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Culture: Science & History
Unraveling the genetic tapestry provides clues to breeds and their mixes
A mongrel dog is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re going to get. And therein lies the appeal. What’s more fun than serendipitous unpredictability all bundled up in puppy fur? But when that puppy grows up, we inevitably make assumptions about her ancestry based on how she looks and behaves. Our logic goes like this: “If my pooch is long and low to the ground, and she never barks, she must be a Corgi/Basenji mix.”
But it’s much more complicated. The genes—and there may be hundreds—that work together to make a Corgi look like a short-legged Shepherd may be completely different than those responsible for a Basset Hound’s low-slung carriage. With some exceptions, scientists cannot yet connect genetic dots to specific traits. But they have discovered something tangible that measures some of the differences between breeds: genetic patterns of organization displayed on a scatter graph that answer the question, “What’s the same and what’s different?”
A scatter graph provides a symbolic visualization of DNA, wherein each individual dog contributes one point. The resulting pattern indicates the type and strength of the relationship between individuals. The more the points cluster around each other, the more alike they are.
Breakthrough
Until only a few years ago, scientists couldn’t identify the differences in genetic material that might explain profound variations in the Canidae clan. From wolf to West Highland White Terrier—they all looked the same under the microscope. Then, in 2004, Elaine Ostrander and her colleagues at the Washington-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center published data indicating that as much as 30 percent of the dog’s genetic material accounts for breed variation (Science, May 2004).
In addition to simplifying methods used to find markers for breed-related disease, the researchers identified patterns of “breedness” and tracked the history of breed DNA. At the same time, by following mitochondrial DNA, genetic material passed down from mother to offspring without changing, they traced the breed’s journey.
Depending on how much time is attributed to a generation and how many generations are involved, scientists can estimate how much time has passed. Based on this tracking, it has been suggested that it took 5,000 years to develop and refine a handful of the world’s 350-plus breeds, and about 400 years to create the rest.
Research indicates that four distinct breed groups are ancient: (1) Middle Eastern Saluki and Afghan, (2) Tibetan Terrier and Lhasa Apso, (3) Chinese Chow Chow, Pekingese, Shar-Pei and Shih Tzu; Japanese Akita and Shiba Inu, (4) Arctic Alaskan Malamute, Siberian Husky and Samoyed. Although the 13 breeds look different, they are so closely related that they are represented by a single genetic cluster. It’s likely they all originated from the same stem-parent—proto-breed, if you will—who roamed the Asian continent.
As humans migrated from one place to another, this ubiquitous proto-breed trotted along, bringing with her the ingredients needed to cook up all the breeds we’re familiar with today. Her offspring performed work unique to each geographical region, such as hunting, hauling or guarding. Isolated and mating only with each other, “accidental” breed types exhibiting consistent shape, color and behavior emerged.
No matter what historians might claim—scent hound to sight hound, bird dog to bad dog—evidence produced through genetic research indicates that all remaining breeds have been concocted in the last 400 years. Although closely related to one another, they can be identified as distinct based on the way their DNA separates.
How They Do It
Sue DeNise, vice president of genomic research at MMI Genomics Inc., which developed the Canine Heritage Breed Test specifically for mixed-breed analysis, talked to us about how her company analyzes canine DNA. “We’ve been doing testing for AKC parentage verification for a long time,” she notes. “We initially started working in the cattle business, looking for genetic markers in order to trace what was important to cattle breeders. Out of that whole-genome association study, we had purebred and crossbred cattle, so we asked, ‘What can the markers tell us about underlying traits in breeds of cattle?’” Their discovery paved the way for the companion animal program, which was modeled on what they learned with cattle.
“We look at ’breedness‘ among dogs. Our canine database is built with 10,000 samples of 108 breeds. We ran 400 markers to identify the best markers for a ’breedness‘ test against 38 breeds. We created a panel of 96 pieces of DNA that split dogs into their identified pure breed. In our preliminary test, we found that individual purebred dogs cluster with other purebreds.” Initially, MMI chose 38 AKC registered breeds from their database, selected for their popularity based on number of registrations. Recently, as DeNise notes, they increased the number to 108 breeds. This jump in breed recognition required testing thousands of markers to identify the just over 300 markers that characterize these 108 breeds.
Constructing Breeds
Like all species, domestic dogs are on an evolutionary journey, starting at wolf and going somewhere yet to be determined. We tinker with evolution, but might be surprised to find out we don’t control it. Our concept of a breed—that individuals within the breed look alike—is nothing more than a snapshot of the DNA time line, taken while we’re doing the tinkering.
Breeds are created a number of ways. In simple terms, when breeders interfere with natural reproduction and rigorously select for traits favored by humans, specialized breeds like Retrievers, Spaniels, Hounds and Terriers are the result. Saving spontaneous mutations in a litter of dogs, repeating the breeding to get more of the same mutation, and breeding those dogs back to one another has resulted in the English Bulldog, Chinese Crested and Inca Hairless. More recent breeds, such as the Airedale, Australian Cattle Dog and Doberman, are the result of crossing older breeds to make new ones.
