Dog Behavior Blog

Should Dogs Eat The Same Food Every Day?

2011-12-07T10:39:48-07:00

I was just feeding my Standard Poodle his daily rations and thinking about dog food. Every morning and evening, I give him half a can of some kind of premium dog food, some premium dog kibble, and some human food, like chicken, beef, or tuna. I mix up the cans of food, so that he never gets the same flavor repeated twice in one day. Sometimes it’s canned lamb, other times it’s canned chicken, and other times it’s beef from a can. I mix up the human food as well, giving him some chicken meat or beef or tuna on a random basis.

When I started feeding my first dog, many years ago, I was told by everyone that I should feed her the same thing, day in and day out. So I gave her the same dried kibble, twice a day, every day. The rationale was that if I gave her something else to eat, she would have an upset stomach because she was not used to processing different kinds of food.

She seemed grateful to get the food, and I didn’t think to question the conventional wisdom that I was told.

Much later, I started to wonder about the conventional wisdom. After all, feral dogs and their wild relatives eat a huge variety of food, basically whatever they can find or catch, all without having severe diarrhea every 20 minutes.

So is it really true that dogs need to stay on the same diet?

We know that mammals (yes, us too!) have a bacterial flora in their gut that assists in the digestion and processing of food. When that bacterial flora is disrupted, we can have diarrhea. This is often why people who go to other countries come down with a case of the “turista” when they eat food containing a different mix of bacterial flora.

Maybe that happens with dogs as well, when we change them over from feeding on only one food item to a large variety of foods. Then we might have a little bit of cleanup to do for a while.

Some people have told me that the proper way to introduce a dog to some other kind of food is to put in a little bit of the new food in along with lots of the old food, and then keep adding a little bit of the new food every day until the proportion of new food outweighs the proportion of old food. This can take months.

But with us, we know that we get over the “turista” in a week or two, and then are quite happy to eat a variety of strange foods as the bacterial flora adjusts in the gut. Should dogs be any different?

I know that my Poodle enjoys eating a variety of different foods. Occasionally I will forget which can I gave him and repeat the same canned food twice in a day. He usually eats some of it, but not with the relish that he saves for a dinner that is varied from the time before.

Put yourself in his place: How would you like to have oatmeal for breakfast, and oatmeal for dinner, only to look forward to the next day and …..more oatmeal?

To go back to my question: should dogs stay on the same diet day after day? In my opinion, the answer is No, not even close.

(PS, I love oatmeal, but I don’t think that I could eat it twice a day for the rest of my life).

--Con Slobodchikoff

Your Dog Can Talk To You

2011-10-17T16:27:51-07:00

We have known for some time that animals such as chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas can be taught to communicate through using signs such as those of American Sign Language or using lexigrams on computer keyboards. We also are becoming increasingly aware that dogs have the cognitive ability to understand human gestures such as pointing, and that dogs are keen observers of the body movements of humans. However, with dogs, this communication has often been a one-way street: We point, they respond, but we do not usually respond to their gestures. In her book, Dogs Can Sign, Too, Sean Senechal offers a step-by-step method of teaching both humans and dogs a way of communicating with one another through gestures (Senechal, Sean, 2009, Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate to You, Celestial Arts, Berkeley CA).

I first learned of Sean Senechal’s work from a story by Anne Fawcett in the May 27, 2011 Sydney Morning Herald, which talked about the progress we are making in communicating with animals. The story talked about my work with decoding prairie dog language, and also talked about the work that Sean Senechal was doing in devising a language that dogs can use to communicate with their people.

I was intrigued, and visited Sean at her California ranch to see her work for myself. She showed me how her horse could use the sign language to request different kinds of foods, and also how her dogs could use the language to indicate what kind of food they wanted, where things hurt on their body, and their wanting to go outside to play. I ordered her book from Amazon, and found the book to be both informative and fun to read.

