Dog Behavior Blog

A New Edition of “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook.”

        In a previous post (September 7, 2008) I reviewed Barbara Handelman’s “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook” (WoofandWord Press, 2008).  At the time, I reported that it is a very useful book, showing dogs in a variety of action photos doing many different behaviors. My only criticism was that many of the photos were very pale, lacking in crispness and definition.

        Barbara Handelman recently sent me a second edition of the book, in which the photos have been reprinted. In this edition, the photos have really good contrast, are crisp, and it is very easy to see the behaviors that the photos are illustrating.

        At the time of my original post, I thought that this was a terrific book for anyone who wanted to get a visual impression of dog behavior. I still think so.

As best I can tell, the only thing that has changed between the first and second editions is the way the photos have been printed. The book now is available through Dogwise, www.dogwise.com.

Here is what I said about the first edition:

The book, “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook” by Barbara Handelman (copyright 2008, 347 pages, Woof and Word Press, Norwich VT, ISBN 978-0-9765118-2-3) is quite an impressive tome. The book cover says that the book has 1000 pictures, and although I did not count, I can well believe it. Each page has at least several black-and-white photos of dogs behaving.  Measuring 8.5x11 inches (21.5x28 cm), the book is large, with an attractive color cover of dogs performing a variety of behaviors.

The book is organized alphabetically, starting with “acquired bite inhibition” on page 1 and ending with “zoomorphism” on page 280.  Each entry provides a brief definition or description of a particular behavior. In places where the definition is not always easy to understand (such as learning), the book usually also has an example that is much more concrete and more comprehensible than the official definition. For example, “Counter Conditioning” (p 140) has a definition that is standard to the psychological literature, and an example that can be understood by those who get lost in the psychological jargon.

Pages 283 to 294 have 24 photos of dogs either interacting or showing different facial expressions, and the reader is asked to identify as many behaviors as possible in each photo. Pages 295 to 312 have detailed answers to the behaviors in each of the previous photos, and the reader can easily flip back to the alphabetically-organized subjects to get a more detailed look at each behavior.

At the very back of the book is an extensive section of references, titled “Works Cited,” and a topical bibliography, again alphabetized, that lists the more important books and other resources, starting with “Aggression” and ending with “Websites.”

The photographs in the book are provided by 9 different photographers, including Barbara Handelman. Most photos are action shots, with the dogs caught in the middle of some behavior that is featured in the text. A number of photos are of wolves, but many different dog breeds are represented as well.

Clearly, everything in the book has been well-thought-out and well-presented. The book is useful to everyone who is interested in dog behavior, both the seasoned professionals with lots of experience and the novices just starting out.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

A Dog's View Of The World

I just finished reading a delightful book, Inside of a Dog, by Alexandra Horowitz (2009, Scribner, NY). In this book, Horowitz discusses what the world is like for dogs.

As a scientist with a Ph. D. in animal behavior, Horowitz brings in a considerable amount of information from experiments that have been done with dogs. However, she writes with an engaging, light-hearted style that kept me reading, turning over page after page to see what she would say next.

Many sections start with anecdotes of Horowitz interacting with her dog, Pumpernickel. Each of the anecdotes is short, but illustrates the point that Horowitz brings us in that section.
The anecdotes also show the profound feeling that Horowitz has for dogs. Unlike many animal behaviorists who view their study animals with a dispassionate eye as “subjects,”  Horowitz clearly likes dogs and honors dogs for who they are.

Although one would think that dogs have been studied to a great extent by now, the actual fact is that there are relatively few scientific studies of dog behavior, compared to studies of other animals such as rats. Horowitz has contributed to scientific dog knowledge with her studies of dog theory of mind. In case you are not familiar with the concept of theory of mind, it asks the question: does an animal (or a human for that matter) understand that other individuals have minds of their own?  In her work, Horowitz found that dogs have what she describes as rudimentary theory of mind, i.e., understanding that there is something going on behind the actions of other dogs and people.

