Dog Behavior Blog

Basics of Dog Adoption 101

According to the ASPCA, around 3 to 4 million dogs and cats are euthanized every year in the United States,  about  60 percent of the dogs and 70 percent of the cats that end up in shelters. Often these were animals who were part of a family, and because of some kind of change in circumstances, such as moving or financial troubles, they were turned over to a shelter.

Many of these animals would have loved to start a new life in another home. Few of them get that chance.

Adopting an animal saves a life.

But there are some challenges involved in adoption.  In my consulting practice I have often seen the kind of difficulties that can arise. Someone falls in love with an adorable dog in a shelter, and brings her home to live a happy life. For a while, things are great. The dog is very respectful, meek, and polite. This period lasts anywhere from a few days to a month or two.

Gradually the dog gains more confidence, and that is when potential problems can surface. Perhaps the dog is somewhat aggressive, guarding her food dish, or maybe pees and poops on the carpet, or maybe tugs hard on the leash while walking. Sometimes, problems arise that were the cause of the dog being put into the shelter in the first place. This is the time that people can start questioning whether they made the right decision to adopt a dog.  This is often the time that people seek advice from dog behavior professionals.

The best time to get advice about adoption, however, is before a dog is adopted. There are a lot of issues that have to be considered, such as dogproofing a house, getting the right food, finding a good vet, figuring out how to introduce the new dog to the resident animals and people, deciding whether to buy a crate for the dog, and planning a routine for the new animal to follow.  Without prior planning, chaos can ensue.

Now there is an excellent source of advice on adopting a dog, both for the planning stages and for the potential problems that can arise.

A new book by Drs. Patricia McConnell and Karen London addresses the entire adoption process. The book is called Love Has No Age Limit: Welcoming An Adopted Dog Into Your Home,  published by McConnell Publishing Limited, and available for $ 9.95 at Dr. McConnell’s website: http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Dr. Karen London, a coauthor of the book and a cowriter of this blog, provided me with a free copy for review. I should also say that if I did not like the book, I would have thanked Karen politely and simply would not have written a review.

The book reads very well and very quickly. It has 95 pages, so the amount of reading material is not overwhelming. But the contents go through all of the steps of adoption, from the planning stages, to the stages of building a relationship with your new dog, to a consideration of the possible behavioral problems that might arise.  It is a very enjoyable read,  and  the information is invaluable to anyone who is thinking about adopting a dog. In the future, when I am asked about dog adoptions by my clients, I am certainly going to recommend that they buy this book first.  For people who want to distribute this book more widely, there are quantity discounts offered on Dr. McConnell’s website.

And in the meanwhile, let’s not forget about the 70 percent of cats who are euthanized each year. Cats need good homes too.

--Con Slobodchikoff

When You Are Generous, Your Dog Is Watching You

Some people have generous natures, and some people are miserly. The generous ones are happy to share what they have with others, while the miserly folks resent having to share anything with anybody.

So if given the choice, which type of person would a dog likely approach first?

If you guessed the generous one, you guessed right.

But how do dogs know this? A recent study in the journal Animal Behaviour reported on experiments where dogs were given the opportunity to interact with generous vs. non-generous people, and the study examined the cues that the dogs used to make a decision about whom to interact with (Marshall-Pescini et al. 2011. Social eavesdropping in the domestic dog. Animal Behaviour (2011), doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.02.029).

The study used 100 dogs of mixed breeds and ages. In the experimental setup, a dog and the dog’s person were allowed to go into a small room, and the dog was given the opportunity to explore the room. Then the dog and person sat down along one side of the room while two people unfamiliar to the dog entered the room. Each of these two people had a bowl of cereal and a bowl of sausages, and each came up to the seated dog and allowed the dog to smell both bowls. Then the two people sat down facing each other, and started to eat small quantities of cereal.

A third person entered the room, came up to each of the two people facing one another, and begged for food. One of the two people, the generous one, let the person have a morsel of cereal, saying “Have it.” and placed a bit of food in the beggar’s mouth.  The other person, the non-generous one, told the person “No” and made a gesture as if pushing the beggar away. The beggar moved from one person to the next six times, each time either getting a morsel of food from the generous person or being told “No” by the non-generous one.

