Category: Innovation

First puppies born through IVF.

There’s more to this than initially meets the eye.

I’m back to another ScienceAlert article although this story has been widely reported including by our local newspaper, the Grants Pass Daily Courier. This is about in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Now I am sure that I share with countless others a poor understanding of what IVF is. Here’s a Wikipedia extract:

In vitro fertilization or fertilisation (IVF) is a process by which an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro (“in glass”). The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman’s ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova (egg or eggs) from the woman’s ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a liquid in a laboratory. The fertilised egg (zygote) is cultured for 2–6 days in a growth medium and is then implanted in the same or another woman’s uterus, with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy.

Obviously that applies to women.

A quick web search revealed that the IVF procedure is commonly used in livestock. Here’s a graphic example of that (literally):

IVFProcedure

All of which leads nicely in to the Science Alert story.

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These are the world’s first puppies born through IVF

Cutest science ever.

PETER DOCKRILL 11 DEC 2015

The world’s first litter of puppies born through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) represents the culmination of decades of research and has resulted in seven adorable pups called Cannon, Red, Green, Cornelia, Buddy, Kiwi and Ivy le Fleur.

But the achievement goes beyond almost intolerable cuteness. The researchers say successfully breeding puppies via IVF opens the door for saving endangered canid species and using gene-editing techniques to eradicate heritable diseases in dogs.

“Since the mid–1970s, people have been trying to do this in a dog and have been unsuccessful,” said Alex Travis, a reproductive biologist from Cornell University.

To develop the litter of pups, the researchers had to fertilise eggs from donor mothers with sperm from donor fathers in the lab, before transferring the embryos to a host female. 19 embryos were transferred to the host female in total, who gave birth to seven healthy pups.

Two of the pups came from a beagle mother donor and a cocker spaniel father donor, and the other five came from two pairings of beagle mothers and fathers.

The team had to overcome a number of challenges to make the process work. Picking the right time to collect mature eggs from the female oviduct proved difficult, as dogs’ reproductive cycles occur only twice per year typically. The researchers found delaying the egg collection by one day resulted in greater fertilisation than previous attempts.

An additional barrier was preparing the sperm for fertilisation, which is normally performed by the female tract. But the researchers found they could simulate these conditions by adding magnesium to the cell culture. “We made those two changes, and now we achieve success in fertilisation rates at 80 to 90 percent,” said Travis.

The researchers’ IVF process, described in PLOS One, will enable conservationists to store the semen and eggs of endangered canids and also help protect rare dog breeds.

“We can freeze and bank sperm, and use it for artificial insemination,” said Travis. “We can also freeze oocytes, but in the absence of in vitro fertilisation, we couldn’t use them. Now we can use this technique to conserve the genetics of endangered species.”

The IVF process should also lead to better genome-editing techniques in the future. This issue is particularly pertinent in light of the way that humans have bred dogs over many centuries. With the paired selection of mates for desired traits leading to detrimental genetic baggage due to inbreeding, this gives researchers a chance to eliminate diseases that certain breeds are now predisposed to.

“With a combination of gene-editing techniques and IVF, we can potentially prevent genetic disease before it starts,” said Travis.

We don’t always hear a lot about endangered canid species, but here are five candidates that this research will helpfully be able to help sooner rather than later.

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If you are like me and rarely follow the links in online stories then let me alert you to the last one. It’s an article in Scientific American that opens, thus:

The 5 Most Endangered Canine Species
By John R. Platt on May 9, 2013

Domesticated dogs are some of the most popular animals on the planet, but their cousins in the wild aren’t always as beloved. For thousands of years humans have persecuted wolves, jackals, dingoes, foxes and other members of the family Canidae, pushing many species into or close to extinction. Here are five of the most endangered canine species and subspecies, three of which only continue to exist because a few people and organizations have taken extraordinary efforts to save them.

I don’t have copyright permission to offer more. So all I will do is to list the names of those five most endangered species:

The Ethiopian wolf
The Mexican gray wolf
The red wolf
Darwin’s fox
Island fox

Do go here and read the full article. And let’s not forget that our lovely dogs are not the full canine story.

Friendship between dogs.

A remarkable report about how dogs share.

Apologies for the short intro but my internet connection is still not 100% and I didn’t want to fuss around and lose the window in which to present this fascinating article on ScienceAlert sent to me by Dan Gomez.

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Dogs give food to their ‘friends’ in first-of-its-kind study

Treats for everybody! But more for pals.
PETER DOCKRILL 17 DEC 2015

Voluntary acts of kindness and positive outward gestures without thought of reward are two of the more redeeming aspects of human society, but to what extent do these prosocial behaviours exist in other animals?

A new study by researchers in Austria suggests that dogs are prosocial among their own kind too, with an experiment involving the voluntary offering of food between the animals showing that dogs also understand the concept of giving.

“Dogs and their nearest relatives, the wolves, exhibit social and cooperative behaviour, so there are grounds to assume that these animals also behave prosocially toward conspecifics,” said Friederike Range, an ethnologist at the Messerli Research Institute. “Additionally, over thousands of years of domestication, dogs were selected for special social skills.”

But measuring prosocial behaviour in dogs isn’t easy, says Range, because they’re so very social with humans. It can be difficult to tell between seemingly prosocial acts and behaviours that could actually just be the dog obediently reacting to cues and unintended communications from researchers.