This book provides a very readable entry into what science knows about dog behavior and dog senses.  However, rather than  presenting the information from a human’s point of view, Horowitz strives to present the information from a dog’s point of view: what is important to a dog, how a dog relates to humans and to other dogs, and how dogs are neither little humans in fur coats nor wolves one step removed from hunting elk on snow-swept plains.

I found this book to be both entertaining and informative, a rarity in most books. I enjoyed the sound of the words in my mind as I read, and I enjoyed the descriptions of experiments boiled down to their essence, free of circumlocutions and mind-numbing jargon. Most of all, I enjoyed the balanced presentation of what we do and do not yet know about dogs.

All told, a great read.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Do Dogs Understand Contagious Yawning?

When we yawn, it seems like the whole world yawns with us. Let one person start to yawn, and pretty soon everyone else is yawning too. Chimps also yawn contagiously, and possibly some other primates as well.

But what does yawning mean to a dog? Because dogs and humans have been associated for so long, is it reasonable to expect that when we yawn, our dogs will yawn along with us? These are the questions that are asked by two recent articles.

In one of the articles (Joly-Mascheroni et al. 2008. Dogs catch human yawns. Biology Letters 4:446-448) the authors had 29 dogs watching a human yawning, and recorded that 21 of the dogs yawned in response. The authors suggest that this represents a rudimentary form of empathy that dogs might feel for humans, causing the dogs to yawn after they see a human yawning.

In the other article (Harr et al. 2009. Do dogs (Canis familiaris) show contagious yawning? Animal Cognition DOI 10.1007/s10071-009-0233-0), the authors showed 15 dogs video clips of either humans yawning or dogs with either yawns or open mouths, and recorded how many dogs yawned under these circumstances. Only one dog yawned in response to the video clips, and this was to human yawns.

So here we have a difference. One article says that dogs yawn in response to human yawns, and the other article says that they don’t. How do we find our way out of this?

One problem is that there are a lot of unknown factors that could influence the interpretation of these results.

For example, can dogs see and understand video clips? My dog Raja seems utterly indifferent to what is happening on the TV screen, even when there are dogs bouncing around in commercials.

And even if they can see what is on the screen, can they interpret what they are seeing? The other day I came across a website that was talking about the work of Samuel Renshaw, a pioneer in human perception research. The website had a picture that Renshaw showed to people, asking them what the picture represented. I could not figure out what was in the picture until I saw the answer, and then it was obvious to me. If you are curious, take a look at the picture at: http://www.enter.net/~torve/critics/Renshaw/notassmart/notassmart1.html and see if you can identify what is there.

Also, when seeing real human faces yawning, are the dogs responding by yawning through empathy, or are they yawning because of discomfort?  In a book called On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals, Turid Rugaas describes a yawn as a calming signal that one dog gives to another (or to a human) signifying that the dog is not a threat, as a way of defusing a potentially stressful or aggressive situation.

When I first got Raja as a rescue dog, I would extend my hand to him to try to get him familiarized with my smell. He would often yawn in response. I understood this to mean that he was stressed and nervous, and I made sure that I did not push my attention onto him. Could the dogs watching yawning humans have responded by yawning because they were feeling stressed in the experimental situation?

What it comes down to is that some of the time, we know surprisingly little about why dogs do what they do.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Do Dogs Know Right From Wrong?

Yesterday, my Standard Poodle, Raja, got into the garbage while I was gone. The garbage can has a tight lid on it, opened by a foot treadle, and to make sure that the can was dogproof, I put a plastic gallon water jug on top of the lid whenever no one is in the house. Raja knocked over the garbage can, sending the water jug flying, and somehow pried open the lid to get at the contents of the can. Fortunately, there was nothing in there but wet paper towels, so he couldn’t hurt himself by eating decaying garbage. He did have a great time shredding the paper towels and scattering the shreds over the living room rug.

On previous occasions when this happened, I reprimanded Raja by scolding him in a deep, low voice, pointing to the shreds of garbage and telling him “No!” several times. I do not believe in hitting dogs, so the only punishment that Raja received was my stern and deep-voiced “No.” Throughout his life, Raja has gotten into the garbage perhaps once or twice a year, so this was a relatively unusual event, triggered perhaps by absolute boredom.

