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It started when two canine scientists decide to become pen pals in an era of digital media...

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15 December 2014

Top 4 of 2014: Your Favourite Canine Science Posts


As December rolls into its second half, and the days warm up - or cool down - depending on where you are situated on the globe, we wanted to say thank you for joining us in 2014 - we are continually blown away with the popular and supportive community we have around us at Do You Believe in Dog? here on the blog, on Facebook and also on Twitter

Taking our lead from Companion Animal Psychology, we decided to jump into some statistics (because hey, we are scientists!) to see what you made our most popular posts of 2014.

You voted with your clicks all year long and so, without further ado, here are the Top 4 Do You Believe in Dog posts of 2014:

# 4

What the pug is going on?

After seeing popular opinion of pugs framed as 'cute', Mia put together this review of the health issues facing brachycephalic breeds such as pugs, why it's a welfare concern and what can be done to raise awareness and improve the quality of life in future generations of these dogs. 


Read: What the pug is going on?

This piece was cross-posted to The Dodo
# 3

Dogs Are Like Porn: All Over the Internet and Waiting For You

Outlining all the ways you can actively participate in canine research, even without leaving the comfort of your couch, Julie compile this fantastic list of scientific studies seeking participants. You can be a citizen scientist!   

Read: Dogs Are Like Porn: All Over the Internet and Waiting For You



# 2

Dog Loses Ear at Dog Park and There Was Nothing We Could Do About It

"Dogs are confusing. People are confusing. Put them together in a public space, and it’s like all the circuses came to town on the same day." Julie outlines the issues of dogs and people combining in public spaces and offers many easily accessed resources and opportunities to educate ourselves so we can be proactive in preventing bad experiences for all.

Read: Dog Loses Ear at Dog Park and There Was Nothing We Could Do About It




# 1

Why do dogs lick people?

It started with a question on twitter, and turned out to be our most popular post of 2014.
With the photo by Chris Sembrot that can not be unseen, this post from Mia looked at what we have learned about why dog lick us - there's no one quick answer and some people were quite surprised at the depth of background, in evolutionary, social and environmental terms, behind what we consider an everyday behaviour. A big part of why we love canine science!

Read: Why do dogs lick people?

This piece was cross-posted to The Dodo

We're looking forward to sharing more great canine science with you in 2015. Have a safe and fun holiday season.

Further reading:
All the above!

Milkman K. & Berger J. (2014). The science of sharing and the sharing of science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1317511111

Scanlon E. (2013). Scholarship in the digital age: Open educational resources, publication and public engagement, British Journal of Educational Technology, 45 (1) 12-23. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12010

Stilgoe J. & J. Wilsdon (2014). Why should we promote public engagement with science?, Public Understanding of Science, 23 (1) 4-15. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963662513518154

Wong-Parodi G. & Strauss B.H. (2014). Team science for science communication., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PMID: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25225381

© Do You Believe in Dog? 2014
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8 December 2014

Don't miss out! Dogs + Science from November


Catch up! Participate! Plan your conferences for 2015! Check out all the latest in canine science from November here, thanks to the magic of Storify (if you don't see a beautiful array of handy snippets below, please click this link to view)

Further reading:

Cobb M., Paul McGreevy, Alan Lill & Pauleen Bennett (2014). The advent of canine performance science: Offering a sustainable future for working dogs, Behavioural Processes, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.10.012

Hecht J. (2014). Citizen science: A new direction in canine behavior research, Behavioural Processes, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.10.014

Bradshaw J.W.S. & Rachel A. Casey (2009). Dominance in domestic dogs—useful construct or bad habit?, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 4 (3) 135-144. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2008.08.004

Gosling S.D. & Oliver P. John (2003). A Dog's Got Personality: A Cross-Species Comparative Approach to Personality Judgments in Dogs and Humans., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85 (6) 1161-1169. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1161
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21 November 2014

Dogtober = Canine science in October


What a BOOMING month for dogs and science October was! We've captured the links to all the latest blogs, research and news that caught out attention throughout Dog-tober.

