Near the top of my ever growing list of advantages of getting older is how much easier it is to admit I’m wrong. For those of you who have yet to see this quality in me, this podcast should convince you. Granted I probably don’t like being wrong any more than anyone else, but in a field like behavior it happens a lot for multiple reasons.

One is because, while our knowledge of training has bubbled along nicely, our knowledge of domestic animal behavior has lagged. My guess is that this results from a semantic mix-up. In this country knowledge of behaviorism, a training method, is easy to confuse with knowledge of how animals actually behave which is referred to as ethology.

Another reason animal behavior provides its share of reasons to rethink and even recant old ideas is because we’ve lacked the technology to study what is going on in the brain of human and nonhuman animals in the past. As this has become more sophisticated and available  more ego-busting but nonetheless delightful studies such as the one discussed in this podcast are bound to occur with more frequency.

Some people can go on and on about wine or cheese whereas I find cat pee an fascinating subject. No kidding. I returned home after a seminar on various urinary tract conditions in cats (and a few dogs) and was so wound up with new thoughts and ideas that they kept me awake that night.

As far as I’m concerned, urine is the most energy-efficient calling card an animal possesses. Because of that, it doesn’t surprise me that animals, and especially more solitary animals like cats, experience urinary tract problems when they feel physically or mentally insecure in their space. For those in the who find themselves in that position, what we see as urine  in the wrong place might be the animal’s version of calling 911.

Some day…

A few weeks ago I read an article in the local paper touting the value of home-grown food that incomprehensibly segued into a tirade about laws that prohibit the keeping of chickens and other farm animals in suburbia. That surprised me because keeping farm animals in more complex suburban and urban environments isn’t a good idea for multiple reasons. It’s not good for the farm animals and it’s not good for the area’s companion animals and wildlife, to say nothing of the people who live in those areas. But while the reasons for this seem pretty obvious to me as a veterinarian with a long standing interest in the interaction of health, behavior, and the human-animal bond, apparently they’re not so obvious to others.

Consider this my attempt to breach that gap.

Read more…

This podcast reflects some thoughts about parents, kids, and animals that have been wandering around in my brain in one form or another for years. In a way, that makes sense because so many companion animals belong to folks who have kids. What intrigued me though was the usual: how changes in ourselves and our society affect our perception of the role of companion animals play or should play in our own or our children’s lives.

Fortunately, this second of the outdoor recordings lacks the worst of the snaps, crackles and pops that showed up in the first one. Perhaps the wildlife figured out what I was doing and decided to cut this poor human some slack.

Relative to animals, we humans typically have taken the “If it looks like a duck” approach to animal identification. As we’ve become ever more remote from nature, for more of us it’s become a case of if looks like how we think a duck should look, that’s reason enough to call it a duck. A good example are all those folks who can’t tell the difference between a pit bull, a boxer, and a Boston Terrier who see no problem voicing their strong negative convictions regarding pit bulls.

Because of this tenuous identification system, it’s probably not surprising that we have little difficulty convincing ourselves that any animal who looks like a domestic animal must surely be domesticated. Add our species penchant for hubris and it’s even easier to convince ourselves that those animals would like nothing better than to live with us.

Because the weather was so unseasonably hot and beautiful, I decided to record this podcast outdoors. The good news is that technically the result is a good example of habituation. The not so good news is that during part of this you’ll hear the drone of a small plane heading for the airport about 35 miles north of me, a sound so familiar to me that I didn’t hear it at all when I recorded this.

You also might notice more Rice Krispy’s effects, those audio snaps, crackles, and pops caused by shifts in position or whatever. Like the drone of the plane, they didn’t show up until I replayed the recording on my computer’s editing program later.

As with my outdoor recording experience, our lives with our animals are filled with interactions, some of which have become so much a part of our daily routine that we don’t even notice them. But if these later create problems for our animals, the idea of changing them seems as difficult as changing when the sun rises or sets. Fortunately for us and them, it doesn’t have to be that way.

It seems like all of the world’s major religions recognize something comparable to Christianity’s Golden Rule. It reminds us that we humans, like other animals, learn by modeling. If we want another person to behave in a way we find nonthreatening and even enjoyable, we need to display that same behavior first. Needless to say, that doesn’t sit well with some of us some of the time and others most of the time. After all, it takes a lot less energy to tell someone to do as we say and not as we do.

Given how reluctant we may feel about modeling good behavior for members of our own species, it’s easy to understand why some of us blanche at the thought of doing this for our animals…

No matter how much doing so may benefit them and our relationship with them.

This podcast discusses one example of a type of communication that’s becoming disturbingly common in the animal-related arena: emotional blackmail. Those with products or services to sell try to convince us that purchasing these expresses love for our animals. And if we refuse, some even may try to make us feel guilty or irresponsible.

However other forms of emotional blackmail such as the one discussed in this podcast are more insidious. These folks extract seemingly reasonable promises from us when we lack the time and sometimes knowledge to properly analyze their full meaning. When this occurs we don’t even realize we’ve been blackmailed until we later discover that the demand to which we agreed could undermine instead of enhance our relationship with our animals.

In these cases, it’s difficult not to wonder about the blackmailer’s motivation. If the promise extracted ultimately could undermine the animal’s health, behavior, and relationship with us, love of animals doesn’t seem like the likely motivator.

