The Spotted Devil

Something to keep in mind is that just because someone is a key note speaker doesn't mean that us scientists hang on every word they say. It is about the quality of the arguments and the quality of the science. Personally I am as critical, sceptical and questioning as my current knowledge allows. Some presenters make me gasp in awe, others make me dismissive and yet others encourage a little of both. I'll leave it to your imagination on where I stand at the moment

Apparently it's not supposed to be, you need a piece of paper and a dog... I still got through without it yesterday. Thanks for the reply! Not sure I will risk it...too far to travel only to be told that I need to pay the entry fee. It was a last minute thing for me so no passes which we were given last year.

Does anyone know if your Dogs Vic card is sufficient entry if you are on a breed stand? I'm thinking of helping out at the Dally club's stand today. Thanks!

Gee, I have big ears, should be able to hear. I thought she said 362? It was both 362 she sent the survey and over 2000 animals over 10 years or [there abouts.] Thanks Steve ;) OK, LL - looks like we share the bottle of red

Gee, I have big ears, should be able to hear. I thought she said 362? I certainly won't bet a bottle of red on it, LL :p Bet you a bottle the dam was a labrador. Better/bigger producer. No deal ;) She said it was

To be honest, I couldn't see many people going along with this one! She likened it to production animals, where some people are "stud breeders" and breed the purebred breeding stock whilst those involved in production purchase the breeding stock (you would think, for a premium) and breed F1 "pets". I found her talk quite hard to follow at times without a powerpoint presentation. The thing is they are dogs not stud cattle. We as registered breeders are supposed to take type, temperament , structure and soundness (which includes health ) seriously. We are aiming to produce the best that we can. If a puppy meets our expectations upon maturity and we think it worthy of breeding from, then why would we waste it, by seling it to someone who is going to cross breed and it's forever lost to our breed. If the idea is to breed " better dogs", then how can the cross breeders hope to achieve that, if they are using the second rate left overs, that the registered breeders wouldn't touch with a barge pole ? But it guess that doesn't matter, as all they are looking it is both parents are "nice" dogs. My interpretation was similar Whatever you breed, you must put together the best bitch with the best dog to get the best outcome. During the panel discussion, Pauleen Bennett did point out that scientists can be extremely blunt and hyper-critical of each other and that the breeders et al. who were present at the seminar clearly were trying to do the right thing by their dogs and their puppy buyers. It becomes part of the problem when you are preaching to the converted. How do you reach those that are either blissfully ignorant or don't care? I strongly suspect that DOL does not represent the "average" breeder nor the "average" owner. I find it hard to get my head around that sometimes because I swear I'm normal!!!!!!

Gee, I have big ears, should be able to hear. I thought she said 362? I certainly won't bet a bottle of red on it, LL

To be honest, I couldn't see many people going along with this one! She likened it to production animals, where some people are "stud breeders" and breed the purebred breeding stock whilst those involved in production purchase the breeding stock (you would think, for a premium) and breed F1 "pets". I found her talk quite hard to follow at times without a powerpoint presentation. I *think* she said 2000 but I can't be sure. I don't know over what time frame.

Typical bloody male

One other thing that Tammie wants to do in her current research is recruit owners and young dogs (6 or 9 months???), test them NOW and then retest at 18 months. To see if these personality traits ARE stable across time. Perhaps stability across situation would also be interesting and something Tammie has most likely considered. There was something, somewhere looking at current temperament tests and how they predict adult temperament. At 6 weeks, the correlation was pretty weak. A little better at 8 weeks but much better at 6-9 months and beyond. So perhaps the tests aren't testing the genetic basis for temperament (which apparently is around 0.5 i.e. 50% of temperament is due to genetics and 50% to environment) but are testing the combination...which isn't much use if you want to SELECT for temperament. As Nekhbet said earlier, a full on, hyper dog can be beautifully behaved in the right hands.

