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

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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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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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