Following these interactions, the beggar left and the dog was allowed to roam around the room for 20 seconds, during which time the experimenters monitored who the dog interacted with the most: the generous person, the non-generous one, or neither.

The end result was that most dogs spent more of their time either looking at or interacting with the generous person while mostly ignoring the non-generous one.

The experimenters tweaked these experiments to see if just voice alone (without the gestures) was enough, or if just the gestures (without the voice) made a difference, or even if the dogs would respond if people made the gestures and said the words but no beggar was present.

The dogs did best when voice was combined with gestures, although they also did well with just the voice alone. They did not seem to recognize what was happening when just the gestures were used (putting food in the beggar’s mouth vs pushing beggar away), perhaps because these gestures were relatively similar.

When no beggar was present, the dogs did not distinguish between the generous and non-generous person, indicating that they were watching what happened to the beggar rather than just tuning in to the voice and the gestures.

Those of us who have trained dogs know that we can get a dog’s attention by sharing food with the dog. But this study puts a novel twist on food sharing: Dogs can assess who shares food with other people, and look to that person as a likely candidate for sharing food with the dog.

So the next time you have people over for a dinner party, be sure to be generous in handing out food.

You need to impress your dog with your generosity.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

Turning A Dog’s Behavior Into A Trick

I love teaching tricks to dogs for so many reasons. It’s a fun way to interact with them, it gives them mental exercise, it can help teach a dog a skill that may be practical, and it’s low pressure training because it’s “just for fun.”

One of the secrets to teaching a dog a trick is working with what they naturally do. If the dog has a tendency to perform a particular behavior, then it will be easier to turn that into a cute trick that is performed on cue than trying to get a dog to do something that is foreign.

For example, a dog who tends to use his paws a lot naturally is a great candidate for high-five, wave, or shake.

Dogs who tend to creep when lying down or even when they are supposed to be in a stay are easy to teach to crawl.

Dogs who sleep on their backs usually don’t mind that position even when they are awake, so they are often quick to learn to rollover or to go belly up.

Spinning on cue is easiest to teach to dogs who naturally go in circles when they are excited. (However, I don’t like to teach this to dogs who spin and spin when they get revved up because I’m worried it will develop into a habit that they will have trouble stopping.)

Part of training is teaching a dog to perform a certain behavior and another part is teaching them to do it on cue. If your dog already exhibits the behavior, then all you have to do is put that behavior on cue. And that’s another reason I like teaching dogs to do tricks—it’s often half done before I even start!

--Karen London

When You’re Smiling, Your Dog Smiles With You

My Standard Poodle Raja likes to sleep in during the morning. Hours after everyone in the house has gotten up, Raja is still asleep under his blanket, dead to the world. Eventually he gets up and walks around the house looking for people to say “Good Morning!” When I see him coming down the hall, I smile at him, reach out and give him a morning massage while his tail wags furiously. If I pay attention, I see that he is smiling too.

I have always assumed that he is smiling because he loves the petting and the massage. It makes me feel good to pet him, lowering my blood pressure, which already is rising with the stress of the coming day.

But could he be responding to my smile? If I were asked this question a few months ago, I would have answered, Of course not!

Now, however, there is an article in the journal Animal Cognition by four researchers in Japan who say that dogs can indeed recognize the smiles of their owners (Nagasawa et al. 2011. Dogs can discriminate human smiling faces from blank expressions. Animal Cognition online 26 February 2011).

In their experiments, the researchers trained five dogs to respond to photographs of human faces. During the training phase, the dogs were shown two photographs: the smiling face of a university student, and the back of that student’s head. They were rewarded for choosing the photograph of the smiling face.

Then  the experimenters showed each dog a photograph of their owner’s smiling face vs. their owner’s face with a neutral expression, repeating this ten times with each dog. The dogs chose the photograph of the smiling owner’s face between 80-90 percent of the time, significantly above chance levels (chance would be choosing the smiling face and the neutral face 50 percent of the time each).

The experimenters then went one step further and showed the dogs photographs of the smiling face and neutral face of unfamiliar people of the same gender as the dogs’ owners. Again the dogs chose the smiling faces between 70-90 percent of the time.

