Validation

 

We always knew this was the case but now there has been a clinical research trial.

https://bvajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/.../vetr.586

"Results

Significant reductions in reported pain severity scores were recorded for all pain indicators over successive treatments (p < 0.001), with each treatment causing further significant reduction in pain severity. Number of pain indicators recorded over successive treatment sessions remained constant, in keeping with a cohort presenting with degenerative disease and chronic pain. All dogs and diagnostic variables responded similarly. Post-treatment a dog was significantly more likely to have a ‘positive’ quality of life.

Conclusions

This cross-sectional study indicates canine massage therapy may effectively reduce myofascial and musculoskeletal pain severity reported by owners and practitioners associated with gait, posture, behavioural and performance issues and reduction in daily activities. Although this is not a double-blind trial, and there is no control group, this study suggests massage therapy may be a valid treatment for myofascial and musculoskeletal pain typically derived from muscular injuries, arthritis/other orthopaedic conditions."

If you get lost in the stats...just ask Pixie. She'll tell you it means canine massage is great.

 

Dogs and seniors

I’ve been reading again.

I recently saw an article on one of the Facebook Dog Groups I belong to titled “Dog ownership provides health benefits for senior citizens”. Rapidly reaching senior citizen status myself, and some say I’ve already reached it, I thought that it made perfect sense. 

The article says that research finds pet owners have a greater quantity of exercise than their non-pet owning peers plus a lower blood pressure. As far as the first part goes I can wholeheartedly concur that wind, gales, tornados, floods, snow etc. would not stop Sam & Sarah demanding to take me out for my walk – or is it the other way round? Whatever…the dogs and I get our exercise at least three times day. OK, the quantity has reduced over the years. Where they used to want to be out for 60 to 90 minutes at a time, now they turn round for the car after 30 to 45 minutes – which suits me as I’m getting senior-er with them. But at least I do get out. 

Regarding the reduced blood pressure, this has been scientifically shown to be due to an increase in oxytocin which is a hormone that reduces stress. We have a friend who has diabetes who comes round each weekend to sit with the dogs – Sarah on his left and Sam on his right. Since starting this routine his blood pressure has reduced remarkably. Ok…that is not a controlled experiment and only on one person, but it has worked for him so could well work on others. 

Recently we have had to move my mother into a care home local to us as she was suffering from frequent falls and other illnesses due to immobility. Apart from us knowing she is now round the corner it means we can take the dogs to regularly see their Grandma. One of things on our checklist when Chris and I were looking for homes was whether they accept visits by dogs as my mum always lights up when she sees Sam and Sarah. Luckily this one does. 

So when I read that other research has shown that owning a pet can slow down some forms of dementia I was even more interested. It is said that looking after a pet with all the duties like walking, feeding, and general well-being can keep the mind motivated on something rather than simply drifting off as my mum used to do. 

Now, every weekend, when Chris is not working, we take the dogs into the Day Room to visit their Grandma Peg. They get so excited seeing all their new ‘friends’ who totally adore them. On the first occasion we took them along, Sam and Sarah went from resident to resident licking any hands that were put out to pet them. I know our dogs are rather special but I’m afraid it was not purely out of their goodness of their hearts but the fact that we usually visit during tea time when all the residents have eaten biscuits and licking hands or snuffling around feet means they get crumbs. One lovely man used to save his Rich Tea and Custard Cream biscuits especially for the dogs. Guess what, he was the first person they visit after their Grandma. Our dogs are great at pretending they have never ever ever been fed by their Dads. 

When I visit without the dogs I get looks of disappointment that it is just me who is visiting and not the dogs too. 

The extra bonus with taking Sam and Sarah along is that the residents chat to each and giggle over their behaviour so they stimulate interaction. Sarah, being the Diva she is, simply lies in the middle of the room with a "Go on...you can adore me" look on her face. My Mum is now welcome at everyone’s dinner table since she is the Dog Grandma. 

Most of the residents find it hard to see so, at first, couldn’t distinguish between our twins. But then one lady said “Oh look, one of the dogs has a tail that constantly goes round and round like a helicopter while the other one wags their tail from side to side”. They have found their own way of learning to tell who is who by their tail action which must help with memory. 

