Tom came to Learning from Dogs a short while ago and signed up to follow the blog. As is usual, I went across to his blog in order to leave a thank-you note. I was flabbergasted at what I saw. Tom and his two dogs were walking across Spain. He called his blog Chica’s Challenge and this is what he wrote on his home page.
First, Tom decided he wanted to do a long walk.
Then he thought Spain would be nice as it has to be in winter.
And he’d like to take Chica, our podenco.
As an afterthought, he said, “Maybe we could raise some money?”
“Who for?” I asked.
“Well, as I’m taking Chica and it’s in Spain, I guess for Spanish podencos.”
“Great idea! I’ll write the blog!”
I wanted to follow his posts and did so.
Then I wanted to republish a post and asked Tom if I had his permission to so do.
One dog and her man walking across Spain, raising money for their podenco friends.
Day 7: Jimena de la Frontera to Cerra de la Fantasia 20k
The last two days were non-walking days, one for bad weather and another to move base again. Now we have the luxury of being in a house for a while in Jimera de Libar, a village we know well.
So the day started with the drive back to Jimena and the weather looked reasonable. Again, Merlin refused to be left so the three of them set off up the path, climbing steadily for the first hour and a half.
Climbing pathSpanish Fir / Pinsapo (Abies Pinsapo) in the background
The path eventually levelled out and passed beneath the rocky outcrops of the Altos de Paneron and Cerro de Marin. After a bare rocky sections where the route was harder to determine, they went into dense forest of oak and Spanish fir (we love these and call them lollipop trees because of their shape). Both dogs in great form, but Tom was mean and moody :).
Dark clouds were gathering from all directions but the view to the coast was still impressive. However, it wasn’t long before the rain began and the temperature dropped.
Looking south – you can just see the sea
Fortunately the rest of the route was on a well-defined and signposted track, winding down through the cork oaks in the midst of the Los Alcornacales. It was here deep in the forest that I eventually picked them up. I had forgotten that smaller Spanish roads aren’t always roads as I know them and the last five and a half miles I was driving along a rough track with no mobile signal, not at all sure I was in the right place. Even though we have a 4×4, I made very slow progress and it was with considerable relief that I found them, damp but completely unconcerned.
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In the original some of the photographs were side-by-side but in copying them across I chose to enlarge them.
The start of Tom’s walk may be seen here and I thoroughly recommend that you read it in full.
I shall continue to follow Tom’s walk and may republish another post.
Unfortunately, there are still some drivers out there who apparently don’t know how to treat pedestrians with the respect that they deserve.
But this little dog is doing his best to set them straight.
The other day, Beqa Tsinadze happened upon a curious scene in the town of Batumi, Georgia. There, at a clearly marked crosswalk, a group of young kids were waiting for cars to yield so they could safely cross the road.
Photo Credit: Beqa Tsinadze
Regrettably, though, it seems that many drivers weren’t eager to extend that courtesy without being told to.
So, that’s exactly what this dog did — taking on the role of crossing guard on the kids’ behalf. The moment was captured on video.
The thoughtful dog tackled the situation like a pro. But apparently this wasn’t just a one-time thing.
Tsinadze shared another video of the same dog stopping traffic and escorting yet another group of kids across the street.
Photo Credit: Beqa Tsinadze
Though it’s unclear why the pup came to adopt the role of crossing guard, it may be as a way of saying thanks.
According to Georgian media, the dog arrived to the area as a helpless stray a few years back, and has since endeared himself to members of the community who have taken it upon themselves to care for him.
The report above states that the dog goes by several names among folks in the neighborhood who know him — but there’s no doubt that you’d be safe in calling him a very good boy.
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Another wonderful report.
I’m sorry, I ought to write more but I would only be waffling!
Researchers in India studied whether 160 stray dogs would react to commands like gesturing toward a bowl. This image, taken in 2012, shows street dogs surrounding an Indian tea vendor in Allahabad. (AP Photo / Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Dogs are famously good at interpreting human signals, whether communicated verbally or through gestures. But much of what we know about our furry friends’ comprehension of social cues focuses on pet dogs, which share close relationships with their owners and are trained to follow commands. Now, a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, suggests that stray dogs can also understand human gestures, indicating that this ability might be innate.