The last experiment turned out to be something of a puzzler. The experimenters showed the dogs both smiling and neutral photographs of faces of the opposite gender as the dogs’ owners. Now the dogs fell to chance levels, suggesting that they couldn’t tell the difference between the smiling face or the neutral face of someone with whom they weren’t familiar. This last response suggests that it isn’t just simple conditioning where the dogs have learned to respond to a smile, regardless of the face.

We can ask why. Maybe dogs have to learn that the smile on their owner’s face is associated with positive things, such as a food reward, a walk, or strokes. Or maybe dogs just feel good around their owners and not as good around other people. Maybe they feel particularly good when the owner’s emotion, expressed as a smile, washes over them. Clearly we still have a lot to learn about this.

But I know one thing. I feel good when I see Raja coming down the hallway, and I am pretty sure that Raja feels good when he sees me smiling.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Dogs Assess Reputations

We all know someone who has a bad reputation. Backstabber. Malicious gossip. Liar. Cheater. Gets unpredictably angry. And we try to keep that reputation in mind when we deal with the person. If you are like me, you might give the person the benefit of the doubt, but then when it happens to you, you back off and are no longer willing to trust the person. As the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy.

But can dogs assess who has a bad reputation? On the surface, the answer seems to be easy – Of course not. Dogs are supposed to be friendly toward everyone, and are supposed to lack the thinking skills that would allow them to form a judgment about reputations.

Not so fast, however, with the easy answers.

A new study appearing in the journal Animal Cognition shows that dogs can make some pretty good judgments about people’s reputations (Kundey et al. 2011. Reputation-like inference in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition 14: 291-302).

The experimenters used a very clever trick. While a dog was watching, they had two people kneeling side-by-side in front of another person who was kneeling facing the other two. The two kneeling people each gave the  person facing them a treat by placing the treat in front of the person. But one of the two givers consistently took the treat back, while the other giver allowed the person in front of them to take the treat. Then each of the givers offered the dog a treat by placing the treat in front of them, just like they did when they were offering the treat to the person. The dog was allowed to choose whose treat to take.

All ten dogs in this experiment chose to take the treat from the giver who didn’t take back the treat.

To control for unintentional cues, the experimenters tried a variety of modifications of this experimental design, each with about ten new dogs. In one modification, the givers were kneeling facing away from the recipient person, and had to reach backward to offer the treat. In another modification, the givers were not people, but large cardboard boxes with people inside reaching out to put down the treats. In a third modification, the recipient was a cardboard box.

In each case, at least nine of the ten dogs chose to take the treat from the giver who didn’t initially take the treat back.

The experimenters concluded that the dogs formed a concept of the reputation of each of the givers: one giver was reliable in offering the treat, while the other one was unreliable.

Let’s extend these results to our dogs. How many times have you yelled at your dog, hit your dog, yanked your dog by the collar or leash, or otherwise acted in an unpleasant manner toward your dog (my hope is that your answer is “zero”)? For those who do that, these experiments imply that dogs are forming a concept of the reputation of their people.

Just as we don’t do well in an environment of working with a boss who has a reputation for being unpleasant, maybe dogs don’t do well living with people who have a reputation of being unpredictable.

And maybe dogs act out when they get a concept that the person that they are living with has a bad reputation.

The moral of the story is, be nice to your dogs.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Snow Changes Dogs

Snow has once again descended upon our mountain town, and that means that many dogs are experiencing their favorite time of year. There’s no doubt about it—snow is fun for most dogs, and, along with cooler winter temperatures, it really changes them. One of the most obvious changes is that dogs are more energetic, especially when they are outdoors.

Energy can be great fun for all involved. Bringing a dog with you when cross country skiing or snow shoeing is a wonderful experience, and many dogs enjoy the extra time outdoors exercising. Even having company while shoveling snow is a pleasant side effect of the fact that most dogs love snow. People shovel the snow and dogs try to catch it as it flies by to the piles. And I love it when a dog is happily tired in the evenings after a day of outdoor snow adventures.

On the other hand, if your dog is feeling extra peppy because of the snow and crisp air, it can be exhausting if you are not similarly inclined to be more playful and full of joy due to snow. When dogs are invigorated by the weather but their people consider winter storms an inspiration to sip hot cocoa while reading a good book in front of the fire, there can be trouble.