Thanks to Storify (click here if the you can't see the collection of links below) you can make sure you didn't miss out too.


Further reading:

Bradshaw J.W.S. & Nicola J. Rooney (2014). Why do adult dogs ‘play’?,
Behavioural Processes, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.09.023

Bozkurt A., Barbara Sherman, Rita Brugarolas, Sean Mealin, John Majikes, Pu Yang & Robert Loftin (2014). Towards Cyber-Enhanced Working Dogs for Search and Rescue, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 1-1. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/mis.2014.77
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16 November 2014

Canine science catch up: 16-30 September 2014


Gosh, it's been a busy ride since posting the excellent guest post by research, Cat Reeve, about her interesting detector dog research

So now it's time to play catch up, starting with the canine science related things that we noticed in the second half of September, captured with the help of Storify - did you miss any of these?

Further reading (some of the abstracts from Canine Science Forum 2014 now available):

Westgarth C. & Hayley E. Christian (2014). How can we motivate owners to walk their dogs more?, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 9 (6) e6-e7. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2014.09.023

Fehringer A. (2014). Stress in shelter dogs and the use of foster care to improve animal welfare, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 9 (6) e11. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2014.09.038

Horowitz A. & Hecht J. (2014). Categories and consequences of dog-human play: A citizen science approach, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 9 (6) e15. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2014.09.052

Browne C.M., T. Mary Foster & James S. McEwan (2014). Dog training: Reinforcement timing and owner body language, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 9 (6) e17. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2014.09.059
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26 September 2014

Cat and Dogs: seeking solutions with sniffing canines and science


Hi Mia and Julie, 


First of all, I LOVE your blog! 

After meeting at SPARCS this past summer (summer for us in North America.. I take it summer is just beginning in Australia!), I’ve followed it closely. 

You do amazing things for the promotion of  canine science. Serious love.

A bit of background for the readers: I’m currently doing my PhD at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, under the supervision of Dr. Simon Gadbois

Dr. Gadbois has an amazing amount of knowledge and experience in the science of sniffing (just check out Gadbois & Reeve, 2014 link below!). 

He’s trained sniffer dogs for the conservation of ribbon snakes and wood turtles, to track coyotes, and to detect invasive pests in lumber. He and I have taken on a different type of project and are studying the intricacies of biomedical detection dogs, specifically, the very interesting phenomenon of Diabetic Alert Dogs

Cat Reeve at #SPARCS2014 where she won the 'Best Emerging Researcher' prize

I say interesting because there’s anecdotal evidence suggesting that some dogs alert their owners to hypoglycemic events (low blood sugar). In 2008, Deborah Wells published a series of case studies where dogs were reported as signalling (barking, licking, pawing etc. the individual) while their owners were awake, while they were sleeping, and even when their owners were in a different room with the door closed! And this is with no previous training! 

Isn’t this fantastic! Severe hypoglycemic events can be extremely dangerous for individuals with diabetes. If not treated, they can lead to seizures, comas, and even death. The fact that dogs may be able to alert an individual before a serious hypoglycemic event means less worry about hypoglycaemia unawareness, and blood sugar dropping over night when individuals are unconscious.


Given that dogs are signalling through closed doors, it is assumed that the dogs smell something that alerts them to a change in the physiology of their owner (as opposed to behavioural cues, as is believed to be the case with seizure alert dogs). There are many companies that have taken advantage of this supposed ability, and have trained Diabetic Alert Dogs (DADs) to sell to individuals with diabetes. 

In my own searches, I have found no company that publicly provides information as to how they train their dogs. However, according to recent studies (see Gonder-Frederick et al., 2013 and Rooney et al., 2011 below) these trained DADs dogs contribute greatly to the families of individuals’ with diabetes; they signal consistently and, consequently, significantly reduce the number of hypoglycemic events an individual experiences. 

Now, if it is in fact an olfactory cue that dogs use to identify a drop in blood sugar in their owners, one would expect that if you presented one of these trained DADs with the “scent” of hypoglycemia without the individual present (just like having the owner with diabetes on the other side of a door), the dog would still signal. 