When I walked into the house, Raja greeted me with his usual enthusiastic tail-wagging at the door. I petted him, as is our usual custom, and then stepped into the living room, where I saw the shreds of paper.

I simply pointed to the garbage, and looked at Raja. He immediately started to cringe, crouching down low, with his tail between his legs. I did not say a word, but kept pointing to the papers scattered around. Raja then lay down on the floor and rolled over, exposing his belly, with his front feet folded up and his eyes closed.

When I have been asked about the proper thing to do with a dog who has gotten into the garbage hours or minutes before the dog’s people come home, I have always said that the best thing is to do nothing, because by then the dog does not remember having strewn things around, and punishing the dog after the fact would be counterproductive. I have always said that the dog does not at that point understand what the punishment is about, and would only get confused if punished. This is straight out of classical learning theory, where a response has to follow an event immediately for the lesson to be learned.

However, here was Raja clearly acting as if he knew that he had done something wrong. Not only that, but he was apparently remembering our last lesson about garbage from at least half a year previously.

Does that mean that he knows right from wrong? And, in the larger picture, do dogs in general know right from wrong? In Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals, a new book that is due to be released in March, Marc Bekoff and his coauthor Jessica Pierce argue that dogs and other animals have a sense of right and wrong, and a moral sense of fairness and empathy. Although the main thrust of the book deals with animals in general, Bekoff and Pierce have some examples from the behavior of dogs. They mention a case of a larger, stronger male dog playing with a smaller, weaker male and restraining his bites so as to not injure the smaller dog. They also mention the work of Friedericke Range and her colleagues in Austria, who have shown that dogs will refuse to work for food if they see that other dogs are getting more for doing the same thing. Bekoff and Pierce give a number of other examples, ranging from elephants to mice, that show that animals have a sense of morality, compassion, and a sense of right or wrong.

So how about Raja and the garbage? Does he have a sense of right and wrong? I would say yes. I think that he knows perfectly well that he is not allowed to get into the garbage, and perhaps feels a sense of remorse or shame when he is called on this issue. What’s more, he remembers prior scoldings, even though they happened a long time ago, and knows that they apply to the current situation.

Just like I still remember being scolded as a kid for getting into things that my parents told me not to touch.

--Con Slobodchikoff

A Rudimentary Theory Of Mind In Dogs And Other Animals

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a guest post by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, whose work on dog attention and theory of mind was featured in a post on this blog on October 8, 2008. Dr. Horowitz has written a book, "Inside Of A Dog," that will be published in September 2009 by Scribner. It is about what a dog's point of view might be like, using scientific results to help draw the picture.

It is notoriously difficult to test for theory of mind in animals. "Theory of mind" (ToM) refers to the attribution of mental states--particularly belief, desire, and knowledge--to others. Research shows that human children are not born with this understanding, but they develop it by age four. Many claim that ToM is wrapped up in what enables us humans to be (at times) so cooperative, so empathetic--in a word, so human. As a result, there is great interest in determining whether any non-human animal has a ToM.

The question of non-human ToM is vexed in a couple of ways. For one thing, tests to determine when children develop a ToM--for instance, the false-belief test, which asks if a child realizes that someone who's been out of the room doesn't know about any machinations that happened inside the room--require that the children use language to tell researchers what they know. So much for testing animals. For another, with the non-verbal tests that have been developed, the results with animals (mostly chimpanzees) have been mixed. Sometimes chimps act with seeming understanding of what others know; sometimes they act as though utterly oblivious.

It occurred to me that there is a problem with our concept of ToM. The implicit premise is that ToM is an "all or nothing", on-or-off ability, which pops "on" early in childhood, rather than developing in stages. This kind of conceptual definition reminds me of the Cartesian notion that an animate creature is either self-aware and conscious, or is merely an unthinking material form. Descartes led us to dualism, which we spent hundreds of years struggling out from under; but we retain his binary template of an animal being either insightful or mindless.

I propose, by contrast, that ToM is not best considered a unitary ability that one either has in spades, or one does not have at all. Instead, an individual may be able to realize that something connects all the behavior you see someone else doing--without specifically postulating a "mind" behind it. This step could be described as having a "rudimentary" theory of mind: more than acting instinctively, or as a behaviorist, but less than acting with the theoretical understanding characteristic of humans.