When kennel clubs closed gene pools in the late 19th century to suspend change in registered dogs, breeds drifted toward a more uniform stereotype. Until the early 1800s, an assortment of dogs with similar talents who could produce somewhat similar offspring were awarded the right be called a breed. Breeds evolved, flourished and disappeared when jobs were eliminated. Tumblers, who mesmerized prey by “winding their bodies about circularly, and then fiercely and violently venturing on the beast,” disappeared when guns came into widespread use. Turnspit dogs, who made a living running on a wheel to turn meat so it would cook evenly, received their pink slips when technology improved cooking methods.
By and large, Victorian society was not so pragmatic; sentimentality and commercial opportunity were catalysts for saving unemployed breeds from their inevitable demise. As a result, many Terrier breeds went from killing varmints in the barnyard to killing time in the Victorian parlor in less than a decade.
Whereas previously, a breed was a regional product maintained and preserved by a small community of knowledgeable people, commercial interest in the well-bred pet dog initiated a shift in breeding practices during the Victorian era. The old-money kennels operated as a pastime by the wealthy gave way to a large number of small, commercially operated kennels run by entrepreneurs of modest means and experience.
Germane to this tale is that, according to the unwritten rules governing canine physiology, anatomy and behavior go hand in hand. One cannot be changed without affecting the other. Victorian enthusiasts who were busily adding aesthetic traits to utilitarian breeds were creating not only subtle variations in type, but in many cases, modifications in behavior as well. As utilitarian breeds went from working hard to hardly working, many exhibited new physical and behavioral characteristics that were compatible with their augmented duties as companion animals. Breeders claimed the “sub-breeds” as their own, made up new names and registered each one.
However, no matter how they’re sliced and diced, reducing and suppressing genes so they aren’t expressed doesn’t mean they’ve been eliminated. They’re still lurking and, depending on the method used to analyze the DNA, the lurkers often show up in the results.
Deconstructing Breeds
The problematic aspect of analyzing mongrel DNA is that breeds were not all created at the same time. As DeNise explains, “As new breeds are developed, they may not appear as uniform as older breeds. When older breeds are crossed to create a new breed, there is some period of time before the new breed develops a unique DNA pattern of its own. In these cases, the more ancient breed sometimes appears in the new breed. The number of generations required to have a uniquely identified breed created from crossing of older breeds depends on the number of breeding animals in the new line, the severity with which the breed owners apply the standard, and the amount of introgressing [inbreeding, or breeding immediate relatives; line breeding, breeding close relatives; and backcrossing, breeding sibling to parent] allowed by the registration agency.”
Most people assume all mixed-breed dogs had a purebred ancestor at some time in their recent heritage. But in fact, this is not necessarily the case. When you run a mongrel’s DNA through a computer program, the algorithms attempt to group breeds together on a scatter chart. If the heritage of the dog is such that it is not in MMI’s database of 108 breeds, the program tries to find varieties that are most alike. Because at least one or two of the handful of ancient breeds are in every modern dog, sometimes the program will identify an ancient breed in the mix. “In the report we send to the client, we use the terms ‘primary,’ meaning the majority of the DNA matches a breed; ‘secondary,’ meaning less than the majority of the DNA but a strong influence nonetheless; and ‘in the mix,’ meaning the least amount of influence,” DeNise notes. That’s how you might get an obscure breed in the report. For instance, a 35-pound mongrel with a tablespoon of Husky and a teaspoon of Border Collie may also have a dash of Borzoi, because before gene pools were closed a century ago, Huskies were crossed with coursing hounds to add speed.
Don’t Judge a Pup by Her Cover
As MMI Genomics states on their certificates, “Your dog’s visual appearance may vary from the listed breed(s) due to the inherent randomness of phenotypic expression in every individual.” What this means is that you may look nothing like your parents, but you have Grandma’s great legs and Great Uncle Harry’s turned-up nose. All in all, though, no matter how genes are mixed and matched, your family members resemble one another. However, if Grandma was an Afghan Hound and Great Uncle Harry was a Pug, “random phenotypic expression” can be pretty extreme.
Researchers are intrigued by data that suggest expressed traits are somehow turned “on” and “off” by other genetic components, thus causing the wide variations in canine form and behavior. For instance, it’s possible that many breeds have the genetic potential for a black tongue, but only a few breeds have the molecular mechanism to switch that color on. So that black-tongued mutt may not have any Chow in the mix after all.
On the other hand, the results may show that a quintessential Heinz 57 has the genetic makeup of a single breed and it could be one she looks nothing like.