Dehlinger and colleagues recently tested three DADs in a lab setting, presenting the dogs with human biological samples that were obtained identically to the way the samples used to train the dogs were obtained. In this study, none of the three dogs could pick out a hypoglycemic sample from a normoglycemic sample! DARN!

So what is it that these dogs smell? How is it that some DADs are accurate at signalling hypoglycaemia but evidently cannot signal in the lab? 

Enter ME! This is what I’m trying to figure out!

One possibility is that, at least in the study outlined above, the use of sweat samples was misguided. Maybe the volatiles are more strongly present in an individual’s breath. I am currently in the process of testing whether there is one channel more likely than others to expel the volatiles needed to detect a change in blood sugar, i.e. breath, sweat, or saliva. 

So far we’ve found that, after being trained to detect extremely low saliency scents, our dogs can detect and discriminate between human breath samples with incredible ease and accuracy (see the video of Koda discriminating between breath samples). 


Little Koda discriminating between breath samples. The jar that has the check mark on it is the target sample. The jar with the x+ is a different breath sample. When Koda first enters the room, he smells a jar that is the “sample” (it matches the target sample)... This is the smell we want him to find amongst the three jars that are closer to the camera. He chooses the right one!

Preliminary tests with patient samples suggest that our dogs can also tell the difference between breath samples taken from the same individual when their blood sugar was low, when it was normal, and when it was high (unpublished). 

Also, it’s possible that in the Dehlinger et al. (2013) study, the sample collection procedure was simply not sufficient enough to contain the volatiles produced during a hypoglycemic event. With the help of a fantastic chemist at Dalhousie (Dr. Peter Wentzell), we have perfected a procedure that coats cotton balls in silicone oil. This is believed to help contain the volatiles through the *magic of chemistry.  

*may actually be science, not magic - check with the chemists

Another potential is that these DADs are simply responding to a general stress response in the body. It’s possible that DADs (and untrained dogs who signal to their owners) are picking up on the physiological change associated with stress (changes in cortisol, adrenaline etc.). Kind of how people say animals can smell when you’re scared. 

If this is truly what’s happening, you would expect to see DADs giving a lot of false alarms. 

And in fact, personal communication with friends of friends who own DADs tell me that their DADs alert to not only hypoglycemic events, but to asthma attacks, anxiety attacks, etc. If you read carefully, few studies ask owners of DADs if their dog gives a lot of false alarm signals (dog signals to their owner and after the owner checks their blood sugar, they discover that they are not low). 

Isn’t this fascinating? 

The dogs I work with are incredible (shout out to the amazing owners that let me work with their dogs every week), and have incredible work ethic and sniffers. 


Our dogs are extremely motivated to work (because we make it super fun!). This is Nutella on her “break”. She doesn’t want a break. She wants to keep working! She’s whining and pawing at the door of the work room.


With the assistance of these amazing dogs, hopefully Dr. Gadbois and myself will be able to shed light on how exactly DADs do their job in the near future - I'll let you know how we go!


Cat Reeve
PhD Candidate
Dalhousie University
CANADA

Follow Cat on Twitter

Follow the Dalhousie Canid Behaviour Research Team on Facebook

Check out #DogsOfDal on Instagram

Further reading:

Brown S.W. & Strong V. (2001). The use of seizure-alert dogs, Seizure, 10 (1) 39-41. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/seiz.2000.0481 

Dehlinger, K., Tarnowski, K., House, J.L., Los, E., Hanavan, K., Bustamante, B., Ahmann, A.J., & Ward, W.K. (2013). Can trained dogs detect a hypoglycemic scent in patients with Type 1 Diabetes? Diabetes Care (Observations), 36, 98-99. 

Fier, B.M. (2004). Morbidity of hypoglycaemia in type 1 diabetes. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 65, 47-52. 

