An interesting paper appeared in a recent issue of Behavioural Processes (2009, vol. 82, pp. 355).  The author, William Helton from New Zealand, examined results from three published studies in which breed and head shape were reported, to answer the question of whether morphology (head shape, in this case) reflected intelligence in dogs.  Now, a little background because there a lot of caveats associated with this work.

First, what do we mean by head shape?  The classic measure of head shape, used here, is the cranial index.  This is the ratio of the width of the skull to the overall length of the skull, and can be easily measured with calipers.  But of course, this is only one possible way to measure a skull shape.  It turns out that dogs are interesting for this kind of question because, through our breeding, we have produced a wide range of head shapes, on a continuum of cranial indices.  So extremes in the cranial index values reveal dolichocephalic dogs (with a long cranium, the running dogs and sight hounds; think greyhound) and brachycephalic dogs (with a very wide cranium, bred for fighting and holding, grasping; think Staffordshire Bull Terriers) and in between, mesocephalic breeds, whose heads are less extreme in length or width.  So we can divide breeds into three parts of this continuum, or ask as the author did, whether dogs of extreme shapes, the breeds that are more specialized in their breeding, might have a lower or higher intelligence.  One hypothesis might be that medium-head-shape dogs, of less specialized duty (historically), might be less intelligent.

Another issue is, “what do we mean by intelligence, and how was it measured?”  A very good, and very difficult, question.  We really have VERY little data on the cognitive capabilities of breeds of dogs (or of course, of most species of animals).  But some work HAS been done on what might be one aspect of intelligence: trainability.  Now, while we have a few studies on this topic, among breeds, we still have very little.  But one way that has been used to “get at this question” has been to survey experienced dog owners, especially those with a broad exposure to breeds, to rank the PERCEIVED trainability of various breeds.  One good source of such information is obedience judges, and Coren has published these very consistent and repeatable results in a number of places.  So now we are no longer talking about intelligence, or even trainability, but perceived trainability… but it’s the best we’ve got, until we do more research!

So now, to the results of this work: what is the relationship between head shape, especially extremes of head shape, and ranking of perceived trainability (our stand-in for intelligence)?  Well, to a degree not accountable by simple chance, medium-head-shape dogs are perceived to be more trainable, and dogs with more extreme head shapes, whether long or wide, are perceived to be less trainable.

There are some other interesting findings to go with this main point.  For instance, what else does head shape tell us?  It turns out that the shape of the head also tells us a lot about the visual abilities of dog.  Breeds with long heads, associated with coursing or hunting by long-distance running, like greyhounds, have a retina designed with a wide area of receptivity: their vision is most acute in the horizontal and at the horizon.  Breeds with wide heads have their greatest receptivity in the center, like primates including us, and thus have their best vision in the center and close up.  So there are differences in the nervous system associated with head shape and there certainly could be differences in other facets of their brains and learning abilities.  Perhaps it is true that highly specialized breeds, so specialized that they LOOK different, might not have needed a broad intelligence to do their job, while your basic, unspecialized, medium-head-shape dog needed more wits to get the job(s) done!

Or perhaps this study tells us more about human perception.  Perhaps there is something in us that tells us that things that look different are (have to be?) different in other ways.  The answer lies in learning more about the actual intelligence, or at least the actual trainability, of dog breeds, a project that we at Companion Animal Solutions have begun, and that other ethologists around the world are undertaking.  The questions never end, and I hope that if you have questions, you will contact us here at Companion Animal Solutions.

Few of the regular attendees of the AVMA conference were aware of what was happening with Merial, a veterinary pharmaceutical company. Quite a controversy was created when a few weeks before the conference, it was brought to light that the company was using Cesar Millan in promotion of their Frontline and Heartguard products. As you may know, Mr. Millan’s show The Dog Whisperer is broadcast on the National Geographic channel. Mr Millan’s methods have come under intense scrutiny by the veterinary behavior community.

Dr. Andrew Luescher, DVM, PhD Diplomate, American College of Veterinary Behaviorists previewed videotapes submitted to him by National Geographic. The following is excerpted from his report:

“I have been involved in continuing education for dog trainers for over 10 years, first through the “How Dogs Learn” program at the University of Guelph and then through the DOGS! Course at Purdue University. I therefore know very well where dog training stands today, and I must tell you that Millan’s techniques are outdated and unacceptable not only to the veterinary community, but also to dog trainers.”