DeNise explains it this way: “In a population of any breed, there are dogs that are carriers but don’t exhibit phenotype [observable characteristics]. If you reduce the size of breeding population—creating what we call a bottleneck—you start increasing the frequency of deleterious traits, like dwarfism or white coat. If we looked at the DNA of, for instance, a group of white mini-German Shepherds, they would probably cluster with German Shepherds. After they’ve intermated for five to six generations, we may not come up with that. They would cluster with each other. If breeders were changing allele frequencies quickly, you could do it very fast.
“There are always contradictions that make you say, ‘Huh, that’s really weird.’ One odd thing that happens is due to some sort of random assortment of genes in mixed-breed dogs. The algorithm may identify a breed that is not consistent with the physical appearance of the dog. We sometimes get an indication of this when the certificate is printed with the picture of the dog provided by the owner, and the certificate is reviewed by our customer service department prior to mailing it to the pet owner.”
A 90-pound, wiry-haired mongrel who swims, chases balls and makes goo-goo eyes like a Golden Retriever and whose only pedigreed relative is a very distant Chihuahua confounds the process, but says a whole lot about the complexity of canine genetics and why some scientists devote their careers to studying canine evolution. Extreme variation in anatomy and behavior is unique to the domestic dog. If humans were an equally anomalous species, we’d weigh between 20 and 650 pounds and range in height from three to 10 feet. In dogs, adaptations change with such speed that scientists suspect there may be a clue in the canine genome that could reveal how evolution works.
Sorting It Out
Before they launched the project, MMI tested DNA from a street dog rescued from a Thai village. You’d think there would be no clusters of any kind, but the computer identified Chow and Akita in the mix. This isn’t surprising, because the free-living common village cur who populates most of the developing world may be the closest living relative to the original proto-breed. Findings suggest that Thai pooch stores a sizable chunk of the original genetic blueprint of every single living dog in her DNA. The question is, how much?
MMI can’t as yet define the percentage of “breedness” in mixed-breed dogs. One reason is that some breeds cluster loose and others tight. Why this happens isn’t clearly understood. German Shepherds, Standard Poodles and Collies cluster tight. Miniature Poodles cluster tight, but Toy Poodles cluster loose. Within their breeds, Labrador Retrievers and Beagles often cluster as two different groups. According to DeNise, “Labs from the United Kennel Club that are bred specifically for hunting and AKC Labs do not necessarily cluster as one breed. And AKC Beagles and Beagles bred specifically for research don’t cluster together either.”
She adds, “In my opinion, it’s possible that a population that increases rapidly doesn’t cluster as well as those populations that have remained static. This is because, as you increase a population to accommodate breed popularity, people breed everything, including animals that may not exhibit all the physical characteristics that are desirable.”
And even when dogs look alike, they can display behavioral differences. As DeNise notes, “We understand so little about how behaviors are coded. Many behaviors are learned, but there are probably multiple genes that are responsible for herding, birding, heeling—these kind of hard-wired behaviors.”
Scientists are eager to tease out genetic connections to breed-associated motor patterns. When wolves hunt, they display these behaviors sequentially: orient > eye > stalk > chase > grab-bite > kill-bite > eat. Artificial selection, however, extracts and segregates these patterns in incomplete sequences. In certain breeds, individuals perform the abbreviated motor pattern repeatedly. A Pointer who stops dead in her tracks and stands stock still with her front leg held rigid in mid-stride to indicate the presence and position of game is the lofty goal of bird-dog breeders. To wolves, it’s just a good meal interrupted.
Combinations of canine anatomy and behavior push and pull one another along in a rhythm of interconnected patterns in relationships that may not be as random as they appear. Like principal components of an automobile in which the size of the engine and the weight of the body directly affect efficiency, it appears that dogs, too, have integral parts wherein one component is proportionate to the other.
Researchers don’t fully understand the relationship, but they are making headway. As reported in Genetics (June 2008), a team of scientists identified a few single genes that regulate systems controlling skull shape, weight, fur length, age span and behavior. Because mutts are combinations of DNA from different breeds, they may hold the answer to how the genes influence multiple traits.
Scientists suspect that many evolutionary secrets are hidden in the dog genome. For dog lovers, deconstructing Molly or Max’s mixed-breed heritage is an interesting intellectual mystery to be discussed at cocktail parties or the dog park. For scientists, their genetic material is nothing less than an instruction manual for species building. Whereas populations evolve over the course of millennia through the process of natural selection, dogs can change so rapidly and abruptly that they represent evolution at hyperspeed. How it happens remains a puzzle. Now scientists are looking to mutts to find the missing piece.
Dog's Life: Lifestyle
Happy accident launched the toy
Louis Pasteur’s remark “Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors only the prepared mind” is true in many fields. Those who have great knowledge recognize opportunity and are able to take a random event and recognize the value of something unexpected.
In the world of dogs, a great example of chance favoring the prepared mind is seen in the original inspiration for the Kong toy. Inventor Joe Markham, founder of The Kong Company, received his inspiration from a surprising source.