Yet thousands do... why is that? In "free-operant shaping" you reinforce successive approximations. You don't wait for the dog to sit. You reinforce the little steps along the way, often tiny little things. It does require a shift in thinking and I think for many people, some good instruction. It's not for everyone, and it's not for teaching just a couple of things with, it becomes more efficient with use. To take it further... I free shaped a formal retrieve with my Dally who barely looked at a retrieve item and if he did it was with complete ambivalence. His retrieve is a hoot now - he sprints out and sprints back with a madly wagging tail and huge enthusiasm. For a dog that doesn't tolerate much other than a "what's in it for me approach" it's been a huge success. I also taught the basics of the send away, with just a smidge of luring. As for a dog offering a behaviour constantly it's all about how you train and what your criteria is - once you've trained something to a solid level you add the cue and then only reward if you have asked for the behaviour. Dogs are pretty darned smart

I understand what you are saying, Deerhound, but in the scenario that you suggest, the shelter staff would have a pretty good guage of knowing what dog would do what, simply by the fact they interact. The dogs' behaviours would not be limited by breed/genetics only, so the only way a shelter would be able to say what you have suggested would be due to the fact that they have met the dogs in question. IMO. I suppose the test allows you to standardise that "gut feeling" of the shelter staff, what if the shelter was very busy and the staff member had been off sick for the past few days and hadn't had a lot of experience dealing with that dog? or what if the staff member was a sighthound person for example and didn't like dogs with short faces so didn't spend a lot of time on them. Would it not be better if they could look at the chart and say "well we tested this dog in exactly the same way as all the other dogs here and found ...XYZ" I suppose a standardised test takes out any errors cause by personal bias in the shelter staff. The same thing goes for formal puppy testing which has not been demonstrated to be a good measure over time. Pauleen Bennett made the point that she is quite sure she knows her puppies very well to the point of being able to successfully match them to their new owners. However, as she pointed out - maybe they would have worked out no matter (or despite) what she did! I'm a bit the same - spent 3-4 days watching a Dalmatian litter (aged 5 weeks). By the end of my time with them I had pretty much settled on my pup - which was confirmed once BAER tests and assessments by other breeders were done. 3 weeks later I brought home my Spotted Devil. 3 years later, in my mind, so many traits that I observed back then are extremely consistent with the dog that I have now. He is just what I wanted. However, who knows - it could be dumb luck, it could be the way I raised him and trained him or it really could be his genes.

Own up attendees, who else test "jumped" their dogs? Some more interesting articles. Free. Some journals require payment. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=P...6bbd5d7d4aca020 Don't tell me you blind sided poor Yank!

In a shelter at least the animals are there longer than a day, in most cases, so "you" might get some idea on whether music etc does make a difference. Don't see how you can get a true reading from new animals every day. A lot of people, racehorse trainers come to mind, do play music for their animals but they are doing so to a fairly static population, not one that changes every day. I have had music in the indoor kennels ever since my days of training greys. I believe it settles the dogs. Even my indoor pets score some classical music ( to iTunes) when I leave the house. I know a few grey trainers who still use music in their kennels. For sure ;) And I do the same with foster kits and my lot! However, being a scientist I really want to know if and how and why it works. Often our assumptions are wrong because they are unintentionally based on how WE feel - especially with our beloved companion animals. Research in production animal welfare has shown just how wrong some of our assumptions were - sometimes we simplified something that was very complex and sometimes we were just way off. Hopefully it's time for companion animal research to play some catch up.

Not for me ;) because before I extrapolate how to quantify something I need to know exactly what it is constituted of, or at least bound by; so what is the definition of amicability, what are its boundaries/parameters? Where does it always exist and under what circumstance? lilli - my knowledge of psych theory is not my strong point so apologies if I don't make sense or get it wrong From what I understand, personality traits attributed to humans are said to be stable across TIME and SITUATION - most psychologists agree on "The Big Five" and individuals are given a scale on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Researchers at Monash used this idea and the methodology to develop a series of personality traits for dogs (as interpreted by their owners) - damn it, but my mind has gone blank on the details. I *think* that what Tammie found in her initial survey was that the general public rated a number personality traits which were extremely important and these boiled down and were interpreted as 'amicability'. From what I understand, Tammie is trying to match the owner's opinion of whether their dog is 'amicable' to behaviours observed and determine whether a panel of dog behaviour experts can agree on the behaviours. In terms of the definition of 'amicability' - I think it's very easy to get hung up on the word (and probably fair enough too) - however, there is often a divide between what scientists call something and understanding or general use of the word outside the scientific community. It's a problem and a difficult one to rectify and balance out. What breeders call "line breeding" a geneticist will call "in breeding", what Monty Roberts calls "positive horsemanship" (paraphrasing) a trainer with scientific knowledge will call "negative reinforcement" - it's not a criticism but often cause for great and unnecessary misunderstanding. Here's a funny one for you - when I talk about behavioural responses of cats to a particular treatment, I talk about "lying with their eyes close" NOT "sleeping" - although the latter is a reasonable inference it puts way too much interpretation on the behaviour for my liking. It makes for a long winded presentation but a more accurate one.

