Canine commentary on fairness

Very interesting piece on my local NPR station today on The World today:
www.theworld.org/taxonomy_by_date/1/2008120

"New research suggests that dogs may exhibit behaviors that look like envy. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Dr. Friederike Range who headed the study at the University of Vienna."

Some more on the study itself:
http://www.wolfscience.at/english/research/blog/09December2008/

"One crucial element for the evolution of cooperation may be the sensitivity to others' efforts and pay-offs in comparison to one's own costs and gains. Inequity aversion is thought to be the driving force behind unselfish motivated punishment in humans constituting a powerful device for the enforcement of cooperation."

Dogs Can Think "no fair"

What parent hasn't heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something. Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way.

Ask them to do a trick and they'll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they'll happily keep at it.

But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again.

Associated PressThis undated handout photo provided by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the subject being asked for its paw by the experimenter and obeying. The partner dog is sitting next to the subject and waiting for its turn.

Associated PressThe subject is following closely that the partner is receiving a food reward for its action.

Associated PressThe subject has not received food for giving the paw in the last trials and observing that the partner did receive food, the subject is refusing to give the paw and avoids looking at the experimenter. No fair! What parent hasn't heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something. Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way. Ask them to do a trick and they'll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they'll happily keep at it. But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again.

Indeed, he may even turn away and refuse to look at you.

Dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness.

"Animals react to inequity," said Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, Austria, who lead a team of researchers testing animals at the school's Clever Dog Lab. "To avoid stress, we should try to avoid treating them differently."

Similar responses have been seen in monkeys.

Range said she wasn't surprised at the dogs reaction, since wolves are known to cooperate with one another and appear to be sensitive to each other. Modern dogs are descended from wolves.

Next, she said, will be experiments to test how dogs and wolves work together. "Among other questions, we will investigate how differences in emotions influence cooperative abilities," she said via e-mail.

In the reward experiments reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Range and colleagues experimented with dogs that understood the command "paw," to place their paw in the hand of a researcher. It's the same game as teaching a dog to "shake hands."

Those that refused at the start -- and one border collie that insisted on trying to herd other dogs -- were removed. That left 29 dogs to be tested in varying pairs.

The dogs sat side-by-side with an experimenter in front of them. In front of the experimenter was a divided food bowl with pieces of sausage on one side and brown bread on the other.

The dogs were asked to shake hands and each could see what reward the other received.

When one dog got a reward and the other didn't, the unrewarded animal stopped playing.

When both got a reward all was well.

One thing that did surprise the researchers was that -- unlike primates -- the dogs didn't seem to care whether the reward was sausage or bread.

Possibly, they suggested, the presence of a reward was so important it obscured any preference. Other possibilities, they said, are that daily training with their owners overrides a preference, or that the social condition of working next to a partner increased their motivation regardless of which reward they got.

And the dogs never rejected the food, something that primates had done when they thought the reward was unfair.

The dogs, the researchers said, "were not willing to pay a cost by rejecting unfair offers."

Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, isn't so sure the experiment measures the animals reaction to fairness.

"What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well," he said in a telephone interview. cm-bd

But the researchers didn't do a control test that had been done in monkey studies, Wynne said, in which a preferred reward was visible but not given to anyone.

In that case the monkeys went on strike because they could see the better reward but got something lesser.

In dogs, he noted, the quality of reward didn't seem to matter, so the test only worked when they got no reward at all, he said.

However, Wynne added, there is "no doubt in my mind that dogs are very, very sensitive to what people are doing and are very smart."

-- The Associated Press

Local Dog Deaths

There have been two high profile dog deaths in my local area. In both cases, the tragedy of the deaths need not have happened at all. Instead of just seeing the horror of it all, the need for proactive education and outreach needs to be brought into clear focus.

The first was an elderly ill dog whose owners took it upon themselves to put her out of her misery. They lacked the monetary means to do so humanely. The lacked the knowledge that there is a local nonprofit that will do these procedures at no cost, if required. They tried to kill the dog with a hammer.

I hear the sounds of shock and disgust. I echo them with you.

