Category: Science

This has nothing to do with dogs!

But everything to do with staying fit and healthy.

There are many things that I read first thing in the morning before I am dressed. Ninety-nine percent of them I don’t share with you.

But the following caused me to a) reflect on whether I was guilty of doing this, and b) how many others know of this.

One of the results of having 4,000 (bar 25) followers of this place is that I feel a certain obligation to share certain news.

It was published on The Conversation and is free to reproduce.

So here goes:

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The serious consequence of exercising too much, too fast

Exercising too much, too hard can lead not only to burnout but sometimes to a serious condition that can harm the kidneys.

By , Associate Professor of Exercise and Sports Science, Wayne State University, January 24th, 2020.

Every 365.25 days, when the Earth completes a full orbit around the Sun, we humans have the opportunity to hit the reset button and become fitter, finer versions of ourselves. As usual for January, social media is humming with advice on how to eat better, exercise regularly, lose weight and remain healthy. We feel particularly invincible at this time of year, armed with renewed vigor and motivation to purge ourselves from previous indulgences and our couch-potato ways.

The New Year is also the time when our overzealous, instant-gratification selves emerge, and we do too much exercise too soon to make up for lost time. Exhaustive muscular work, especially following a period of inactivity, can cause mechanical and chemical disruptions to muscle cell membranes which trigger the muscle cells to burst.

I am an exercise physiologist and sports medicine specialist who studies exercise-associated collapse. I am seeing and hearing of more incidents of skeletal muscle ruptures that are causing harm in other parts of the body.

This information is not designed to scare people back onto the couch. The key take-away from highlighting these cases is to remind athletes, coaches and mere mortals that the desired physiological response to a training stimulus requires both a gradual buildup period and period of recovery in between training sessions.

A cross-section of the human kidneys, which can be injured when muscle cells rupture and send toxic chemicals into the bloodstream. crystal light/Shutterstock.com

More than muscle injury

The medical term for skeletal muscle cell rupture is “rhabdomyolysis,” or “rhabdo” for short. When muscle cells rupture or explode, the intracellular contents are released into the bloodstream. These cellular contents include enzymes, such as creatine kinase; electrolytes, such as potassium; and proteins, such as myoglobin.

Myoglobin, in particular, is a big, red protein that can block the kidney filtration system, or renal tubules, that serve as kidney plumbing. It also can dissociate into toxic byproducts that injure kidneys. In rare cases, too much myoglobin in the bloodstream can stop kidney function altogether, as happened with a 27-year old marathon runner who died from kidney failure.

In a study we conducted on college swimmers, we saw a cluster of rhabdomyolysis, in which six out of 34 swimmers were hospitalized after participating in a 20-minute or so “arm competition” to see how many pull-ups, rows and bench presses they could complete. Cases of “symptomatic rhabdo,” or those needing medical treatment, appear to be increasing within collegiate sports teams at an alarming rate, with the characteristic appearance seen in football players returning to January practice after a season-ending holiday layoff.

To date, 17 cases of team rhabdo have occurred from doing “too much, too soon, too fast” and include a variety of sports such as football, swimming, lacrosse, soccer, track, basketball, softball, volleyball and golf.

Noncompetitive athletes affected too

So, what about us mere mortals trying to get back in shape? Any physical activity that is either new or excessive can cause symptomatic rhabdo. Excessive gardening, weightlifting, CrossFit type activities and even a routine Army physical fitness test have triggered symptomatic rhabdo with kidney injury.

Over 90 cases of rhabdo have been documented after spinning, while 119 high school students in Taiwan ended up in the emergency room after their teacher made them complete 120 push-ups within five minutes. Thus, harmful muscle cell rupture can occur after any degree five minutes to 36 hours of exuberant and/or unaccustomed physical activity.