Gadbois, S., & Reeve, C. (2014). Canine Olfaction: Scent, Sign and Situation. In A.  Horowitz (ed.). Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior. New York: Springer. 

Gonder-Frederick L., D. Warren, K. Vajda & J. Shepard (2013). Diabetic Alert Dogs: A Preliminary Survey of Current Users, Diabetes Care, 36 (4) e47-e47. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/dc12-1998  

Rooney N.J., Morant, S. & Guest, C. (2013). Investigation into the Value of Trained Glycaemia Alert Dogs to Clients with Type I Diabetes, PLoS ONE, 8 (8) e69921. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069921

Matyka K.A. (2002). Sweet dreams? - nocturnal hypoglycemia in children with type 1 diabetes, Pediatric Diabetes, 3 (2) 74-81. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1034/j.1399-5448.2002.30203.x   

Wells D.L., Lawson S.W. & Siriwardena A.N. Canine responses to hypoglycemia in patients with type 1 diabetes., Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.), PMID: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19040375

© Cat Reeve | Do You Believe in Dog? 2014

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17 September 2014

Dog Science in September: Springing and Falling


Depending on your location, your days are either brightening and warming up, or shortening and cooling off. Wherever you are, we hope you enjoy this collection of canine science that we took note of over the last two weeks, Storified in the one spot for easy reference:

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31 August 2014

August lives up to its definition: respected and impressive


The things we noticed in and around canine science over the past two weeks, Storified in one neat location for your convenience:



Further reading:

Feuerbacher E.N. (2014). Shut up and pet me! Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) prefer petting to vocal praise in concurrent and single-alternative choice procedures, Behavioural Processes, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.08.019

Gygax L. (2014). The A to Z of statistics for testing cognitive judgement bias, Animal Behaviour, 95 59-69. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.06.013

Arnott E.R., Claire M. Wade & Paul D. McGreevy (2014). Environmental Factors Associated with Success Rates of Australian Stock Herding Dogs, PLoS ONE, 9 (8) e104457. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104457



© Do You Believe in Dog? 2014
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20 August 2014

Do You Believe in Dog? A New Ball Game


Hello Do You Believe in Dog(ers)!

(source)
After two years of mostly pen-pal style blogging, we're excited to share our new direction!

When we first decided to create Do You Believe in Dog?, we committed to blogging back and forth about canine science for two years. We were able to celebrate achieving that goal at the recent 4th Canine Science Forum in Lincoln, UK and also reflect on the future of Do You Believe in Dog?

The DYBID blog, Facebook and Twitter feeds have become vibrant places to access canine science studies and thoughtful commentary. We are pleased and proud of the space we have created and the community who enjoy it. We're as committed as ever to helping people access the canine science conversation, and moving forward, we've decided to open up DYBID as a space where other canine science practitioners can share their findings and thoughts. 

What you can expect

Guest contributors 
Following the format you've enjoyed in earlier guest posts (like Dog training: do you get the timing right?, Take a walk on the wild side: dingo science  and Black dog syndrome, a bad rap?) researchers and students of canine science are welcome to submit short posts to DYBID based on peer-reviewed research. We're hoping posts will focus on research either presented at academic conferences or published in scientific journals. If you have an idea for a post, check out the Contributors page for more details, and be in touch! 

Canine science highlights 
We'll continue our usual presence on Facebook and Twitter, and here on the DYBID blog we'll post fortnightly updates highlighting the canine science that we've been following in the previous two weeks (blog posts, scientific studies, websites, etc.). 

T
his slideshow is our first attempt at sharing Canine science highlights. We have used Storify so you can quickly flip through and click on anything you want more info about.


Where in the world are Mia and Julie?

To simplify our Twitter presence:


Maybe you don't think we've simplified our Twitter presence?!
For us, this is 'simplified' ;)


We'll both be posting things on the DYBID Facebook feed and welcome your continued contributions and conversations there.


We hope you'll enjoy this new direction! We look forward to your feedback as we share canine science highlights and add more voices to the DYBID space.