Formulated in terms of what we need to attribute to animals in order to explain their social behavior, we get the following hierarchy:

Theory of behavior: the understanding that certain behaviors lead to certain outcomes
Rudimentary theory of mind: the appreciation that there some overarching element which leads to seen behaviors
Theory of mind: extrapolating that what others' behaviors have in common is their root in a mind

Much of animal behavior requires only a "theory of behavior" to explain: an animal's action is based on simple associative conditioning, having learned that one event follows another. For instance, a dog who learns to sit at attention when a familiar person approaches him with a biscuit need not have posited anything about the mind of the biscuit-carrier; he need only have associated the fact of the biscuit being carried with his ultimate reward (biscuit-eating). The five-year-old child sitting waiting for some similarly valued reward from a parent has drawn the same association, surely--but also has a head full of conjectures about what the parent intends, thinks--in other words, what is on her mind.

The intermediate level allows for a middle ground between these poles. The dog who has learned not just to sit before the biscuit-carrier, but also to continue to adjust his sitting to always see her face; the dog who has generalized from the one biscuit-handling person to investigate whether other humans carry biscuits, but learns that not everyone can have biscuits extracted from them by sitting dutifully--these dogs have a more advanced theory of behavior. They are sensitive to salient elements of the behavior--the attention of the human, for instance--and use this knowledge to generalize to future contexts.

As Con has described in an earlier post, when I studied dogs' behaviors in dyadic rough-and-tumble play, I saw dogs behave in a way that I think is best explained by imputing to them a rudimentary theory of mind. They play-signaled--a request to play--only to dogs facing them, thus able to receive that request. When a dog paused in play, his play-partner used attention-getters to redirect him before signaling again. And, even more impressive, dogs used attention-getters matched to their partner's state of inattention: if a dog is looking at you, you needn't bite him on the rump to get his attention; a minor leap up will do. But if he is playing with another dog, the leap-up is ineffective; something on the order of a rump-bite is required.

What this demonstrates, I have suggested, is that the dogs were acting as though they understood that not only must you react to the presence of other dogs, not only must you communicate to the faces of other dogs--but you must also attend to an invisible feature of them--a feature that between humans we call "attention"--in order to communicate, and thus play together. Acting with sensitivity to attention is much more sophisticated than simply acting in response to seeing a stimulus: play-signaling whenever you see another dog, or using any attention-getter if you can't see a face. We simply cannot tell from the data whether the dogs actually have a theory of mind--a real understanding of the minds of others--but their behavior plainly shows us that they have more than just a theory of behavior.

I realize that many dog owners have no reluctance in asserting that their dogs have a theory of mind--and much more sophisticated cognition besides. "Dogs have the intelligence of three-year-olds", it's claimed. As discerning and sensitive companions as dogs are, I haven't seen the evidence yet. And I'd suggest that we owners, in turn, don't truly treat dogs as theorists of mind: we wouldn't dream of leaving a three-year-old alone with little to do for hours on end, the way we do our dogs; we ignore them when we're busy with other people or with work; we do nearly nothing to advance their intellect. Dogs are best served not by over-attributing to them but by acknowledging what they do know, and acting accordingly.

On dogs and wolves: The origin of the differences

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a guest post from Dr. Adam Miklosi, who has been researching the comparative behavior of dogs and wolves. Dr. Miklosi's recent extensive and informative book, "Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition (Oxford University Press), is available through Amazon.

Researchers know two sorts of facts. First, there was a time when dogs did not exist, but only wolf-like creatures lived across the Northern Hemisphere. Second, relatively suddenly (in terms of an evolutionary time scale) a very similar type of animal emerged that was usually found in association with humans: the dog.

In recent times geneticists have established that the dog’s closest living relative is the wolf, and zoo-archaeologists date the dog-like animals from about 17,000 BP. All the rest is still a mater of debate, including the exact date and the location of domestication, and whether dogs domesticated themselves by joining human groups, and to what extent humans played an active role in “selecting” for certain types with regard to form and behavior.

