tjhowell

In the next week or two would be fine. I would like to wrap up by the end of January, but I will go on as long as it takes. O so my five would not be suitable? Two used to be blood donors. It sounds like yours would be excellent. If you're interested in helping out or if you have any questions, please let me know.

MissMaddy and AnimalMad -- that sounds excellent. If you're still interested, let me know and we can try to organize a time.

sorry, I am just catching up with this. It was lovely to meet you and hopefully will see you and your lovely dogs again some time!

Hi everyone, I just wanted to bump this because I need a few more participants for this study. If you think your dog may be suitable, please contact me at [email protected] I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year holiday! Thanks for all your support, Tiffani

If you ever get up (or down! :D ) to small dogs, I can give you the contact for the Tibetan Spaniel Association of Victoria. There you'd find heaps of Buddhist tibbies who can go into the calm zone, right from birth. I can't resist posting this pic of a baby tib & a passing relative flat out 'meditating'. In the meantime, I'm sure your study will go well & be a useful addition to the research literature. :D ha! How cute! I love it

@onsntillnflash -- yes, Onslow would be good, but you are unfortunately two states away, so I can understand that's it's not really convenient for you to come down for the study :D hehe @The Spotted Devil -- Yes! I remember that (vaguely -- because I think you spoke right after me and I was so nervous before and during my talk that it took me about 10 minutes to settle down afterward). I look forward to hearing more about your research. :D @ash&elar -- we are willing to work with you on the timing, but as a general preference we are trying to go for testing in early- to mid-afternoon during the week.

@Megan -- unfortunately yes, we need larger dogs than MS or mini poodles. @Bilbo -- the cavvies are too small, but the shepherd could work. Please email me if you'd like more information or to chat in depth about the study. @anniek -- greyhounds would be perfect, except their head shape is too elongated. A recent study showed that the brain actually changes shape when a dog has a very long nose or a very short one. In follow-up studies, we hope to look at these differences. @Tatelina -- thanks! I need all the luck I can get! @The Spotted Devil -- thanks very much for your kind words ;) Where did we meet? @mita -- if we do more research on small dogs, your Tibby would be perfect @newfsie -- good point indeed. I didn't realise acupuncture was so popular on here. @SilverHaze -- your husky sounds great. Please email if you'd like more information. I'd love to meet you and your dog. For everyone, the reason we have to be so picky about what breeds/breed types to use is that this is the first study of this kind, and any large variation in head size or shape could throw off the results. At first, we were only going to work with one breed, but that was too restrictive, so instead we will use any dog that is large and has a medium-shaped head (not too long-nosed or too flat-faced). In future studies, we'll hope to extend this out a bit and look for breed, size, or head shape differences and I'll be on here recruiting y'all again!

@dancinbcs -- Good point. I think in cases like these it would really be down to the owner's knowledge of their own dogs. We asked for dogs that don't mind being vaccinated, because more dogs have probably been vaccinated than would have received acupuncture. Of course, in a case like yours, it sounds like your dog would be fine. It's a shame you're not closer.

Good idea, newfsie! thanks :D

@Poodlefan -- poodles would probably be ideal too :D Good point about show dogs. I was originally thinking of obedience dogs, but they may not all be as low-key as we're looking for. It will come down to the individual, though, of course. @Megan -- crosses are fine. Is MS miniature schnauzer?

@Poodlefan -- thanks very much for that heads up. I will look into contacting some breed clubs @Bundy's Mum -- Bundy sounds lovely :D But we definitely do need dogs that settle pretty easily in new environments for this study. If you think he'd settle down after loving us to death and bouncing around let me know. Or if either of your other two are suitable, that'd be great too. @Andisa -- that sounds excellent. He'd probably be a perfect subject for this study. The plan is for this to be one trial per dog, but a portion of the dogs we test may be asked to return for a follow-up. The decision to come back would be entirely up to the owner, and it wouldn't disrupt the data collection for this portion of the study.

Dear Andisa, We need them at least until early December, and most likely into early next year. The actual testing takes about 10 minutes, but because we need the dogs to be fully relaxed, we are suggesting to allow up to 90 minutes in total. This will give people time to get into the lab and have a cuppa while the dog settles. I have attached the explanatory statement, which gives more details about the study. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Tiffani EEG_Explan_Statement.pdf

Hi everyone, I am Tiffani Howell, a PhD student at Monash University, and we are looking for medium- to large-breed (Labrador Retrievers, Australian Shepherds, Spaniels, etc) pet dogs to participate in an EEG study. We need dogs that relax easy in the presence of their owners, even in unfamiliar environments, and that do not become distressed when receiving annual vaccinations by the veterinarian. A new minimally-invasive procedure involves three tiny needle electrodes, similar in size to acupuncture needles, that go just underneath the skin. We hope this research will encourage the use of minimally-invasive techniques in future EEG research with animals, which has traditionally been highly invasive. You will receive a small payment and a Monash Clayton campus parking pass for participating. For more information, please contact me at [email protected] Thanks very much, Tiffani

It may be that dogs use visual information more than we think they do. I would be surprised if smell wasn't the main sense they relied on, but perhaps they can be fooled by their eyes occasionally, just like us I think they understand that there's nothing particularly salient about their reflection, but only after they try to engage it and don't get the expected response from the 'other dog'. The responses that we've gotten from running the test so far have really run the gamut (which unfortunately will make the stats that much harder to analyse!) Some act super interested in the mirror but never turn around; others turn around immediately, and still others act completely differently to seeing their owner in the mirror vs through the window. And I would've thought that learning would play a large role in this, but I don't know if it will....

