evidence that dogs could be predisposed to acquire information socially via the ‘Do as I do’ method. Do as I Do is a relatively new training method for people to use, based on dogs’ social cognitive skills, particularly on their imitative ability. 

With this training technique, dogs learn new behaviors by observing and copying their handler. The dog is a copycat. This method relies on social learning, and it was recently introduced in the applied field of dog training. 

As this method has started spreading in the dog training world, we felt that its efficiency and efficacy needed scientific testing. We were also wanting to know whether this method would be more or less efficient than other current training methods in training for particular behaviors.

We expected that dogs would more easily copy object-related actions from a human demonstrator so we tested dogs’ efficiency in this kind of tasks. To do this, I travelled across Italy and the UK with my video-cameras as well as a heavy Ikea cabinet filled with objects (you can imagine the weird looks I got from security personal at checkpoints!). I used these objects to test dogs learning to open or close drawers and lockers, pick up items from it etc. Since training methods can be affected by the skills of the trainer, only experienced dog-owners pairs who achieved a certificate either for the ‘Do as I do’ method or for shaping / clicker training were included in the study. Each pair was tested using ‘his’ method for teaching three different object-related actions in three testing sessions.

We expected that the ‘Do as I do’ method would prove more efficient for teaching complex tasks, compared to the shaping method that relies on individual learning. This expectation comes from what we know in humans: we tend to rely more on social learning when required to learn something difficult.

Our research found that the ‘Do as I do’ method proved more efficient for teaching dogs complex tasks, like close a drawer, open a locker and pick up an item that was inside (i.e., the time needed by the owner to obtain the first correct performance of the predetermined action was shorter with the ‘Do as I do’ method compared to shaping). We did not find a significant difference in the efficiency of the methods for teaching dogs simple tasks like knocking over a bottle or ringing a bell.

Now that we know a bit more on how to efficiently teach complex object-related actions, we are curious to know what happens when we want to teach different kind of complex actions, like body movements. We also want to know whether introducing social learning in dog training could have an effect on learning cues for trained action. 

We are aware that learning rates can be influenced by many factors, and we acknowledge that this study is just a very first step towards a more scientific approach to training paradigms. However we believe that this kind of information can be very important for the practitioners working in the applied field of dog training. We hope that the readers will not misinterpret the results and will not extend them to different actions and situations that were not tested.

Furthermore we would like to emphasize that, despite being efficient for training some kinds of actions, the ‘Do as I do’ method does not replace the methods based on individual learning (for example think of how many actions are not imitable at all if the demonstrator is a human and the learner is a dog!). Instead ‘Do as I do’ is a useful (and fun!) addition to existing training paradigms. Experienced dog trainers may find effective ways to mix the different training techniques in order to obtain the best results with each dog. 

Claudia Fugazza
Do as I Do Book and DVD
http://www.apprendimentosociale.it/en/claudia-fugazza/
Family Dog Project 

Reference 
Fugazza C. & Miklósi Á. (2014). Should old dog trainers learn new tricks? The efficiency of the Do as I do method and shaping/clicker training method to train dogs, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 153 53-61. DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2014.01.009

© Do You Believe in Dog? 2014
p.s. Check out this dogs excellent jump!

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How do dogs and people respond to a crying baby

Guest post by: Min Hooi Yong, PhD

“Does your dog know when you are sad?” Puzzling question, perhaps? 

We get a range of answers from dog owners, from the confident “Yes!” to “Maaaaybe?”, and the hopeful “I like to think so...”. Many dogs are considered to be part of the family, and we expect our family members to empathize with us when we are sad.

A recent study found that dogs showed submissive behavior (licking and nuzzling) when an adult person pretended to cry but not when she is humming¹. Does the licking and nuzzling behavior mean that the dog understand that we are feeling sad? (I hear YES-es). Or can it be that because we are crying, we ignore everyone including our dog, and so, our dog will nuzzle us seeking attention and/or comfort?

(source)

There have been many studies showing that animals (e.g. rodents, birds, chimps) experience distress or concern (empathic response) when observing either kin or non-kin in distress. For example, giving electric shocks to rats and pigeons. The observer experienced a change both behaviourally and physiologically, and these responses are often considered as an experience of emotional contagion, an elementary form of empathy. Emotional contagion is essentially the spreading of all forms of emotion from one person (or animal) to another (like the spreading of joy or distress through a crowd - think of a flash mob dance effect filtering through a crowd)².