In combination, gradual training and appropriate recovery allow beneficial muscular, cardiovascular and body composition adaptations to occur, such as building muscle, increasing fitness and losing body fat. Our research confirms that a two-week gradual introduction into training after a layoff is required for muscle cell membranes to fully adapt to training stress.

Subclinical rhabdo, or muscle breakdown without acute kidney injury or debilitating symptoms, is common and represents the typical response to training which does not require medical treatment. However, hard exercise, especially following a layoff, with the following signs or symptoms within one to two days requires an appropriate medical examination:

    • excruciating muscle pain that does not resolve over time
    • muscle swelling with limitations in movement
    • nausea or vomiting, or both
    • very dark (looks like Coca-Cola) or sparse urine.

There are risk factors which increase the likelihood of developing rhabdo following a workout. These risk factors include exercising in the heat, dehydration or overhydration, binge drinking, excessive coffee consumption, extreme dietary practices (vegetarian or high [protein] https://doi.org/10.1097/JSM.0000000000000310)) and possessing the sickle cell trait. Both men and women can develop symptomatic rhabdo, although we see more cases in men. Smaller arm muscles appear more susceptible to rupture after five to 30 minutes of exercise than bigger leg muscles for reasons that remain unclear.

Although symptomatic rhabdomyolysis is uncommon, this emergent complication of exercise should be on everyone’s radar since cases are on the rise. We coaches, trainers, scientists, practitioners and others encourage everyone to reap the joys and benefits of regular exercise training. However, we caution against exercising too much too soon. Self- (or coach-) inflicted skeletal muscle cell explosions are fully preventable with adherence to smart, physiologically sound approaches to training.

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Now there’s an element of me not really understanding this (and I haven’t yet watched the video) but that’s no reason not to share it with you.

What do you think? Wiser to share it or too much a case of worrying? Tamara Hew-Butler certainly knows all about this.

Dogs observations of us humans

A widely-reported study shows the depth to which dogs understand us.

I have seen this reported both in The Smithsonian and Mother Nature News.

I have included both!

I’ll comment at the end of the articles.

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Stray Dogs May Understand Human Signals, Too

By Brigit Katz

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.

By Starre Vartan   January 21, 2020

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.

The oldest human-animal relationship by far!

How old is that doggie in the window?

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.

Then there are the more objective ageing biomarkers, such as levels of gene expression (genes produce proteins at differing rates at different stages of life) or numbers of immune cells. The rate at which biological age increases depends on genetically inherited factors, mental health and lifestyle.

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.

The authors of the new ageing study suggest that a sensible way to measure biological age is though so-called “epigenetic clocks” – changes to the packaging of our DNA that accumulate over time in all mammals.

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 article originally appeared on 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.

Well done the BBC!

Speaking with wolves!

An insightful look at the way that baby wolves play.

I’m gradually getting ourselves organised following the power failure and, on cue, Chris Gomez sent the following in two days ago.

It shows beyond doubt that young wolves play like dogs and that the two animals are more alike than dis-alike.

You watch the following video and see what I mean.

Then there is the article that is reproduced below.

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Baby wolves like to play fetch too – what this says about your dog.

By Fermin Koop

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.

There’s more to a dog’s whiskers than we imagined!

A fascinating article.

The following was sent to me by Chris Gomez, brother of Dan, who I have known for nearly as long as Dan (and that’s a long time)!

The article appeared on ZME Science was published on the 15th January. It contains material that I, for one, didn’t know and I suspect I’m not the only one.

Have a read.

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Why do dogs have whiskers?

Whiskers allow dogs to “see” things that are literally under their noses.

By Tibi Puiu

Credit: Pixabay

Many mammals, including canines, have whiskers. Some dog owners think these whiskers are just longer unruly hairs that can be groomed and even snipped off entirely — but this would be a huge mistake. The whiskers, technically known as “vibrissae”, serve important specialized functions that help dogs sense the world around them and coordinate their movement.