Hi again everyone, These sorts of anecdotes that many of you have mentioned are what we'd like to try to measure. Please take part in my study Yes, other senses of course play a huge role in all of this, and a 'smell-o-mirror' might give a very different result than the regular old mirrors we use now. If anyone has any idea of how to make a 'smell-o-mirror' (or what that would even be), by the way, I'd love to chat! hehe My dog is the same with cats, too. If there's a cat in the house, she's fine with it -- she grew up with cats in my parents' home but I don't have cats -- but any cats outside seem to activate that prey drive! I actually haven't read about this study, although it rings a bell. I don't know who did it or when, though. There doesn't appear to be any publications in the scientific literature about testing dogs for this. Our study doesn't go quite as far as to ask if dogs truly have self-recognition in a mirror, but it does ask if dogs can understand the nature of a reflection and use it to solve a problem (which, in this case, it to understand that the owner with the toy is behind them instead of in front of them). Possibly, but a lot depends on the data, of course. If we do run these kinds of analyses, it may not be able to be truly between breeds because I will be surprised if we can get enough of any one breed to make a statistically significant analysis. We may be able to clump them into breed groups or even, as you said, long-faced vs. short-faced breeds. This latter option seems most likely as of now.

That's when they put a mark on the animal's fur in a place where it can't see it itself (e.g. forehead), show the animal itself in a mirror, and see if the animal then understands that it has been marked, right? I read a little bit about them doing that with elephants. I don't think my dog understands that it's her in the mirror, but she does understand that it isn't a real dog. It will be interesting to see what you discover. That's the one! Elephants and dolphins may have evidence of self-recognition, but as another poster said, it's pretty contentious. One of the discussions in animal cognition is exactly this problem: using human capabilities as the benchmark by which we measure all other animals' cognitive skills. On the one hand, we're the ones asking the questions so we are the ones who get to make the rules. On the other hand, why is a dog's superior sense of smell or an eagle's exceptional vision not considered as valuable as human logic, when we all have evolutionary reasons for developing the way we did? It's an interesting philosophical debate, to which I have no answers. But as far as anthropomorphising is concerned, I personally think there's a happy medium SOMEWHERE between "dogs are people too" and "dogs are automatons with no thoughts or feelings". Where that happy medium sits is a fundamental question in animal cognition research.

Wow, this thread has picked up since I was last online! Thanks to everyone for your interest. These kinds of anecdotes are really interesting to us, but how to measure them is a tricky one. Still, this is the sort of thing we'd like to answer. It depends on what the results are, but if we have something publishable, it will probably be in a journal like Animal Cognition or Behavioural Processes (among many others). If we decide to go for gold, there's always Science Magazine haha! yes, this is more the question than true MSR (otherwise we'd be doing the mark test). It's along the lines of a recent Broom study which demonstrated evidence of pigs using mirrors as a tool to solve a problem. This is in that same vein. What we want to see is, if the dog is clearly motivated by whatever it's seeing in the mirror, will they then turn around as if to say "oh, there's Mum behind me with my favourite toy" or will they be confused by it? Either way, they'll get a liver treat at the end Yes, this is a very good point and one thing we'd like to explore further. My guess is that, since dogs rely quite heavily on their sense of smell, this will certainly be a factor in their understanding of a reflection (or lack thereof). But again, this is just a guess because it hasn't been researched to our knowledge. And self-awareness does indeed have a very specific definition in scientific literature, so we're taking a step back to see if dogs can even understand the nature of a reflection. Come one, come all! It'll be fun

hmmm, can you explain why you have a requirement of two adult owners? Sorry, I should have explained that in the first place. We need dogs with two owners because one will be in the room with me and the dog, and the next will be in an adjoining room in front of a window holding a toy (this will be visible to the dog through the mirror, which faces the window). The purpose of having an owner with a toy on the other side of the window is to try to motivate the dog to look into the mirror. We had tried just having one owner in our pilots, with me being alone in the room with the dog. However, this raised problems because many dogs were not able to relax without their owner in the room with them, and the ones who did relax tended not to be obedient when I asked them to sit facing the mirror -- after all, why should they obey a random stranger?! Therefore, we need one owner to remain on the other side of the window with the toy, and the other owner will be in the room with me and the dog. I hope that clarifies things somewhat.

Hi everyone, I am a PhD student researching dog cognitive abilities at Monash University, under the supervision of Dr. Pauleen Bennett. A few animal species have demonstrated an understanding of their reflection, which would indicate self-awareness. Whether this ability exists in dogs is not known, but we aim to find out. We are looking for dogs that are at least 18 months old with two adult owners (16+ years old) who are both willing to come in to Monash University, Clayton, with their dog for approximately 30 minutes. The dog should be able to sit on the owner’s command. During this time, we will examine whether dogs understand the nature of a reflection. If you are interested in participating in this study, please contact me at [email protected] to organise a time to come in (evenings and weekends are fine). Thank you very much, Tiffani