The first question regarding the above mentioned tapes I have is this: The show repeatedly cautions the viewers not to attempt these techniques at home, so what then, is the purpose of this show? Is it an infomercial for Cesar Millan? I think we have to be realistic. People will try these techniques at home, much to the detriment of their dogs.

Millan’s techniques are almost exclusively based on two techniques: flooding and positive punishment. In flooding, an animal is exposed to a fear evoking stimulus (which sometimes results in aggression) and prevented from leaving the situation until the animal stops reacting. To take a human example, arachnophobia would be treated by locking a person in a closet, releasing hundreds of spiders into that closet, and keeping the door shut until the person stops reacting. The person might be cured by that, but also might be severely disturbed and would have gone through an excessive amount of stress. Flooding has therefore always been considered a risky and cruel method of treatment. What Mr. Millan calls “calm submission”, scientists describe as “learned helplessness”.

Positive punishment refers to applying an aversive stimulus or correction as a consequence of a behavior. There are many concerns about punishment aside from its unpleasantness. Punishment is entirely inappropriate for most types of aggression and any behavior that involves anxiety (see Dr. Jim Ha’s post titled Confrontational Behavior Modification Techniques and the Risk to Owners). Punishment can suppress most behavior but does not resolve the underlying problem; anxiety, fear, and/or aggression. Even in cases where correctly applied, punishment might be considered appropriate, many conditions have to be met that most dog owners can’t meet. The punishment has to be applied every time the behavior is displayed, within 1/2 a second of the behavior, and at the correct intensity.

Dr. Nicholas Dodman, the Director of the Animal Behavior Clinic at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine of Tufts University agrees and has said that Cesar Millan’s methods are based on flooding and punishment. The results, though immediate, may only be temporary and can sometimes result in unintended behavioral fallout such as increased anxiety, fear, and aggression.

The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior released two position statements on the use of dominance theory for behavior modification of animals and guidelines for the use of punishment in dealing with behavior problems in animals. These address the problems in many of Millan’s claims about dominance pack order, and how he sets limits. You can download these position statements from the AVSAB web site.

There is a grounding of science in the field of behavior which Mr. Millan does not address in his work with dogs. His methods are based on his own experience and not on science. He calls himself a dog psychologist, but does not talk about basic principles of psychology, such as perception, conditioning, and reinforcement. If he has any knowledge of neurotransmitters and their effect on behavior, he keeps it well hidden. Just stopping an unwanted behavior is not sufficient. It is necessary to teach an acceptable alternate behavior. No amount of drama generated by television show producers or loyal followers change the scientific facts.

For Merial to choose Cesar Millan to represent the veterinary field is akin to choosing a Hollywood star who believes that bloodletting is the best way to treat any medical disorder to represent a pharmaceutical company. His methods are outdated and can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

I enjoyed being at the AVSAB booth at the conference very much though. Not only was I able to educate my colleagues and other attendees about this controversy, but I was also able to show a more effective, safer, and humane alternative. We had videos playing of clicker training being used not only on dogs, but also on cats, chickens, a pig, and a tropical Hornbill. I wonder how well Cesar’s Way would work on those species?

In my next post, I’ll talk about the advances in veterinary medicine that I learned about at the conference.

I have expressed my concern about confrontational behavior modification techniques in earlier blogs: the use of “positive punishment” or dominance and pack theory-based techniques, especially in the hands of untrained users, has been shown to be ineffective and to produce negative side effects.  Hiby and colleagues demonstrated that positive reinforcement techniques produced a significantly better response to obedience tasks than did positive punishment techniques (see references below).  Blackwell and colleagues showed that dogs trained using positive reinforcement methods were less likely to exhibit later behavior problems while dogs trained using punishment were more likely to exhibit later fear-related behaviors (see references below).  These are just some examples: there is an expanding literature on the significantly greater effectiveness of positive reinforcement techniques as well as the lack of effectiveness of aversive or confrontational methods, methods which are related to incorrect ideas about the role of dominance and pack theory in dogs.But in addition to the lack of effectiveness of confrontational techniques, I have expressed concerns about increased risks to owners.  This can be seen regularly on a popular dog training program on television, where aggressive responses by dogs being exposed to confrontational techniques are seen.  And these responses are exhibited towards both the trainer and towards bystanders like owners and family members.  These aggressive responses are a result of either inappropriate use of dominance challenges, like “alpha rolling” and “dominance downs” or the result of purely fear-based responses to punishment.  I see these responses in my own cases frequently, in dogs which have experienced confrontational methods of behavior modification.