In recent years there has been a huge interest in the behavior of dogs, and that has included comparative studies that were aimed at looking at dog-wolf differences. Frank (1980) and his colleagues were the first who suggested that dogs and wolves differ in the way that  they process environmental information. According to them, wolves are more bound to certain type of stimuli for any behavioral response, but at the same time they are able to show flexible problem solving behavior. In contrast, dogs lack complex problem solving skills but they can learn in very flexible ways about the connection between arbitrary stimuli (e.g. Sit!) and some action (Bottom touches ground). Although Frank’s ideas were very interesting, he worked with very few animals, did not account for differences in socialization, and utilized a very restricted experimental methodology.

The main problem is that it is easy to find behavioral difference between dogs and wolves, but an ethologist looks for the origin of these differences. Living in a different physical and social environment makes it more than likely that the two species will display divergent skills. Since dogs look very different from wolves, most researchers agree that domestication of dogs was accompanied by some genetic changes, but what is so obvious in morphology is much more difficult to be revealed in the case of behavior.

Most comparative behavioral research assumes that dogs have been selected to live in close association with humans. In other words, dogs had a greater chance to survive in the human (anthropogenic) environment if they acquired human-like social skills. If one wants to understand more about the genetic underpinning of these skills, one way to reveal them is to perform experiments on dogs and wolves that are raised in similar social environments. Our research group at the Eötvös Loránd University was the first one that raised many dog and wolf pups individually in the same way by a human caretaker (one caretaker lived with only one pup at the same time) with the intent to start a comparative research program.

At present there are two main theories that try to account for behavioral differences between dogs and wolves: selection for cognitive skills, and changes in behavior. If dogs lived for long enough in human society, then selection could have changed their cognitive skills markedly. For example, researchers found that dogs showed high level performance in communicative tasks when they had to find a piece of hidden food on the basis of human gestures. Since wolves were not very successful at this task, in contrast to dog puppies without much human experience, researchers assumed that dogs might have gained some genetic advantage during domestication that affected directly their social cognitive skills.

However, there is also an alternative way to explain this. In order to be successful in a communicative task, not only cognitive skills are important, but also changes in other behaviors. To be a successful companion to a human, a dog has to stand or sit quietly for a few seconds, it should look at the person in order to see the communicative action (gesture), it should allow itself to be controlled by a signal from the other instead of making its own decision, etc. This means that changes in other aspects of behavior like attention span, interest in humans, or temperament could also improve performance, and one does not need to assume that the core-system of social cognition is affected. Thus dogs might be very similar to wolves with regard to cognitive skills in general but in certain tasks they have a better chance to reveal those cognitive skills because of changes in other behavior systems.

In our research program we emphasize dog-human parallels in behavior, assuming not only that the human environment selected for some particular social skills in dogs, but actually, that in functional terms (what is the outcome of the behavior) dog and human behavior shares similar features. Over the years we have collected some evidence for this view by studying various aspects of social behavior in dogs and humans in parallel. In comparative experiments we have found that 4-month-old dogs show attachment behavior toward their human caretaker, which is not the case in socialized wolves. Similar direction of difference was revealed in the case of communication abilities. Dogs proved to be more skilled at an earlier age than wolves in comprehending human gestures, and they also seem to be relatively flexible in utilizing unfamiliar gestural signals. In both cases dogs share many features of their social behavior with human infants. This means that from a functional perspective dogs can be compared to 1.5-2-year-old infants, depending on the task. However, we do not claim that necessarily similar mental mechanisms are at work in these two species. Some of the mechanisms might overlap since both species (dog and human) share a common mammalian heritage and the ability to live in social groups but it is also very likely that human evolution endowed us with some special skills which are not present in dogs.

The increased flexibility in emotional behavior in dogs might also have contributed the success of dogs in the human community. Although it has been paid little attention, dogs and wolves have similarly complex emotional behavior; however, in the case of dogs the possible behavioral combinations are larger. Barking is an obvious example for this. Both wolves and dogs bark, but in wolves barking is used mostly as a “warning” signal. In contrast, dogs utilize barking in a wide range of contexts, including fear, aggression and play. Moreover, humans are quite skilled in discriminating these barking sounds. Considering that we can also use our vocal behavior to modify the behavior of the dogs, it seems that dogs and humans have evolved a novel communicative “channel” for interaction.
    