The new research took place on the streets of several regions in India, which is home to some 30 million stray dogs. Coexistence between canines and humans there is not always peaceful; people have been known to attack street dogs, and vice versa. Around 36 percent of the world’s annual rabies deaths occur in India, most of them children who came into contact with infected dogs.
To better manage the country’s street dogs, it’s essential to gain further knowledge of their behavior, Anindita Bhadra, study co-author and animal behaviorist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, tells Liz Langley of National Geographic. So she and her colleagues set out to discover whether strays, which have never undergone specific training, are able to understand humans in a similar way to their pet counterparts.
The researchers took to the streets equipped with two bowls; one contained chicken and the other was empty but had been rubbed with raw chicken, transferring the food’s scent. The bowls were covered with pieces of cardboard and handed to an experimenter who did not know which one contained the snack. This researcher would approach a stray dog, place the bowls on the ground and point at one of them, sometimes momentarily, sometimes repeatedly.
In total, the researchers studied 160 adult strays. Around half of them refused to get close to either bowl, perhaps because they had negative interactions with humans in the past, the researchers speculate. But of the dogs that did approach the bowls, approximately 80 percent went to the one to which the experimenter had pointed. Whether the researcher had pointed to the bowl briefly or repeatedly did not seem to matter. This response, according to the study authors, suggests that untrained stray dogs are “capable of following complex pointing cues from humans.”
Dogs share an intertwined evolutionary history with humans, with domesticated pooches emerging at least 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, though some experts have argued for an even earlier date. This close contact has prompted dogs to develop a number of skills that allow them to communicate with people, including interpreting human emotion. Still, Bhadra says, the researchers found it “quite amazing” that stray dogs without a history of close human interaction were able to “follow a gesture as abstract as momentary pointing.”
“This means that they closely observe the human, whom they are meeting for the first time, and they use their understanding of humans to make a decision,” Bhadra adds. “This shows their intelligence and adaptability.”
Because some dogs seemed anxious and were wary of approaching the researchers, it’s not clear how a dog’s personality—and past experiences—might affect its ability to interpret human signals. But this ability does not appear to be entirely dependent on training, the study authors say, which in turn should inform efforts to manage stray dogs.
“They are quite capable of understanding our body language and we need to give them their space,” Bhadra says. “A little empathy and respect for another species can reduce a lot of conflict.”
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Mother Nature News had a second picture in their broadly-similar article. Indeed, I’m going to republish this article as well. For although they are of the same story they offer a slightly different account.
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Even stray dogs understand human cues
A new study shows these feral canines are paying close attention.
Even untrained dogs can follow simple communications. (Photo: Abir Bhattacharya/Shutterstock)
Dogs were likely the first animals that human beings domesticated — scientific guesses vary as to whether that was 10,000 years ago in Europe or 30,000 years ago in Asia (or, as one theory goes, humans tamed grey wolves two separate times). Regardless, they have been our companions for much of human history, and all of modern history. We have evolved together.
And that longstanding connection shows up in feral dogs.
Behavioral biologist Dr. Anindita Bhadra of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata, India, revealed this by studying stray dogs in several Indian cities. In the experiment, Bhadra and her colleagues would find a solo stray dog and put two covered bowls on the ground nearby. They they’d simply point to one of the bowls; some did this just once, others did it a few times.
The researchers, who published their work in Frontiers in Psychology, recorded the dogs’ reactions. Half the dogs seemed nervous, and didn’t look at or come close to either bowl. But the other half — noted as less anxious dogs by the researchers — approached the bowls. Of those friendlier dogs, about 80% went to the bowl the researcher pointed at. As long as the dogs weren’t too scared of the people, they were easily able to interpret what the pointing meant.
“We thought it was quite amazing that the dogs could follow a gesture as abstract as momentary pointing,” Bhadra said in a news release. “This means that they closely observe the human, whom they are meeting for the first time, and they use their understanding of humans to make a decision. This shows their intelligence and adaptability.”