But it’s not just my observations: in the January (online) issue of Applied Animal Behaviour Science (vol. 117 (2009) pg 47–54), Meghan Herron, Frances Shofer, and Ilana Reisner publish the results of a study which examined the risk towards owners of owner-executed behavior modification techniques in the form of dog aggression responses.  The retrospective survey technique determined the type of behavior modification attempted by owners of dogs brought to the University of Pennsylvania Behavior Service, as well as where the owner had learned the method, the effectiveness of the method in the owner’s eyes, and the rate of aggressive responses in the dog.

The study included 140 dogs, 90 purebred and 40 mixed breeds, and 41 breeds were represented with no breed representing more than 6% of the sample.  Presenting complaints, which could be multiple, included aggression to familiar people (43%), aggression to unfamiliar people (48%),  aggression to other dogs (40%), separation anxiety (20%), specific fears and anxieties (32%), and a small number of other issues.

The most commonly used confrontational techniques were leash correction (75%), prong or pinch collars (38%), and the use of muzzles (38%).  Aggressive responses on the part of the dog was noted at rates ranging from 43% (for hit or kicking the dog) to 3% for kneeing the dog for jumping, and include rates like 11% for choke or prong collars, 38% for forced release of objects, 31% for alpha rolling, 29% for dominance downs, and 26% for grabbing jowls or scruff.  Even indirect confrontational techniques elicited aggressive responses from dogs in 30% (stare down), 20% (spray bottle), and 41% (growl at dog) of cases.  In contrast, postive reinforcement techniques elicited aggressive responses towards the owners in 0% (clicker training, Look at Me training, pheromones, and increased exercise) to a mere 6%  (trade food for object training) of cases.

There is considerable scientific literature which argues against the idea that most behavior issues are a result of dominance issues or a lack of “alpha” status of owners, instead suggesting that most aggression issues result from fear (self-defense) and anxiety-related issues.  It is equally clear from the scientific literature that confrontational methods like alpha-rolling, forced or dominance downs, and pinch collars increase the levels of a dog’s stress, anxiety, and fear; thus it is not surprising that the use of these techniques were reported to be associated with high levels of aggressive response.  Interestingly, the most commonly reported source of these techniques was television, and while the research did not ask for specifics, it can be assumed that many of these techniques were learned from a popular television show hosted by Cesar Millan.

This study reinforces my own observations that dogs frequently respond aggressively to these confrontational techniques, from fear and anxiety, and that these techniques tend to make these conditions worse, continuing a spiral of deteriorating behavior, often resulting in either attacks on owners, redirected attacks on other humans, dogs, cats and other animals in their environment, or surrender of the unmanageable animal to an adoption facility.  Add to these issues the well-illustrated fact that confrontational methods are not effective, and any reasonable, science-based dog owner should conclude that these techniques have no place in the world of our dogs.  The science of ethology, modern animal behavior, is continuing to drive home this point in hard data.

Here are the references to which I refer in my blog:
Blackwell, E.J., Twells, C., Seawright, A., Casey, R.A., 2007. The relationship between training methods and the occurrence of behaviour problems in a population of domestic dogs. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Veterinary Behaviour Meeting. Fondazione Iniziative Zooprofilattiche e Zootecniche, Brescia, Italy, pp. 51–52.

Hiby, E.F., Rooney, N.J., Bradshaw, J.W.S., 2004. Dog training methods—their use, effectiveness and interaction with behaviour and welfare. Anim. Welfare 13, 63–69.

The modern science of animal behavior, which we call ‘ethology’, has come a long way in the past few decades, from a largely observational, descriptive science to a modern, quantitative science based on solid foundations of evolutionary biology and quantitative methodology.  One of the most common situations in which I realize this is when I see, read, and hear old, out-dated animal behavior concepts and ideas and long-ago-rejected hypotheses used by pet animal behaviorists.  Many trainers and veterinarians received whatever animal behavior education they might have gotten long ago, and often have not stayed up to date.  As a professional and academic ethologist, I of course have the time and professional need to peruse the latest journals, read and review the latest textbooks, and make sure that my university courses are up-to-date.  But when I enter the world of companion animal behavior, I am often taken back to a time long, long ago, to terms presented even to me in my long-ago introductory courses as historical concepts, mistakes, or simplifications used only for pedagogical purposes.

