Then yesterday, around 2pm, we dropped everything to race up to a farmer at Wolf Creek, just a dozen miles North of us, to inspect some hay that was for sale. It was great quality and at $5 a bale the deal of the century. So by the time we had loaded up some bales onto the trailer and returned, unloaded them into the hay loft, organised a bigger trailer from neighbours Dordie and Bill, and I had recuperated under a shower, there was no time at all for today’s post.
Well that larger flatbed trailer was borrowed on Monday evening and early yesterday morning we set off again to Wolf Creek to purchase more bales of hay.
This time we had room for 60 bales, the equivalent of 4,200 lbs in weight. Each bale had to be lifted onto the trailer and stacked carefully.
But at last it was all done, great thanks to Robert who was up at Wolf Creek, and then it was time to head for home.
Jean thanking Robert for his great help in loading our 60 bales!
Impossible not to ignore the beautiful countryside that is so typical of this part of Southern Oregon. (Wolf Creek is less than 15 miles from home.)
The things we do for our horses!
Anyway, once back home somehow Jean and I managed to unload and stack all 60 bales, by which time my creative juices were no longer to be found.
A range of ideas that elevate our understanding of dogs.
Last Thursday, I wrote the opening to what became a two-part essay. The essence of that first part was the conclusion by Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, that, “Clearly dogs and many other animals can truly teach us about traits such as trust, friendship, forgiveness, love, and hope.”
You will recall that the reference to Marc Bekoff came from an article written by David Grimm (1) in The Washington Post. Let me refer back to that article:
In the wild, coyotes ostracize pack members that don’t play by the rules. Something similar happens in dog parks: If three dogs are playing and one bites or tackles too hard, the other two are likely to give him the cold shoulder and stop playing with him, Bekoff says. Such behavior, he says, suggests that dogs are capable of morality, a mind-set once thought to be uniquely human.
Even morality hints at something deeper, however. To enforce moral conduct, dogs must be able to experience a spectrum of emotions, from joy to indignation, guilt to jealousy. They must also be able to read these emotions in others, distinguishing accident from intent, honesty from deceit. And indeed, recent studies by other scientists have shown evidence of these abilities (confirming what many dog owners already feel about their pets).
Scientists have found, for example, that dogs trained to shake hands with humans will stop shaking if they notice that they aren’t being rewarded for the trick although a nearby dog is — a sign, the researchers suggested, that dogs can sense inequity.
Other studies have revealed that dogs yawn when they see humans yawning and that they nuzzle and lick people who are crying; scientists consider both behaviors displays of empathy, a rarely documented trait in the animal kingdom. Dogs have even been shown to be pessimistic: When a group of canines in one study learned that a bowl placed on one side of the room contained a treat and a bowl on the other side contained nothing, some of the dogs just sat there when the empty bowl was placed in the center of the room; they figured it was empty and didn’t waste their time. These same dogs evinced what researchers said was a similar pessimistic attitude when their masters left for work: They were more likely to howl and tear up the couch when their owner disappeared, possibly because they didn’t believe their master would return.
Most, if not all, dog owners would be very familiar with many of the behavioural traits that Marc Bekoff covers. Take this next aspect, for instance:
Bekoff’s recent work suggests another remarkable canine skill: the ability to know what another animal is thinking — a so-called “theory of mind.”
Dogs seem to display a rudimentary form of this skill during play. He has noticed, for example, that one dog won’t begin trying to play with another dog until he has her attention. To get her to notice, he may nip the other dog or run into her field of view. That, Bekoff says, shows that the one wanting to play knows that she’s not paying attention to him. Though this may seem like a simple skill, it’s incredibly important to our species. Without it, we can have a hard time learning or interacting with the world around us.
From the above, it was but a short step, in web-search terms, to discover the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University.
Duke Canine Cognition Center
The Duke Canine Cognition Center (DCCC) is dedicated to the study of dog psychology. Our goal is to understand the flexibility and limitations of dog cognition. In doing so, we gain a window into the mind of animals as well as the evolution of our own species. We can also apply our knowledge of dog cognition to improving programs in which dogs are bred and trained to help humans (i.e. service dogs for the disabled, etc.).
We study dog cognition by inviting dog owners living in the vicinity of Duke University (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) to volunteer their pet dog(s) to play fun problem solving games where they can win treats (food or toys). The Duke Canine Cognition Center has the highest acceptance rate and cheapest tuition at Duke! So join hundreds of others and sign up today so that your dog can help us gain an even better understanding of our very best friends.