He was working on his vehicle and tossed an axle stop with an attached bracket on the ground. His dog got hold of it and loved it. He was playing with it joyously, much to Markham’s amusement. He said to his friend, “What do you think of my new dog toy?”
His friend replied, “Actually, it’s not too pretty. It looks like an earplug from King Kong.” And the Kong toy was born.
I heard this story from Mark Hines, behavior and training specialist for The Kong Company, who gave a talk at a conference on applied animal behavior that we both attended this past weekend. The conference had many great talks and I learned so much, but this one brief story stands out more than any other piece of information. I’ve often wondered how Kong came up with their well-known and trademarked shape.
Dog's Life: Lifestyle
Woven items of the Coast Salish
Wearing dog hair has become acceptable to the point that many people believe no outfit is complete without it. The contribution of canine fur to textiles is hardly new, though.
Before European contact, the Coast Salish people of the Pacific Northwest incorporated dog hair into their textiles, including robes, sashes and blankets. Oral histories have long claimed this, and a recent scientific study has confirmed it. Pieces as old as 200 years that are stored at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian were analyzed using protein mass spectronomy.
All items prior to 1862 contained dog hair, but pieces from the late 1800s and early 1900s did not. No items were made entirely of dog hair, leading scientists to believe that dog hair was a supplemental material. Mountain goats were the primary source of wool, though commercial sheep wool was in some items as well. Ceremonial items were made of goat hair alone, while everyday items also included dog hair.
Museums have labeled blankets made by Coast Salish people as “Dog Hair Blankets” but this study suggests that those descriptions need to be updated.
Dog hair is used to make fibers for knitted and crocheted objects in our culture, too, and the yarn spun from dog hair can be of a very nice quality. Of course, most of us still just wear the fur of our canine pals in an ad hoc, purely decorative way, which always looks good. If you love dogs and wear dog hair, you’ll always be fashionable—good taste never goes out of style.
News: Guest Posts
With backstories to match
First there was Owney the original—a Terrier-mix stray who became the loveable canine mascot of the Railway Mail Service. Then, there was Owney the stamp. Next, Owney the iPhone app and Owney the star of the interactive e-book Tails from the Rails (to be released later this fall). And, finally, Owney look-alikes.
I could suggest this is overkill, except that not only do I find all the Owney spin-offs nearly as adorable as their inspiration, I’m smitten by the finalists of the Owney look-alike contest, especially the winner, a 5ish former stray from California named Bentley.
More than 70 dogs across the country lounged on mailbags, dressed up in letter-carrier uniforms and posed by mailboxes for the contest sponsored by the National Postal Museum and the Washington Humane Society. Second and third prize went to Jordy from Virginia and Murphy from Ohio. Not only do all three dogs look the part, as rescue pups they lived the part too. Read their stories at the National Postal Museum’s website.
Culture: Reviews
Scientists have only recently caught on that canines are not just a fertile subject for their particular specialties — psychology, anthropology, zoology, ethology and more — but also a topic that the publishing world seems eager to promote.
This trend has been a long time developing. Nobel Prize–winner and ethology’s co-founder, Konrad Lorenz, wrote Man Meets Dog (1950), breaking ground that lay dormant until anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s bestseller, The Hidden Life of Dogs (1993), reintroduced the genre of dog studies to the non-scientist reader. A few years later, journalist Mark Derr followed up with Dog’s Best Friend (1997), a book that grew out of his Atlantic Monthly investigative piece about the AKC and the dog-show world. Another dry spell was finally broken by psychology professor Alexandra Horowitz’s Inside of a Dog (2009), which garnered an extraordinary amount of well-earned praise. At long last, it seems that the (overly) popular dog-memoir craze has given way to illuminating and well-researched books that explore the science behind our favorite species, written for the general public.
For example, in the May issue of Bark, we reviewed Dog Sense, a fascinating book by British anthrozoologist John Bradshaw, in which the author provides a compendium of current research (both his own and others’) into dogs’ origins and behavior. More specifically, he details their evolution from a wolf-like ancestor into proto-dogs and then the first domesticated species; he also investigates how this very long-term relationship has affected both canines and humans. He goes on to clearly explain how today’s dogs differ behaviorally and culturally from wolves, and why the dominance/ pack paradigm put forth by many trainers (including Cesar Millan) is not only the wrong way to understand dogs but has also done them a great disservice. It makes for engrossing and thought-provoking reading.
Paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman takes a similar synoptic approach in her engaging new book, The Animal Connection: A New Perspective on What Makes Us Human, and adds valuable insights into the dog’s evolutionary story. She combs through research in her own field as well as in archeology to test her hypothesis that animals (dogs among them) have shaped our species’ evolution. As she says, “I believe that a defining trait of the human species has been a connection with animals…. Defining traits are what make humans human … and they are partially or wholly encoded in our genes.” She does a rigorous investigation — every bit as compelling as a forensic TV drama — into the three big advances that contributed to our modernity: tool-making, language and symbolic behavior, and the domestication of other species to support this position.