Let me give you a few examples: I think that they fall into four categories.  There are concepts that we now know simply are not true: Fixed Action Patterns fall into this category.  Fixed action patterns were a concept from the early days of ethology, mid-20th-century, in which animals were thought to display some behaviors that were absolutely of genetic origin, the classic “hard-wired” behaviors (another term we are trying to dump!).  When gull chicks saw a red dot on the parent’s bill, they “automatically” gaped their mouths open to get food.  The behavior was thought to be fixed or unchanging, burned into the animal’s brain pathways by their genes, and never to be changed or modified in any way.  But then we discovered that they could get better at it, quicker or more discriminating as they grew older: wait, that’s not genetic, that’s called learning!  So the behavior was NOT fixed.  Finally, the field concluded that there really was no such thing as a fixed action pattern.  We went through the usual struggle of dying concepts, modifying the concept to death, trying to keep it alive, before finally burying it and moving on.  But I still hear trainers referring to highly stereotyped, very ‘fixed’ behaviors performed in response to a clear signal as a Fixed Action Pattern, or at the very least, as being ‘hard-wired’, whereas we now know that there is no hard-wiring.  It immediately dates the user of the term to a certain generation and suggests a lack of later education in ethology!

There are concepts that are sort-of, basically true but that we now know are far more complicated, and thus the original terms and concepts simply don’t do the job any more: the Nature vs. Nurture dichotomy falls into this category (as do many dichotomies: the world is not a black and white place).  This issue is related to the concept of the fixed action pattern, but this one has taken longer to die.  Why?  It’s the caveat about being kinda, sorta right.  But here the point is that it is not a dichotomy.  No matter where we look, it’s a continuum, from highly genetically controlled (but never entirely: see point above) to virtually entirely environmental, what we in applied animal behavior would call ‘learned’, but again, never without a genetic component to the behavior.  So now we use terms like ‘genetic predispositions’ or ’strong learning component’ and really talk about these two ends of the continuum as explaining a proportion of the variability in a trait, a concept that is on a continuous, not a dichotomous, scale.

Another example of this continuum issue that I hear all the time is the question of whether dogs have a ‘dominance hierarchy’ (beyond the fact that most companion animal behaviorists are working with VERY old ideas about what a dominance hierarchy is: another blog topic altogether!).  So all dogs, individually, and all dog breeds, have to either possess (be influenced, include in their behavioral repertoire) a dominance-based form of social structure, or not.  Wolves have a dominance hierarchy-based social system and dogs do… or do not, depending on your point-of-view.  OK, first, the existence of dominance hierarchies in wolves (as well as numerous other species) varies on the basis of ecology, their lifestyle, prey, metabolic needs, etc.  So it’s not open-and-shut for wolves.  Now for dogs: the facts show clearly that the use of dominance, the importance of dominance hierachies in the life of, even the ABILITY to communicate such information, varies widely from breed to breed, due to our artificial selection of this, and more often, other related traits, like coat color, hair type, and temperament.  So it’s a continuum: for some breeds, social structure is VERY important; for others, it can influence their behavior; and for yet others, they can’t even recognize these signals.  A major disaster that we see regularly in metropolitan dog parks is when the first type meet the third type, without supervision: but again, perhaps a topic for another blog.  And the same goes for the common argument that while dogs may have social structure, they don’t include humans in their hierarchies… again, as an across-the-board claim, it’s clearly wrong.  Some breeds do, some breeds don’t.

Back to other old animal behavior concepts and terms: there are also concepts which were originally just that, only a concept, and for which we have never discovered a mechanism.  A nice idea, but without a mechanism, just not useful anymore.  These are often terms and concepts that describe a phenomenon functionally or descriptively but which have no mechanistic, explanatory power behind them: an example is Instinctive Drift.  Unfortunately, this term has led to a term more commonly used in applied animal behavior, Predatory Drift, based loosely on the idea of instinctive drift, descriptive of something that we see occur but without any mechanistic, useful purpose.  The same behavior can be more clearly and with a stronger empirical basis explained in other ways.