Humans sense touch through millions of sensory receptors that line the skin and deeper tissue. Unlike humans, the follicles of the coarse hairs protruding from a dog’s muzzle, jaw and above its eyes are also packed with nerves that relay sensory information.

Essentially, these whiskers allow dogs to sense objects and the world around them as humans do with fingers.

What are a canine’s whiskers good for

Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The tactile sensation is made possible thanks to Merkel cells, which are specialized skin receptors associated with nerve terminals. A dog’s mouth and snout are very rich in Merkel cells, according to a study published in the journal Veterinary Science.

According to researchers, these tactile hairs serve a variety of functions. For instance, the whiskers allow dogs to gather information from subtle changes in air currents about size, shape, and speed of nearby objects. Ultimately, this allows canines to see their surroundings better, even in dark. It’s well known that vision isn’t a dog’s strong point, so their vibrissae greatly assist them — especially when dealing with close objects (dogs are farsighted). Whiskers beneath the chin allow dogs to “see” objects obstructed by their snouts.

Whisker’s positioned immediately above the eyes are particularly important for vision. When an object or strong airflow causes these whiskers to flex, dogs will reflexively blink in order to protect their eyes.

It’s not clear whether dogs use their whiskers for food acquisition. However, if they’re anything like rats, seals, and walruses — all related species that have been shown to use their whiskers to find food — dogs might very well use their sensing hairs for this purpose, too.

A dog’s whiskers can also serve an important role in communication with other canines or other species. Like many other mammals, when a dog is threatened it will automatically flare its whiskers, pointing them in a forward direction. This signals to predators and other aggressive animals that the dog is ready to defend itself and respond with violence.

Dogs may use their whiskers to also disperse pheromones, keep their head upright when swimming, and monitor their environment.

About 40% of a canine’s visual cortex (the part of the brain responsible for processing vision) is devoted to mapping information from whiskers. They’re that important!

What you need to know about your dog’s whiskers

Credit: Pxfuel.

Although they might look similar, vibrissae are distinct from body hair. The main difference is that a dog’s whiskers are directed by the nervous system and contain nerves.

Unlike cats, which have four rows of whiskers on either side of a cat’s face, the placement of a dog’s whiskers is less predictable. Some have a multitude of vibrissae, others may have few or even none. You should find them above the eyes, on both sides of the muzzle, above the upper lip (pointing down) and beneath the dog’s chin.

According to scientists, there are no breed-specific differences in canine whiskers. An exception may involve hairless breeds, which have no whiskers at all.

That being said, you should never trim your dog’s whiskers. Some pet owners believe their dogs’ whiskers should be groomed and snip them for aesthetic purposes.

This practice won’t hurt the dog, because there are no pain receptors found in whiskers. However, given the multitude of functions they serve, a whisker-less dog will become confused, disorientated, and less able to navigate its spatial surroundings. If you cut your dog’s whiskers in the past out of ignorance, know at least that they will grow back naturally.

In summary, dogs use their whiskers as a sort of radar to detect objects that they cannot properly see with their own eyes.

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Apart from the fact that the photographs are gorgeous there is much material that is good to know. For instance, I never knew there were no breed-specific differences in canine whiskers. Just hadn’t thought about it before.

Thank you, Chris, for a great link!

Pentobarbital found in route to dog food!

This is another important dog food recall notice.

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:

  • Best Dry Dog Food
  • Best Wet Dog Food
  • Best Puppy Food
  • Best Affordable Dog Food
  • Best Dog Food for Allergies
  • Best Grain-Free Dog Food
  • Best Dog Food Made with Grain
  • Best Dog Food for Sensitive Stomach
  • Best Senior Dog Food
  • Best Dog Food for Weight Loss

Click here to see ALL our Best Dog Food lists for January 2020

Please be sure to share this report with other pet owners.
Mike Sagman, Editor
The Dog Food Advisor
Saving Good Dogs From Bad Dog Food

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Once again may I add my plea to Mike Sagman’s request to share this report as far and wide as you can.

