Tag Archives: stress

02/6/12

Environmental Enrichment and Stress

Just read an absolutely fascinating study called “Enriched environment experience overcomes learning deficits and depressive-like behaviour induced by juvenile stress“, that Dr Sophia Yin made reference to recently on Facebook. It’s an absolutely fascinating read, especially after writing about the over-emphasis of socialisation just days ago. I almost have to eat my words… Almost…

Rat Yawning - Do rats yawn in stress like dogs?

Dogs yawn when they’re stressed – I don’t know if rats do, too, but this study used biochemistry to measure rat-stress.

 

Basics of the Study

This study used rats to investigate the role of stress on adult behaviour (particularly surrounding anxiety and depression).  Two groups of rats were stress during their juvenile period (27-29 days) through ‘forced swimming’, elevation, and restraint. (A third group of rats was used as a control.)  One group of the ‘stressed’ rats was given environmental enrichment, by enhancing their cage environments with toys, shapes, colours, and allowing them activities outside of their cage.  The other groups did not receive environmental enrichment.

The Findings

In short: Environmental enrichment seemed to ‘neutralise’ the anxiety experienced by the stressed rats, and sometimes reduced their anxiety further than rats with no stressful incidents and no environmental enrichment.

In long: Continue reading →

10/29/11

McGreevy on A Modern Dog’s Life

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

McGreevy spoke about some of the demands dogs face in the current era, and explained that these issues are considered in more detail in his book A Modern Dog’s Life.

Basically, McGreevy asks us to appeal to the types of things dogs have to ‘put up with’ in the modern world.  The difficulties of dogs in the 21st century are far different to those of their ancestors.

Dogs have to deal with physical barriers in the modern era.

We have co-evolved, so in a way, we exploit each other, and dogs do cope quite well considering what we do to them.  For example:

Dogs are expected to get in and out of cars. The car is a noisy machine that suddenly transports dogs to a entirely different destination, in which dogs are then expected to cope with.

Dogs experience man-made boundaries and barriers. There are no doors or fences ‘in the wild’.

Dogs walk on man-made surfaces.

Dogs tolerate us touching them in ways other dogs never would.  We touch dogs around the neck. We stare them in the eyes. We hug them.

 

Clearly, there are hosts of stresses for ‘modern dogs’ that need to be considered in studying dogs.  He appealed for applied ethology – ethology that considers human-dog interactions.

 

This train of thought made me think about the kind of stresses I place on my dogs, without even realising it.  I expect my dogs to tolerate me exiting through a door – barriers like this, and ‘pack members’ leaving like this, is quite unnatural.  (For the most part) they don’t attack brooms, the poop-scoop, or other items, even though they are normally displeased about their presence.  I clip their nails!  I keep a bird in a cage that they have to ignore.  All really unnatural behaviours that our dogs, by miracle of being dogs, have learnt to deal with.

What have your dogs learnt to deal with, that their ancestors surely didn’t?

 

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

Continue reading →

12/27/10

Puppies Exhibiting Calming Signals

At the moment, I am raising my first litter.  The puppies are only two weeks old, but are already using calming signals during intensive handling sessions.

The most obvious of which is yawning.  I don’t think I have seen a puppy yawn once in the whelping box – all have yawned while they are being handled.  Obviously, the puppies are not merely tired.

For those who are unaware, “Calming Signals” is a term coined by Turid Rugaas to describe behaviours that communicate discomfort or stress. One of them is yawning, and my puppies are clearly displaying this behaviour.  Another is the ‘look away’. I am certain that taking photographs of these puppies would not be so hard if this signal wasn’t mastered yet.  I have also seen the occasional lip licking, though not with enough conviction that I am convinced it is a calming signal.

I guess my interest in posting this observation is the very early stage of this yawning – why are puppies this young yawning?

There is some debate about whether calming signals are for the benefit of the other animal (e.g. another dog) or actually work in calming the dog down who is displaying the behaviour.  It could be proposed that, at this stage, the puppies are only interacting with their mother.  I have doubts whether they are using these behaviours to solely communicate with her. So perhaps calming signals are working in these young puppies to calm them down?

Perhaps our pet dogs need calming signals in preparedness of interacting with humans.  This raises questions about the origins of calming signals.  Do wolves make calming signals?  How about some wild dog-like species, like New Guinea Singing Dogs or Dingos?  Could this very young display of calming signals be as a result of puppies having to interact with outsiders sooner than their wild cousins (considering that puppies ‘in the wild’ would be in a den for several weeks)?

This is a simple observation, but it makes you wonder – what’s the point of yawning when you’re two weeks old?

(Turid’s website is Calming Signals Community. For more information about Calming Signals, you can access DogWise.com’s selection of Turid Rugaas books. I can personally vouch for the fantastic “On Talking Terms With Dogs” DVD, though the rest of her resources are yet to be dissected.)