Wolf puppies surprised researchers with their responses. (Photo: Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH/Shutterstock)
In another study, three out of 13 untrained 8-week-old wolf puppies spontaneously retrieved a ball for a person who threw it, as MNN’s Mary Jo DiLonardo explains. It was a small study, and a low percentage of retrieving puppies, but it was an unexpected result as these weren’t domesticated dogs. “It was so unexpected, and I immediately knew that this meant that if variation in human-directed play behavior exists in wolves, this behavior could have been a potential target for early selective pressures exerted during dog domestication,” Christina Hansen Wheat, a biologist at Stockholm University, said.
Her observations show that playing with people may be a very old trait for wolves, that could reflect how our human ancestors first got to know them. This playful behavior may have sparked humans’ interest in domestication. If a dog could fetch a stick or other thrown object, they could be quite useful to hunting humans.
Of course, their adorable, big puppy-dog eyes and floppy ears (both traits that have become accentuated over time as dogs evolved) are among the reason we are still drawn to dogs today. (It also helps that they’re great listeners.)
But long before that happened, dogs served an important purpose — assisting people in locating and retrieving prey, and serving as eyes and ears for an intruder. Simple tasks like showing they can follow directions or fetch an object may have moved prehistoric dogs from outside the fire circle to within it, which is why understanding these behaviors are so important.
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If we go back into the mists of time then prehistoric wolves (or dogs) learnt to bond with early humans because it served both their interests to so do. Humans became much more adept at hunting and wolves obviously became the benefactors of food!
Now dogs are so well bonded to human gestures that even non-domesticated dogs understand the signals that we humans put out. I say ‘non-domesticated’ but in a real sense all dogs are domesticated. It would be more accurate to say that these are dogs who do not have a home with humans.
Interesting article about calculating a dog’s age.
It’s a well-known ‘calculation’ that a dog’s age is seven years for every human year. But it’s wrong; the scientific result is more complex.
But rather than me say it, I’ll hand it over to Christian Yates of the BBC who on the 6th January this year published an article on this subject.
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Your pet clearly ages faster than you do, but new research is giving us a much clearer idea of just how old your dog really might be.
By Christian Yates, January 6th, 2020
If your dog has been alive and kicking its paws about for a decade, the widely held belief is it has aged as much as a human would have done over 70 years. This conversion factor – each year of a dog’s life accounting for seven human years – comes from dividing human life expectancy of around 77 by the canine life expectancy of around 11.
The underlying assumption is that each calendar year a dog lives through is equivalent to seven human years at any stage of a dog’s life. But new research suggests that things aren’t so simple. And if we look at some basic developmental milestones, it’s clear why.
For example, most dog breeds reach sexual maturity between the ages of six and 12 months – the upper end of that range corresponding, by the traditional conversion, to a human age of seven. And at the other end of the spectrum, although unusual, some dogs have been known to live for over 20 years. Under the “factor-of-seven” conversion rule, this would equate to an unfathomable 140 human-equivalent years.
New insights into how dogs age suggest our pets move into middle age more rapidly than most owners might suspect (Credit: Getty Images)
To make matters more complicated, dogs’ life expectancy depends significantly on the breed. Smaller dogs tend to live significantly longer, suggesting that they age more slowly than bigger dogs.
All of this raises the question of what exactly we mean by age. The most obvious way to describe it is simply the length of time that has passed since birth. This is known as the chronological definition of age.
When it comes to comparing animal ages across species, the biological definitions of age are far more useful than their chronological counterparts
However, there are other descriptions. Biological age, for example, is a more subjective definition, which relies on assessing physiological indicators to identify an individual’s development. These include measures like the “frailty index” – surveys that take into account an individual’s disease status, cognitive impairments and levels of activity.
Rather than celebrating chronological age, looking at the levels of methylation on a dog’s DNA is a much more accurate measure of aging (Credit: Getty Images)
For example, if you’ve spent a lot of time eating junk food and smoking cigarettes instead of taking exercise and eating healthily, the chances are your biological age will exceed your chronological age. Or, you might be a 60-year-old with the body of a 40-year-old if you’ve looked after yourself well.
A dog’s life
When it comes to comparing animal ages across species, the biological definitions of age are far more useful than their chronological counterparts. Knowing a hamster is six weeks old doesn’t give you a good picture of that animal’s life stage, even if you know the life expectancy of a hamster is only three years. Learning that a hamster has reached an age where it can reproduce gives a much better picture of its level of maturity.