Another example of this phenomenon that I ran into recently is the “Hydraulic Model of Drives,” created in the mid-20th-century by the father of modern ethology, Konrad Lorenz.  It was actually called the Psycho-Hydraulic Model, and many believe that it was actually a little ethology joke: the description of his model was based on a European toilet system, a water closet (geeks are just SO funny!!).  But for a decade or two, it was tested as a model, but by the end of his career, in the ‘70’s, even Lorenz had abandoned it for more powerful models, models which fit the data that we were collecting.  So this model has taken its historic place, and certainly acted in a heuristic fashion to generate considerable discussion and much experimental work before being rejected in the end.  But it lives on in the literature and discussions of some dog trainers!

Finally, there are concepts that are simply made-up, never really true, often derived from wherever those old wives produce their tales: a classic example of this is the ‘alpha roll’ or ’scruffing’ of  dominant wolves towards their subordinates, and thus assumed by some trainers and veterinarians to be a useful concept in the domestic dog.  Domestic dogs are evolved directly from gray wolves: the evidence is quite clear on that now, but there is no such thing as alpha rolling, in wolves or domestic dogs… so why do some trainers keep using it?  It’s punishment, pure and simple.

So let’s kill some of these useless concepts and terms: Fixed Action Patterns, Nature vs Nurture and hard-wired behaviors, Predatory Drift, and the alpha roll.  Let’s get modern: pick up a good textbook in animal behavior… I have a great reading list available.  Don’t date yourself… we ethologists have come a long way in a relatively short time, and companion animal behaviorists have much to contribute to the modern science of ethology, but to do so, we have to stay up front with the science.  Contact me if you are interested in more ways to do this: if there is enough interest, I’ll write a future blog about it.

Here’s a question for all of you dog trainers (and that should be just about everyone who has a dog)… how often should you train a dog? Many of us in this business would, of course, say, “as often as possible… please!” But that is not quite what I mean: from a scientific point-of-view, what is the optimum frequency of dog training… once a day, once a week, once a month? Again, many of us would answer, “as frequently as possible, within the attention span of our dog.” But surprisingly perhaps, there is very little information in the scientific literature about the optimum frequency for training, especially for dogs.

A few trainers like Bailey (1995) and Abrantes (2000) have provided some guidelines, generally “from once to several times a day” but provide no scientific evidence for such statements, which seem to me to fall into the “well, the more often, the better seems to make sense” category. And this issue would be a challenging one to test experimentally because most such research is done with dogs from widely varying rearing and training backgrounds, so that very large sample sizes would be required to determine accurately the answer to such a simple question.

In other species, like rats, horses and humans, there is some evidence that in almost all cases (with some interesting exceptions), more widely spaced training (say, weekly training sessions) are more effective (that is, fewer training sessions are required) than “massed” training sessions (multiple/day). The exceptions have to do with training certain behaviors in yearling horses, and in the decline versus the reoccurrence of fear behavior in humans, where prevention of reocccurrence is decreased by spaced training.

So what about dogs? In a recent paper in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, Dutch researchers Iben Meyer and Jan Ladewig tested laboratory beagles, all raised in a very similar fashion (thus removing the differential rearing confounding variable from the mix), on a simple standardized learning task. This task, broken into four stages, was to move one meter from the trainer and touch a pad on the floor with a front paw. The trainer used a clicker as a secondary reinforcer and a food treat as a primary reinforcer, very much as we do in a lot of our behavior counter-conditioning work. Eighteen beagles were divided into two equal groups: one group trained once per week, and the other trained for five days per week. So which group learned the task, to 80% accuracy, in the least amount of time, and which group learned the task in the fewest number of training sessions?

Well, somewhat surprisingly to many trainers and owners, the once-per-week trainees learned the task equally well but in signficantly fewer training sessions, an average of 6.7 sessions, than the 5-times-per-week group, who achieved proficiency in an average of 9.0 sessions. But if the difference in training rate is five-fold (once per week to 5-times-per-week), that should mean that the more-frequent-training group took fewer total days to learn their task: more training sessions but fewer days overall. That was indeed true: once-a-weekers took a total of 46.7 days and more frequent trainees took only 11.4 days, on average.