There are ten chapters in this paperback book. The first chapter offers a brief statement of why dogs are a good candidate for learning a sign language that they can use to communicate with their humans. Consider, for example, all of the signs, gestures, and procedures that guide dogs have to learn in order to perform their duties for people who cannot see or cannot hear. The second chapter presents an overview of the K9Sign Language that Senechal has devised for communication, using gestures and body postures that are easy and natural for dogs. This language is rule-based with standardized moves: If a dog want to communicate “Potty,” the dog moves its hind legs out to a wide stance, while if a dog wants to communicate its desire for “Chicken” as a food item, the dog lifts its left paw up high and then lowers it down. The third chapter discusses how dog learn and some of the elements of learning theory, as an introduction to those who are not familiar with the basics, and as a reminder for those who know how other animals learn. Chapters 4 through 6 give some practical tips on what people should expect when they start to teach this language to their dogs, and how people can avoid the pitfalls and frustrations that are likely to befall them along the way. Chapter 7 gives specific information on how to teach human signs to dogs, and Chapters 8 and 9 talk about how to use and interpret the signs that dogs naturally have through their body language. Chapter 10 briefly sets out Senechal’s vision that eventually such signs can be used to communicate not only with dogs but with other animals as well, such as horses, as a way of strengthening the human-animal bond.

Throughout the book, Senechal provides photographs of the hand, arm, and face gestures that she uses with her dog Chal, and also provides extensive photographic documentation of the signs that Chal uses to communicate with Senechal. This makes it easy for a person learning K9Sign Language to learn the signs and also to learn what kinds of responses should be taught to a dog. Senechal also goes into extensive detail about the different signs, so that in addition to the visual aspect of the photographs, there is ample explanation of how to learn and teach this language.

In our attempts to communicate with other animals, Senechal’s book is a step in a good direction. Although there is increasing evidence that many animal species have sophisticated methods of communicating and language, decoding those communication methods is difficult and time-consuming. On the other hand, teaching animals a basic language that they can use to communicate with humans offers a path to increasing the well-being of both the animals and the people who otherwise have to guess what it might be that their animals want. This book is a “Must Read” for those who seriously want to communicate with their dogs.

--Con Slobodchikoff

It’s Okay to Change Your Dog’s Name

2011-09-29T14:23:20-07:00

“They named him ‘Baby’ and I just hate it. I feel so silly calling him that, but obviously I can’t change his name. He’s already three years old.” It’s not surprising that my client, a new owner of a 130-pound full-grown Hungarian Kuvasz wasn’t that crazy about the name ‘Baby.’ It’s common to adopt an adult dog with a name that doesn’t really thrill you, and many people have soldiered on for the rest of the dog’s life, stuck with a name that they just don’t feel right about.

There’s good news, though: If you don’t like your dog’s name, you can change it. Period. It’s easy to do it and it causes no harm to the dog. Dogs can have multiple names and respond to each one, as is the case in many homes where the dog is called by his actual name as well as variations by different members of the household.

Changing a dog’s name is one of the easiest parts of adopting and training a new dog. Here’s how you do it. Start by saying the new name and giving him something great like a piece of chicken, a belly rub, or a play session if he looks at you. This teaches him to love hearing his new name and responding to it. Most dogs learn a new name within a few weeks if you do this multiple times each day, and some learn it in just a couple of sessions. Progress will be faster if you avoid using the name for no reason and also refrain from associating it with anything bad.

Names like Baby, Poopsie, and Pudding are often not popular with new adopters. On other extreme, many people feel a mismatch when they adopt a dog who has been going by Killer, Spike, or Vengeance. I knew a family who adopted a dog named Spot, and chose to change it. They could not imagine why someone would give their dog this cliché of a name. A year later, they learned from the rescue group where they adopted their dog that the couple who had surrendered him had been named Dick and Jane, which made the choice of Spot for the dog’s name seem not just understandable, but almost obvious.

--Karen London

Basics of Dog Adoption 101

2011-08-01T10:07:46-07:00

According to the ASPCA, around 3 to 4 million dogs and cats are euthanized every year in the United States, about 60 percent of the dogs and 70 percent of the cats that end up in shelters. Often these were animals who were part of a family, and because of some kind of change in circumstances, such as moving or financial troubles, they were turned over to a shelter.