Today is the eleventh anniversary of the day Pharaoh was born.
Yes, Pharaoh was born on the 3rd June, 2003.
Last year, I celebrated Pharaoh’s tenth birthday with posts over two days. Being ten seemed such a significant milestone for him.
So rather than repeat those two posts, as much as I am tempted to so do 😉 , I will just offer you the links and repost one photograph. Thus here is that first post, Meet the dogs – Pharaoh (pt 1) and the second part is here.
Here’s the photograph of Sandra Tucker, owner of Jutone Kennels in Devon, England, holding puppy Pharaoh the day I first met him: 12th August, 2003.
It would be so easy for me to gush over having Pharaoh in my life these last eleven years. But I shall resist, dear reader! Will just repeat a few words that were said a year ago.
The biggest, single reward of having Pharaoh as my friend goes back a few years. Back to my Devon days and the time when Jon Lavin and I used to spend hours talking together. Pharaoh always contentedly asleep in the same room as the two of us. It was Jon who introduced me to Dr. David Hawkins and his Map of Consciousness. It was Jon one day who looking down at the sleeping Pharaoh pointed out that Dr. Hawkins offered evidence that dogs are integrous creatures with a ‘score’ on that Map of between 205 and 210. (Background story is here.)
So this blog, Learning from Dogs, and my attempt to write a book of the same name flow from that awareness of what dogs mean to human consciousness and what Pharaoh means to me. No, more than that! From that mix of Jon, Dr. David Hawkins, and experiencing the power of unconditional love from an animal living with me day-in, day-out, came a journey into my self. Came the self-awareness that allowed me to like who I was, be openly loved by this dog of mine, and be able to love in return. As is said: “You cannot love another until you love yourself.“
Which, serendipitously, brings me to tomorrow’s post: Celebrating Who I Am.
Obviously, I wanted to include some current photographs of the birthday boy but, try as I did, the perfect image wasn’t captured.
Thus will leave you with these two, both taken yesterday afternoon.
It’s almost impossible, at times, to get one’s mind around life’s events. I’m not wishing to be overly philosophical but, nonetheless, it doesn’t do any harm to muse from time to time about the nature of things.
Take our two rescue horses: Ben and Ranger.
They have now been with us for coming up to three months. Considering how terribly they were treated before being rescued by Darla Clark of Strawberry Mountain Mustangs, it’s a privilege to experience the way that these two horses have so rapidly put their past behind them.
All of which is a preamble to this photograph taken just a couple of days ago.
Ranger (LHS) and Ben enjoying our open grassland.
Just look at their shiny coats! Just look at them so happily munching away on the grass.
Now look at how they were not so long ago.
Ranger, when first seen in February.
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Ben as seen last October.
So back to present, happy times.
The last photograph is of Jean having just put a halter on Ranger so that the two of them can be taken in at the end of the day. Ben follows Ranger in without the need of a halter. Ben and Ranger are inseparable!
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Tomorrow, the celebration of another beautiful animal!
One of the better things about my old home country, the United Kingdom, is The Open University. As Wikipedia explains:
The OU was established in 1969 and the first students enrolled in January 1971. The University administration is based at Walton Hall, Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, but has regional centres in each of its thirteen regions around the United Kingdom. It also has offices and regional examination centres in most other European countries. The university awards undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, as well as non-degree qualifications such as diplomas and certificates or continuing education units.
With more than 250,000 students enrolled, including around 32,000 aged under 25 and more than 50,000 overseas students, it is the largest academic institution in the United Kingdom (and one of the largest in Europe) by student number, and qualifies as one of the world’s largest universities.
For reasons that I am unclear about, I subscribe to the OU’s newsletter. Thus it was that a few weeks ago, this dropped into my ‘in-box’.
Do animals fall in love?
Do romantic relationships exist in the animal kingdom?
Throughout his lifetime, evolutionist and biologist Charles Darwin researched and wrote about how he felt that love can exist within the animal world. Particularly in his papers ‘The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals’ and ‘Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals’, he explored how animals can display supposed ‘human emotions’ like pleasure, pain, happiness and misery. He investigated how animals could seemingly appear to feel ‘down’ when separated from their companions, and seemed to jump for joy and touch one another in a way similar to a human hug when reunited.
Although monogamy and lifelong pair bonds are generally rare in the animal kingdom, some animals seem to thrive on it. Recent research has shown that Gibbons, who were thought to mate for life, have more complicated relationships, with mates occasionally philandering, and even sometimes dumping a mate, suggesting some similarity to human relationships. Swans also form monogamous pair bonds that last for many years, and occassionally for life. Loyalty to their mates has made them a virtually universal symbol of love. But some researchers believe it isn’t as romantic as it first appears, and that they stay together because spending extra time attracting a new mate has the potential to impact on the otherwise reproductive time.