So this work reinforces, in dogs, some of the basic conclusions that have been demonstrated in rats and horses. It eliminates a huge potentially confounding rearing background problem by using one breed all reared in the same way, but of course, tells us nothing about possible genetic differences among breeds or the longterm implications: do dogs trained over a longer time period (in fewer training sessions) retain that learning better or worse than dogs trained more intensively? We would suggest from limited information from other species (but using a model of common evolutionary descent among mammals) that spaced training should produce longer, better retention of learned material. But we will have to wait for the research study to be done and published to know for sure.

Behavior has many causes: this is a general statement that many people believe is true, and it often causes people to extend the conclusion to one that suggests that we can never understand behavior, that it will always remain a black-box mystery. But of course, as professional animal behaviorists, academic or clinical, some of us have set ourselves the goal of understanding the causes of, and therefore the modification of, just that behavior that seems so complex.

Of course, as is so often true, the answer that we see depends on the focus that we bring to the question. To a professional animal behaviorist (let’s use the more modern name for one who studies animal behavior: an ethologist), the answer for the cause for a behavior depends on the level at which you want an answer. Let’s start simple today, a higher, broader level of analysis. For an ethologist, behavior has two possible causes, and is most often caused by an interaction between these two: genes and the environment. This is the old nature/nurture controversy that we still occasionally see raise its head, but as we well know now, all behavior is, at some level, a result of both genetic predispositions and the effects of the environment. And when we say ‘effects of the environment’, we really mean learning: all of the behavior modification that has occurred through the learning that an animal has experienced throughout its lifetime. We know now, for instance, that for all animals, there are four types or forms of learning, and that every modification of behavior gained throughout the lifetime of an animal has happened through one of these four mechanisms. But the four forms of all learning is a topic for another blog: today I want to mention some new literature that once again points to the role of genetics in the behavior of our canine companions, and of course, suggests a similar role for genetics in the behavior of cats, parrots and even ourselves.

What color is your dog? The color of your dog can tell you something about the genetic predispositions for its behavior. Now, let’s be careful: I phrased that sentence with some thought. The color of your dog tells you something about predispositions for behavior, not the behavior of a specific animal. Why? Because, as we said above, the behavior of a specific animal is determined by both its genetic predispositions and the effects of its lifetime environment. This is why the extensive history that we take at each one of our clinical appointments are so important: that history, and every part of it, has had an influence on your pet. But likewise, the scientific evidence is quite clear that genetics is important too.

So what about color? Well, we all agree that color is genetically determined by genetics (not entirely, but largely) and we know that almost all genes control more than a single characteristic (in fact, each gene controls many characteristics), so the color of your dog can tell you something about its genetic code, and therefore, something about its genetic predispositions. Really? Yup, for instance, researchers just this past year showed quite clearly that, in Labradors, occurrence of problem behaviors like barking, chewing, and digging, were related to coat color: gold dogs showed significantly higher levels of these behaviors, even after numerous environmental factors were removed. This supports a 2001 study, in which researchers at Cornell University’s Veterinary Hospital showed that chocolate-colored Labradors were less likely to present with behavior problems than other Labradors, and that gold/yellow Labradors were significantly more likely to be reported with aggression problems.

How about other breeds? Well, there is very little research in applied animal behavior (anyone looking for a philanthropic opportunity?), but a study in 1996 showed that red or golden English cocker spaniels were more likely to show aggressive behavior than black ones. Interesting, huh?

And now, with the completion of the Dog Genome Project, we have a complete map of the domestic dog DNA. With this tool, we are rapidly gaining more information about the role of genetics, and genetic interaction with learning, in determining the cause of our dogs’ behavior.

I recently attended a conference of companion animal behavior practitioners and researchers, held in New Orleans this past March (see earlier blog entry). One of the most interesting, and most important, presentations at the three-day meeting was titled, “Assessing Behavior and Training Methods Using Physiological Measures.” This was a summary, and a very interesting demonstration, of the work by Nancy Williams, Peter Borchelt, Alice Moon-Fanelli, and Megan Bulloch that has suggested that heart rate, a relatively easy measurement in awake (ie, behaving!) animals, can provide insight into the activity of the brain.

The logic comes from some similar work in humans, and goes like this: good, healthy behavior is flexible behavior, that is, behavior which exhibits an appropriate selection of responses to stimuli, and that shifts as appropriate. This sort of behavior suggests that if a brain function known as inhibition is working properly: the dog or cat can turn behavior on and off.