Many of these animals would have loved to start a new life in another home. Few of them get that chance.

Adopting an animal saves a life.

But there are some challenges involved in adoption. In my consulting practice I have often seen the kind of difficulties that can arise. Someone falls in love with an adorable dog in a shelter, and brings her home to live a happy life. For a while, things are great. The dog is very respectful, meek, and polite. This period lasts anywhere from a few days to a month or two.

Gradually the dog gains more confidence, and that is when potential problems can surface. Perhaps the dog is somewhat aggressive, guarding her food dish, or maybe pees and poops on the carpet, or maybe tugs hard on the leash while walking. Sometimes, problems arise that were the cause of the dog being put into the shelter in the first place. This is the time that people can start questioning whether they made the right decision to adopt a dog. This is often the time that people seek advice from dog behavior professionals.

The best time to get advice about adoption, however, is before a dog is adopted. There are a lot of issues that have to be considered, such as dogproofing a house, getting the right food, finding a good vet, figuring out how to introduce the new dog to the resident animals and people, deciding whether to buy a crate for the dog, and planning a routine for the new animal to follow. Without prior planning, chaos can ensue.

Now there is an excellent source of advice on adopting a dog, both for the planning stages and for the potential problems that can arise.

A new book by Drs. Patricia McConnell and Karen London addresses the entire adoption process. The book is called Love Has No Age Limit: Welcoming An Adopted Dog Into Your Home, published by McConnell Publishing Limited, and available for $ 9.95 at Dr. McConnell’s website: http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Dr. Karen London, a coauthor of the book and a cowriter of this blog, provided me with a free copy for review. I should also say that if I did not like the book, I would have thanked Karen politely and simply would not have written a review.

The book reads very well and very quickly. It has 95 pages, so the amount of reading material is not overwhelming. But the contents go through all of the steps of adoption, from the planning stages, to the stages of building a relationship with your new dog, to a consideration of the possible behavioral problems that might arise. It is a very enjoyable read, and the information is invaluable to anyone who is thinking about adopting a dog. In the future, when I am asked about dog adoptions by my clients, I am certainly going to recommend that they buy this book first. For people who want to distribute this book more widely, there are quantity discounts offered on Dr. McConnell’s website.

And in the meanwhile, let’s not forget about the 70 percent of cats who are euthanized each year. Cats need good homes too.

--Con Slobodchikoff

When You Are Generous, Your Dog Is Watching You

2011-05-17T11:01:41-07:00

Some people have generous natures, and some people are miserly. The generous ones are happy to share what they have with others, while the miserly folks resent having to share anything with anybody.

So if given the choice, which type of person would a dog likely approach first?

If you guessed the generous one, you guessed right.

But how do dogs know this? A recent study in the journal Animal Behaviour reported on experiments where dogs were given the opportunity to interact with generous vs. non-generous people, and the study examined the cues that the dogs used to make a decision about whom to interact with (Marshall-Pescini et al. 2011. Social eavesdropping in the domestic dog. Animal Behaviour (2011), doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.02.029).

The study used 100 dogs of mixed breeds and ages. In the experimental setup, a dog and the dog’s person were allowed to go into a small room, and the dog was given the opportunity to explore the room. Then the dog and person sat down along one side of the room while two people unfamiliar to the dog entered the room. Each of these two people had a bowl of cereal and a bowl of sausages, and each came up to the seated dog and allowed the dog to smell both bowls. Then the two people sat down facing each other, and started to eat small quantities of cereal.

A third person entered the room, came up to each of the two people facing one another, and begged for food. One of the two people, the generous one, let the person have a morsel of cereal, saying “Have it.” and placed a bit of food in the beggar’s mouth. The other person, the non-generous one, told the person “No” and made a gesture as if pushing the beggar away. The beggar moved from one person to the next six times, each time either getting a morsel of food from the generous person or being told “No” by the non-generous one.