Darwin’s theories have paved the way for further studies. In this free article, Tim Halliday explores natural selection and evolution in the animal world.
Here is that article.
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Natural Selection and Evolution
Tim Halliday explores natural selection and evolution in the animal world
In the Rules of Life series, and its accompanying CD, Aubrey Manning looks at the behaviour of animals and describes many new discoveries about the way that this is beautifully adapted to meet the challenges which animals face in their daily lives. The scientific study of animal behaviour, or ethology, was founded some 50 years ago by Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. Their most significant contribution was to bring together the study of natural history with an understanding of evolution by natural selection. Since then, the numerous studies that have been made of animal behaviour have revealed that animals do many things that challenge many of the ideas that people had about natural selection 50 years ago. Natural selection theory has developed enormously since that time, largely as the result of animal behaviour studies, and a number of popular misconceptions about evolution have been revealed to be false as a result.
One such misconception is embodied in the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, first coined by Herbert Spencer, and often used to encapsulate the way natural selection works. It is misleading, because ‘survival’ is only part of the story. Evolutionary change comes about because some individuals are more successful in reproduction and so pass on their genes to succeeding generations. As a result, the characteristics that make individuals successful in reproduction become more common in the population. It is thus reproduction that is important in evolution, and survival becomes simply a means to that end.
The importance of this point becomes apparent when we appreciate that, for most animals, reproduction is a very costly and sometimes dangerous activity, as illustrated many times in the series. To engage effectively in reproductive activity requires a great deal of energy and other resources that could otherwise be put towards survival. This is apparent in the common observation that animals show a greatly reduced growth rate, or stop growing altogether, when they reach sexual maturity. The resources that they derive from feeding are diverted from growth to reproduction.
A second common misconception is that natural selection acts ‘for the good of the species’. There are numerous examples of animal behaviour that show that this cannot be the case. For example, African lions live in prides, consisting of several females and their cubs, controlled by a group of two or three males. Other mature males are excluded from living in a pride. From time to time, a coalition of excluded males is formed and they attempt to take over a pride, by attacking and driving away the current pride-holders. If they succeed in doing this, their first act is to kill any cubs in the pride that are still being suckled by their mothers. To kill the young of one’s own species cannot benefit the species. The adaptive value of this behaviour for males is that, deprived of the cubs they have been suckling, the females very quickly come on heat and can conceive cubs fathered by the new pride-holders.
This example illustrates another common misconception about evolution, that, when mating, males and females are acting cooperatively. While it is in the interests of both parents that reproduction is successful, the way that that success comes about is not necessarily the same for the two sexes. For male lions, it is of no reproductive benefit to them to guard females that give birth to cubs fathered by other males. Infanticide is of benefit to them because it ensures that cubs born in the pride are their offspring. Infanticide is costly for females because the considerable time and resources that they have put into producing cubs is wasted. There is thus a conflict between the sexes, even though they have to behave cooperatively if either is to reproduce at all.
The interplay of cooperation and conflict is also apparent in the relationship between parents and offspring. For animals that produce more than one young at a time, it is usually to the advantage of the parent to share food more or less equally among its progeny. For each individual progeny, however, it is to its advantage if it receives more food than its siblings. There is thus a great deal of competition among progeny. This takes a bizarre form in the European Fire Salamander, and in a species of shark described in one of the programmes. In these animals, the young develop within the mother and, as they grow, they eat one another until only one, very large young is left. It may be that producing one offspring at a time is a good strategy from the mother’s point of view, or it could be that she would have higher reproductive success if she produced more; it may be, however that she has no choice in the matter.
The key to understanding evolution by natural selection is to think of it, not in terms of an individual’s survival, but in terms of its effectiveness in passing on its genes, what in the series is referred to as ‘genetic accounting’. Natural selection favours those individuals that pass on the most copies of their genes. This enables us to explain many aspects of animal behaviour that are difficult to explain purely in terms of survival. For example, in many species, particularly among birds, certain adult individuals do not breed themselves, but help other adults to do so, for example by feeding their young. In almost all cases, helpers turn out to be close relatives of the parents they are helping and so they are, in an indirect way, helping to spread those genes that they share with their relatives.
* Tim Halliday is professor of biology at The Open University, where he has worked on newts, toads and frogs since 1977.