Yes, it is horrific what this dog went through - being rescued from her grave by digging her way partially out and then local authorities being alerted by a neighbor, only to be euthanized latter because of her condition. Not all the facts are known about the situation. It is possible that she was a dying beloved family dog and the owners did what they felt they needed to do. The autopsy showed signs of a serious skin condition and malnourishment (not eating for several days) but that does not mean abuse, or even neglect, it could be an old dog dying. There were photographs of this dog with her family; they looked loving and warm.

I do not mean to imply in any way that in any event these people did what was right; no animal should suffer that way! I do think that it is important to understand that they did not feel there was anything else that they could do. That is a breakdown in the animal welfare education system.

While working on an emergency veterinary helpline I would get a number of calls every week from desperate people looking for a kind way to end their pets suffering and not finding any inexpensive way to offer that end of life gift. Those that found their way to us were given the information they needed in a compassionate way.

A yellow Labrador named Molly had to be euthanized Friday after she was struck in the head with a hammer and buried alive.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/dog_buried_alive_euthanized.html

The owners told KGW the dog was a beloved family pet that had been sick for weeks and they couldn't stand to see it continue to suffer. They said they did not have a gun or the money to put the dog down, so they decided to euthanize the animal by hitting it in the head with a hammer.
http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_102508ORB_dog_buried_alive_SW.149ae57cf.html?ocp=1

The other death was that of a service dog killed by another dog on local transit. The owner of the dog that attacked and killed the other dog lied when he boarded the bus and was asked if his dog was a service dog. When questioned by the police, he admitted this.

This opens up the volatile issues of what training/registration/certification/identification service animals ought to have. The laws related to this currently need clarity but I am far from convinced that the suggested changes to the laws are positive. There are so many people who can live fuller lives with the assistance of properly trained service animals. There are far too few organizations able to help these teams get trained.

Kae Seth wasn't surprised to read that bus passenger Leroy Morley passed off his pet Rottweiler mix, Max, as a service dog. The president of Guide Dog Users of Oregon says she increasingly encounters "people who try to stretch the letter of the law" to get their pets into buses and businesses.
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1225250718320060.xml&coll=7

Leroy Morley "feels awful" that his dog killed another dog on a TriMet bus Sunday, said a man Tuesday claiming to be Morley's boss.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1225250715320060.xml&coll=7

*sorry about the issues with the links. Blogger is insisting that any of my Word copy/pasted posts are full of html so I am giving Notepad a try...

Kibble Bubble or Talk to the Dog

A Colbert Report re-run about the financial crisis has just ended, so I turn the tv off, grab my jacket and the leash, and head out for a walk with the dog. She's oddly pensive as we head up the street. After a little while, she stops and asks, "What was that all about?"

"All what?"

"All that 'crisis' and 'bailout' stuff. It sounds scary."

"Well, a bunch of banks made a bunch of really bad loans, and people have lost a lot of money."

"I got that," she says. "I may be a dog, but I'm not stupid. I'm asking how they lost a lot of money."

"Well, it's complicated, but I'll try to explain. Let's say you have a whole bunch of kibble--"

"How much kibble?"

"I don't know. A lot. Fifty cups."

"Oooh! I like how this starts." She wags her tail excitedly.

"You won't like how it ends. Let's say you have fifty cups of kibble, and the Weimaraner across the streets comes and asks you to loan her one cup, and promises to pay you back five cups over the next year. Do you give her the kibble?"

"No! It's my kibble!" She looks offended at the very idea.

"It's only one cup, and she'll pay you back five."

"Yeah, but I don't trust that dog. Where's she going to get five cups of kibble? She's just going to eat the one cup, and I'll never get paid back. She's a bad risk."

"Exactly. Now, imagine that some human comes and offers to sell you a piece of paper for ten cups of kibble, and the paper says you get fifty cups of kibble over the next year. Do you buy it?"

"Sure. Humans have lots of kibble. They're good for it."

"You might think that. The thing is, the paper says that some human gave ten different dogs-- the Weimaraner, the two Yellow Labs on the next block, that beagle around the corner, a bunch of others-- some human gave each of them one cup of kibble, and they promised to pay him back five cups over the next year."

"But it's the human giving me the kibble, right?"