Following these interactions, the beggar left and the dog was allowed to roam around the room for 20 seconds, during which time the experimenters monitored who the dog interacted with the most: the generous person, the non-generous one, or neither.

The end result was that most dogs spent more of their time either looking at or interacting with the generous person while mostly ignoring the non-generous one.

The experimenters tweaked these experiments to see if just voice alone (without the gestures) was enough, or if just the gestures (without the voice) made a difference, or even if the dogs would respond if people made the gestures and said the words but no beggar was present.

The dogs did best when voice was combined with gestures, although they also did well with just the voice alone. They did not seem to recognize what was happening when just the gestures were used (putting food in the beggar’s mouth vs pushing beggar away), perhaps because these gestures were relatively similar.

When no beggar was present, the dogs did not distinguish between the generous and non-generous person, indicating that they were watching what happened to the beggar rather than just tuning in to the voice and the gestures.

Those of us who have trained dogs know that we can get a dog’s attention by sharing food with the dog. But this study puts a novel twist on food sharing: Dogs can assess who shares food with other people, and look to that person as a likely candidate for sharing food with the dog.

So the next time you have people over for a dinner party, be sure to be generous in handing out food.

You need to impress your dog with your generosity.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Turning A Dog’s Behavior Into A Trick

2011-04-20T12:40:28-07:00

I love teaching tricks to dogs for so many reasons. It’s a fun way to interact with them, it gives them mental exercise, it can help teach a dog a skill that may be practical, and it’s low pressure training because it’s “just for fun.”

One of the secrets to teaching a dog a trick is working with what they naturally do. If the dog has a tendency to perform a particular behavior, then it will be easier to turn that into a cute trick that is performed on cue than trying to get a dog to do something that is foreign.

For example, a dog who tends to use his paws a lot naturally is a great candidate for high-five, wave, or shake.

Dogs who tend to creep when lying down or even when they are supposed to be in a stay are easy to teach to crawl.

Dogs who sleep on their backs usually don’t mind that position even when they are awake, so they are often quick to learn to rollover or to go belly up.

Spinning on cue is easiest to teach to dogs who naturally go in circles when they are excited. (However, I don’t like to teach this to dogs who spin and spin when they get revved up because I’m worried it will develop into a habit that they will have trouble stopping.)

Part of training is teaching a dog to perform a certain behavior and another part is teaching them to do it on cue. If your dog already exhibits the behavior, then all you have to do is put that behavior on cue. And that’s another reason I like teaching dogs to do tricks—it’s often half done before I even start!

--Karen London

When You’re Smiling, Your Dog Smiles With You

2011-04-01T08:00:00-07:00

My Standard Poodle Raja likes to sleep in during the morning. Hours after everyone in the house has gotten up, Raja is still asleep under his blanket, dead to the world. Eventually he gets up and walks around the house looking for people to say “Good Morning!” When I see him coming down the hall, I smile at him, reach out and give him a morning massage while his tail wags furiously. If I pay attention, I see that he is smiling too.

I have always assumed that he is smiling because he loves the petting and the massage. It makes me feel good to pet him, lowering my blood pressure, which already is rising with the stress of the coming day.

But could he be responding to my smile? If I were asked this question a few months ago, I would have answered, Of course not!

Now, however, there is an article in the journal Animal Cognition by four researchers in Japan who say that dogs can indeed recognize the smiles of their owners (Nagasawa et al. 2011. Dogs can discriminate human smiling faces from blank expressions. Animal Cognition online 26 February 2011).

In their experiments, the researchers trained five dogs to respond to photographs of human faces. During the training phase, the dogs were shown two photographs: the smiling face of a university student, and the back of that student’s head. They were rewarded for choosing the photograph of the smiling face.

Then the experimenters showed each dog a photograph of their owner’s smiling face vs. their owner’s face with a neutral expression, repeating this ten times with each dog. The dogs chose the photograph of the smiling owner’s face between 80-90 percent of the time, significantly above chance levels (chance would be choosing the smiling face and the neutral face 50 percent of the time each).