So to take people out of the equation as much as possible, Range and his colleagues conducted an experiment where two dogs were set up by themselves in cages side by side. One of the dogs, called the donor dog, had the ability to extend one of two trays toward a receiver dog, using its mouth to pull on a string.

One of these trays contained a treat, while the other was empty. The dogs had been trained over weeks to understand how the tray-pulling system worked, and the donor dog in each instance knew that it would receive nothing itself if it gave the treat to its fellow canine (other than the pleasure perhaps of knowing it had done a kindness to its counterpart).

The researchers found that dogs, in the absence of any ulterior motive, do indeed exhibit prosocial behaviour, by voluntarily giving food to other dogs. But, having said that, they can be accused of preferential treatment.

“Dogs truly behave prosocially toward other dogs. That had never been experimentally demonstrated before,” said Range. “What we also found was that the degree of familiarity among the dogs further influenced this behaviour. Prosocial behaviour was exhibited less frequently toward unfamiliar dogs than toward familiar ones.”

In other words, dogs look out for their friends more than they do random strangers, but the same could be said of our own prosocial behaviour. Humans have the capacity for kindness, but we demonstrate it more frequently with those with which we are more familiar.

The findings are reported in Scientific Reports, but now that we know dogs are prosocial, that of course means there are other puzzles for the researchers to solve. Why do dogs act this way? Is it a result of domestication, their cognitive complexity, or has it been shaped by the species’ reliance on cooperative activities, such as foraging together? As dog lovers, we can’t wait to hear the answers.

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What amazing creatures they are!

New findings in self-awareness.

For dogs!

We humans take self-awareness for granted. The key measure, as I understand it, is our ability to recognise ourselves, as in a mirror or photograph, for example.

I have more than once mentioned in posts in this place, that the evolutionary journey for us humans and our canine companions has resulted in the two species now sharing a number of psychological and physical ailments.

But what has been implicitly understood is that the one thing that dogs and us do not share is self-awareness. Hitherto, it has been believed that dogs do not recognise themselves in the mirror test.

All of which is an introduction to an item that was recently posted on the ScienceAlert website and was brought to my attention by dear friend Dan Gomez.

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Dogs show signs of self-consciousness in new ‘sniff test’
We knew it!

BEC CREW 10 DEC 2015

Self-awareness might seem like the most basic part of life to us humans, but it’s a surprisingly rare concept when it comes to other animals. While great apes, dolphins, orcas, rhesus macaques, Eurasian magpies, and a single Asiatic elephant have all passed the self-recognition test, everything from pandas and pigeons to sea lions, gorillas, and several species of monkey have failed to show signs of consciousness.

Dogs were also on that list of failures – until now. Traditionally, self-consciousness is evaluated via the ‘mirror test’. If an animal uses its own reflection to examine or touch a red mark that’s been applied to its body without its knowledge, scientists can confirm that they possess some sense of self. But what if the animal isn’t that visually oriented?

“I believed that because dogs are much less sensitive to visual stimuli with respect to what, for example, humans and many apes are, it is likely that the failure of this and of other species in the mirror test is mainly due to the sensory modality chosen by the investigator to test the self-awareness and not, necessarily, to the absence of this latter,” says evolutionary biologist Roberto Cazzolla Gatti from Tomsk State University in Russia.

Gatti was prompted into this line of thinking by the fact that in past mirror tests, dogs have shown no interest in looking at their reflection in the mirror, but they will go ahead and sniff the area and possibly even urinate around it. While this got them a big old “fail” in previous studies, Gatti thought the behaviour warranted a closer look.

Back in 2001, renowned animal behaviour expert, Marc Bekoff, investigated the ‘mirror sniffing’ phenomenon via an experiment dubbed the ‘yellow snow test’. Yep it’s exactly what it sounds like. Over a five-year period, Bekoff took his dog Jethro on walks during the winter months, and timed how long he would sniff clumps of snow soaked in his own or other dogs’ urine.

The AnimalWise blog explains:

“Bekoff would wait until Jethro or other known female and male dogs urinated on snow, and then scoop up the clump of yellow snow as soon as Jethro was elsewhere and did not see him pick it up or move it (Bekoff used clean gloves each time and took other precautions to minimise odour and visual cues).

Bekoff then moved the yellow snow varying distances down the path so that Jethro would run across the displaced urine: (i) within about 10 seconds, (ii) between 10 and 120 seconds later, or (iii) between 120 and 300 seconds later. After Jethro arrived, Bekoff recorded how long he sniffed at the yellow snow, whether he urinated over it using the typical male raised-leg posture, and whether urination immediately followed the sniffing (‘scent marking’).”

Not surprisingly, Jethro paid a lot less attention to his own urine than he did to that of other dogs, so Bekoff concluded that his pet had to have some sense of self to be able to distinguish between scents. But with a sample size of one, the experiment wasn’t exactly going to set the scientific community on fire.

Gatti decided to come up with something a little more convincing. Called the Sniff Test of Self-Recognition (STSR), the experiment involved collecting urine samples from four stray dogs and systematically exposing them to the scents. He repeated this four times a year at the beginning of every season.