Energetic dogs may be more likely to misbehave with destructive chewing, barking, whining, chasing the cat, and any of a number of undesirable actions that result from being full of energy with no way to vent it. When they do go outside, they may be less responsive because they are so distracted. They may also take off running and leaping—cute but potentially dangerous. Many people are surprised by misbehavior that occurs in the winter without realizing that cooler temperatures, more snow, and a bit of cabin fever may all be contributing factors.

The way that snow changes many dogs is a positive turn of events as long as you embrace it and provide your dog ample opportunities to enjoy the season. Otherwise, you’re in for a long wait until spring!

--Karen London

Chaser, The Dog Who Knows 1000 Words

How many words of dog language do you know?

Oh, that’s right, dogs aren’t supposed to have a language with words. They merely have a communication system, where their barks, whines, growls, raised heads and wagging tails are simple expressions of emotion, but nothing to do with words. What a relief!

But what if it isn’t true? What if dogs have a language of their own, with gestures, growls, and barks that are the equivalent of words and sentences? What then?

Scientists who have been interested in knowing whether animals have language have often tried a back-door approach. If you can teach an animal a human language (or something artificial made up by people) then it might imply that the animal has the cognitive capacity to have a language of its own. No guarantee, of course, but at least it shows the possibility.

To this end, we have had studies of teaching sign language to chimps (such as Washoe), teaching keyboard symbols to bonobos (such as Kanzi), teaching English words to parrots (such as Alex), and teaching artificial gestural and sound languages to dolphins (such as Akeakamai and Phoenix).

And what do you know, they all can understand, and some can or could communicate back to the experimenters, much to the chagrin of the naysayers who insist that language is exclusively the property of people.

As far as dogs go, a group of scientists reported in 2004 that the Border Collie Rico could understand 200 words, and if given a task of retrieving an object  whose name Rico did not know from among a group of objects whose names he did know, he could make the intellectual leap and assume that the unknown name that was given stood for the one object whose name he did not know.

Now comes an article in the scientific literature about a Border Collie called Chaser, who knows more than 1000 words (Pilley, J.W. and A. K. Reid, 2011. Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents. Behavioural Processes, doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2010.11.007).

Over a three-year period, Chaser learned the names of more than 1000 objects (specifically, 1022 objects), which were all proper nouns relating to stuffed toys, Frisbee-like objects, or balls. Like Rico, she could retrieve an object whose name she did not know, when she was asked to find that object from among a series of objects whose names she knew. She could also understand broad categories, such as “toy”, “ball”, and “Frisbee” and could correctly select the right kind of object when told to fetch, for example, a “ball” from a selection of objects that included a number of other things.

Even more impressive, for those of us whose dogs chew our slippers, is that Chaser learned to distinguish between “toy” and “non-toy” when the objects were very similar. Toys were things she was allowed to play with. Non-toys were similar objects that she could see but was not allowed to touch, such as cloth animals, balls, dolls, or shoes that were visible to her. So she generalized the categories “toy” and “non-toy” by function: “toys” were things she was allowed to play with, and “non-toys” were things she was  forbidden to touch.

It looks like Chaser could understand a lot of what was said to her. The experimenters did not specifically test for her understanding of sentences, but when they told her: “Fetch the ball,” that pretty-much implies that she could understand sentences at some level.

So much for the argument that dogs only understand your tone of voice.

And by the way, how many words of dog language do you know?

--Con Slobodchikoff

Size Of Tail Messes Up Dog Language

We all know that dog tails communicate information to other dogs and to people: happiness, friendliness, playfulness, fear, aggression, and status.

But what happens when the tail is artificially shortened (docked)? Are other dogs affected by this tail shortening? In the United States at least, more than one third of all dog breeds have traditionally had their tails docked. What does this is do to dog body language?

This is been a difficult question to answer scientifically because experiments have been so hard to perform. If you're using live dogs with short and long tails to study this question, you have a lot of factors other than tail length that could confuse the issue. You have all kinds of body scents, ear positions, general body posture, and behavioral interactions that can modify the response of other dogs to short or long tails.

