Are You Serious Jo

Grief, mourning and loss is about losing your future with that person or animal and in some cases it could be that it reminds you of your own mortality. If you lose a child you grieve over the fact thwey will never grow up, a partner that you won't grow old together or take holidays etc. ever again. Dogs will stay by a grave because that is the last place they saw something associated with their owner. It's called a local cue.

Another thing to remember is that what Mark says may not be true, hasn't been verified.

They've always had trouble with volunteers, there just isn't the population to provide enough. The animal people I know up there won't go there anymore either.

They also pick up on changed behaviour of the owner when a loved dog dies. Dogs are supercued to humans as they co-evolved. Some dogs really become quieter and more affectionate when their owner is sad because they've learned that is the right behaviour in that context.

Yeah, they sure can see the truth when they read the thread, I'm not the only one who responded to you with some facts when you were asking where's the proof. It's ok to be wrong, you can learn new things

Right, so now you have been proven wrong it is just an opinion, but before that you were adamant that your claim was right and no one could prove you were wrong. You didn't know I was going to pull a paper out to show you, did you think I was bluffing :laugh: I don't lie, so if I make a scientific claim it's because I have proof.

I thought they could seize and take back to their vet? The current system is disgraceful and against all other law where you are innocent till proven guilty. How many people could afford the ridiculous costs they have decided you have to pay.

I give back the same degree of respect I am given, if you read the thread you'll see the disrespect was thrown at me before I had to provide proof. I can only imagine the reception I'd get if I started to tell someone that I knew more about say nursing than them :laugh: I am not here to make people like me so water off a duck's back at the end of the day.

The professionalism extends to everything, not talking about animal related things in particular. That's one area where it seems to be on par with the East coast. I know a few really good rescues down here.

Then he must be anxious with every visitor, that's the only way to explain the behaviour. Have you tired indicating to them that everything is ok before they go the visitors tralee?

Well maybe they think I'm crazy with all my lardy dar fancy notions of professionalism and accountability I'm an East coast person, it's been real, it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun :laugh:

My expat QLDer friends all notice it too, we are like shell shocked people dropped into an alien environment :laugh:

It's a totally new situation when a companion is no longer there. Some dogs don't cope with change very well.

Yep, I think it will improve, the 36 years I spent in QLD was nothing like this :laugh: I think it's the isolation, there are so many crazies here!

In general as well, the place isn't a country town but it behaves like one. It's like two degrees of separation!

One reason I'm fleeing SA, it's no picnic here, everyone is connected, especially in the animal world.

It's appalling that the new direction is to force people to keep their breeding dogs in kennels when it's bloody obvious a small breeder can manage them in the house easily. I don't understand why it isn't obvious that the very thing that is supposed to make puppy farms better is really going to make them better and bigger. Puppy farmers will be laughing all the way to the bank. It will be interesting to see the outcome of Moorook from a legal point of view and hopefully laws won't be passed based on grudges.

The big difference is there is credible evidence for my position but you can't produce any for yours. I'm not going to list every paper up till now for you or summarise all the research, the onus is on you to prove me wrong. I put that paper up as an example and to show that I didn't make it up about working in the field. There's a lot of work being done with dogs and minimax is right, they still haven't evolved metarepresentation :laugh:

Go to google scholar and search for " Do dogs (Canis familiaris) understand invisible displacement?" you'll see a paper with lead author E Collier-Baker and me second author, you can download the PDF. That is the paper that got us an international award. I'm not at all worried that you will be any threat to my current understanding of dog cognition because you clearly don't have any knowledge on the subject. When you've read all the key literature on the subject come back and tell me exactly why based on the published papers in the field. The thing is it won't tell you that dogs don't understand death, what it does is demonstrate that dogs lack the basic stage that is needed for more complex cognitive abilities such as thinking of the future, self awareness etc.

No one should keep their dogs permanently in a kennel, no matter who they are, pet owner, breeder or rescue. Over night or some of the day is ok, but the dogs I'm talking about were permanent kennel residents.

There are lots of papers, in fact I've co authored one key paper in the field. Just because you don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist. I don't just pull this stuff out of my bottom, I only post what I can verify.

All the maremmas I've heard about accept a person if the owner does. To want to attack even when the owner isn't giving danger cues is a bit of a worry and I'm not surprised you don't want to see your lines in homes tralee.

Science. The very reason people do research is because a behaviour can appear to be something but when you do careful tests you can see that it is not what it appears to be. Nursing is an evidence based profession, you wouldn't just give a drug because someone wrote in a book once their mother did wonderfully on it. Exactly the same for the study of animal behaviour, you don't just discard all previous work because some person who has a bias said their dog knows something. Human bias is controlled as well, ever heard of double blind studies?

BL, these unrehomeables weren't housepets they were dogs kept in kennels for years. Plenty of people have been there and seen them.

The concept of their own imminent death or that of an owner or another dog perhaps? I would suspect that there is a huge amount of irrefutable evidence that dogs understand when an owner, or another animal that they live with, is dying or has died. Dogs do grieve, do they not? As with any mammal in particular, they also understand when their own life is in danger and react accordingly, using the flight or fight response. In regards to this particular situation, it is a shame that the son chose to follow his mother's wishes. People who know they are dying do not always make rational decisions, just as people who are not dying also can make stupid decisions. In my opinion, this woman's decision was not entirely different to people who choose to have a fairly young and healthy dog put down for other nefarious reasons. Yes - ask any person involved in killing dogs in pounds and shelters. I suspect they know exactly what is about to happen to them. The airy fairy idea that this dog did not "suffer" in any way before being killed is just denial of the reality IMO. Some may be fearful of the smells and strange people but they really don't have a clue about death. I have been on both sides, I have held animals as they were PTS when I was doing vet nursing and I also am a cognitive researcher who has done research with dogs in order to determine what they are capable of doing and understanding. I can tell you right now there are no papers that demonstrate dogs understand death, but plenty that provide evidence they don't. Your anecdotes are just that, your own experience coloured by your emotions and it is not evidence. Trust me, if dogs could be shown to demonstrate the cognitive capabilities to understand death there's be a Nature paper and you couldn't escape the press, it would be huge news. We think non-human apes might have a limited ability to think into the future but dogs can't. Do some feel a bit of fear because of the vet clinic and someone holding their leg, sure, but it's fantasy to believe they know they are going to die. So let's not scare people with misinformation. Oh, I see, you know exactly what every dog is thinking, or not thinking. Funnily enough yes, you do your experiments the right way you can confidently extrapolate your findings to the species as a whole :laugh: Can you post a linky to your work disputing the current literature? Where did you publish :D So you experiment on dogs? Hmmm, interesting. One benefit of age is that you come to understand that not all things on this earth can or will be explained by 'science'. I will give you a little challenge. How, scientifically of course, would you explain why a dog would exhibit unusual behaviour (pacing, panting, obviously stressed) at the same time as it's owner dies unexpectantly, and whilst that owner is not present ie: at another location? I knew you didn't know enough about cognitive research and would come back with suspicion :laugh: Cognitive research involves setting up tasks for the dog (or other animal) to do with a reward at the end. They love it because they get to play games. How you set up the task depends on what you are trying to learn, how they solve the task tells you what they are capable of. Those anecdotes are just that, stories that are unproven. You can't eliminate human bias as an explanation for what is described. As a scientist you can't just believe what you read in books without proof, anyone can write a book, doesn't make it true. I would be a bad scientist if I believed what someone told me without any evidence especially when the carefully controlled experiments say otherwise.