"No, the dogs are. They promise to pay whoever has the paper. The human just sold you the paper."

"Well, that's not so good. But as long as the human vouches for the dogs, I guess it's not too bad a risk."

"The thing is, he doesn't know any of the dogs. He bought the paper from somebody else, who bought it from somebody else, who bought it from a dog somewhere, who made the original loans."

"Wait a minute. Why on earth would anybody do that? You can't trust any of those dogs to give me back my kibble."

"Well, the theory is, if you put ten dogs together, they might not all pay you back, but as long as some of them do, you can get back the kibble you started with. If you get lucky, and they all pay you the kibble they owe you, you've got almost a hundred cups of kibble."

"That sounds good. So am I a lucky dog?"

"Of course not. You can't trust those dogs, and none of them can give you any kibble."

"Oh." She looks sad. "Well, ok, then I'm out ten cups of kibble. That's bad, but I've still got..." You can see the wheels turning as she struggles with the math.

"Forty cups left."

"Thank you. Forty cups left. That's not too bad."

"Right, except you wanted to get a lot more kibble, so you went and borrowed another fifty cups from some other dog, and promised to pay her back a hundred cups."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you're greedy."

"Well, why would she give me the kibble?"

"Because you had forty cups, and showed her a piece of paper saying that you'd get fifty more in the next year."

"But those bad dogs didn't give me my kibble."

"Right, so instead of having forty cups of kibble, you have minus sixty. You owe some other dog sixty cups of kibble that you don't have."

"Well, that sucks."

"Exactly. That's the financial crisis, in a nutshell."

"So what's the bailout?"

"The bailout is that I step in, as your owner, and give you the hundred cups of kibble you need to pay off the dog you borrowed from."

"Oh! That's good." She wags her tail. "This is why we love you."

"Thanks. The problem is, because I had to spend money buying kibble to bail you out, I no longer have the money to buy you squeaky toys."

"But... but... but..." she's really flustered. "But I like squeaky toys! I like kibble! I want my squeaky toys and kibble!" She's about to melt down completely.

"Take it easy. Your squeaky toys and kibble are safe. This is all just a hypothetical."

"Oh." She calms down a bit. "So, hypothetically, who's to blame for all this? I bet it's that Weimaraner. I never did trust that dog."

(For the record, the dog in question is perfectly nice, and has very nice owners. I have no idea why Emmy dislikes her so much.)
"No, it's not her fault."

"But she borrowed kibble she couldn't pay back!"

"Yeah, but Alan Greenspan told her it was a good idea, and she believed him."

"Who's Alan Greenspan?"

"Another human. He's... a veterinarian, and takes care of a lot of dogs."

"Oh. Well, what about the human who sold me the paper? It's all his fault, isn't it."

"Not really. He bought the paper from somebody else, and trusted them when they said it was a good investment."

"So, it's the dog who made the initial loans, isn't it? Let's find him and bite him."

"He might be the right one to blame, but nobody remembers who he was. And anyway, he had a mathematical model that said the whole thing would work out. It was very complicated"

"Oh. Complicated math is very convincing to dogs."

"Also bankers, more's the pity."

"So there's nobody to bite? We're out all this kibble, and there's nobody to bite?"

"Nope. At least, nobody we can identify easily. All we can do is buy more kibble, and hope for the best."

"Hmmph." She looks dissatisfied, and we walk in silence for a while. "You know what? I bet it was a cat."

"A cat?"

"A cat. Whenever there's a crisis, and kibble goes missing, there's a cat at the bottom of it somewhere."

"That's an... interesting theory."

"You should see if any of these bankers are cats. I bet one of them's a cat. That's who you should blame."

"I'll be sure to pass that on to the appropriate authorities."

"Good." And, with the nation's financial problems solved, we continue on our walk.

http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2008/10/the_kibble_bubble.php

Humane Education

Being out of work and watching the field as hawk-eyed as I have been some ideas have been brewing in my head.

My education department was not the only one cut recently. While mine was cut all together, a number of other shelters in the Northwest have had education programs suffer cut-backs or redirection of their time away from education to outreach. What does that mean? More hours for events and fundraising and less hours for directly educating the public.