Goodo - then you could use the test to find which "UNamicable" dogs you could use as breeding stock. The test is not to say dogs should be "amicable", it's simply meant to be a measure. how can I use it as a test when the context has not been given? What was the test, where was it conducted, what did the stranger do if anything, etc. From memory - the handler and the "stranger" were under recorded instructions to ensure it was the same for everyone. The dog was first on lead with the handler, then off lead with the handler, then off lead with the owner absent. The stranger either ignored the dog OR called the dog over OR tried to pat the dog - not sure if it was all 3 in all 3 situations. I will be heading down with Zig at some point - reckon I can predict his behaviour too - hope Tammie has some Urine-Off

Not confused but impressed me. You're on top of the research implications & the extent of current literature. A refreshing read in this thread. I'm not suggesting you incorporate this into your study.....but similar challenges are faced re research with very young children, like babies. And that's been battled away at for yonks now, so there's piles of stuff. And there's an emerging literature in looking at if & how dogs learn in a similar way to babies & toddlers. With sensible caution, of course. Thanks Mita ;) I'm glad I made sense! In terms of measuring - you are correct with regard to the advances made with babies/children - I did a couple of elective Psych subjects in my undergraduate degree to balance out the heavy science slant of the rest of my studies. I am fortunate that the basis of the work I am doing has been demonstrated in other (production) species so I do have some sort of framework to hang my research on. But of course the research environments are worlds apart so there are one or two hurdles to iron out. As you say, with sensible caution!

In a shelter at least the animals are there longer than a day, in most cases, so "you" might get some idea on whether music etc does make a difference. Don't see how you can get a true reading from new animals every day. A lot of people, racehorse trainers come to mind, do play music for their animals but they are doing so to a fairly static population, not one that changes every day. Yes, it's a difficult scenario - I think there there has been some work done on the effect of music but I remember one of my supervisors saying it wasn't particularly strong. So, if faced with this, I would probably do a pilot study and look at a stable (ish) population using a control group and a treatment group. I might look at barking (perhaps using a decibel meter???) but I would also look at activity, position in cage, posture etc - perhaps even salivary cortisol. Within that stable population you might also conduct a pilot study to determine how many days it takes for the treatment to have a significant effect on the population. And that's before you start on a study in the "real world". And people wonder why it takes so long to do a PhD :D Sorry - can't remember whether your example was from a specific research project or was a hypothetical???