In the chapter, “The Wolf at the Door,” Shipman suggests how domestication might have happened. As importantly, she refutes other theorists, such as Raymond Coppinger and his “protodog- as-village-pests” model. She writes about Belgian researcher Mietje Germonpré, whose work recently dated a proto-dog fossil skull to 31,680 BP — proving that dogs were domesticated long before humans congregated in settlements. (It was an amazing 20,000 years before the next species, the goat, was domesticated.) Shipman questions why so few representations of wolves/dogs (as well as human figures) appear in prehistoric art, and incorporates anthropologist Anne Pike-Tay’s suggestion that if domesticated dogs were helping us hunt, they were “perhaps placed in a completely different symbolic category from other animals,” adding, “dogs might have been put into the human family category as an extension of the hunter.” All of which attests to the fact that dogs have been a part of the human family since our own prehistory — an extremely long time.
All of these books, the classics and the current crop, should be read by dog lovers. Not only do they contribute to our understanding of our first friends, they also have the potential to improve dogs’ welfare by educating us as to what we can and can’t expect from them. We owe it to dogs to learn more so this age-old relationship can grow even stronger. Here’s hoping this trend continues and more groundbreaking books are on the way.
Culture: DogPatch
Making sense of dogs
What is an anthrozoologist, anyway? Turns out it’s someone who studies human-animal interactions, and John Bradshaw, who directs the world-renowned Anthrozoology Institute based at the UK’s University of Bristol (and founded it at the University of Southampton), is pre-eminent among them. For more than a quarter of a century, he’s investigated the behavior of dogs and their people, and his findings have been widely published. In Dog Sense — his best-selling, recently released book — he expands upon his belief that “the future of the dog does not lie simply with the blunt instruments of legislation and regulation, but with better public understanding of what dogs actually are, their needs and wants.” Recently, Bradshaw shared his thoughts on evolution, training (debunking the myth behind the “dog as wolf” model), changes in breeding practices in the UK and what lies behind dogs’ attraction and attachment to us, among other intriguing ideas.
Bark: Why do you think that a proto-dog — a transition from wolf to dog — evolved?
John Bradshaw: My theory — and I have nothing to back it up — is that something happened in the brains of certain wolves that made dual socialization possible. Humans developed a propensity to take in pets, and then these particular wolves came along — these would be the protodogs. They would have looked exactly like wolves. This was not an intervention on our part, but rather, a very different cultural environment.
A key difference between dogs and wolves is not their appearance but rather, how they behave. Dogs have the capacity to socialize to both species, ours and their own, and the unique ability to continue functioning as members of their own species while simultaneously establishing and maintaining relationships with ours.
B: Most researchers refer to domestication as a one-way street. Didn’t other species, including the wolf and proto-dog, also have an effect on our own evolution?
JB: Domestication was a long and complex process; speculatively, I would [say] that there were several failed attempts. Researchers who are studying human evolution and the human brain pretty much say that our own evolution — at the genetic level — wasn’t influenced by dogs. But, of course, our culture has been profoundly influenced by them.
Dogs were, for a long time, a crucial part of our technology and their domestication marked a technological innovation that also provided the blueprint for the domestication of other animals; if we were able to domesticate dogs, why not pigs, sheep, cattle, goats? So if you are talking about evolution in the general sense of where humans are today, what we think about and how we see the world, then, yes, dogs dramatically affected that evolution. If you are talking about dogs affecting genetic evolution, we haven’t discovered that yet. I’m not saying we won’t, but we aren’t there yet.
B: Do you think it’s possible that we hunted together, or perhaps learned or honed our own skills by watching wolves hunt?
JB: I don’t think we were hunting partners, to begin with, but one of the versions of human evolution that I strongly subscribe to comes from Steven Mithen, a cognitive archaeologist and professor of early prehistory, who studies the evolution of the human mind and why we are different from the Neanderthal — why they died out and we didn’t. One of the key [dissimilarities] he points to is our ancestors’ ability to think like animals. They could put themselves in the place of an animal — that they, in fact, had a connection to the animals. So we would be able to think, “If I were a wolf, what would I be doing?” or, “If I were a deer, what would I do now?”
B: If scientists have concluded that wolf behavior is different from that of dogs, why do people still consider the lupomorph (wolf pack) model as a determinant of canine behavior?
JB: They have a good excuse, which is that in terms of their DNA, dogs and wolves are so similar. However, that doesn’t mean there is similarity in their behaviors.
Confusion about how wolves actually behave comes from observations of wolves artificially grouped in zoos. A natural pack is based on a family, but those confined in zoos and so forth are not family units. So in a zoo their behavior looks like it is one of dominance hierarchy based on aggression. The whole basis of wolf behavior [in that context] is not natural. It’s like comparing all human behavior to the behavior of humans in refugee camps. In that kind of group, behavior is distorted.