The making of a scent dog.

A guest post from Bryony Ravate.

To be honest there are times when I struggle to come up with something original in terms of blogging. And it is at these times of life that I am very grateful for the offer of a guest post. Take Bryony for example. This is not the first time that I have presented her work but I am forever grateful for her so doing.

This is her article on scent dogs.

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The making of a scent dog.

By Bryony Ravate, January 2nd, 2020

If you’ve been lucky enough to be around dogs, you will have probably noticed how their noses are always moving. By possessing a nose up to 15x times more sensitive than our own, with 600,00 neurones, they can sniff out different components in every room. When you’re cooking a meal, you will be able to recognise the smell of a dish. But when your dog smells the meal, he can smell each individual spice and seasoning, the oils, the crockery and even any water.
You can use your dogs’ keen sense of smell for play – laying out different scents for them to explore. But their noses can also be used for working environments– such as in airports, with the police and in search and rescue missions. They can track down suitcases hiding illegal substances, follow the suspect of a crime and sniff out the victims of a snowstorm. To become scent dogs, the canines go through vigorous training. However, although all dogs have an exceptional sense of smell, not all dogs make it through training.

It makes sense to analyse what leads to success and failure in scent dog training. So, a keen researcher at University College Cork, Ireland performed a literature review in which factors behind success and failure in scent dog training were analysed. A literature review is the process whereby you search a database full of information (usually research articles published in reputable journals) and you extrapolate the information to create your own source. Here, I’m going to pull together some of the points I found the most interesting, points you may not think would affect the making of a scent dog.

Personality

Dogs with strong motivation to play or search, dogs which were bold rather than shy, and dogs which can adapt and cope with stressful stimuli are more likely to become scent dogs. High motivation to play or search, makes a dog easier to train. Play can be used as a reward, by allowing the dog to pull on a chew toy after being successful in a trial. Finding scents may be perceived as a game to the dog, increasing his motivation to engage. Bold dogs are less unnerved by new surroundings and situations. A nervous dog may be hesitant about pursuing an unknown scent – but a bold dog will take little hesitation. Adaptable dogs may be able to apply their knowledge to different situations and they will be unphased by commotions and will keep working when faced with distractions.

Housing Standards

Dogs that live in enriched environments throughout their training have increased ability in trials. Like children, the more opportunities you offer your dogs to learn, explore and interact with their environment, the more it allows them to develop and grow. Dogs should feel secure in their home environment when not working; keeping them with other dogs and in bright rooms without using loud cleaning equipment (such as hoovers) will make them less anxious, leading to better accuracy in scent trials.

The Human Partner

Dogs emotions are often intertwined with their handlers. When a dog’s owner gets angry, the stress hormones in the dog increase as a result. If a dog handler is happy, the dogs will perform better. The bond between dogs and their handlers can affect the accuracy of scent trials. If the dog lives at the owners’ home when he’s not working, obedience and accuracy are increased. Although the bond between scent dog and handler is important, they must be independent thinkers. When faced with a problem- solving task, they must be able to manipulate the environment themselves to find a solution, rather than looking at their handler for cues about the answer.
These are some factors which can alter the likelihood of a dog being a successful, as reviewed by Camille A Trosi and her team. What we must keep in mind is that all dogs are individuals. We cannot use this information to ensure all dogs in the future will pass scent dog training. However, we can use this knowledge to give potential scent dogs the best possible start to life; providing enrichment, an affectionate bond with their handler, and a suitable home environment. Canine personalities are not always determined by genetics, and a suitable environment can give a dog a metaphorical push in the right direction to ensure he is the best he can be, whether that be as a scent dog, a guide dog or even a lap dog.

Original Source : Troisi, C. A., Mills, D. S., Wilkinson, A. and Zulch, H. E. 2019. Behavioral and Cognitive Factors That Affect the Success of Scent Detection Dogs. Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, 14, pp. 51-76. doi: 10.3819/ccbr.2019.140007

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Now what I haven’t done before but intend to do straightaway is to reproduce an extract from Bryony’s CV.

