Neuroscience May Confirm What Many Dog Lovers Already Know
Dog owners regularly attribute emotions such as love and loyalty to their pets, and may be just as regularly dismissed for doing so. The Dog Project, being conducted by Dr. Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University in Atlanta, has detected canine brain activity suggesting that dog owners may have the last laugh. Dr. Berns […]
Assumptions about future behavior of shelter dogs seen as food aggressive are unfounded.
Animal shelters may conduct what they describe as behavioral evaluations of the dogs they receive, in order to discover what they presume will be problem behaviors when the dogs are adopted into new homes. Among the behaviors that evaluations are designed to detect are those labeled “food aggression.” The behaviors described by that term include […]
Of Mice and Dogs: Their Personalities May Be Up To Us
Most of us easily acknowledge the likelihood that specific behaviors can be influenced by learning, in ourselves and in other species, including the one closest to us, our companion dogs. We can learn to tie our shoes, and our dogs can learn to walk next to us. We can even learn rules of etiquette and […]
Animal professionals shown to disagree with each other when assigning breed(s) to dogs of unknown parentage.
Summary A survey of more than 900 people in dog-related professions and services showed that they frequently disagreed with each other when making visual breed identifications of the same dog, and that their opinions may or may not have correlated with DNA breed analysis. More than 70% of the study participants reported that now, or […]
Study underscores that we can only learn what dogs are capable of from capable dogs.
The human community has changed dramatically in the modern era. Both dogs and people are continually adjusting to new phenomena (trains, cars, streets teeming with other people and other dogs, to name a few) and new expectations that arise from our living in closer proximity to each other. It’s challenging enough for people. How do […]
Study shows owners and non-owners recognize animal emotions
“‘Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, ‘Doesn’t this guy have a dog?”’ – Frans De Waal, quoted in The New York Times June 26, 2001 Charles Darwin argued that emotions evolved in both humans and animals; and scientists who have studied […]
Dogs’ personalities more reflective of their relationships with people than of their breed
Janis Bradley examines a recent study published in Applied Animal Behavior Science.
Winnipeg, Manitoba far behind Calgary in community safety
A paper published last week in the Journal Injury Prevention attempted to make the case that “pit bull” bans in Manitoba may have been effective in reducing dog bite injury hospitalizations (DBIH, in the language of the paper). [1] In attempting to do so, however, the authors revealed that the bans, applicable to the overwhelming […]
‘What kind of dog is that?’: Dog experts needed to participate in new University of Florida survey regarding visual breed identification
Assisted in part by a grant from the National Canine Research Council, the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida’s School of Veterinary Medicine is conducting a national survey of dog experts (breeders, trainers, groomers, veterinarians, shelter staff, rescuers, and others). Based upon responses to an online survey, Program Director Dr. Julie Levy […]
The quality of a dog’s relationship to humans is a crucial determinant of social behavior
Note: This blog was originally written in 2012, the below document was updated in 2016 to reflect the most recent research. For almost 2 decades, The Family Dog Project has been at the forefront of research demonstrating that dogs have a special ability that few other animals possess: to notice and respond to social […]