The second reason is that proto-dogs, the wolves who became domesticated, were different than other wolves. The animal who was the common ancestor of wolves and protodogs has been extinct for at least 15,000 years. Wolves in the wild are getting wilder and wilder for at least 15,000 years, probably longer.
Recent interpretations of wolf behavior have emphasized cohesive, rather than aggressive, behavior as being essential to the stability of a pack. Wolves in different packs try to avoid one another, but dogs are extraordinarily outgoing. Dogs’ sociability is even more remarkable when compared to that of their ancestors.
B: If the wolf model isn’t appropriate, what is?
JB: The behavior of feral, or village, dogs in Italy, Russia and India has been studied recently, and results show that those dogs are much closer to the ancestors of pet dogs than wolves are. These are urban feral dogs, high-density dogs, dogs in large groups. Earlier studies [of feral dogs] were conducted in environments in which the dogs were being persecuted and are like the early captive-wolf studies: not reliable.
Research recently conducted in West Bengal (where feral dogs are more tolerated by the people) has found that feral dogs are a lot more tolerant of one another than wolves are. Family bonds form, but with less correlation. They do not hunt together, but rather, forage singly, and, unlike in a wolf pack, more than one female in a social group will breed at the same time. They aren’t a pack in the wolf sense; their “pack” structure is very loose and rarely involves cooperative behavior, either in raising young or obtaining food.
The studies of West Bengal feral dogs don’t offer the slightest shred of evidence that they are constantly motivated to assume leadership of the pack within which they live, as the old-fashioned wolf-pack theory would have it.
B: You write that there is little evidence that hierarchy is a particular fixation of dogs — that dogs do not want to dominate us — but so many trainers (including Cesar Millan, as you note in the book) and others use this construct to explain dog behavior. Why is this wrong and what are its implications?
JB: Part of the problem is that confrontation makes good television, and attracts programmers, but having a confrontation in your living room with your own dog isn’t the best way to train a dog. The more effective way is to use reward-based training, which can be (by television standards) incredibly dull, since it may take hours or sometimes weeks. My colleagues and I are appalled by the popularity of this style of confrontational dog training. I don’t know what the situation is in your country, but in the UK, we have a new Animal Welfare Act, and that kind of training goes against its recommendations. The law reads, “All dogs should be trained to behave well, ideally from a very young age. Only use positive reward-based training. Avoid harsh, potentially painful or frightening training methods.”
There is little evidence that hierarchy is a particular fixation of dogs, either in their relationship with other dogs or in those with their owners.
And if some trainers believe that dogs only perceive us as if we were other dogs (or wolves), there is no logical basis for assuming that dogs [instinctively] want to control us. Domestication should have favored exactly the opposite: dogs who passionately want us to control them.
B: Have you seen any changes in breeding practices in the UK as a result of the BBC’s “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” documentary?
JB: The genetic isolation of breeds has brought about a dramatic change in the canine gene pool. Three inquiries have been commissioned: one by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, another by the government and a third by the Kennel Club itself, but there is still a great deal to be done. There are problems implementing the studies’ conclusions because the KC, like the AKC, is a federal structure made up of individual breed clubs. The federation has no power to tell the member breed clubs what to do.
There is also an unfortunate loophole in the UK legislation, in a macabre sort of way: the law doesn’t apply to fetuses so if there is a hereditary defect, it can be legal!
Top breeders, those who show their dogs, practice selective breeding to meet the latest interpretation of the breed standard, which is based on the appearance of the dog. The whole basis of judging rests on how a dog looks and behaves in the show ring.
Some of breeds’ gene pools are too small, and the answer has to be to amalgamate breeds to increase genetic variation. A group of people in Australia are taking on the breeding of pet-quality dogs, [selecting for] calm personality, trainability, freedom from inheritable disease and discomfort, people-focused and so forth. Dr. Paul McGreevy and Pauline Bennett are part of this group. Genetics can only go so far, though. You have to mold a dog’s personality — it can’t be done through genetics alone.
B: Many people use puppy testing to predict a dog’s adult character. Do you feel this is valid?
JB: Dogs are born to become friendly toward people, a process that starts in about the third week of their life and goes on for several months. This process of socialization is well charted. At 16 weeks, the window of socialization to people begins to close, though it stays open a bit longer for socialization to other dogs.
Young puppies try out different behavioral approaches; they change from one day to the next. It is more important to look at the litter’s environment — how is the female kept, for example? Puppy tests carried out at seven or eight weeks of age are being conducted when a puppy’s behavior is actually most malleable. Numerous scientific studies have failed to find any validity in puppy testing as a predicator of future character. The only personality trait that seems to be resistant to change after seven weeks is extreme fearfulness.
B: You write that dogs have been so heavily selected to form strong attachments to humans that many suffer from separation anxiety — up to 50 percent of Labs bred in the UK, for instance. On what is this finding based?