The area of brain that is responsible for inhibition is connected to the heart via the vagal nerve, where it helps to control heart function. Heart rate variability (HRV) is the increase and decrease of heart rate in reaction to the changing environment, and HRV reflects the degree of inhibition that has developed in the brain. Thus, high HRV (a very responsive heart/brain) is good. Low HRV in humans is associated with increased mortality, and the likelihood of diabetes, depression and suicide, epilepsy, alcohol abuse, stress, panic disorders, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Thus, the brain is important in behavior and HRV is a way to monitor brain (inhibitory) functioning. Neat idea, huh?

So what are the findings: how is HRV and behavior associated in dogs? The work is only in its very earliest stages, but Dr. Williams and her colleagues have found that low HRV is associated with both aggressive and stress behaviors in dogs. She feels that by recording HRV in client dogs, we might gain a much stronger insight into the causes of problem behaviors, and ultimately, the effectiveness of our behavior modification tools. And with the advent of new tools for recording heart rate data, adapted from the sports and fitness business, like the $370 Polar Watch, we can record this kind of data in active animals under natural conditions. Don’t be surprised in the near future if we ask you for permission to fit your dog with a strap-on Polar Watch while we observe their behavior or expose them to behavior modification procedures!

I am sitting in the New Orleans International Airport, waiting for my (much delayed) flight to Atlanta (severe weather!), and on to home in Seattle. The purpose of my travel to the Big Easy, and specifically, to a small hotel with conference facilities in the French Quarter, was to attend something called the Interdisciplinary Forum for Applied Animal Behavior (IFAAB). IFAAB brings together, by invitation only, no more than 30 of the top Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists (CAABs) and Board-certified Veterinary Behaviorists in the country. Each attendee must make a presentation to their colleagues, presentations designed to stir up discussion and even dissension as much as simply being lectures on new discoveries. I have attended IFAAB in the past, in addition to more traditional meetings for a professional animal behaviorist with interests in both the research and clinical ends of our field. These more traditional meetings include 25 consecutive years of attending the meetings of the Animal Behavior Society (the certifying body for CAABs) as well as attendance at several meeting of the International Ethological Congress, the American Society of Primatologists, and others too numerous to count.

But the IFAAB meetings are different: animal behavior is a longstanding academic discipline dating back to Charles Darwin’s work and well before, but the clinical side is very new. Both CAAB and vet-board certification for behavior was established only in the 90’s, and to this day there are only about 50 of each in the country. There is very little research in applied animal behavior, and because of this, so much of what we do has had to be learned by trial-and-error (which is not necessarily a bad way to do it, just not always the most efficient or accurate), and handed down to new entrants in the field through avenues like IFAAB and the internship program that CAS is establishing with the University of Washington.

Given that much of what we have learned has been very personal, one-on-one, and very much in a vacuum, it is also not surprising that we don’t always agree on what it is we have learned. So these IFAAB meetings are always interesting: it is a group of people who realize that we all have a single-minded passion to help companion animals and their owners, and who have learned that they need each other and the knowledge that we have learned collectively. And yet, we come from a wide range of backgrounds, and as I have said, we have in some cases learned different things, different ways of accomplishing our task.

The upshot of this is that outsiders, newcomers or invited guests like equipment makers (we had a [very successful] inventor looking for new ideas at this meeting: fun!), always marvel at the degree to which we pound tables, argue, mutter, and disagree during the day-long presentations, and then all head to dinner together perfectly happily, supporting one another in the recent loss of a beloved herding dog, or the latest troubles with a teenager, all evening. It’s a fantastic meeting, an important opportunity to learn and to support each other. And a way to rationalize a little sunshine in March too!!

What did we discuss this year? Well, many of the topics will be showing up in blog entries here in the near future, but here’s a short list: the ability to train dogs to increase the variety in their behavioral repertoires, the effectiveness of new devices for cat environmental enrichment and dog leash control, several presentations on how to increase the amount, and improve the quality, of research in clinical animal behavior (one major factor: $$$ and how to raise funds), a new socialization program for fearful cats, competitive foraging in dogs, reading micro-expressions and what they tell us about emotional state in humans and dogs, assessing training techniques using heart rate, how the training of military and police dogs differs from pets, and the proper role of inhibition devices in training. Whew! And that still left time for the arguments.

So exhausted and ready to get home, but feeling reinvigorated about our field and the opportunities to help our clients, I await the call to board that delayed flight to Atlanta and on to home!