A recent behavioral tool has been to use robots to study the behavior of other animals. With a robot you can test for specific things, such as a short tail versus a long tail on a dog, and everything else stays constant: the robot is still the same size, stays in the same position, doesn't have any confusing smells, and doesn't engage in any behaviors that could modify the response of an approaching animal.

Using a robot, a study has recently looked at the effect of short and long tails on the approach behavior of other dogs (Leaver, S.D.A. and T.E. Reimchen. 2008. Behavioural responses of Canis familiaris to different tail lengths of a remotely-controlled life-sized dog replica. Behaviour 145:377-390).

The experimenters did this study in a place where there are a lot of off-leash dogs in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. They used a robot about the size of a Labrador retriever, and attached to the robot either a short tail (9 cm or 3.5 in) or a long tail (30 cm or 12 in). Using a servo mechanism, they could make the tail either wag or stand still. They videotaped the approaches of 492 off-leash dogs and assessed the conditions under which the dogs either freely approached the robot or hesitated in their approach.

They divided the approaching dogs into two categories: smaller dogs (those whose shoulder was below the shoulder of the robot) and larger dogs (those whose shoulder was above the shoulder of the robot).

They found that the dogs differed in their approach to a short tail versus a long tail.

Both larger and smaller dogs tended to approach the robot without hesitation when the robot had a long, wagging tail, and tended to hesitate more when the long tail was motionless. We might expect this because a wagging tail generally signals friendliness while a motionless tail can signal potential aggression.

On the other hand, both larger and smaller dogs seemed to have a difficult time determining whether the short tail was wagging or still. Both the larger and smaller dogs tended to approach either the wagging short tail or the still short tail at about the same rate, a rate that was below the rate of approach for a long wagging tail and above the rate of approach for a motionless long tail.

It was as if the dogs couldn't see the difference between a wagging short tail or a motionless one and had to make a guess as to whether to approach or not.

So it seems that tail docking does introduce some confusion into dog language, making it more difficult for dogs to determine whether a dog with a short tail is friendly or potentially aggressive.

Fortunately for dogs, the practice of tail docking seems to be decreasing in frequency, allowing more dogs with normal-sized tails to be able to accurately communicate their intentions to other dogs.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

Dogs Playing Together: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a post by guest author Nancy Frensley, CPDT, CAP2, who is Manager of Behavior and Training at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society in Berkeley, California. She writes periodic posts about the behavioral challenges and joys of shelter dogs.

One of first things adopters from our shelter, Berkeley East Bay Humane Society, want to do is take their dogs to a dog park.  It’s easy to assume that all dogs both want to play with other dogs and have the right temperament and social skills to do so. However, everyone will benefit by considering a few things before beginning this particular adventure.   

Until puppies reach maturity, between the ages of eighteen  months and two years, most of them enjoy playing with other dogs.  Good dog play can teach young dogs valuable lessons.  Play enhances bite inhibition, develops communication skills, and maintains friendly responses to other dogs.  As they mature, most dogs become less universal in their desire to play.

Even though some parts of each puppy’s play style are inherited, each of them goes through distinct developmental periods during the first two years of life in which social and play styles are formed. Puppies (under four months) can be very rude but are generally tolerated by adult dogs as well as their human parents.  Between the ages of about five and eighteen months, almost all puppies start to push their boundaries with both people and their own kind.  In addition, puppies experience distinct “fear periods” during this time of their lives. Unsupervised play as well as harsh corrections can cause pups to develop fear as well as the inappropriate play styles of chasing, body slamming and persistent wrestling; styles that can lead to aggression problems.  

Most dogs reach full maturity at about two years. After that, they are less likely to engage in play with dogs they don’t already know and may become more reserved with people as well. Most are content, at this point, to play with previously established dog friends. Sometimes, they lose their desire to play with dogs entirely.  Dogs adopted as adults have often had limited social exposure and may never enjoy playing with other dogs.

From the very first day, you should carefully monitor all your dog’s playtimes. By supervising, you can shape your dog’s play style for the rest of his life. The most important part of supervision is being able to recognize when play is appropriate and when it is not. The second most important part is being able to interrupt questionable or inappropriate play and call your dog away before it goes bad.