Hearing a baby cry can be quite distressing. What happens to us when we, the observers, hear the cry? We respond by getting up and checking on the crying baby, “increased attention”. Our body also releases the stress hormone cortisol when we hear the cry, regardless of age or parenting experience^3,4. Also, we can tell if the crying is urgent or not. We do, sometimes find crying aversive (imagine a baby crying non-stop throughout your long-distance flight).

Flickr/thedalogs

In our study, we wanted to know if dogs and humans show a similar physiological response to a baby crying. We had three questions: 

1. We know that dogs are attached to humans, so would dogs show increased attention to a baby crying and babbling? 
2. Exposure to uncontrollable white noise is considered aversive and elicits submissive behavior. If dogs find crying aversive, would dogs show submissive behavior towards crying as well as white noise? 
3. Do dogs show an increased stress response (measured in their salivary cortisol levels) to a baby crying compared to white noise and a baby babbling, similar to humans?

We had 75 dogs and 74 humans listen to one of three sounds. A human baby crying:

A human baby babbling: 

Or white noise:

Each sound was played at an average volume of 82 decibels – similar to chamber music in a small auditorium (not loud enough to cause hearing damage, but it is loud). We collected saliva before and after listening to one sound from both dogs and humans for their cortisol levels. We also analyzed dogs’ behavior while the sound was played, and collected sound ratings about how aversive people found the sounds.

What did our three questions reveal? First, we found that both dogs and humans showed an increase in cortisol levels only after listening to crying, but no changes to baby babbling and white noise. Second, dogs showed increased attention to both the crying and babbling sounds, but not to white noise. Third, dogs displayed increased submissive behavior (e.g. the dog’s body and head were lowered, the ears were held flat and back, the tail was lowered and sometimes slightly between their legs or wagging rapidly side-to-side, the tongue pro-truded slightly, or the dog raised one leg in a hesitant or placating manner) to the crying and white noise, but not to babbling. Additionally, human participants rated the white noise as more aversive than crying (see table below for a summary). We also analyzed other possible aspects that might have influenced the dogs’ responses such as time of testing, demographic data e.g. neutered status and sex, acoustic features in the sounds (pitch and melody), and even dog owners’ unintentional cuing. We found that the responses shown were a result of distress, evident from crying.

You might ask why submissive behavior was shown during crying and white noise. Let’s start with white noise. Our human participants perceived white noise as more unpleasant compared to crying. Humans tend to cover their ears and animals also show similar avoidance, and what better way than to lower your head? On the other hand, with crying sounds, one is generally more subdued (sympathetic concern) especially when you can hear the distress meaning in the sound. The combined behavioral indicators during these sounds (e.g. lowered posture, shaking, stimulus avoidance) points toward submissive behavior.

In humans, an increase in cortisol and attention is interpreted as a demonstration of
emotional contagion^3,4. This unique pattern of physiological and behavioral responding to crying in our study is most consistent with (a) emotional contagion in dogs, providing first evidence that dogs, like humans, experience a physiological response to human infant crying, and (b) suggests the first clear evidence of cross-species empathy (i.e. canine emotional contagion to human distress). 

Author

Min Hooi Yong has recently completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Ted Ruffman in the Department of Psychology, University of Otago, New Zealand. You can follow her research, or Prof Ted Ruffman. This study has been published in the journal “Behavioural Processes”:

Yong, M. H., & Ruffman, T. (2014). Emotional contagion: Dogs and humans show a similarphysiological response to human infant crying. Behavioural Processes, 108, 155–165.

Min Hooi Yong

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the dog owners and their dogs who participated in our study, and to Stephanie McConnon, Mary Saxton, and Barbara Lowen for allowing us to use their dog videos. Mia is a female English Setter aged 3, Annie is a female Border Collie aged 9, and Flack is a male mixed breed (Collie/Husky/Heading) aged 4.

References

1. Custance, D. & Mayer, J. Empathic-like responding by domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to distress in humans: An exploratory study. Anim. Cogn. 15, 851–859 (2012).
2. De Waal, F. B. M. Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 59, 279–300 (2008).
3. Fleming, A. S., Corter, C., Stallings, J. & Steiner, M. Testosterone and prolactin are associated with emotional responses to infant cries in new fathers. Horm. Behav. 42, 399–413 (2002).
4. Giardino, J., Gonzalez, A., Steiner, M. & Fleming, A. S. Effects of motherhood on physiological and subjective responses to infant cries in teenage mothers: A comparison with non-mothers and adult mothers. Horm. Behav. 53, 149–158 (2008).

Thank you, Min, for discussing your research on Do You Believe in Dog? View other guest contributors here ~ Julie & Mia 

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