On showing dogs in conformation shows

I’ve been cogitating recently on the statement I’ve seen in a few places that “it makes sense to show a dog in conformation shows before breeding it to make sure a judge has a chance to say that the dog has good or bad conformation.” I just posted this to a breed-specific mailing list in response to that statement, and am curious what y’all think of it:

I think the real question is whether a judge selects a dog based on healthy structure or based on something else. I suspect it varies by judge, but the concern is that, given a ring of dogs all with good structure, the dog with some other flashy attribute will win (thick coat, particular head or ear shape). Then people start breeding for that attribute in order to win. Then that attribute gets valued over good structure. I think the fear that this will happen in any given breed is valid, given what we've seen in other breeds - take the show German Shepherd with its very sloping backline or the tastefully plump show Labrador.

What it comes down to for me is, what is the best way to evaluate healthy structure in a dog before breeding? I don’t think conformation shows are that way. I suggest a) making sure the dog is able to work well and without pain b) giving the dog time to mature to see if it has any structural unsoundness and c) having the dog examined by a veterinary orthopedic specialist. There are plenty of structural issues that are just not going to show up on physical exam (whether performed by vet or by judge), which is why (a) and (b) are so important.

Thoughts from the blogosphere?

Bonus dog photo because every post needs a photo (of a purebred dog out of parents who were never shown in coformation shows, and a mixed breed whose parents were probably not selected with any sort of care at all):

The vegetables of genetics

Today I’m working on revisions for my DNA class at IAABC, which starts Monday, April 24. This will be the second time I’ve offered this class; it’s the first in a series of four classes (which you can take in any order, so this one isn’t required for later classes). And the auditor’s price is still super low to encourage people to take it just for fun.

I’m never sure how to promote this class. Will it offer you direct insights into how to modify behavior? It won’t, of course. It will tell you what DNA is and what genes are and how at a low level DNA differences affect traits. For how to apply this stuff to behavior consulting, you should refer to the fourth class in the series, which is about behavioral genetics.

But while the fourth class has that stuff we all want to know in it, to really understand how all that stuff works you really want to take this first class. Sometimes I think of this one as the vegetables class: you have to eat your veggies before you can have your dessert. But I hope it’s not just because I’m a genetics geek that I do think this class has some fascinating material in its own right. It’s not overcooked frozen peas, it’s heirloom tomatoes from the farmer's market. In later classes I’ll talk about the weird ways our DNA can affect our personalities, and in order to deeply understand what I mean, you want to know how DNA is put together and how the body reads the genetic code and how things can go wrong.

And by the way, I make sure all of my classes have something in them for everyone, so if you are a genetics geek too, come take the class for the optional resources, which have loads of articles with new research findings in which we (surprise!) realize DNA is more complicated than we at first thought, and getting more complicated the closer we look at it.

And if anyone can help me explain how to market this funny little class and explain to people that this really is stuff it’s good to know (for behavior consulting but also just for life in the middle of the Genomics Revolution) then please tell me!

Puppies and Pointing

Why are some dogs better at paying attention to humans, particularly human gestures like pointing, than others? We know genetics has something to do with it, because some breeds (like border collies) are a lot better at responding to human signals than others like beagles. To better understand the biology driving differences in ability to respond to human signals, researchers at the Family Dog Project compared dogs and wolves as they grew up. They knew that wolves can respond to human signals, but that they are better at this when they have been extensively socialized, whereas dogs can understand human signals with much less socialization. But at what age do these differences manifest?

Image from the Family Dog Project

The researchers used a pointing test to measure ability to respond to human signals. This test has been used on dogs before: if a dog is given a choice of two bowls, only one of which contains food, and he can't see where the food is, will he follow a person's pointing gesture to pick the right bowl? (The bowl with no food in it is rubbed with food so the dogs can't use their noses to get the right answer.) This test has been done in the past with dogs versus human children (dogs do about the same as two year old kids on this task), dogs versus wolves (dogs generally outperform wolves, unless the wolves have a whole lot of experience with humans), and dogs versus chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives (dogs outperform chimps!).

For this study, the researchers compared hand-reared (i.e., well socialized) 8-week old dog and wolf puppies; 4 month old dog and wolf puppies; and adult dogs and wolves. They tested the animals' abilities both with "proximal" pointing (putting their finger right up to the bowl) and "distal" pointing (standing farther away and indicating the bowl) - except that, since very young puppies and wolves don't see well, they didn't test the distal pointing in the 8 week old babies. What they found:

• The 8 week old puppies (dogs and wolves) had similar ability to follow the proximal pointing gesture with the researcher's finger right next to the bowl. However, 6 of the 13 wolf puppies tested had to be removed from the trial because they couldn't be held on the start line or didn't go choose a bowl. Of the 9 puppies, only one was removed for similar reasons.
  
• 4 month old dogs did better at distal pointing (with the researcher standing away from the bowl and indicating it) than 4 month old wolves did. In fact, the 4 month old wolves seemed to do no better than chance.
  
• Adult dogs and wolves did equally well with both proximal and distal pointing.
  
• At all three ages, wolves needed more time to establish eye contact with the pointing human than dogs did.

So all the animals at all ages were able to understand a pointing gesture when the human put their hand right up to the bowl. But pointing from farther away was harder, as you'd expect. Very young puppies (dog and wolf) were not tested on that task. At four months, wolves hadn't figured it out yet, but dogs had. As adults, the wolves had caught up. These were highly socialized adult wolves with a great deal of experience with humans.

It's interesting that dogs seem to develop the ability to understand a more difficult human pointing gesture at a younger age than wolves - and particularly interesting that this may have to do with the fact that wolves are not as eager to look us in the eye as dogs are. (If you don't look at someone, it's hard to follow their pointing gesture!)

So what does this mean for differences in different dog breeds? Do different dog breeds have differences in the timing of their cognitive development? Does this affect how much attention they pay to us, and perhaps how easy they are to train? We don't know, but I think this is one direction dog research needs to go.

(By the way, check out the original paper - it's open access, and has some great videos of dog and wolf puppies at the end!)

Gácsi, Márta, et al. "Explaining dog wolf differences in utilizing human pointing gestures: selection for synergistic shifts in the development of some social skills." PLoS One 4.8 (2009): e6584.

This post was originally published with slight modifications at Darwin's Dogs.

Puppies and dog breeds

Thanks to Julie Wurth for a great interview with me and Linda Case of The Science Dog in our local paper, the News-Gazette.

Since the article was about getting a new puppy and provided pointers to this blog I figured it was a good idea to suggest some old posts to any new readers. As always, for a constant stream of interesting dog science articles not written by me, follow me on Twitter or like my page on Facebook!

• The Replacement Dog: how a veterinarian / dog rescuer / geneticist searched for the right puppy

• The history of dog breeds: Victorians, genetics, and the importance of diversity

And an update on Dash - he is turning into a fine young man. Here he is from a few days ago.

Dashiell, aged six months