I currently hold a Pass with Distinction in MSc Animal Behaviour and Welfare from Queen’s University Belfast. I also have a BSc in Animal Behaviour and Welfare from Plymouth University. As well as holding two degrees relevant to the field, I currently have 2+ years of work experience. I possess the core attributes required when pursuing a career in the scientific industry; dedication, independence and initiative. I am highly passionate and believe that with my unique skillset I can have a valuable impact in the field of Science Communication.

Plus Bryony has her own blog, BrynsteinScience, and is also on Instagram, of the same name.

We wish Bryony much success in her work life and in her caring and interest for animals in general and dogs in particular!

There is an extensive article on Wikipedia in the UK on scent dog and the link to that article is here.

Finally to close with this wonderful photograph of a scent dog.

By Taz80 / SEDIRI Eddy – Personal picture, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15094727

That’s perfect!

Those eyes!

Now to the wolf’s eyes!

I have written quite a few times about the eyes of dogs but never the wolf.

This was sent to me by Julie Thomas-Smith, the wife of my best friend, Richard Maugham, and it is just beautiful.

It comes from the Wolf Conservation Center and when one goes across to that website then one reads:

A wolf’s eyes have the power to speak a great language. Did you know that wolves possess certain ocular characteristics that allow them to communicate with other members of their species using their eyes alone? One can guess that this gives a new meaning to the common phrase “puppy-dog eyes!”

Enjoy your weekend.

Can dogs count?

The answer may surprise you!

Dogs use a part of their brain for processing numbers. But more than that, dogs use a similar brain region to process numbers as we humans do.

I found that fascinating.

This was one the results of reading a very interesting article published by The Smithsonian magazine earlier on in December.

Let me share it with you.

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Dogs’ Brains Naturally Process Numbers, Just Like Ours

Scientists stuck 11 dogs in fMRI scanners to see if their brains had a knack for quantity

How many sheep? (Arbutus Photography / flickr)

Katherine J. Wu,   smithsonianmag.com
Dec. 19, 2019,

Sit. Stay. Fetch. Count?

Sort of. A team of scientists has found that dogs naturally process numbers in a similar brain region as humans, reports Virginia Morell for Science. While that doesn’t mean mutts can do math, it seems they have an innate sense of quantity, and may take notice when you put fewer treats in their bowl, according to a study published this week in Biology Letters.

Importantly, while other research has delved into similar stunts that scientists coaxed out of canines by rewarding them with treats, the new study suggests a knack for numbers is present in even untrained dogs—and could have deep evolutionary roots. This supports the idea that the ways in which animals process quantity in their brains may be “ancient and widespread among species,” Michael Beran, a psychologist at Georgia State University who wasn’t involved in the research, tells Morell.

To test pooches’ numerical prowess, a team led by Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, scanned the brains of 11 dogs of different breeds as they gazed at screens serially flashing different numbers of variably-sized dots. As the images flipped rapidly past, the researchers looked for activity in a region of the canine brain called the parietotemporal cortex, analogous to humans’ parietal cortex, which is known to help people rapidly process numbers. In humans, this region lights up on a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner when numbers start to vary—a sign that cells are working hard to puzzle through the difference.

Something similar seems to apply to canines, the team found. When dogs hopped into the scanner, most of their parietotemporal cortices showed more activity when the numbers of dots flashed onto the screen changed (for instance, three small dots followed by ten big dots) than when they stayed the same (four small dots followed by four large dots).

The behavior wasn’t universal: 3 out of the researchers’ 11 test subjects failed to discern the difference. But it’s not surprising that the rest did, Krista Macpherson, a canine cognition researcher at Western University in Canada who wasn’t involved in the study, tells Morell.