So does having a dog help with seniority? It certainly seems like it does to me. Now, if only I could remember where I put my keys and why have I just come upstairs……..? 

Sam looking adoringly at Grandma Peg, Sarah simply making sure the camera has her best angle

Empathy between dogs and their owners - proven.

I always enjoy reading well conducted research articles concerning canine behaviour especially those that give further proof to the incredible bond between a dog and their owner. 

I was interested in an article I read recently (http://www.littlethings.com/secret-ways-dogs-say-love-you) which had a couple of extra references, which my geeky nature had to follow up. 

One in particular referred to the way dog owners feel they can read the emotions of their dog through their facial expressions and not just through the way they are standing, turn their head or the way they hold their tail. It appears that this is actually true. A Japanese study in 2013 (Nagasawa et al) examined the facial expressions of dogs, using a high speed camera, when they were presented with their owner and someone they didn’t know.

It is always good to have things like this verified so we are just not classed as ‘mad dog people’. The study showed that when a dog is reunited with their owner, they lifted their eyebrows, especially the left eyebrow. But when they saw someone they didn’t know, there was little facial movement. 

The research team suggested this demonstrated behavioural facial laterality in response to emotional stimuli which reflects their attachment to their owner. 

Another study from the article referred to contagious yawning. We frequently yawn empathetically when someone we are watching yawns – echoing their behaviour. But apparently, this is not limited to humans. I guess it is not too much of a surprise since dogs have always been bred to watch us and see what we are doing. 

The study by Romero et al (2013) was conducted to determine whether contagious yawning in a dog was due to mild distress related response or empathy. They studied 25 dogs faced with familiar humans (their owners) and an unfamiliar human (the researcher) and acted out a yawn or other movements used as a control mouth expression. The dogs yawned far more frequently when watching their owners than the unfamiliar human which clearly demonstrates the correlation between emotional proximity. In addition, contagious yawns in the dogs were significantly higher during true yawning than other mouth movements. To make the inference even more factual, the research team actually measured the heart rate of the dogs. This did not change throughout the experiment which demonstrated the yawning response was not due to stress. They concluded that their study showed this contagious yawning is consistent with a form of empathy between a dog and their owner. 

So next time someone tells you that your dog can’t possibly understand what you are saying, tell them “Oh yes they can” and it is now scientifically proven. 
 

Talking to my kids

Appendix 

Nagasawa M et al. (2013) “Dogs show left facial lateralization upon reunion with their owners”. Behavioural Processes, 98 September 2013, pp 112–116 

Romero T et al. (2013) “Familiarity Bias and Physiological Responses in Contagious Yawning by Dogs Support Link to Empathy”. PLoS ONE 8(8): e71365. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071365

Give a dog a bone....and they will find it like we do

Research that looks into neurophysiology, behaviour AND dogs…..ooooo, right up my street!

I always knew dogs were really really smart and this was confirmed by a recent study at the University of Sheffield (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/navigating-way-through-computer-like-dog-with-bone-1.515267). The research team found that when humans navigate through computer files, the same brain structures are used as when a dog searches for their bone.

Apparently, it seems most of us search for stuff on our computers by going through folders or other pathways. (Sounds about right for me anyway!). There are two ways to search : hierarchical or query-based. Most people in the study moved through folders in a top down fashion until they reached the file they wanted rather than spending time composing a specific query-based search. This is despite advances in search technology.

So why did their sample prefer this long-winded method? They suggested that top-down navigation uses the same parts of the brain and neural processes that have evolved over millions of years for navigating in the physical world – looking for a path where we actually stored something physically.

To get technical, these parts are in the posterior part of the brain. And that is what links us to dogs. This is exactly how they use their brain to navigate instinctively to that part of the garden where they buried their bone so they can find it when they next want it.

I’m sure there will be some people who use the key word search. Ok, for you, to get even more technical, searching for a file using a key word activates a part of the frontal brain, called Broca’s area just in case you ever need that for a pub quiz. But for us ‘old fashioned’ types it is not all bad news. Apparently top-down searching makes less use of words, leaving your ‘language system available for other tasks’, the researchers said. Phew!

Interestingly, using the frontal part of the brain for searching is a function, so far, unique to humans. But watch this space. Other recent studies have shown how the brains of dogs are evolving in parallel with us as they have spent so many years working alongside humans. You may well come home one day and find your dog on Google! 