There are three kinds of dog play—good, questionable, and totally inappropriate. Here’s how to tell them apart: 

Good dog play. You don’t need to interrupt this play. The dogs are monitoring themselves.         

 •Play is balanced. There is a lot of give-and-take.  Both dogs are clearly having fun.

 •Dogs have loose, relaxed bodies, and their movements are silly and inefficient-looking.

 •Chase games exhibit a sense of sharing.  But, if one dog is being chased into hiding or is becoming defensive, interrupt the play.

 •Both dogs are making friendly play gestures.  These include play bows, turning and hitting with the hips and both dogs stopping when things get too rough.

Questionable dog play.  You should always interrupt this play before it goes too far.  Any of the following behaviors can lead to a fight.

• Wrestling can be appropriate but is questionable and should be interrupted if more than two dogs are involved, or if one dog is always on the bottom.

• Tug-of-war if one or both dogs become possessive.

 • Stalking postures: These postures  are not play behavior.  A stalking posture is significantly different from play bow and is often the first stage of a body slam.

Rude and totally inappropriate dog play.  This “play” is not play at all; it is aggressive behavior and must always be stopped.  After you intervene you have a good  opportunity to play one-on-one with your dog while he settles down. Rude behaviors are:

 • Neck biting and collar grabbing.

 •Excessive barking and harassing another dog. Rude puppies often do this relentlessly at adult dogs that do not want to play.

 • Body slamming.  This is only fun for the slammer.

 • Pinning.  Bull breeds do this routinely, but others do it, too. 

 • Mounting other dogs. Both males and females do this and it is almost guaranteed to start a fight.

 • Snapping.  A dog that is scared or aggravated may snap; so may a dog that is guarding a toy or a bone. 

 • Standing in a “T” position (head over another dog’s shoulders).  This is never play; it is always a challenge. Don’t let it happen at all.

 • Ganging up.  Two or more dogs ganging up on one.

 • General over arousal, resulting in a case of the crazies, growlies, or snappies. 

If you cannot call your dog away quickly and effectively as soon as play becomes questionable use a long line (20’-30’) and practice calling your dog with rewards every day.  Once you call your dog away from play, give him time to calm down before releasing him to play again. If your dog has gotten into a scuffle, stop all interactions with other dogs for the remainder of the outing.

It’s everyone’s responsibility to supervise their dogs to keep play friendly.

 

 

What Do Dog Growls Mean?

Your dog growls at you when you try to take away his food dish. Then he growls at you when you are playing tug with him. Can you tell the difference in the growls? Or does one growl sound like another to you?

It turns out, dogs can tell the difference between these two types of growls.

A study using 41 dogs of various breeds tested whether dogs can tell the difference between growling when another dog approaches food, growling when an unfamiliar stranger approaches, and growling while playing tug (Farago et al. 2010. This bone is mine: affective and referential aspects of dog growls. Animal Behaviour 79: 917-924 doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.01.005).

The experimenters recorded dog growls in all three contexts. Then they played back the different growls to a dog approaching a bone. Here’s how it was done: a dog was allowed to approach an untended bone, and when the dog’s nose was close to the bone, the experimenters played back either a food guarding growl, or a threatening stranger growl, or a tug growl.

The results were striking. When the food guarding growl was played, 11 of 12 dogs withdrew from the bone. Compare this with the other growls: 2 of 12 dogs withdrew from the bone when they heard the threatening stranger growl, and 4 of 12 dogs withdrew when they heard the play tug growl.

Clearly, the dogs understood the meaning of the growls.

All three types of growls had different acoustic properties in terms of pitch and places where the most sound energy was concentrated (called “formants” in human language).

Interestingly enough, the food guarding growls and the threatening stranger growls were lower in pitch than the play tug growl. This is a common theme in aggressive vocalizations of many mammals: lower pitch (within the pitch range of the vocalizations that the animal makes) often means aggression.

Increasingly, scientists are finding that more and more animals have a language. To be fair to my scientific colleagues, most of them prefer to use the term “referential communication” rather than “language”. But I prefer to quote Shakespeare: “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” And it’s sweet  to know that scientific experiments are starting to show that dogs can smell the roses.

--Con Slobodchikoff