“I placed within a fence five urine samples containing the scent of each of the four dogs and a ‘blank sample’, filled only with cotton wool odourless,” he says. “The containers were then opened and each dog was individually introduced to the inside of the cage and allowed to freely move for 5 minutes. The time taken by each dog to sniff each sample was recorded.”

Just like Jethro, each dog spent way more time smelling the urine samples of other dogs than their own, which supports the hypothesis that they know their own scent and aren’t that interested in it. The result was stronger the older the dog, which suggests that self-awareness develops with age.

It might seem obvious that dogs would know their own scent, but if you’ve ever seen a dog bark at its own reflection, or completely ignore it – totally unaware of its own appearance and movements – you can see the significance.

“I demonstrated that even when applying it to multiple individuals living in groups and with different ages and sexes, this test provides significant evidence of self-awareness in dogs and can play a crucial role in showing that this capacity is not a specific feature of only great apes, humans, and a few other animals, but it depends on the way in which researchers try to verify it,” says Gatti.

The findings are published in the journal Ethology, Ecology and Evolution.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: that sample size of four is pretty crap. And yep, it is, so we can’t really call this an official “pass” just yet. But the fact that we may well need to rethink the mirror test and figure out how to better align it with how certain species see the world is certainly worthy of a proper investigation. Certain behaviours such as empathy have been linked to self-awareness, and thanks to the ‘yawn test’, there’s evidence that dogs feel empathy towards their owners.

We’ll just have to wait and see if scientists are prepared to conduct a giant yellow snow test to put this conundrum to bed once and for all. In the meantime, here’s dolphins passing the mirror test adorably:

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Speaking of self-awareness, today, December 12th, is the centenary of the birth of Frank Sinatra.

Photo of Frank SINATRA, posed, c.early 1960s (Photo by GAB Archive/Redferns)

We want them to live forever!

Here’s an anti-aging project that we all wish for a successful outcome.

Despite the fact that one of the very important items that we learn from dogs is the certainty of death, there is not a single dog carer who doesn’t want them to live much longer lives.

Today’s post is the republication of a recent science report over on Mother Nature Network concerning a drug, rapamycin, that is hoped may give our wonderful dogs several more healthy years of life. As always, republished within the generous terms of MNN.

We wish the scientists much luck in achieving this outcome, without any deleterious side effects.

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Anti-aging project aims to extend dogs’ life spans

Researchers hope a drug called rapamycin can give dogs several more healthy years of life.
By: Russell McLendon, December 4, 2015,

Although some dogs have lived as long as 29 years, canine life spans are typically closer to half that length. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Living with a dog can help humans in lots of ways, from reducing stress and anxiety to lifting our spirits and making us laugh. Yet despite the abundance of benefits dogs offer, they also come with a notable drawback: Their life spans are much shorter than ours, forcing us to deal with the sadness of their deaths every 15 years or so.

Grieving for our dogs is just part of life, and in the big picture, it’s a small price to pay. But according to researchers at the University of Washington (UW), there may be a way to help our best friends stay with us — and stay healthy — a little longer.

Dog aging varies widely by size and breed, with smaller dogs typically maturing more quickly, yet also living a few years longer on average. It’s also common for mutts to outlive purebred dogs, thanks to the perks of higher genetic diversity. But while almost any dog is considered elderly by age 15, some have been known to nearly double their expected life spans — including Bluey, an Australian cattle dog who famously lived to see his 29th birthday last century.

And now researchers at UW’s Dog Aging Project (DAP) are working to bring similar longevity to canines of all kinds. In addition to performing “the first nationwide, large-scale longitudinal study of aging in pet dogs,” this project involves efforts to improve dogs’ “healthy life span” via therapies that already work in lab settings.

“To be clear, our goal is to extend the period of life in which dogs are healthy, not prolong the already difficult older years,” the project’s website explains. “Imagine what you could do with an additional two to five years with your beloved pet in the prime of his or her life. This is within our reach today.”

If it pans out, this may also aid ongoing research into extending the lives of other animals, including humans. But for now, the therapy is focused on dogs.

Researchers think rapamycin might increase a dog's healthy life span by up to 5 years. (Photo: Shutterstock) — Researchers think rapamycin might increase a dog’s healthy life span by up to 5 years. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Namely, they’re testing the FDA-approved drug rapamycin (aka sirolimus) on middle-aged dogs. High doses of rapamycin are already used in humans to fight cancer and prevent organ-transplant rejection, but at low doses, it has also been shown to slow aging and extend life span in several animals with few or no side effects. In mice, for example, the immunosuppressant can lengthen lives by up to 25 percent.

“If rapamycin has a similar effect in dogs — and it’s important to keep in mind we don’t know this yet — then a typical large dog could live 2 to 3 years longer, and a smaller dog might live 4 years longer,” the project’s organizers write. “More important than the extra years, however, is the improvement in overall health during aging that we expect rapamycin to provide.”

Rapamycin trials have already begun on 32 middle-aged golden retrievers, Labrador retrievers and German shepherds. Ranging from 6 to 9 years old, these dogs will spend several months on a low-dose rapamycin regimen in which researchers study age-related metrics like heart function, immune response, physical activity, body weight and cognitive measures. They’ll also follow these 32 dogs throughout the rest of their lives, looking for any significant changes in aging or life span.