JB: It comes from my own research and that of others. We concluded that many dogs experience this anxiety at some time in their lifetime. In one longitudinal study, we followed puppies, 40 in all, litters of Labradors and Border Collies, from eight weeks to 18 months old. Over 50 percent of the Labs and almost half of the Collies showed some kind of separation distress. Subsequent studies, during which we filmed dogs left alone, showed that self-reporting by owners underestimates the scope of the problem.
We work closely with rehoming charities, instructing them on prevention and ways to train dogs so they won’t suffer when left alone. The key thing is to get new owners to train the dog to understand that they are coming back.
This is not a disorder at all, but rather, a perfectly natural behavior. We have selected dogs to be highly dependent on us. Research has shown that just a few minutes of friendly attention from one person on two consecutive days is enough to make some dogs in shelters desperate to stay with that person. Their attachment to humans is that strong.
B: One of the most controversial positions you take is that being in a shelter may damage a dog. Was consideration given to contributing factors such as the length of time spent in a shelter, the condition of the facility, the interactions a dog has with other dogs and humans there, and the dog’s personality and history?
JB: We want to understand what is going on inside these dogs, and I am not in any way blaming rescuers or shelters. Dogs who have been attached to a family may suddenly wind up in a shelter for a variety of reasons: family breakup, job loss or the dog’s behavioral problems. Dogs will be very upset by this and when they arrive in a shelter, their cortisol level [a stress-related hormone] goes sky high. We know this because when we’ve taken urine samples, we’ve had to dilute the urine to even get a measurement — it was that high. They don’t have the resources to cope and go into hyperdrive, desperate to please people. As a result, in a shelter setting, dogs actually can be easily trained.
As I mentioned, attachment can happen quickly in shelters. Of course, when dogs are unhappy, they need to be appropriately cared for, but we find that it’s important to rotate their caregivers so they don’t form an attachment to any one person.
It is also important to assess dogs for separation anxiety, predict the behavior, and advise [shelter staff and prospective adopters] on how to train them to be left alone. That is one of the most important things you can do to ensure the welfare of the dog [in terms of his or her eventual placement] in a new home.
B: Dogs clearly love us, and demonstrate that in many ways, but is this what motivates them to obey us and follow our lead?
JB: Human contact has a high-level reward value for dogs; simple attention from us is rewarding. And if that attention comes while playing with them, it can be a double reward. You can train a dog with a tennis ball, but while the game is important, it is not the only thing. The real treat is the interaction. Withdraw your attention, ignore the dog, and the dog will find this withdrawal of attention aversive.
News: Guest Posts
Railway Mail Service mascot gets his own stamp
A few years ago, during an East Coast vacation with my pre-teen nieces, we did the museum circuit in Washington, D.C., including a stop at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum. It was my sister’s idea, and I thought a likely snooze-fest. But I was wrong; the museum is a fascinating place with a particular jewel, Owney, the canine mascot of the Railway Mail Service. Still looking rather jaunty in all his taxidermic glory, Owney wears a little brown jacket decked with the various medals and tags he accumulated on his many journeys.
For those who don’t know of about Owney, he was the beloved by clerks on mail-sorting trains at the end of the nineteenth century and became an icon of American postal lore.
According to the National Postal Museum, the stray Terrier-mix appeared at the Post Office in Albany, N.Y., in the 1880s. Clerks took a liking to him and named him Owney.
Fond of riding in postal wagons, Owney followed mailbags onto trains and soon became a good-luck charm to Railway Mail Service employees, who made him their unofficial mascot. Working in the Railway Mail Service was highly dangerous; according to the National Postal Museum, more than 80 mail clerks were killed in train wrecks and more than 2,000 were injured between 1890 and 1900. However, it was said that no train ever met with trouble while Owney was aboard.
As Owney traveled the country, clerks affixed medals and tags to his collar to document his travels. In August 1895, Owney journeyed around the world, sailing out of Tacoma, Wash., on a steamer bound for Hong Kong. Upon his return during Christmas week, the Los Angeles Times reported that he had visited Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Another reporter claimed the Emperor of Japan had awarded the dog a medal bearing the Japanese coat of arms. Owney’s triumphant return to American shores was covered by newspapers nationwide.
After Owney died in Toledo, Ohio, on June 11, 1897, mail clerks raised funds to have his body preserved.
This month, Owney will follow the mail again. On July 27, the U.S. Postal Service (no stranger to putting pups on stamps) will issue a first-class 44-cent forever stamp in his honor. The stamp features a new, and quite handsome, illustration of Owney by artist Bill Bond of Arlington, Va.
► A dedication ceremony will take place at the National Postal Museum on Wednesday, July 27 at 11 am. It’s free and open to the public.
Dog's Life: Lifestyle
Hitler planned to use dogs to win WW2
In recent years, canine cognition research has gotten extremely popular, but interest in how dogs think isn't exactly new. In the 1920's, German animal psychologists believed that dogs were almost as intelligent as humans, and capable of abstract thinking and communication.
