Blogspot - Companion Animal Psychology

Why dog trainers are like stalwart detectives, and how it all begins mid-scene. Guest post by Kristi Benson CTC Photo: Anna Goroshnikova/Shutterstock A while ago, a client got in touch asking for help with the family dog . The dog was a young and lovely Golden retriever, smart as a whip and sweet as pie. The problem? He was barking. A lot. As I packed up my bag of tricks, I grabbed a few different hand-outs to make sure I had all the usual suspects covered: boredom barking? Check. Fearful barking? Check. Guarding, alarm, attention, and play? Check, check, check. My bait bag and some treats followed the hand-outs into my bag and I was off to the races. When a story  begins in the middle of some action, it’s called “in medias res”, which is a Latin term meaning "into the middle of things". Have you ever read a thriller that opens with the characters sitting around a table in a tense meeting of political hotshots? Or a murder mystery starting with a car chase, sirens whooping? ...

Why people should not keep goats in a dog environment, and what to do instead. Guest post by Christian Nawroth, PhD . Photo: Christian Nawroth Media coverage of recent goat cognition research gives the impression that goats might be the new dogs when it comes to communicating with humans, and so can make good pets. But can you keep a goat in a dog environment? Short answer: You shouldn’t, if you care about their welfare. Recent media coverage on research on the cognitive skills of goats might have falsely given the impression that goats are horned dog-equivalents. Indeed, goats show surprisingly dog-like skills: They gaze at humans in the same way as dogs do when asking for a treat that is out of reach. Similarly to dogs, goats are also skilful readers of the human pointing gesture when it comes to using this information to find a hidden reward. They also understand that people who have turned their back on them are unable to see them . Recently it was discovered that goats, muc...

Are visual cues more effective than verbal cues in dog training? Guest post by Sienna Taylor, MSc (Hartpury University Centre) . Photo: Dorottya Mathe (Shutterstock) A new study by Anna Scandurra (University of Naples) et al. investigates whether visual cues as opposed to verbal cues are more effective when dogs are trained to fetch an item under four conditions: using only hand cues, using only verbal cues, using both hand and verbal cues and using contradictory hand and verbal cues. It turns out that dogs responded better to visual hand gestures than verbal cues although speed of response was quicker when both hand and verbal cues were used together. Many pet owners teach their dogs to respond to both visual and verbal cues, for example, an owner might ask their dog to lie on the floor by simply using the verbal command “Lie Down” or alternatively using a hand gesture such as pointing or perhaps a combination of both!  Whilst dogs do use vocalisations to communicate (such as att...

Are lip licking and looking away signals of discomfort and expressions of peace in the domestic dog? Guest post by Georgina (Gina) Bishopp (Hartpury College, UK) Photo: StudioCAXAP A study by Dr. Angelika Firnkes (Ludwig Maximilians University Munich) et al., 2017 has found that the domestic dog uses appeasement gestures both when feeling threatened and during greetings with humans. For the first time it has now been shown that dogs will use at least two of these signals, the lip lick and look away, to appease their human social companions. Turid Rugaas (2005) had previously described a set of behaviours in dogs, including the lip lick and looking away, through years of working as a behavioural consultant, that she described as ‘Calming Signals’. Rugaas (2005) explained that the dogs would use these ‘Calming Signals’ when feeling uncomfortable and attempting to prevent aggressive responses from their conspecifics and humans. For the first time scientific research has supported this t...