And in phase two of the study, a second group of middle-aged dogs will enter a longer-term, low-dose rapamycin regimen “designed to optimize lifespan extension.” Based on mouse studies conducted both at UW and elsewhere, they anticipate the drug “could increase healthy lifespan of middle-aged dogs by 2-5 years or more.”

Rapamycin isn’t a miracle drug, however, and high doses have been linked to side effects like immune suppression and delayed wound healing. But as the DAP website argues, “these are greatly mitigated at the doses used to extend longevity, and both animal and human studies indicate that even mild adverse events are rare.”

Regular exercise and outdoor time are great ways to boost a dog's quality of life. (Photo: Shutterstock) — Regular exercise and outdoor time are great ways to boost a dog’s quality of life. (Photo: Shutterstock)

While the idea of extending dogs’ lives is exciting, it’s important not to let quantity of life overshadow quality of life. We may never have full control over how long our dogs live, but we can make sure they live well while they’re here.

A good reminder of this comes from Pegasus, a Great Dane rescued from unscrupulous breeders in South Africa when she was 4 weeks old. Suffering from a pigment deficiency often associated with blindness and deafness, Pegasus wasn’t expected to live very long. Filmmaker Dave Meinert adopted her anyway, and decided to film her daily as she grew up. In May 2015, he released a time-lapse movie (see below) of her reaching adulthood that quickly went viral. And as he explains in the video, Pegasus’ prognosis only helped the pair live every day like it was their last.

“I still don’t know how long she is going to live,” Meinert admits. “But right now is pretty great.”

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Watching the video offers the most beautiful, and powerful, reminder of the unconditional love that we can share with our dogs! What a gift they give us!

Wouldn’t we all love a few more years of happy and healthy life for our beloved dogs.

The power of dog’s spit!

What clues does your dog’s spit hold for human mental health?

This is not a spoof. Apparently the closeness of the relationship between dogs and humans holds real scientific value.

Just my way of introducing a most fascinating and interesting item that recently appeared on The Conversation blogsite. (And see my note at the end of today’s post.)

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What clues does your dog’s spit hold for human mental health?

December 2, 2015

Elixir Karlsson, Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School

There goes some precious DNA…. Graeme Bird, CC BY-NC-ND

Dogs were the first animals people domesticated, long before the earliest human civilizations appeared. Today, tens of thousands of years later, dogs have an unusually close relationship with us. They share our homes and steal our hearts – and have even evolved to love us back. Sadly, they also suffer from many of the same difficult-to-treat psychiatric and neurological diseases we do.

I learned this firsthand about six years ago, when my sister Adria adopted Beskow, a beautiful,

Beskow, in fine spirits. Elinor Karlsson, CC BY-ND

boisterous, black and white mutt. Beskow became my constant companion on my morning runs along the Charles River. Her joy in running was obvious to everyone we passed, and she kept me going mile after mile.

When not running, though, Beskow suffered from constant anxiety that left her stressed and unhappy – on edge around other dogs and prone to aggressive behavior. Beskow had trouble even playing outdoors, since she was compelled to attend to every sound and movement. Working one-on-one with skilled behaviorists and trainers helped immensely, but poor Beskow still never seemed able to relax. Eventually, Adria combined the intensive training with medication, which finally seemed to give Beskow some relief.

Beskow’s personality – her intelligence, her focus and her anxiety – was shaped not only by her own life experiences, but by thousands of years of evolution. Have you ever known a dog who would retrieve the same ball over and over again, for hours on end? Or just wouldn’t stay out of the water? Or wasn’t interested in balls, or water, but just wanted to follow her nose? These dogs are the result of hundreds of generations of artificial selection by human beings. By favoring useful behaviors when breeding dogs, we made the genetic changes responsible more common in their gene pool.

When a particular genetic change rapidly rises in prevalence in a population, it leaves a “signature of selection” that we can detect by sequencing the DNA of many individuals from the population. Essentially, around a selected gene, we find a region of the genome where one particular pattern of DNA – the variant linked to the favored version of the gene – is far more common than any of the alternative patterns. The stronger the selection, the bigger this region, and the easier it is to detect this signature of selection.

In dogs, genes shaping behaviors purposely bred by humans are marked with large signatures of selection. It’s a bit like evolution is shining a spotlight on parts of the dog genome and saying, “Look here for interesting stuff!” To figure out exactly how a particular gene influences a dog’s behavior or health, though, we need lots more information.

To try to unravel these connections, my colleagues and I are launching a new citizen science research project we’re calling Darwin’s Dogs. Together with animal behavior experts, we’ve put together a series of short surveys about everything from diet (does your dog eat grass?) to behavior (is your dog a foot sitter?) to personality (is your dog aloof or friendly?).

Any dog can participate in Darwin’s Dogs, including purebred dogs, mixed breed dogs, and mutts of no particular breed – our study’s participants will be very genetically diverse. We’re combining new DNA sequencing technology, which can give us much more genetic information from each dog, with powerful new analysis methods that can control for diverse ancestry. By including all dogs, we hope to be able to do much larger studies, and home in quickly on the important genes and genetic variants.