While I strongly feel that it is the responsibility of these local animal welfare non-profits to be doing this educational work, if their leadership does not agree with my priorities a painful gap is left in the community.

Sadly, but predictably, many children and adults do not learn at home what they need to know to be responsible pet owners. To tell the truth, I did not learn the lessons that I really needed when I was young. I was taught kindness, which is the most important lesson certainly, but the serious day to day meeting of animals’ needs (beyond the basics of food, water and shelter) was something that I was not prepared for. Pets suffered for this. I suffer still for having been the cause for their pain.

There are a number of independent organizations trying to meet these humane education needs.

Healing Species is a program doing some amazing work using an 11 week program, leading classrooms of children to expand their understanding of others and to learn empathy. Through sharing stories, group projects and conversations, and simple but deeply changing positive interactions with real animals the students’ views of stewardship, kindness and community are nurtured.
www.healingspecies.org

Doggone Safe brings safety programs to both children and adults. A majority of injuries that are caused by dogs could be avoided all together if basic skills about interactions with animals were taught widely. These programs also instruct on reading canine body language so that a person can understand a dogs intentions more clearly. A wagging tail does not always belong to a friendly dog!
www.doggonesafe.com

Kids and Storks teaches soon-to-be and new-parents pet safety lessons and how to properly prepare and then integrate their family pets with the new arrival – a baby. So many pets loss their loving homes because parents lack these skills!
www.dogsandstorks.com

Come the beginning of the year, I will be re-launching a humane education curriculum for a local Head Start school. It is a program I developed and taught while employed at a local humane society; yes, that one that no longer has an education department. I’ll be teaching these classes with my feline and canine partners: Guido and Moon. We’ll be strictly volunteers. The schools can’t afford to pay and the small non-profit that I’ll be working under the auspice of, has only has three paid employees and a dedicated group of volunteers.

Where does is all this leading me?

Oregon law says:
Oregon 336.067 Instruction in ethics and morality. (1) In public schools special emphasis shall be given to instruction in: …(c) Humane treatment of animals.

If the animal welfare larger non-profits cannot, or chose not to, provide humane education then perhaps independent contractors and smaller non-profits will have to step up and fill the need.

Building Coalition

Responsibility, Transparency, Community Support, and Willingness to Change

Without these from local animal welfare organizations (and I include rescues, open-admission, limited-admission, private and government agencies here) there will be "bright new day" in animal welfare. The euthanasia numbers will not drop. The public will remain ignorant, committing neglect and abuse. Spay and neuter efforts will fail.

As a member of two local task forces, I have seen the intent to embrace the four principles above from a number of organizations. They are brave; they are truly willing to serve. Some may have something to lose by walking the walk here – the limited admission shelters are moving of their own free-will toward a level playing field.

Yet there are those that still refuse to share information about their operations. Some organizations publish their annual reports in a newsletter, or even better on their website - including intake and live release numbers, budget information and program specs. Others chose to keep this information tucked away only for the eyes and minds of their board members.

Trust is an issue.

Does one chose to trust other local organizations or hide information? Do we choose to lay the numbers and the issues on the table, and educate our public or opt for the nanny-state answer that they can’t understand so they shouldn’t have the information?

Integrity is at risk here.

With the Asilomar Accords (www.asilomaraccords.org) common language, at least on a local level, can be reached so that terminology on what is Healthy, Treatable, or Unhealthy within a community will have same usage. To come to these terms is not an easy discussion and cannot be held solely within the animal welfare community. By calling in members from the animal welfare community (shelters and rescues), as well as veterinarian, trainers and behaviorists, owners of pet related businesses, to honestly discus what an average pet owner is likely to do in various situations – these definitions can be classified.

These terms are by no means rubber stamps for disposition. If the resources are available in a community, “unhealthy” pets can be placed. If the resources are not there, not even all “healthy” pets will be placed and euthanasia of these animals will continue. But without at very least common terminology a community cannot work together as a whole to end that tragic practice.

I applaud my local community coalition ASAP (http://www.catadoptionteam.org/cat/adoption/info/408) for the work they are doing and I am proud to be a small part of the process. I can only hope all of them will follow through and not hobble the process with their own fears.