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Two photographs that offer my answer to the question: Do animals fall in love?
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Hazel asleep with her dear friend Cleo. (Hazel to the left.)
Over the week-end Learning from Dogs registered a 1,000 followers. Now I may be tempting fate by writing this but whatever the figure, on a day-to-day basis, the trend is one of a steadily increasing number of subscribers.
Yes, in the grand scheme of things, this is a tiny achievement compared to many of the great blogs out there. But, nonetheless, I feel compelled to write this.
That it is impossible for me to convey the degree of gratitude to all of you followers and the many additional readers who pass this way. Please just know the depth of my feelings in this regard.
Just also know that the community feeling that has grown up around this writing adventure is fabulous. Something of which I had no expectation when I published my first post on July 15th, 2009. Just for fun, here is that first post.
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Parenting lessons from Dogs!
Much too late to make me realise the inadequacies of my own parenting skills, I learnt an important lesson when training my GSD (who is called Pharaoh, by the way). That is that putting more emphasis into praise and reward for getting it right ‘trains’ the dog much quicker than telling it off. The classic example is scolding a dog for running off when it should be lots of hugs and praise for returning home. The scolding simply teaches the dog that returning home isn’t pleasant whereas praise reinforces that home is the place to be. Like so many things in life, very obvious once understood!
Absolutely certain that it works with youngsters just the same way.
Despite being a very dominant dog, Pharaoh showed his teaching ability when working with other dogs. In the UK there is an amazing woman, Angela Stockdale, who has proved that dogs (and horses) learn most effectively when being taught by other dogs (and horses). Pharaoh was revealed to be a Beta Dog, (i.e. second in status below the Alpha Dog) and, therefore, was able to use his natural pack instinct to teach puppy dogs their social skills and to break up squabbles within a pack.
When you think about it, don’t kids learn much more (often to our chagrin!) from other kids than they do from their parents. Still focusing on giving more praise than punishment seems like a much more effective strategy.
As was read somewhere, Catch them in the act of doing Right!
By Paul Handover.
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So here we are! Within a couple of months of me writing Learning from Dogs for five years!
For those who love numbers and statistics, try these: 2,062 published posts with 8,815 comments approved.
But those numbers mean nothing compared to the joy of having you follow Learning from Dogs.
Thank you!
Pharaoh appreciates the milestone, as well! Thanks all you wonderful supporters of this place!
This photograph of Pharaoh was taken yesterday morning. Like his ‘owner’ starting to show his age! (Pharaoh is eleven on June 3rd.)
Here’s another photograph taken same time yesterday morning.
I can’t recall why it was many months ago that I came across the website of Frontiers in Science. But I did and, in particular, I came across a fundamental difference between the two species. In an article entitled: A simple reason for a big difference: wolves do not look back at humans, but dogs do.I’m going to take a chance, as in not having formal permission to republish it, in reposting it in full here. Because it means so much to me and other dog lovers!
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A simple reason for a big difference: wolves do not look back at humans, but dogs do.
Adám Miklósi, Enikö Kubinyi, József Topál, Márta Gácsi, Zsófia Virányi and Vilmos Csányi
Department of Ethology, Eötvös University, Budapest, Pázmány P. 1c, 1117, Hungary. miklosa@ludens.elte.hu
The present investigations were undertaken to compare interspecific communicative abilities of dogs and wolves, which were socialized to humans at comparable levels. The first study demonstrated that socialized wolves were able to locate the place of hidden food indicated by the touching and, to some extent, pointing cues provided by the familiar human experimenter, but their performance remained inferior to that of dogs. In the second study, we have found that, after undergoing training to solve a simple manipulation task, dogs that are faced with an insoluble version of the same problem look/gaze at the human, while socialized wolves do not. Based on these observations, we suggest that the key difference between dog and wolf behavior is the dogs’ ability to look at the human’s face. Since looking behavior has an important function in initializing and maintaining communicative interaction in human communication systems, we suppose that by positive feedback processes (both evolutionary and ontogenetically) the readiness of dogs to look at the human face has lead to complex forms of dog-human communication that cannot be achieved in wolves even after extended socialization.
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Actually, that article from the Department of Ethology at Eötvös University in Budapest is just an excuse for me to post three photographs confirming the good scientists results!
Young Cleo, May 12th, 2012.
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Mr Pharaoh’s look from June, 2007.
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The second Cleo look from May, 2012.
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There’s no question in my mind that millions of dog lovers across the world know the intimacy that is conveyed in a dog’s eyes!
Learning from Dogs 