Monthly Archives: November 2012

11/16/12

Research Finds: Hungry Dogs are Hungry

Some Thoughts About Dogs welcomes guest blogger Michael D Anderson from NerdWallet.

Photo © Ruthless Photos.

Biologists at the University of Vienna published a study last month about dogs’ temperament in relation to their owners. The study hypothesized that without their owners, dogs would be more likely to view ambiguous events as negative ones. This is a common feature of human cognition – you’ll often hear that depressed people “see the glass as half-empty.”

The abstract of the study is available here.

The Vienna researchers found that, unlike in humans, when presented with ambiguous stimuli, dogs don’t have a negative judgment bias when they’re in distress. This is a jargon-loaded, awkward way of generalizing on the following: These scientists found that, when hungry, dogs don’t become emotional if their owners are absent—they go right to the bowl of food because, following one of the experiment’s stipulations, these dogs hadn’t eaten in at least three hours.

Experimenters measured how long it took each of 24 dogs to approach a bowl—the study had initially included 32 animals, but the scientists decided to exclude dogs that had unusually extreme separation anxiety.

In training—before the two testing days—the biologists conditioned the dogs to identify one side of the testing room as positive—where a bowl had food—and the other side as negative—where a bowl was empty.

On testing days, they refreshed dog’s memories about the room, but then they changed up locations a bit. They established near-negative (i.e. closer to the original negative location), middle and near-positive locations. At the beginning of each test, they approached one of these new locations with a bowl.

The experimenters then tested for “latency,” or long it took the dogs to approach the bowl, when the owner was present and when he or she was absent. The owner, they said, had an effect. The dogs took longer to approach the near-negative location and shorter to approach the near-positive; in tests without the owner, they approached at the same rate to each respective location.

What I don’t understand is how the biologists so tightly connect dogs’ approach to food—which they measure as “latency”—to their mood. The idea, I think, was that dogs should take longer to approach a bowl—even if the location is near-positive—when the owner isn’t there. The idea is that the dog is distressed without the owner around—they’ll start barking, toileting, or whatever else instead of going right to the bowl.

But these dogs were hungry: as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, owners were asked not to feed their dogs in the 3 hours before the study.

The whole premise of this experiment is odd. What they pose is that dogs are less temperamental than humans: emotional distress or not, they’ll logically discern where the food is. What I think they meant to ask is whether or not dogs behave any different after domestication: Are they still primal? The answer, I think, didn’t even require extensive experiments: yes, they’re hungry, owner be damned.

 

Further reading:

“Animal Behaviour: Cognitive Bias and Affective State”

“Bias in Interpretation of Ambiguous Sentences Related to Threat in Anxiety”

“Dogs Showing Separation-Related Behavior Exhibit a ‘Pessimistic’ Cognitive Bias”

 

This article comes from NerdWallet, a consumer-focused, analysis-driven website dedicated to dissecting the data behind the story.

11/14/12

Puppies are here!

Clover had her puppies on Tuesday 6th of November 2012.  Six puppies, 3 boys and 3 girls.  All good weights, healthy, happy, strong, drinking well. They have been given temporary names, because I find calling puppies “1st boy” and “3rd born” and “last born” tedious. This post is just to show you some puppy pictures. Enjoy!

 

First born, “Alfalfa”, bitch.

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11/12/12

The Week in Tweets – 12th November

Welcome to our only weekly (ish) segment: The Week in Tweets! This is where I summarise my weekly tweets (from my Twitter account) and choose my favourite as the Tweet of the Week.

 

Tweet of the Week

There were a lot of rescue posts this week that caught my attention and could become the ‘tweet of the week’, but Lindsay from ThatMutt won out with her post “Community support for no kill“. To me, this is a perfect example of no-kill, open-admission sheltering at work.  In an emergency situation, Animal Allies Humane Society took in 63 cats.  They made room, not by killing, but by waiving adoption fees and going to the media and community for help.  A brilliant good news story that makes me believe in the possibilities of no-kill.

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11/10/12

Preparing for Puppies

So we have been undertaking puppy preparations here, in anticipation for Clover’s upcoming litter. We have many basic things, as we have had litters before – thermometers, heat lamp, whelping box, and so forth. So, really, the only stuff we had to get is the fun stuff!