Thanks again for your support over the past two years -- Now, let's play ball!
(Go Yankees! That was Julie)


Mia & Julie

Further reading:

Dijk E.M.V. (2011). Portraying real science in science communication, Science Education, 95 (6) 1086-1100. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sce.20458


Nosek B.A. (2012). Scientific Communication Is Changing and Scientists Should Lead the Way, Psychological Inquiry, 23 (3) 308-314. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047840x.2012.717907

Fischhoff B. & Scheufele D. (2013). The science of science communication, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (Supplement 3) 14033-14039. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1213273110

(source)

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10 August 2014

Canine Science Forum 2014 - we come full circle!


Aw - it's Us @ CSF2014! Thanks Tamás Faragó :)
Dear Julie,


while you've been off enjoying the fjords of Norway and I've been recovering from six legs of long haul flying with a three year old as hand luggage, I thought I'd put up a quick post to recap the wonderful week in Lincoln, UK that was the (Feline and) Canine Science Forum 2014.

Such a fun, stimulating, inspiring week comprising the Feline Science day (Monday), public lecture by James Serpell (rhymes with purple) on Monday evening, Canine Science Forum (Tue-Wed-Thu), including the wonderful gala dinner at Lincoln Castle on Wednesday night and finally, the Companion Animals: Human Health & Disease day (Friday).

If anyone out there happened to miss it, we live tweeted nearly all of the presentations so you can easily catch up on all the great thoughts via the magic of Storify here.


Feline Science Day:

Public lecture by James Serpell:


Canine Science Forum Day 1:


Canine Science Forum Day 2:

Which, of course, included us being real life #scientists (we don't make this stuff up!):


You talked about Project: Play with Your Dog and the role that citizen science can play in canine science.

Nancy Dreschel (now on Twitter at @ndreschel) presented the key findings from our collaborative meta-analysis looking at canine salivary cortisol.



And I explored if using group averages is really the best way to determine and analyse the stress and welfare experience of working dogs (and my points were relevant to all animals!).



Then we drank wine in at a castle. Which was a mighty fine way to end that day.


Canine Science Forum Day 3:


Companion  Animals: Human Health & Disease 2014


We heard the exciting news that the next Canine Science Forum is to be held in Padova, Italy in 2016.

We continued on in England after CSF, down to visit the Animal Welfare and Behaviour Group at Bristol University - it was lovely to share some of our experiences and ideas with this team and we look forward to keeping up with their great work in the future.



And while we took a nap to recover, Do You Believe in Dog? went and turned two years old on us! So here we are - at the end of the original two years that we agreed to do this for, back in that first email exchange not even week after we met

120 blog posts with over 170,000 views, 8,900 tweets and over 8,400 followers on Facebook

Julie - I don't know how I can ever thank you enough for agreeing to join me on this adventure. I am so proud of how Do You Believe in Dog? has helped bring canine science to everyone. I am equally humbled and thrilled by the community that has grown around our pen pal exchanges - along with the popular guest posts by Clare, Brad, HeatherChristy, Claudia and Lindsay - and feel excited for the future of canine science and its ongoing transfer to the general public. 





Above all Julie, I am so grateful for your beautiful friendship which was perhaps the most fun surprise of this two year journey we have shared. Behind the posts of DYBID? are many email exchanges, Skype calls and messages. Through this media we have developed an incredibly open and honest friendship that I will always cherish. I respect you, your scientific and science communication work enormously. I have learned much from you and look forward to what comes next - for both of us.

"What's that?" you ask?  You'll see!

Mia

Further reading:

Do You Believe in Dog? - all the posts from the last two years!

Hecht, J. and Cooper, C. B. (2014) Tribute to Tinbergen: Public Engagement in Ethology, Ethology, 120 (3) 207-214. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eth.12199

Hecht, J. (2014) Canine Science: a trend you can easily get behind. Dog Spies, Scientific American Blog Network.

Cobb, M. and Hecht, J. (2014) Do You Believe in Dog? An experiment in scientific communication. Canine Science 1 (1) 10-12 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/09.0011/cs.082014

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