Personality is another interesting aspect of dog behavior in which human parallels might be possible. Interacting individuals living in the same social group may be at an advantage if the range of their personalities overlaps. Dogs and humans might share some personality traits which facilitate their interaction within a group. Interaction with wolves depends in most cases on the skill of the human to adapt to the “needs” of the individual animal, while with dogs, relationships can be based on mutual acclimatization. At the moment we do not know how dogs and humans affect each other’s personality, but the possibility of such an influence is much greater than in the case of wolves.

Know the Signs of Over Arousal

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: When we asked you for your most burning questions, many of you responded with questions that you would like to see us address. Here is one issue that some of you wanted us to tackle. This is a post from Karen London.

No matter how you play with your dog, you might have the type of dog who tends to get overly aroused when she gets excited. Just like some children, some dogs come hard-wired to spiral into a state of emotional overload in seemingly low-key situations. Other dogs, especially adolescents, haven’t yet perfected their emotional thermostats, and need their owners to help them learn to keep their emotions in check. In either case, all dogs need their owners to know the signs of over arousal, and to know how and when to calm things down before they begin to spiral out of control.

Begin by carefully observing your dog during regular play. Watch the way her body moves, and the way her eyes look. Listen carefully to her barks and play growls, if she’s the kind of dog who vocalizes while playing. Become familiar with her normal repertoire, because dogs tend to do the same kinds of things when they get overly aroused, just more so. In general, their movements are faster, their leaps are higher, and their barks are louder. Sometimes you’ll notice that their movements look less coordinated and less precise, as though they are physically spinning out of control (which they are!). If a dog has been play-growling, listen for the growls to get lower and to sound more threatening. On the other hand, listen for barks to become more rapid and, ironically, higher-pitched.

Some dogs add actions to their regular bag of tricks when they become overly aroused. Dogs who were politely playing tug or fetch might start leaping up and nipping at your arm. Be especially careful if your dog starts leaping up at you repeatedly, perhaps pushing off you with her forepaws, punching you with her muzzle, or clacking her teeth together while her head is directed toward you. These are dogs who might be losing emotional control or are becoming over aroused, and are telling you that you’re going to be the target of their pent-up, uninhibited, energy. If this happens, it’s time to put your inner playground monitor on duty.

Other signs that a dog is overly aroused include a retraction in the corners of the mouth as though the dog is panting from extreme overheating (but it’s not that hot). Another good predictor of over arousal is a dog who simply can’t stop doing what she’s doing—you call; ask her to sit, come, or lie down; and she continues leaping or barking in an out-of-control kind of way. Fixed and rounded eyes can also be a sign that a dog is emotionally overloaded, and are another good reason to develop a precise picture of how your dog looks when playing appropriately.

There is another important behavior to watch for that is not necessarily related to arousal, but is potentially dangerous. If your dog has a closed mouth, along with a stiff and still body, she may be sending you a warning that a bite is on the way. Dogs who are playing politely will often stop for a second or two and look at you (a kind of self-imposed doggy time-out that prevents over arousal) but their bodies stay loose and relaxed and their mouths are usually open. However, if your dog stops all play, goes stiff and silent, and her eyes become hard and round while she stares directly at you, immediately try to break the mood by saying “Want your dinner?” or “Let’s go for a walk!” and walk away. Your next step is to pick up the phone and call a good trainer or behaviorist.

If you are unsure if your dog’s behavior is within the bounds of normal play, don’t hesitate to work with an experienced trainer or behaviorist. It’s not uncommon when you are first learning to read visual signals to start worrying about postures and expressions you never noticed before. It happens in many fields—young biology students discover that the world is awash in bacteria and begin to obsess about what’s on the doorknob. Medical students memorize the symptoms of obscure diseases and begin to imagine they have come down with them. So, if a little knowledge begins to feel like a dangerous thing, go out of your way to work with someone more experienced who can help you decipher your observations.