 

Leave with Work

I put in leave with work, as I pretty much don’t work when I have puppies. I need to be here for the whelping, and I need to be here to clean, socialise, and just generally care take puppies. At a young age, they are not too strenuous. As they get older, the elimination increases, and so does the work load!

 

Clover in the whelping box, the blanket over the top is to make it more den like for her. The whelping box is next to our bed. You can see to the right the towels ‘ready to go’ on top of a column heater. The brown blanket is lining a box, which has a hot water bottle inside – ready for puppies when they’re born. The blue toy outside the whelping box is Clover’s personal touch!

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11/4/12

Schedules of Reinforcement

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

 

When training dogs, consciously or not, we undertake a pattern of delivering rewards.  Sometimes, we give a dog a reward for every correct behaviour, sometimes the dog gets the reward for 3 times they get it right, or sometimes we mix it up and we may reward a sit-stay for 3 seconds, and then 8 seconds, then 5 seconds, and so forth.

Believe it or not, at some point, all the different patterns of rewards (“schedules of reinforcement”) have been given names and classified. First, I’ll describe these schedules of reinforcement, and then the ‘better’ alternative (according to Dunbar but also according to me!).

 

Continuous Reinforcement

Continuous reinforcement means rewarding a dog every time a response is performed.

Example:  Every time you call your dog, you reward them with a treat.

Pros: This often builds up a very high level of response, as the dog understands they will get a treat, and so are highly motivated to accomplish the behaviour.

Cons: It’s easy to run out of treats!  Because of the nature of the schedule, you reward everything – including ‘sloppy’ or ‘slow responses’.

 

Fixed Schedule – Ratio or Interval

A fixed schedule means that the reward is delivered on a consistence basis, though intermittently.  Ratio or interval refers to number of responses and time passed during response respectively.

Example: Fixed Ratio: When your dog barks at the door, you normally ignore it the first and second time, but when they bark thrice, you let them in. Interval Ratio: This is difficult to conceptualise in dog training, as it assumes that the dog is maintaining a behaviour.  The best example is training the stay: For every 10 seconds that the dog maintains a stay, you return and give the dog a treat.

Pros: Quick way for dog to learn. Good way to maintain behaviours. Prepares a dog to work without always getting rewarded (which is particularly useful for sports like obedience, where the dog cannot get rewarded in the ring).

Cons: Not as quick for dogs to understand as with continuous reinforcement.  The dog’s behaviour make become ‘scalloped’, with more enthused and motivated behaviours nearer to the reward (e.g. if the dog catches on that they only get rewarded for every 3rd sit, they will be more enthused about doing the 3rd one than the 1st and 2nd).  When the intervals or ratios are too long, the dog may ‘strike’ (i.e. quit perfoming the behaviour).  Ratios are difficult to implement in practice, as it normally hard to count and train at the same time!  Moving away from a fixed schedule often demotivates the dog (e.g. if the dog is used to being rewarded at every 3rd behaviour, for this to cease, often means the dog will abruptly stop performing the behaviour).

 

Variable schedules – ratio or interval

Variable schedules are when the animal is rewarded at changing consistency.  Ratio refers to the number of repetitions inbetween rewards, and interval refers to the time period inbetween rewards.

Example:  Ratio: When you reward your dog for ‘sit’, you don’t reward them everytime. Instead, you reward them for their first successful behaviour, then you miss a couple, and reward the 4th one, then you reward the 6th behaviour, then you reward the 9th behaviour, and so forth.  (This is the principle that poker machines work on.)  Interval: Again, if you have a dog in a stay, you could reward the dog for 5 seconds having passed, then 10 seconds, then 8 seconds, then 15 seconds, then 7 seconds, and so forth. So you are rewarding the dog based on a variable time interval schedule.

Pros: This reward schedule works well and is good for maintaining behaviours.

Cons: Too complex for any person to apply.  It is very much a laboratory/computer type of training, and is too complex for people to implement.  If you stretch the ratio too far, the dog will ‘strike’.

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