My suggestion was not a possible test for "amicability", it was an example of something that we CAN quantify. We can count the number of times a dog barks in a vet clinic in the first 24 hours. If that information is useful (and I know of several experiments where it has been useful), then we have an objective measure. You still don't know why they are barking, is it fear, stress, seperation anxiety, over excited, etc, all of which should be handled differently or you worsen the problem. It doesn't tell us how each dog got there and it does require an assumption that in-patient presentations to a vet clinic will follow some sort of statistical norm across a large enough population of dogs (e.g an average number of labs, an average number of terriers, an average number of dogs with broken legs, an average number of dogs who are blind etc etc) but we could test a hypothesis that "water spray collars and citronella collars are equally as effective in reducing barking in the veterinary clinic environment over the first 24 hours of admission" or "Classical music decreases barking in a vet clinic over the first 24 hours compared to no music at all" - and because we can objectively measure the behaviour, we can repeat experiments to see if they continue to provide similar results. How do you objectively measure how effective a "treatment" is when each and every day there would be new dogs in the vet clinic barking? You might strike a day when they are all very mellow or a day when they all set each other off. A day when all the dogs admitted have very stable temperaments or days when they are all stress heads, or a day when they are a mixture. I'll ignore the use of a antibarking collar because I find that thought unbearable but you would have to play music for a long, long time to even come close to seeing if it would work. I can't comment on Tammie's research specifically because I'm not as familiar with it, but your point is a good one, Rebanne, and it is something I come up against in my research because I often work in shelters and other difficult environments where there is so much I can't control. You can get around some of the difficulties by using statistics - for example, in some cat research I did, I teased out some changes in behaviours over time. The observations were done in two different rooms which were subject to different conditions but there was very little influence of location so I felt comfortable in combining the data. Where there was a difference, I suggested possible reasons why this was occurring but obviously this was only a reasonable inference. However, there were some specific effects of whether or not cats were desexed that significantly affected their behaviour - and I don't mean in terms of sexual behaviour but behaviours that would indicate that the animal is adapting (or not) to the shelter environment. I used that information in my next research project and only used desexed cats to try and reduce variation and I set up the experiment so I could control as much as possible. I'm actually sitting here re-analysing the physiology data from the 2nd study as I didn't really get much from it - looking for different ways that the cats respond to the shelter. However, my PhD is a whole different ball game as I can't control a damn thing!!!! In this case, like a lot of research, it becomes a real numbers game (which is why I'll be working my @r$e off for the next few years ). I have to recruit lots of dogs/handlers to get past the "noise" in the stats that results from the variation between the dogs and the environments I'm working in. Doing behaviour/welfare research with companion animals is extremely difficult and there is not a plethora of really strong papers out there IMHO. We can't control conditions like you can with production animals for obvious reasons. I am heavily restricted (and rightly so) in a lot of situations because the animals are technically if not actually owned pets. If it's any consolation I spend hours sweating over these details trying to get it right :D I hope I haven't confused the issue further.

Pawfect - give it a few more days. It's quite a bit of info to collate and put online :D

Just wanted to add that I certainly didn't agree with everything that was said yesterday. I am simply trying to appreciate every point of view as that is part of what I need to do.

I must say I did not get the impression that breeders should be "dumbing down" dogs. It was about breeding from dogs of sound temperament and good health. Dr Mike Goddard (who owns 2 pure bred Goldens) pointed out that whether you breed pure or cross, you must select the best possible sire and dam and that, whilst cross breeding can produce hybrid vigour in terms of fitness effects (ie ability to survive and reproduce) it is not a cure all and 2 bad dogs will not make a good one. He talked about breeders needing to be honest with themselves to avoid kennel blindness. There was an outcry when he said that line breeding is in breeding but he is right in terms of scientific terminology. It's like the training threads that get out of hand because people don't understand that negative reinforcement/punishment doesn't mean you beat your dog! There was acknowledgement that we need to build better owners but that does require a whole other seminar. Notably, student presentations did focus on the dog more than the owner factors so I imagine this guided the seminar structure. These types of seminars are not uncommon within the AWSC framework and are designed to inform stakeholders and encourage engagement and discussion. As I mentioned earlier in this thread I am attempting to quantify human-canine interactions in a variety of settings but am in the development stages of my research and thus had little to present. Again I repeat that I would be happy to discuss what I'm doing with anyone interested. For those who don't know me, I was the person with the microphone sprinting around the theatre trying not to fall down the stairs

It was noted that some standards require an aloof temperament and no-one had a problem with that. There seemed to be no desire to create a "Euro" dog. It was also acknowledged that there is currently NO way to distinguish pure bred dogs from registered breeders and those from BYBs. Compulsory microchipping was suggested to track dogs. In addition it was emphasised that breeders present at the meeting clearly gave a damn about their breeding programs and there were about 3 million of the 3.6 million dogs out there who were doing very well. Happy to recall what I can.

I lure and shape as well! Somethings I just have no idea what to wait for so I just wave a piece of meat and con her into doing what I want. I find though that because I do shape with a lot of other stuff, once I have lured her into a trick, she will store it in her head and bring it out for offering next time we train (if that makes sense!) But then I'm not a proper trainer! I only do stuff with her because its healthy for her brain! And so say all of us, Bub Yes, I like to compete but most of all I love having a delightful dog as a companion - after all a busy Dally is a tired Dally is a good Dally

No! Poor Leo....send him over to play with Dizzy for a bit. He'll be begging to come home and work his Aussie butt off