Karen B. London

(This is an excerpt from the new book, “Play Together, Stay Together: Happy and Healthy Play Between People and Dogs” written by Karen London and Patricia McConnell. The book is available at patriciamcconnell.com and at dogwise.com.)

A Review Of “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook”

The book, “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook” by Barbara Handelman (copyright 2008, 347 pages, Woof and Word Press, Norwich VT, ISBN 978-0-9765118-2-3) is quite an impressive tome. The book cover says that the book has 1000 pictures, and although I did not count, I can well believe it. Each page has at least several black-and-white photos of dogs behaving.  Measuring 8.5x11 inches (21.5x28 cm), the book is large, with an attractive color cover of dogs performing a variety of behaviors. It sells for $32.97 on www.Amazon.com at the present time, or it can be purchased at www.woofandwordpress.com.

The book is organized alphabetically, starting with “acquired bite inhibition” on page 1 and ending with “zoomorphism” on page 280.  Each entry provides a brief definition or description of a particular behavior. In places where the definition is not always easy to understand (such as learning), the book usually also has an example that is much more concrete and more comprehensible than the official definition. For example, “Counter Conditioning” (p 140) has a definition that is standard to the psychological literature, and an example that can be understood by those who get lost in the psychological jargon.

Pages 283 to 294 have 24 photos of dogs either interacting or showing different facial expressions, and the reader is asked to identify as many behaviors as possible in each photo. Pages 295 to 312 have detailed answers to the behaviors in each of the previous photos, and the reader can easily flip back to the alphabetically-organized subjects to get a more detailed look at each behavior.

At the very back of the book is an extensive section of references, titled “Works Cited,” and a topical bibliography, again alphabetized, that lists the more important books and other resources, starting with “Aggression” and ending with “Websites.”

The photographs in the book are provided by 9 different photographers, including Barbara Handelman. Most photos are action shots, with the dogs caught in the middle of some behavior that is featured in the text. A number of photos are of wolves, but many different dog breeds are represented as well.

Clearly, everything in the book has been well-thought-out and well-presented. The book is useful to everyone who is interested in dog behavior, both the seasoned professionals with lots of experience and the novices just starting out.

The only criticism that I have of the book is that many of the photos (all of the photos except for the cover are in black-and-white) seem to be faded and washed-out. You can still see the behaviors clearly, but the photos lack crispness and fade somewhat into the pages. Perhaps this was an intentional design decision, so that the photos did not overwhelm the text.  I must say that the more I used the book, the more I appreciated the faded nature of the photos. It gave the book a zen quality that would not be present with crisper photos.

All told, I think that this is a terrific book, and I recommend it to everyone who is interested in understanding the body language of dogs.  Reading the definitions of various behaviors and seeing the pictures side-by-side with the definitions gives a very good introduction to the kinds of things that dogs do.

--Con Slobodchikoff

What Is Your Most Burning Question?

Now that Karen London and I have been writing the Dog Behavior Blog for about one year, we wanted to ask our readers, What Is Your Most Burning Question?

Those of you who have regularly read our weekly or semi-weekly posts know that we have a mix of information about dog behavior problems, analysis of scientific articles about dog behavior, book reviews, and general information about dogs.

We would like to know what you, our readers, are interested in having us write about. What would you really like to know about dog behavior?  After all, through this blog, you have access to two experts who between them can answer your questions, or at least point you in the right direction.  While we cannot give advice about specific situations through this blog, we can answer your questions in a more general way, so that anyone who has that kind of situation can profit from the knowledge.

Karen London has been dealing with particularly difficult dog behavior problems for a number of years, and also writes a column for BARK magazine. I (Con Slobodchikoff) have been dealing with dog problems and dog training for many years through my company, Animal Communications, Ltd., and also teach animal behavior courses at the university level. Between the two of us, we have a lot of experience with dog behavior.

You can either send us your Most Burning Question through the Comments on this blog, or if you would like to do it more privately, you can send an e-mail to me at slobodchikoff@animalcommunications.com  We will compile these questions and try to answer as many of them as space permits, while not neglecting the science and the book reviews.