Of course, approximating quantities of dots isn’t the same as solving complex mathematical equations, as our brains are equipped to do. But both behaviors stem from an inherent sense for numbers—something that appears to span the 80-million-year evolutionary gap between dogs and humans, the findings suggest.

Understanding how that basic ability might evolve into “higher” mathematical skills is a clear next step, study author Lauren Aulet, a psychologist at Emory University, says in a statement. Until then, we humans can count on the fact that we have plenty in common with our canine companions.

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An inherent sense for numbers. Wow!

This is yet another aspect of the relationship we have with our pooches that is deeper and closer than I imagined, and I’m sure I don’t only speak for myself.

The early beginnings.

Science has maybe found a clue to the ancestor of the dog and the wolf.

For an animal that means so much to us humans, the origins of the dog are still uncertain. Indeed, as this interesting article shows, the origins of the wolf are uncertain.

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Was This 18,000-Year-Old Puppy Frozen in Siberian Permafrost the Ancestor of Wolves, Dogs or Both?

DNA tests on the well-preserved remains can’t determine whether the little canine was wild or domestic

(Sergey Fedorov/NEFU)

By Jason Daley, smithsonianmag.com
Dec. 3, 2019, 10 a.m.”>December 3, 2019

Meet Dogor, an 18,000-year-old pup unearthed in Siberian permafrost whose name means “friend” in the Yakut language. The remains of the prehistoric pup are puzzling researchers because genetic testing shows it’s not a wolf or a dog, meaning it could be an elusive ancestor of both.

Locals found the remains in the summer of 2018 in a frozen lump of ground near the Indigirka River, according to the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk. Parts of the animal are incredibly well-preserved, including its head, nose, whiskers, eyelashes and mouth, revealing that it still had its milk teeth when it died. Researchers suggest the animal was just two months old when it passed, though they do not know the cause of death.

The pup is so well-preserved that researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden were able to sequence the animal’s DNA using a piece of rib bone. The results found that Dogor was male, but even after two rounds of analysis the team could not determine whether he was a dog or a wolf.

“It’s normally relatively easy to tell the difference between the two,” David Stanton, a Centre for Palaeogenetics research fellow, tells Amy Woodyatt at CNN. “We have a lot of data from it already, and with that amount of data, you’d expect to tell if it was one or the other. The fact that we can’t might suggest that it’s from a population that was ancestral to both—to dogs and wolves.”

The find is exciting, regardless of whether Dogor turns out to be a common canine ancestor, an early dog, or an early wolf. Hannah Knowles at The Washington Post reports that Dogor comes from an interesting time in canine evolution, when wolf species were dying out and early dogs were beginning to emerge.

“As you go back in time, as you get closer to the point that dogs and wolves converge, [it becomes] harder to tell between the two,” Stanton tells Knowles.

(Sergey Fedorov/NEFU)

The history of just how and when dogs split from wolves is unresolved. There’s a general agreement among scientists that modern gray wolves and dogs split from a common ancestor 15,000 to 40,000 years ago, explains Brian Handwerk previously for Smithsonian.com. How dogs became dogs, however, is contested. Some research suggests that dogs were domesticated by humans once, while other studies have found dogs were domesticated multiple times. Exactly where in the world wild canines became man’s best friend is also disputed. The origin of the human-animal bond has been traced to Mongolia, China and Europe.

Scientists disagree about how dogs ended up paired with people, too. Some suspect humans captured wolf pups and actively domesticated them. Others suggest that a strain of “friendly,” less aggressive wolves more or less domesticated themselves by hanging out near humans, gaining access to their leftover food.

Dorgor’s DNA could help unravel these mysteries. The team plans to do a third round of DNA testing that may help definitively place Dogor in the canine family tree, report Daria Litvinova and Roman Kutuko at the Associated Press.

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This is incredibly interesting, don’t you think?

Hopefully I will hear of that third round of DNA testing and, if so, will most definitely share it with you.