A beagle considers making the saliva donation. Stephen Schaffner, CC BY-ND

Once an owner has filled out the survey, there’s a second, crucial step. We send an easy-to-use kit to collect a small dog saliva sample we can use for DNA analysis. There’s no cost, and we’ll share any information we find.

Our plan is to combine the genetic data from many dogs and look for changes in DNA that correlate with particular behaviors. It won’t be easy to match up DNA with an obsession with tennis balls, for instance. Behavior is a complex trait that relies on many genes. Simple Mendelian traits, like Beskow’s black and white coat, are controlled by a single gene which determines the observable characteristic. This kind of inherited trait is comparatively easy to map. Complex traits, on the other hand, may be shaped by tens or even hundreds of different genetic changes, each of which on its own only slightly alters the individual carrying it.

Adding to the complexity, environment often plays a big role. For example, Beskow may not have been as anxious if she’d lived with Adria from puppyhood, even though her genetics would be unchanged.

Darwin’s Dogs team member Jesse McClure extracts DNA from a sample. Elinor Karlsson, CC BY-ND

To succeed, we need a lot of dogs to sign up. Initially, we’re aiming to enroll 5,000 dogs. If successful, we’ll keep growing. With bigger sample sizes, we’ll be able to tackle even more complex biological puzzles.

This is a huge effort, but could offer huge rewards. By figuring out how a genetic change leads to a change in behavior, we can decipher neural pathways involved in psychiatric and neurological diseases shared between people and dogs. We already know these include not just anxiety, but also PTSD, OCD, autism spectrum disorders, phobias, narcolepsia, epilepsy, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Understanding the biology underlying a disease is the first step in developing more effective treatments – of both the canine and human variety. For example, genetic studies of narcolepsy in Doberman pinschers found the gene mutation causing the disease – but only in this one dog population. Researching the gene’s function, though, led to critical new insights into the molecular biology of sleep, and, eventually, to new treatment options for people suffering from this debilitating disease.

Darwin’s Dogs is investigating normal canine behaviors as well as diseases. We hypothesize that finding the small genetic changes that led to complex behaviors, like retrieving, or even personality characteristics, like playfulness, will help us figure out how brains work. We need this mechanistic understanding to design new, safe and more effective therapies for psychiatric diseases.

And Beskow? Six years later, she is as wonderful as ever. While still anxious some of the time, the

Beskow with one of her loving family members. Adria Karlsson, CC BY-ND

medication and training have paid off, and she enjoys her daily walks, training and playtime. She still gets very nervous around other dogs, but is a gentle, playful companion for my sister’s three young children.

We are now sequencing her genome. In the next few months, we should have our first glimpse into Beskow’s ancestry. We know she is a natural herder, so we’re curious to find out how much her genome matches up to herding breeds, and which genes are in that part of the genome.

Of course, we can’t figure out much from just one dog – if you are a dog owner, please enroll your dog today!

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This is an incredibly interest research project with far-reaching implications for us humans. I have written to Professor Karlsson to double-check that anyone who reads this can participate, even if living outside the USA, and will update this post as soon as I hear back from her.

Do share this as far and wide as you can for the benefits for us humans are clear and obvious.

Not a week goes by without me gaining more and deeper understanding of just how wonderful and fabulous our dogs are.

Tricks for us seniors

Eleven tricks you can teach a senior dog.

The household here in Oregon has a number of seniors, both dogs and humans. And while I’m pretty sure that this senior human is practically past the point of learning new tricks, apparently it doesn’t apply to our old dogs.

So enjoy this recent article that appeared on Mother Nature News.

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Teaching an old dog new tricks is not only possible, but a lot of fun!

By: Jaymi Heimbuch, November 30, 2015

Old dogs can learn new tricks with ease! (Photo: Annette Shaff/Shutterstock)

The old saying goes that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but we know a lot of old sayings are wrong — this one included. Of course we can teach old dogs new tricks! In fact, it’s a great way to keep your dog mentally stimulated and having fun throughout his life.

One important thing to keep in mind about teaching senior dogs new tricks and behaviors is the dog’s level of physical ability. Many senior dogs are perfectly able, but if your dog is getting achy in the joints or has other limitations that come with age, keep these in mind. Older dogs may have joint pain or arthritis and have a harder time jumping or even sitting for long periods. They may also have dental issues which may limit the tricks they can do using their mouths. And they may also have hearing or vision problems which alter not only what kinds of tricks you want to teach them but also the way in which you teach them. So it’s important to know what your dog’s physical limitations are when you’re thinking up new tricks, and not push him to the point of possible injury.

While your dog may be past the days of learning to jump through hoops or leap over walls, there is a huge range of tricks that keep mobility issues in mind, and which senior dogs will have a lot of fun learning. Some of the tricks listed here build on each other and gain complexity, so you can keep things interesting for your dog for weeks at a time while training.