This school of thought even influenced Hitler in his quest to win World War II. Recent research discovered that the Nazis hoped to build an army of talking dogs that would free up human workers in concentration camps.
The Nazis set up a dog school called Tier-Sprechschule ASRA in the 1930s, which stayed open throughout the war. Officials recruited dogs from all over Germany with the intention of training them to speak and tap out signals with their paws.
These findings may seem to come out of left field, but Dr. Jan Bondeson, the professor from Cardiff University behind the research, says that a strong bond between humans and nature was part of the Nazi philosophy.
"Indeed, when they started interning Jews, the newspapers were flooded with outraged letters from Germans wondering what had happened to the pets they left behind.”
I've read a lot about war dogs, but this piece of previously lost history is perhaps the most unique story that I've ever heard.
Dog's Life: Lifestyle
7,000 year old dog suggests people saw canines as thinking beings
I happen to live near the nation’s first pet cemetery, located in Hartsdale, N.Y. Pet burials may seem like a modern luxury, but the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery has been burying beloved dogs since 1896. However, it turns out that canine burials may far predate New York’s venerable cemetery.
Recently, the burial remains of a dog that lived over 7,000 years ago was discovered in Siberia. Unlike wolves that were buried ritualistically during this time period, this Husky-like dog was buried similarly to a human. Robert Losey, the lead author of a study about the discovery, believes that the burial shows people saw the dog as a thinking, social being. The human-like burial was likely meant to ensure that the dog would be properly cared for in the afterlife.
We may not have a lot in common with people who lived thousands of years ago, but we do share a special bond with our dogs!
News: Guest Posts
Artistry and history—without the sticker shock of paintings.
People love collecting. Go to any garage sale, estate sale or antique show and you will see avid collectors carefully inspecting items in vendors’ booths on tables or in boxes. As antique shows gradually become a thing of the past, the Internet provides a major outlet for finding antiques and collectibles. It is especially helpful when what you collect is not common or easy to find.
Collecting dog-related items has become increasingly popular during the past 10 or so years. Dog objects are fun items that dog lovers can use to personalize and decorate their spaces. The possibilities for collecting dog-related items are endless. Today, there are dealers who specialize in dog art, objects, books and photographs. While many people collect specific breeds or specific items, my collection is eclectic and includes different breeds and media. It consists of wood, metal and dog figurines, prints, paintings and photographs, with photographs constituting the primary focus of my collection. I have always loved old paintings of dogs but realized that most were beyond my budget. I started collecting photographs eight years ago when I found a framed photo of a Chihuahua sitting on a chair. I paid about $10 for it and my collection began. There weren’t many photos for sale at antique shows, so I was certain that it would take me years to build up a moderate collection. This pace would surely be better on my budget. I soon discovered E-Bay and an endless source for photos. My collection grew exponentially. I was drawn to photographs for several reasons. First, as I mentioned, they are much easier on my budget than paintings. Second, they are more portable and ship easily and inexpensively. Third, I was intrigued by the fact that 100 or more years ago so many people cared about their dogs enough to have them photographed by a professional in a studio setting. Often the dog is seated or lying on a piece of furniture or in front of a fake backdrop of woods, water, mountains or a grand interior. I primarily collect photos with only a dog or dogs in them but occasionally I buy one with a person or people in them. Within the field of photography there are many different types based on format and technology. Examples include daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite (CDVs or visiting cards), cabinet cards, stereographs, albumen prints, dry plate, silver prints and real photo postcards. Although I collect black and white photos that span between 1850 and 1950, I am partial to three types: CDVs, cabinet cards and photo post cards. CDVs were introduced in 1854 and were made until about 1905. They are albumen prints mounted on a 2 1/2-inch by 4-inch card. They are often printed or embossed with the photographer’s or studio name. Cabinet cards were introduced in 1863 and were made until the early 1920s. They are made using a wet-plate negative on albumen paper that measures 4-inches by 5 1/2-inches and mounted on 4 1/4-inch x 6 1/2-inch mount. The size of the mount can vary for either type of photo. Both CDVs and cabinet cards were produced in photographer’s studios. Photo postcards were first introduced in 1900 and remained popular through the 1940s. They are real photographs that are developed onto photo paper the size and weight of a postcard with a postcard back. Postcard photos were created by professionals and amateurs alike.Care and Preservation Without proper care photos will not last. They need to be stored or displayed out of direct light in dry, temperate spaces. Learn more about collecting and caring for photographs at the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, N.Y., The American Museum of Photography (virtual museum) and Collector’s Guide to Early Photographs by O. Henry Mace. Some museums, antique dealers and art galleries specialize in animal related items, far fewer specialize in dogs. Here are a few that do: William Secord Gallery, Genesee Country Village and Museum, AKC Museum of the Dog and The Cobblestore.
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