In their first year of life, puppies grow up so quickly that they age the equivalent of 31 human years (Credit: Getty Images)
In particular, “methylation” – the addition of methyl groups (a carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms) to DNA – seems to be a good indicator of age. Many prominent physiological markers, such as the development of teeth, seem to occur at the same levels of methylation across different species. So by matching the levels of methylation in Labrador retrievers and humans, the researchers derived a formula to map dog age to its human equivalent.
That formula is: human equivalent age = 16 x ln(dog’s chronological age) + 31.
Here “ln” represents a mathematical function known as the natural logarithm. The logarithm function is well-known in the non-linear scales for energy released during earthquakes (Richter) or for measuring sound (decibels). It comes in useful for measuring quantities whose sizes vary over many orders of magnitude. It’s even possible that a logarithmic experience of the passing of time might explain why we perceive time speeding up as we get older.
A handy short cut is to remember that the first dog year counts for 31 human years
In the graph below, you can see how the natural logarithm works to convert the years a dog has lived (dog age) into the equivalent human age in the red dashed curve. The curve suggests that dogs mature extremely rapidly at first, but that their ageing then slows down, meaning that most of their lives are experienced as a form of protracted middle age.
A handy short cut is to remember that the first dog year counts for 31 human years. Then, after that, every time the dog’s chronological age doubles, the number of equivalent human years increases by 11. So eight calendar years represents three “doublings” (from one to two, two to four and then four to eight) giving a dog age equivalent of 64 (that’s 31 + 3×11).
This useful approximation is plotted as the black curve on the conversion figure below. The green line represents the discredited factor-of-seven rule that suggests unrealistic ages at the higher end of the dog age spectrum.
In eight calendar years a dog will approximately age the equivalent of 64 years (Credit: Christian Yates)
Most dog lovers will already have suspected that the human-to-dog age relationship is non-linear, having noticed that, initially, their pets mature much more quickly than the linear factor-of-seven rule suggests.
A more sophisticated refinement to the factor-of-seven rules has suggested that each of the dog’s first two years correspond to 12 human years while all subsequent years count for four human equivalents. The blue curve in the above figure, which represents this ad hoc rule, shows better agreement with the new logarithmic law.
In practice the new molecular insights into human-to-dog age conversion encapsulated by the logarithmic law suggest that dogs move into middle age even more rapidly than most dog-owners would have suspected. It’s worth bearing in mind, when you find that Rex is reluctant to chase the ball like he once did, that he’s probably got more miles on the clock than you’ve been giving him credit for.
Christian Yates is a senior lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath. He is also the author of The Maths of Life and Death.
This articleoriginally appearedon The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
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I don’t know about you but I found this article extremely interesting.
Playing a game of fetch with a dog means they are following a human social cue to recover the ball. But fetch isn’t just for dogs, wolf puppies are down to play too, which means they can also understand human communication cues, according to a new study.
Credit Wikipedia Commons
The findings, published in the journal iScience, were made after researchers put 13 8-week-old wolf puppies from three different litters through a series of tests usually used to assess dog-puppy behavior. Three of the pups were interested in playing fetch with a stranger, which included bringing a ball back when encouraged to.
The discovery was quite a surprise for the team as it was believed that the cognitive abilities necessary to understand communication cues given by a human were presented in dogs only after humans domesticated them 15,000 years ago. Dogs differ from wolves physically, genetically and behaviorally.
“When I saw the first wolf puppy retrieving the ball, I literally got goosebumps,” said Christina Hansen Wheat of Stockholm University in a press release. “I immediately knew that this meant that if variation in human-directed play behavior exists in wolves, this behavior could have been a potential target for early selective pressures exerted during dog domestication.”
Wanting to learn more about the effects of domestication on behavior, Hansen Wheat and her team raised wolf and dog puppies from the age of 10 days and put them through various behavioral tests. In one of them, the pup was thrown a ball by an unknown person, encouraging the wolf to get it and bring it back.
Expectations of the wolf pups catching on weren’t high, with the first two litters showing no interest in the balls, let alone of playing fetch. But everything changed with the third litter. A few of the puppies went for the ball and even responded to the social cues and brought it back.
“It was very surprising that we had wolves actually retrieving the ball,” said Hansen Wheat. “I did not expect that. I do not think any of us did. It was especially surprising that the wolves retrieved the ball for a person they had never met before.”