The experimenters then went one step further and showed the dogs photographs of the smiling face and neutral face of unfamiliar people of the same gender as the dogs’ owners. Again the dogs chose the smiling faces between 70-90 percent of the time.

The last experiment turned out to be something of a puzzler. The experimenters showed the dogs both smiling and neutral photographs of faces of the opposite gender as the dogs’ owners. Now the dogs fell to chance levels, suggesting that they couldn’t tell the difference between the smiling face or the neutral face of someone with whom they weren’t familiar. This last response suggests that it isn’t just simple conditioning where the dogs have learned to respond to a smile, regardless of the face.

We can ask why. Maybe dogs have to learn that the smile on their owner’s face is associated with positive things, such as a food reward, a walk, or strokes. Or maybe dogs just feel good around their owners and not as good around other people. Maybe they feel particularly good when the owner’s emotion, expressed as a smile, washes over them. Clearly we still have a lot to learn about this.

But I know one thing. I feel good when I see Raja coming down the hallway, and I am pretty sure that Raja feels good when he sees me smiling.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Dogs Assess Reputations

2011-03-01T11:45:00-07:00

We all know someone who has a bad reputation. Backstabber. Malicious gossip. Liar. Cheater. Gets unpredictably angry. And we try to keep that reputation in mind when we deal with the person. If you are like me, you might give the person the benefit of the doubt, but then when it happens to you, you back off and are no longer willing to trust the person. As the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy.

But can dogs assess who has a bad reputation? On the surface, the answer seems to be easy – Of course not. Dogs are supposed to be friendly toward everyone, and are supposed to lack the thinking skills that would allow them to form a judgment about reputations.

Not so fast, however, with the easy answers.

A new study appearing in the journal Animal Cognition shows that dogs can make some pretty good judgments about people’s reputations (Kundey et al. 2011. Reputation-like inference in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition 14: 291-302).

The experimenters used a very clever trick. While a dog was watching, they had two people kneeling side-by-side in front of another person who was kneeling facing the other two. The two kneeling people each gave the person facing them a treat by placing the treat in front of the person. But one of the two givers consistently took the treat back, while the other giver allowed the person in front of them to take the treat. Then each of the givers offered the dog a treat by placing the treat in front of them, just like they did when they were offering the treat to the person. The dog was allowed to choose whose treat to take.

All ten dogs in this experiment chose to take the treat from the giver who didn’t take back the treat.

To control for unintentional cues, the experimenters tried a variety of modifications of this experimental design, each with about ten new dogs. In one modification, the givers were kneeling facing away from the recipient person, and had to reach backward to offer the treat. In another modification, the givers were not people, but large cardboard boxes with people inside reaching out to put down the treats. In a third modification, the recipient was a cardboard box.

In each case, at least nine of the ten dogs chose to take the treat from the giver who didn’t initially take the treat back.

The experimenters concluded that the dogs formed a concept of the reputation of each of the givers: one giver was reliable in offering the treat, while the other one was unreliable.

Let’s extend these results to our dogs. How many times have you yelled at your dog, hit your dog, yanked your dog by the collar or leash, or otherwise acted in an unpleasant manner toward your dog (my hope is that your answer is “zero”)? For those who do that, these experiments imply that dogs are forming a concept of the reputation of their people.

Just as we don’t do well in an environment of working with a boss who has a reputation for being unpleasant, maybe dogs don’t do well living with people who have a reputation of being unpredictable.

And maybe dogs act out when they get a concept that the person that they are living with has a bad reputation.

The moral of the story is, be nice to your dogs.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Snow Changes Dogs

2011-01-28T09:54:09-07:00

Snow has once again descended upon our mountain town, and that means that many dogs are experiencing their favorite time of year. There’s no doubt about it—snow is fun for most dogs, and, along with cooler winter temperatures, it really changes them. One of the most obvious changes is that dogs are more energetic, especially when they are outdoors.