Touch

This is such a great trick to use as a foundation for other tricks, from flipping light switches on or off to coming back to your side. And it’s incredibly easy for your dog to learn and do. This is great for older dogs because you can make it really simple at first and build complexity into it after your dog has it down. To start out, you train your dog to do hand targeting. Here’s a video that shows not only how to train your dog to touch your hand, but many of the uses of the behavior:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWSJVwZybwo

Yawn

Teaching your dog to yawn is all about “capturing behavior” with clicker training. It’s much like training your dog “touch” but this time, you have to wait for your dog to offer the behavior and capture it when it happens. Click — or say a key word like “Yes” — whenever you catch your dog yawning, and then reward him with treats or a game with a toy. After awhile, your dog begins to associate the yawn as being a trick that earns a reward. Here’s a video that demonstrates capturing different behaviors that you can turn into cute tricks, including yawning on command:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybL0mkN0ZYA

Put toys away

Even when you’re a grown-up, you have to pick up your toys when you’re done playing. Teaching your dog this tidy behavior will keep him or her a little more active in a low-key way, and thus help loosen up those stiff joints and muscles without putting a strain on their body. Plus, it’s a fun game that you can play over and over, not just on clean-up duty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfjzhErIF4

Names of objects

Stretch your dog’s mental abilities by teaching him the name of different objects or toys. This is a great way to teach your dog to fetch certain items from the toy box or even various objects from around house. You can start off with a few items from the toy box or simply get rolling with items you may want him to fetch for you, including hats, keys, shoes, blankets and so on.

Though it may take a while for your dog to truly grasp the name for each item at first, soon he will catch on to what the name game is all about and will likely grasp names faster when introduced to new objects.

Here’s a video that shows how to begin teaching a dog the name of an item, and how to add more items into the mix:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cDzgEa4Ado

Ring a bell to go out

Your senior dog may be house-trained, but is he also trained to tell you precisely when he wants or needs to go out? You can give your older dog a great tool to tell you what he needs by teaching him to ring a bell as a cue to go outside. This video shows the progression of teaching a dog to touch the bell, and then eventually transition to learning that ringing the bell means their human opens the door for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjve4nuw7So

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The balance of this fascinating article comes out tomorrow.

These extraordinary minds of ours.

Serendipity at work.

Chapter 8 of my book is entitled: Behaviours and Relationships. It opens thus:

“It is all to do with relationships.”

I heard this many years before the idea of writing this book came to me. Heard it from J, who was referred to in the previous chapter. J was speaking of what makes for happy people in all walks of life. It’s one of those remarks that initially comes over as such an obvious statement, akin to water being wet or the night being dark, that it is easy to miss the incredible depth of meaning behind those seven words.

Humans are fascinating. Every aspect of who we are can be seen in our relationships. How we relate to people around us, whether it be a thirty-second exchange with a stranger or a long natter with friends whom we have known for decades, including our partners and family relations. The core relationship, of course, the relationship that drives so many of our behaviours is the relationship that we have with ourself. That being rooted in our relationship experiences with the adults around us when we were young people.

When one looks at the performance of successful companies one often sees, nay one always sees, people being valued. The directors and managers of those companies understand that if people are valued then a myriad of benefits flow from that approach to relationships. Moving out of the workplace, the relationships that people have are always stronger and happier if those individual persons know they are valued. Moving beyond people, our dogs, and many other animals, are always stronger and happier if they feel valued. It’s the difference between empathy and sympathy.

Recently over on Mother Nature Network there was an essay presented by Russell McLendon who is science editor for MNN. It is about happiness.

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Happiness is all in your head

Scientists say they’ve found where happiness happens in the brain. What does that mean?

By: Russell McLendon, November 24, 2015

Understanding how our brains generate happiness could help make it less elusive, researchers say. (Photo: Andrew Vargas/Flickr)

Everyone wants to be happy. Yet despite all our efforts in pursuit of this prized emotion, it can be a surprisingly nebulous goal. What is “happiness,” exactly?

That question has puzzled philosophers for thousands of years, and it’s still tricky for anyone to tackle. But recent advances in neuroscience have finally begun to shed light on it, and now a new study claims to have found an answer. Being told happiness is “all in your head” may seem both obvious and dismissive, but in this case the specifics are also empowering. The more we know about how (and where) happiness happens, the less helpless we’ll be to summon it when we need it.

By comparing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with questionnaires about emotional states, researchers from Kyoto University in Japan say they’ve traced the experience of happiness to a specific part of the human brain. Overall happiness, they conclude, occurs when positive emotions combine with a sense of life satisfaction in the precuneus, a region of the medial parietal lobe that’s linked to important brain tasks like episodic memory, self-reflection and consciousness.

Psychologists already distinguish between broad life satisfaction and “subjective well-being,” since happiness often seems to fade during bad moods without necessarily plunging us into deeper existential despair. But by revealing the neural mechanics of how these feelings combine to create overall happiness, the authors of the new study hope to make it easier to objectively quantify this mysterious and elusive emotion.

“Over history, many eminent scholars like Aristotle have contemplated what happiness is,” lead author Wataru Sato says in a press release. “I’m very happy that we now know more about what it means to be happy.”

Scientists used MRI brain scans to identify happiness in a brain region known as the precuneus. (Photo: Kyoto University)

To pinpoint the location of happiness, Sato and his colleagues first used MRI to scan the brains of their study subjects. Those participants then took a survey, which asked about their general sense of happiness, the intensity of their emotions and the degree of their overall life satisfaction.

After analyzing the data, the researchers discovered that those who scored higher on the happiness survey also had more gray matter mass in the precuneus. That means this brain region is larger in people who feel happiness more intensely, feel sadness less intensely and who are better able to find meaning in life.