In the past, other research showed that domesticated and non-domesticated species will follow human gestures if a food reward is given, Hansen Wheat and her team said. But in those cases, the animals were previously trained to follow the cues or knew the person conducting the study.
While the new research has a limitation over the size of its sample, it could reassess our interpretation that understanding human social cues came from domestication. Instead, it could be possible that this behavior can be traced back to an ancestral population before wolves were domesticated into dogs.
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Despite this being the twenty-first century there are still things being discovered that cause us humans to be amazed.
Such as this story about the young wolves, way before they evolved into dogs.
On last Thursday morning, at 02:30, in the middle of a huge storm the electricity was lost. So was the telephone and the internet.
The electricity was restored at 04:30 on Friday, the telephone later in the morning but no internet.
Finally, the internet was restored at 21:00 last night, too late to do anything useful.
So that explains the absence of yours truly over the last three days. Hopefully, if it remains on there will be a normal post at midnight tonight. All times are Pacific Time.
Devoted exclusively to the work of Sue Dreamwalker
Sue earlier on in the week brought my attention to this page on her blog: Pastel Drawings. Sue said that I could republish them. I am flattered. In fact, there are sixteen of these beautiful drawings and I intend to publish eight of them today and the remaining eight in Picture Parade Three Hundred and Twenty-Two.
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They are so beautiful.
Thank you, Sue, for giving me permission to republish them. Needless to say full copyright is vested in Sue Morton and them being republished in this place does not give authority for them to be republished elsewhere.
Last month, on a chilly winter day in Nova Scotia, Canada, Bryan Thompson had a chance encounter he won’t soon forget.
While walking through a local park, Thompson saw this: a stranger making his way through the snow, pulling a cart containing the most precious cargo.
Inside, bundled up against the cold, was a cozy white pup.
Photo Credit: Facebook/Bryan Thompson
Speaking to the stranger, Thompson came to learn that the dog has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a spinal cord disorder which can lead to paralysis in dogs. Because of that, she’s unable to get around on her own — but that hasn’t stopped the pair from still taking walks.
The dedicated dog owner crafted the cart to ensure it never does.
In a post online, Thompson described his reaction to that scene.
“I told him he was a great person for doing that, because I know there are many who wouldn’t. He just said that she would do the same for him,” Thompson wrote. “It’s hard to type this without tearing up.”
Photo Credit: Facebook/Bryan Thompson
Afterward, the stranger and his happy dog continued on their way — slipping out of sight, but not out of mind.
Thompson’s account of that touching encounter has since gone viral, inspiring countless others with an example of true love at its finest.
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This stranger, who is not named, is just a miraculous person. Plus a caring and loving man. It’s no surprise that the encounter, as described above, has gone viral.
I came late to my desk yesterday afternoon so you will forgive me for launching straight into a piece I read on the BBC.
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Bow ties give dogs in shelters a ‘second chance’
When 13-year-old Sir Darius Brown (yes, his real name) heard about displaced dogs being euthanised after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, he had an idea.
His sister had taught him how to make bow ties and he decided to donate some to local animal shelters. It helped the dogs to get adopted faster.
Now his handmade bow ties have helped around 200 dogs across the US, leading him to receive a letter of recognition from former President Barack Obama.
The first of the New Year but I suspect if will be far from the last.
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Dear Fellow Dog Lover,
I’m pleased to report there have been no dog food recalls issued since September 26, 2019.
Euthanasia Drug Discovered in Adulterated Animal Fat
The FDA recently discovered an animal euthanasia drug (pentobarbital) in test samples collected at a major supplier of animal fat to the pet food industry.
We’re unable to locate any information about which pet food brands may have purchased the affected ingredient.
For this reason, we recommend all dog and cat owners remain alert to the potential for future recalls related to this news.
Click here to read the official FDA Warning Letter sent to the producer.
Dog Food Recall Update
Some pet foods previously recalled may still be on store shelves… or in your own home. So, if you’ve missed any of the 11 recalls we’ve sent since July… be sure to visit our Dog Food Recalls page for full details.
10 Best Dog Food Lists Recently Updated
Over the last 90 days, The Dog Food Advisor has updated the following best dog food pages:
Learning from Dogs 