Send us your questions now. As I tell my students who are sometimes reluctant to raise their hand to ask a question (my animal behavior classes usually run at more than 100 students, so perhaps that can be intimidating), if you have a question, chances are, a lot of other people will have that same question, and will be grateful that you took the initiative to ask.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Great Reads For Serious Dog Lovers

I get phone calls and e-mails all the time from people asking me how they can learn more about the field of canine behavior. My answers always include academic study, attending seminars, actually training dogs to a high level in some area for fun or competition, and reading everything possible on the subject. I find that people are most eager to pursue the reading avenue, possibly because it is easy to get access to books, and this is one inexpensive option that has the advantage of being doable in the comfort of home. Naturally, the next question is always what books are best. The general answer is to read widely from a variety of authors, but the specific books change as new books get published. Here are some of my favorite picks for great dog books to read.

If you want to know more about training in general, I have two favorites. Family Friendly Dog Training: A Six Week Program for You and Your Dog by Patricia B. McConnell and Aimee M. Moore is based on a six-week curriculum for beginning dog training classes, and covers the basics every dog should know and how to teach to teach them in a step-by-step way. Excel-erated Learning: Explaining in plain English how dogs learn and how best to teach them covers learning theory and how it applies to dog training.

If you want to learn more about the science of canine behavior, consider delving into The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People, which is edited by James Serpell or The Behavioural Biology of Dogs which is edited by P. Jensen. Both of these books contain chapters on a range of topics from the world?s top scientists and their studies of all things canine. Steven Lindsay's three volume set entitled Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training is perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date.

If your desire is to learn about specific topics or areas of problem behavior, there are arrange of possibilities, depending on exactly which issues you need to know more about. Patricia McConnell has a series of booklets on a variety of topics. Some of her titles are The Cautious Canine: How to Help Dogs Conquer Their Fears, Feeling Outnumbered: How to Manage and Enjoy Your Multi-Dog Household, I?ll Be Home Soon: How to Prevent and Treat Separation Anxiety, and Feisty Fido: Help for the Leash Aggressive Dog.

Other great specialty books include Raising Puppies & Kids Together: A Guide for Parents by Pia Silvani and Lynn Eckhardt, Visiting the Dog Park?Having Fun, Staying Safe by Cheryl Smith, and Help! I'm Barking and I Can?t Be Quiet by Daniel Q. Estep and Suzanne Hetts.

For books that combine moving, educational stories with practical, useful information and scientific backup for everything in the books, there are several books to consider. Patricia McConnell's The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs explains the human side of behavior within the dog-human relationship. The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication examines the mutualistic relationship between humans and other animals, including dogs and debunks the old-fashioned idea that these relationships were good only for the humans and that the humans imposed it on animals. The Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz' Man Meets Dog is an amazing foray into the ideas and speculation of a great scientist as he contemplates his own dogs and their behavior.

For some great reads that are literary and enjoyable as well as informative, consider James Herriot?s Dog Stories, which is an insightful and delightful collection of adventures in the life of a country vet in Yorkshire England. His stories are probably the most charming animal tales that have ever been written. Caroline Knapp?s book Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs is about one woman?s quest for love and how she finally found the intimacy that had eluded her in all her previous relationships when she adopted a dog. Have tissues on hand. Dog is My Co-Pilot is a wonderful volume of essays by professional writers about every facet of sharing our lives with dogs.

Finally, a couple of classic reads are books that everybody serious about dog training behavior has read, or at least should read. The books Genetics and the Social Behavior and the Dog by John Paul Scott and John L. Fuller and The New Knowledge of Dog Behavior by Clarence Pfaffenberger both explain the classic studies and breeding programs that informed our current views on the heritability of behavioral traits in dogs, critical socialization periods, and the effects of emotional traits on performance.

Karen Pryor's book Don't Shoot the Dog: The New Art of Teaching and Training brought a whole new perspective on positive training methods to the entire dog training world, and wins my personal vote for the best book title ever.

If you are interested in reading dog books of any kind, there is a single website that is worth checking out. It is called Dogwise.com, but in my house we call it the hide-your-credit-card site because I love it so much and spend so much money there.

--Karen B. London