Even though it didn’t occur to me when I recorded this, I wonder if so many politicians succumb to sexual indiscretions because, like some animals, they haven’t been able to make the transition from competitor to leader either. Makes sense to me.

If  some consider the unraveling the genome as the Holy Grail of genetics, it’s probably the discovery of genes associated with specific behaviors more so than those associated with any specific disease. Unfortunately why this is so may have more to do with imperfect human nature than any quest for knowledge.

Even though I was careful not to record the example in this podcast in such a way that it would upset the sleeping Ollie, I fear I wasn’t so aware of his feelings when I edited it later. Sad to say that unfit humanoid that I am, I thought he was downstairs sleeping with the cat in front of the woodstove when he’d actually come upstairs to the office and crept into the dog cave for a snooze. The first I became aware of his presence was shortly after I mentioned his name the first time in the recording and discovered him beside my chair looking up at me. When I smiled at him, he went into the dog-drawer and fell asleep beside his mom…

Which provides further evidence that he’s very good at reading my body language. As if I needed it.

Studies of the canine genome remind me of the concept of unintended consequences or in more philosophical terms, the old saying that if we tug on a corner, the whole universe moves. For sure when I read about what the canine genome tells us about diseases in ourselves, I couldn’t help but look at my thankfully healthy sleeping dogs and whisper, “Thank you.”

This is one of those podcasts that I think of as belonging to my “Can of Worm” Series. I so categorized it because the more I thought about this particular subject, the more I realized that as usual this wasn’t just about science. In addition to science, it was  about ethics and also about how we feel about ourselves as individuals and what makes us and all animals unique. Even more confounding, our identities probably consist of a collection of personal wow factors that may be another’s ho-hum or even ick factors. As a result, how much ick each of us would accept to preserve a wow seems like it would boil down to a lot more than anything science alone could determine.

Here’s one of the multiple articles that have appeared in the past few years about how parasites change human and nonhuman animal behaviors. And here’s another.

I edited this podcast this podcast the day after the 2012 SuperBowl and noticed yet another negative effect of a simplistic winner-loser system. The Boston team lost so there were people in the area who were very upset this morning, probably for three reasons: they felt like losers, they probably didn’t get much sleep, and they probably ate and drank too much stuff that they probably normally  wouldn’t normally eat and drink. According to medical studies, some of them even will succumb to cardiovascular problems or urinary tract infections thanks to the game. But from what I observed that Monday morning, others also will drive too fast. The pick-ups and SUVs are manageable because the road is wide enough to stay out of their way. But those 18-wheelers and logging trucks were another story.

Given such a exaggerated human response to something as remote from real life as a football game, you can imagine the magnitude of the emotions involved when their animals’ behaviors pit neighbors against neighbors…

In keeping with the theme of this podcast, I’d like to add that one of the reasons that our dogs and cats may be attracted to our expensive leather shoes, purses, jackets or briefcases  isn’t because they know how much we value those items and want to punish us for not paying enough attention to them. It’s because leather is especially good at retaining scent.

Young human and nonhuman animals possess less experience and, as a result, possess less data in their subconscious data bases. Or nonhuman animals do if you believe they have a subconscious mind which means believing that they also posses conscious one. Some people do, some don’t. But regardless which side of this philosophical debate we come down on, most of us do accept that youngsters of any species posses a view of reality that’s more limited than those with more experience.

This explains why I’m way more leery of the teenagers who barrel down my road while using various electronic devices, handheld or not. They simply haven’t driven the road long enough to recognize the slight change in color just before the bridge that signals black ice rather than just wet. Nor do they realize that on certain kinds of days at certain times of the year, they may come around a certain corner and encounter a flock of wild turkeys crossing the road. Worse, these changes are so subtle and subjective that only observing a skilled driver plus experience (or a LOT more experience if such a role model isn’t available) can result in the kind of repository required to succeed in a certain environment while focusing on something else.

Similarly, I’m much more watchful of my young animals outdoors until I’m comfortable they know about the idiosyncrasies of my property. Mother Nature nicely handles this by keeping wild youngsters with their parents or other environmentally savvy adult animals  just long enough for this transfer of information to occur. Companion animals, on the other hand, may need to rely on us for the kind of input that will enable them to feel comfortable enough in their surroundings that they can negotiate them safely while doing something else. The challenge is to provide it, but then to stop fussing and back off so they can internalize the data.

Wow! How’s that for a morose title for a dead-of-winter commentary? I could blame it on a fascinating article by Paul Tullis in the November-December 2011 Scientific American Mind entitled “The Death of Pre-School.” But all that article did was cause me to organize my thoughts regarding similar changes in young animal education/training that I’ve been pondering for years. Ironically just as the amount of research into the positive physical, mental, and emotional benefits of play for kids and animals of all species increases, there’s been a tendency to impose structured training on kids and domestic animals at a younger age.

Why does all work and no play make Jack and Jill dull academically as well as socially and undermine their chance for future success and happiness? And what does this have to do with animals anyhow?

To find out the answers to those questions, click here.

You can see what I consider a likely example of a laughing dog here and read an article about the increased scientific interest in ticklish animals here. As always when it comes to the subject of animal emotion, some of us are more open to the idea than others. Naturally I felt obligated see if any of my animals were ticklish. Just for scientific reasons, of course.