Sam Googling walks

Looking through the eyes of love

As much as I love research, there are many that make me think “I already knew that” but it is good to read things that have now been proven scientifically. This recent piece of research is another one that seems to support the coevolution of human-dog bonding by engaging common modes of communicating social attachment. 

The latest piece of I-told-you-so was published in the journal Science and revealed ways in which humans and dogs bond with each other by looking into each other’s eyes. Japanese animal behaviourists (Nagasawa et al of Azabu University published here) found that interaction between dogs and their owners, especially by eye contact, raises levels of oxytocin in both the human and dog brains. Oxytocin is a very powerful hormone commonly referred to as the ‘love hormone’ since when we hug or kiss a loved one, the levels of oxytocin go up. And when the hormone elicits this caring behaviour, then the levels go even higher causing a looping effect. Because of this effect, it is said to play a big role in pair bonding. 

Although it had already been found that oxytocin bonding occurs in other mammals, too, (interesting fact –Prairie voles, one of nature's most monogamous species, produce tons and tons of oxytocin) humans were thought to be unique in using eye contact as part of this cycle. But now it has been shown that domesticated dogs and humans share the same effect. When the research team tested hand-reared wolves (which tend to be undomesticated), they found no such effect, and wolves spent little time gazing into their owners' eyes. 

The study is surprising to many who work on animal behaviour, as eye contact, especially staring or gazing, is typically viewed as threatening. However, a gaze shared between a dog and their human owner produces quite different results than one between two dogs. The team suggested that early domesticated dogs began unknowingly and unintentionally utilizing a mechanism meant for bonding a human parent with their child. Because those ancestor dogs benefited from the behaviour, the trait was passed on. 

If, like us, you tend to humanize your dogs, this piece of research gets even more scary. They found that that if they sprayed either oxytocin or a placebo into 27 dogs' noses in a randomised experiment, female dogs that received the hormone spent more time staring longingly at their owners, and oxytocin levels also rose in those people. So your girl dog really does look at Mum or Dad more longingly! Our Sarah will never go over that piece of research. 

There is a sweet little video from New Scientist on YouTube here which describes what we already knew. 

A study in 2012 showed that, in humans, giving a massage also helps to raise oxytocin levels (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23251939). So for the perfect double bond, giving your dog a massage and gazing lovingly into their eyes (probably not both at the same time as that could make for an awkward massage technique) the bond will be strengthened even more. We have actually noticed that often, when one of us massages Sam or Sarah, they frequently gaze at the other of us. Clever dogs! They get one oxytocin boost from the massaging Dad and another from the other Dad.

Dogs and our facial expressions

Probably any dog owner would say "Well..I could have told you that" but it is always good to read another scientific research article which proves us right (as this previous post did). 

A recent research study has shown that dogs can discriminate emotional expressions of human faces. The researchers performed a series of tests to show that dogs could accurately tell the difference between pictures of a happy and angry faces in humans not only for people they know well, but even for faces they have never seen before. 

They said that "It appears likely to us that the dogs associate a smiling face with a positive meaning and an angry facial expression with a negative meaning." Amazingly even when the research team tried to train dogs to choose a picture of an angry face, by tempting them with treats, the test dogs were reluctant to do so. 

The team sampled 24 dogs, mainly Border Collies and German Shepherds, in several behavioural tests with touch screens which the dogs could touch in response to an image of happy faces and angry faces. They were consistently able to differentiate between the two expressions.

The research team concluded that dogs probably use their memories of real emotional human faces to accomplish the task. 

There have been several research studies in the past few months showing the links between dogs and us, such as being able to determine the emotional tone, intonation and volume changes in human speech and how they interpret human commands which make great reading.  All of these studies assist in my reasoning that adding another tool into the bonding mix, namely massage and touch, can only help owner and dog become the best friends ever.  Incorporate a smiling face, soothing voice and touch into a daily routine and that's it....they will listen to you forever (unless you are 3 minutes late with their food of course but dogs being able to tell the time is another piece of research waiting to be done)

Listening to every word I say.....when they want to!

Appendix

Muller et al : "Dogs Can Disciminate Emotional Expressions of Human Faces" : Current Biology