“To our knowledge, our study is the first to show that the precuneus is associated with subjective happiness,” the researchers write in the journal Scientific Reports.

Complex phenomena like happiness rarely boil down to a single brain region, but other recent research also points to an outsized role for the precuneus. A study published this month links impaired connectivity in the precuneus to depression, for example, and a 2014 study suggests the region is a “distinct hub” in the brain’s default-mode network, which is active during self-reflection and daydreaming.

All this may seem like an esoteric quest for neuroscientists, but it’s about more than just academic curiosity. By knowing which parts of the human brain generate our sensation of happiness, we might develop more accurate ways to test methods of becoming happier, like travel, exercise or meditation.

“Several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mass in the precuneus,” Sato says. “This new insight on where happiness happens in the brain will be useful for developing happiness programs based on scientific research.”

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It’s an unscientific opinion from me but I truly believe that humans have a bias towards happiness. And if there’s one animal that we can learn happiness from, it’s the dog!

Picture parade one hundred and twenty-four

More than a photograph, less than a film!

Enjoy these for today’s picture parade:

Published on Nov 6, 2015
Another try at a slow motion video of Abbey shaking the water off after a bath

Published on Apr 24, 2014
Stunning, Perfection, Breathtaking – just a few words that describe this 3 minute surfing clip that shows Ian Walsh catching huge waves and making it look effortless.

Well over two million viewings.

Music: Versailles
Warner // Chappell Production Music

Published on Oct 22, 2014

This is a clip from our movie “THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES”.
More on www.homan.pl

That homan.pl web link is well worth a visit – stunning stuff!

Finally, back to slow animal shakes! (And I must acknowledge Mother Nature News for the idea for today’s picture parade.)

Published on Mar 21, 2013
Why do wet furry mammals shake? Si and Sam give some of their favourite animals a shower to uncover the science behind the ‘wet dog shake’. Sam caught up with Andrew Dickerson from Georgia Institute of Technology to find out more about the science… we’ll have the full interview for you soon.

Food, agriculture, and our climate.

Locavore or vegetarian? What’s the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

With Thanksgiving Day just behind us and Christmas just around the corner, this is the season of feasting.

Just last Monday I published an essay written by George Monbiot, Pregnant Silence, that highlighted the impact on our climate of modern food production. Here are a couple of paragraphs from that essay:

Freshwater life is being wiped out across the world by farm manure. In England, as I reported last week, the system designed to protect us from the tide of crap has comprehensively broken down. Dead zones now extend from many coasts, as farm sewage erases ocean life across thousands of square kilometres.

Livestock farming causes around 14% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions: slightly more than the output of the world’s cars, lorries, buses, trains, ships and planes. If you eat soya, your emissions per unit of protein are 20 times lower than eating pork or chicken, and 150 times lower than eating beef.

Thus it seemed both timely and appropriate to republish a further essay on the topic. This one published in The Conversation by Elliott Campbell, who is Associate Professor, Environmental Engineering, at the University of California. It is republished here under the terms of essays published in The Conversation.

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Locavore or vegetarian? What’s the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

November 25, 2015

Elliott Campbell

This year’s Thanksgiving feast falls only a few days before the start of the global climate summit in Paris. Although the connections are not always obvious, the topic of food – and what you choose to eat – has a lot to do with climate change.

Our global agriculture system puts food on the table but it also puts greenhouse gases (GHG) in the air, which represent a huge portion of global emissions. GHG emissions come directly from farms such as methane from cows and nitrous oxide from fertilized fields, while other emissions come from the industries that support agriculture, such as fertilizer factories that consume fossil fuels.

Still other emissions come from natural lands, which have massive stocks of natural carbon stored in plants and soils. When natural lands are cleared to make room for more food production, the carbon in those natural pools is emitted to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Adding all these emissions together makes agriculture responsible for between roughly one fifth and one third of all global anthropogenic, or man-made, greenhouse gas emissions.

How can these emissions be reduced? My own research through the University of California Global Food Initiative has focused on evaluating a wide range of factors from biofuels to local food systems.

Undoubtedly, broad emissions reductions must come from political action and industry commitments. Nevertheless, an enlightened consumer can also help achieve meaningful reductions in GHG emissions, particularly for the case of food. The trick is to understanding what food means for your personal carbon footprint and how to effectively shrink this footprint.

On par with electricity

Zooming in from the global picture on emissions to a single home reveals how important our personal food choices are for climate change. You can use carbon footprint calculators, such as the University of California CoolClimate Tool, to get an idea of how important food is in relation to choices we make about commuting, air travel, home energy use, and consumption of other goods and services.

For the average U.S. household, food consumption will be responsible for about the same GHG emissions as home electricity consumption for the average US household.

Measuring the greenhouse gas impact of different foods is complex but in general, it’s commonly agreed that plant-based diets have a lower carbon footprint. davidwoliver/flickr, CC BY-NC

That’s a significant portion of an individual’s GHG footprint but it could be seen as a blessing in disguise. While you may be stuck with your home or your vehicle for some time and their associated GHG emissions, food is something we purchase with great frequency. And every trip to the grocery store or farmer’s market is another opportunity for an action that has a significant and lasting impact on our climate.

Making concrete decisions, though, is not always straight-forward. Many consumers are faced with a perplexing array of options from organic to conventional foods, supermarkets to farmers markets, and genetically modified organisms to more traditional varieties.