Energy can be great fun for all involved. Bringing a dog with you when cross country skiing or snow shoeing is a wonderful experience, and many dogs enjoy the extra time outdoors exercising. Even having company while shoveling snow is a pleasant side effect of the fact that most dogs love snow. People shovel the snow and dogs try to catch it as it flies by to the piles. And I love it when a dog is happily tired in the evenings after a day of outdoor snow adventures.

On the other hand, if your dog is feeling extra peppy because of the snow and crisp air, it can be exhausting if you are not similarly inclined to be more playful and full of joy due to snow. When dogs are invigorated by the weather but their people consider winter storms an inspiration to sip hot cocoa while reading a good book in front of the fire, there can be trouble.

Energetic dogs may be more likely to misbehave with destructive chewing, barking, whining, chasing the cat, and any of a number of undesirable actions that result from being full of energy with no way to vent it. When they do go outside, they may be less responsive because they are so distracted. They may also take off running and leaping—cute but potentially dangerous. Many people are surprised by misbehavior that occurs in the winter without realizing that cooler temperatures, more snow, and a bit of cabin fever may all be contributing factors.

The way that snow changes many dogs is a positive turn of events as long as you embrace it and provide your dog ample opportunities to enjoy the season. Otherwise, you’re in for a long wait until spring!

--Karen London

Chaser, The Dog Who Knows 1000 Words

2011-01-18T10:21:22-07:00

How many words of dog language do you know?

Oh, that’s right, dogs aren’t supposed to have a language with words. They merely have a communication system, where their barks, whines, growls, raised heads and wagging tails are simple expressions of emotion, but nothing to do with words. What a relief!

But what if it isn’t true? What if dogs have a language of their own, with gestures, growls, and barks that are the equivalent of words and sentences? What then?

Scientists who have been interested in knowing whether animals have language have often tried a back-door approach. If you can teach an animal a human language (or something artificial made up by people) then it might imply that the animal has the cognitive capacity to have a language of its own. No guarantee, of course, but at least it shows the possibility.

To this end, we have had studies of teaching sign language to chimps (such as Washoe), teaching keyboard symbols to bonobos (such as Kanzi), teaching English words to parrots (such as Alex), and teaching artificial gestural and sound languages to dolphins (such as Akeakamai and Phoenix).

And what do you know, they all can understand, and some can or could communicate back to the experimenters, much to the chagrin of the naysayers who insist that language is exclusively the property of people.

As far as dogs go, a group of scientists reported in 2004 that the Border Collie Rico could understand 200 words, and if given a task of retrieving an object whose name Rico did not know from among a group of objects whose names he did know, he could make the intellectual leap and assume that the unknown name that was given stood for the one object whose name he did not know.

Now comes an article in the scientific literature about a Border Collie called Chaser, who knows more than 1000 words (Pilley, J.W. and A. K. Reid, 2011. Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents. Behavioural Processes, doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2010.11.007).

Over a three-year period, Chaser learned the names of more than 1000 objects (specifically, 1022 objects), which were all proper nouns relating to stuffed toys, Frisbee-like objects, or balls. Like Rico, she could retrieve an object whose name she did not know, when she was asked to find that object from among a series of objects whose names she knew. She could also understand broad categories, such as “toy”, “ball”, and “Frisbee” and could correctly select the right kind of object when told to fetch, for example, a “ball” from a selection of objects that included a number of other things.

Even more impressive, for those of us whose dogs chew our slippers, is that Chaser learned to distinguish between “toy” and “non-toy” when the objects were very similar. Toys were things she was allowed to play with. Non-toys were similar objects that she could see but was not allowed to touch, such as cloth animals, balls, dolls, or shoes that were visible to her. So she generalized the categories “toy” and “non-toy” by function: “toys” were things she was allowed to play with, and “non-toys” were things she was forbidden to touch.

It looks like Chaser could understand a lot of what was said to her. The experimenters did not specifically test for her understanding of sentences, but when they told her: “Fetch the ball,” that pretty-much implies that she could understand sentences at some level.

So much for the argument that dogs only understand your tone of voice.

And by the way, how many words of dog language do you know?

--Con Slobodchikoff