And in truth, the carbon footprint of many food options is disputed in the scientific literature. Despite the need for more research, there appears to be a very clear advantage for individuals to chose a more plant-based diet. A meat-intensive diet has more than twice the emissions of a vegan diet. Reducing the quantity of meat (particularly red meat) and dairy on the table can go a long way to reducing the carbon footprint of your food.

Food miles and water recycling

Local food systems are popularly thought to reduce GHG emissions through decreased food transport or food miles. But in many cases food miles turn out to be a meaningful but small piece of the overall GHG emissions from food.

For example, a broad analysis of the US food supply suggests that food miles may be responsible for less than 10% of the GHG emissions associated with food. This general trend suggests that where you get your food from is much less important than first-order issues, such as shifting to a more plant-based diet.

A little-appreciated way of reducing the carbon footprint of food is to recycle nearby water rather than pump it long distances. The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency (PVWMA) Water Resources Center in California sanitizes wastewater for direct use or blending with ground (well) water. US Department of Agriculture, CC BY

Where, then, does this leave a rapidly emerging local food movement?

For starters, there are some cases where food miles have greater importance. For example, food miles can play a big part in the carbon footprint of foods when airplanes or refrigeration are required during transport.

There is, however, untapped potential for locally produced food to deliver carbon savings around water and fertilizers.

When water is pumped long distances, it can add to food’s carbon footprint. Re-use of purified urban wastewater for irrigating crops represents one strategy for addressing this challenge but is only economically and environmentally feasible when food production is in close proximity to cities.

Using fossil fuels to produce fertilizers, such as ammonia, can also be a big piece of the carbon footprint of food. Nutrients in reclaimed wastewater and urban compost may provide a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuel-based fertilizers. But similar to water re-use, reusing nutrients is most easily done when there is a short distance between food production and consumption.

To be sure, buying local food doesn’t imply that food or nutrient recycling has happened. But developing local food systems could certainly be a first step towards exploring how to close the water and nutrient loop.

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I am sure many, as with me, tend not to follow through on all the links in an online essay. But there was one that really caught my eye. It was the CoolClimate Calculator on the Berkeley Edu website. It allows one to fill in a number of figures in terms of living, travel, food and more, and determine one’s total tons CO2/year emitted and how that compares with other people in your neighbourhood. Unfortunately, it only calculates CO2/year for US locations. Does anyone know of similar calculators online in, say, the United Kingdom? Would love to know.

Feelings – of both humans and animals.

Five years ago Jean and I were married!

So if we are discussing feelings, as we are today, there is no better place to start than by me expressing my feelings of joy and love that I feel for, and still receive from, my gorgeous Jean. I know five years at our stage of life is far fewer than for many married couples but, nevertheless, they have been beautiful years and I wish for many more.

wedding — Diane Jackson, Bridesmaid, Jean and me, my mother and Dan Gomez, Best Man. November 20th, 2010

I had been pondering these last few days as to what I would write for today. For I wanted to celebrate our anniversary yet wanted a broader theme; so to speak.

There couldn’t have been a better answer to that ponder than a recent video that was presented by TED Talks. It was a talk by Carl Safina about what is going on inside the brains of animals: What are animals thinking and feeling? Or in the fuller words of that TED Talk page:

What’s going on inside the brains of animals? Can we know what, or if, they’re thinking and feeling? Carl Safina thinks we can. Using discoveries and anecdotes that span ecology, biology and behavioral science, he weaves together stories of whales, wolves, elephants and albatrosses to argue that just as we think, feel, use tools and express emotions, so too do the other creatures – and minds – that share the Earth with us.

Safina is very qualified to speak on the subject as his bio on that TED Talk page reveals. However, I couldn’t find a YouTube link for that TED Talk but could find two videos that are very good alternatives.

The first is a short video of Safina promoting his book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.

The second is a much longer video that is Safina’s presentation at the recent Ransom A. Myers Lecture. If you can spare the time, then do watch it. You will not be disappointed.

Published on Oct 9, 2015
8th Annual Ransom A. Myers Lecture in Science and Society. Thursday, October 1st 2015.

Title: Beyond Words: What animals think and feel
Presented by: Dr. Carl Safina, Marine Ecologist/Author, The Safina Centre

Finally, and please forgive my indulgences, I want to close today’s post with some photographs that for me have “feelings” stamped all over them!

Jeannie, Hazel and cat feeling trust for each other.

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One of our local deer trusting Jeannie. — One of our local wild deer trusting Jeannie.

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Last but not least! Photograph taken two days ago by yours truly reflecting my feelings of wonder at being alive in this world! — Last but not least! A photograph taken two days ago by yours truly reflecting my feelings of wonder at being alive in this world!

Onwards and upwards!

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Dogs show signs of self-consciousness in new ‘sniff test’ We knew it!

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Anti-aging project aims to extend dogs’ life spans

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What clues does your dog’s spit hold for human mental health?

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Teaching an old dog new tricks is not only possible, but a lot of fun!

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Happiness is all in your head

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Locavore or vegetarian? What’s the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

On par with electricity

Food miles and water recycling

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Dogs show signs of self-consciousness in new ‘sniff test’
We knew it!