0210: The Self-awareness of Dogs with Dr. Ellen Furlong

Dog behaviorist and researcher Dr. Ellen Furlong from Illinois Wesleyan University describes some fascinating studies that reveal we may not know dogs as well as we think we do.

This discussion was inspired by Yasemin Saplakoglu’s article in Live Science.
Dogs Know Where Their Paws End and the World Begins

Illinois Wesleyan University’s summer term (June 1-29) offers Dr. Furlong’s PSYC 322: What Does Fido Know?

Heartland Community College has the scaled down non-credit version running April 26-May  17.
How Your Dog Thinks & Why It Matters

Even though these are online courses, they have limited space. So enroll now.

And listen to Dr. Furlong’s audiobook Decoding Dogs: Inside the Canine Mind on Audible.

Interviews referenced in this episode:

0147: Dog Behaviorist Dr. Ellen Furlong

0207: Kansas City Animal Services with April Moore

0130: Harrowing Tale of Parvovirus with Jesse Shroyer

The Parvo pup is Peaches’ friend Oakley. He is mentioned in this episode when we talk about dogs watching TV. Here's a video of Peaches playing in the snow with her friend Rosa, Oakley’s foster sister. At the end of the video is a few seconds of them watching themselves on TV playing in the snow. Please subscribe to our free YouTube channel to help us secure the Rosie Fund URL and visit RosieFund.org for links to all of our social media.

Celebrate 5 years of Rosie Fund by supporting our campaign to sponsor 50 dogs. You can donate on our website or Facebook page. You can also contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com.

Music for this episode is provided by alternative string duo, The Wires. Visit them at TheWires.info. Learn fiddle and cello-fiddle online — even if you've never played before — from Laurel Morgan Parks and Sascha Groshang at FiddleLife.com.

Make a donation at RosieFund.org or through our Facebook page. You can contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Also check out our page on BarkYours, the online mall with gifts for people who love their dogs.

Rosie Fund online:
RosieFund.org
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Instagram.com/rosiefund
YouTube.com/rosiefund

Transcript

DR. FURLONG  0:02 
Do they understand that they have this body, that they're in control of this body and that this body can interact with objects in helpful or unhelpful ways around them?

PHIL   0:14 
I'm Phil Hatterman and this is Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund. Today, dog behaviorist and researcher Dr. Ellen Furlong from Illinois Wesleyan uUniversity discusses some fascinating studies that reveal we may not know dogs as well as we think we do.

If you're new to this podcast, in each episode we explore the world of dog care and companionship. "We save each other" is the motto of Rosie Fund, which simply means the more we do for dogs the more they do for us, and they already do a lot. If you love dogs, you'll love Dog Words. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Go to the podcast page at RosieFund.org to share your thoughts. We welcome suggestions for topics and guests. The only way we know which ones you like is if you tell us, then we'll try to deliver more of that. If you have a story you'd like to share on Dog Words, let us know. Please download, subscribe, rate and, most importantly share Dog Words.

Celebrate five years of Rosie Fund by supporting our campaign to sponsor 50 dogs. You can donate on our website or Facebook page. You can also contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Links are in the description.

Please follow Rosie Fund on social media . Subscribe to the free Rosie Fund YouTube channel that offers great videos of Rosie, Peaches, and shelter dogs, including some exclusive content like the sweet KC Pet Project dog featured in our latest post. Your donations help fund the Rosie Life Starter Kits that make sure these senior and harder-to-adopt dogs have some of the items they'll need in their forever home.

A few weeks ago we started adding transcripts to Dog Words episodes. The automated transcription is fairly accurate but it is necessary to review each document before posting to make sure there aren't any substantive errors. So it will take some time to get all of our archived episodes transcribed. If there's an episode you would like moved to the top of the list, let us know at RosieFund.org.

Next time on Dog Words, Best Friends Animal Society's Senior Director of National Programs and KC Pet Project co-founder Brent Toellner discusses the goal of no more homeless pets and no-kill shelters nationwide. The mission of Rosie Fund is to provide humans with the resources and education they need to give senior and harder-to-adopt dogs a better life. We thank you for joining our mission.

We welcome back to Dog Words professor Dr. Ellen Furlong from Illinois Wesleyan University. How have you been?

DR. FURLONG  2:41 
Great! It's been a long cold winter but it's finally spring so...

PHIL   2:45 
Yes, our last interview, I don't know for sure, but it feels like the weather was just like this but heading in the other direction. It was cold and windy and getting colder and darker and now it's cold and windy but, hopefully, it's getting warmer and brighter. Spring is just around the corner.

DR. FURLONG  3:03 
Absolutely.

PHIL   3:05 
People want to get outside with their dogs. Hopefully, they've already been doing that. We had a fascinating discussion about a variety of dog behavior issues when you were on last time. And I reached out to you because I read a study that you did not participate in but I found interesting and I wanted you to enlighten me and our listeners on really what does it mean, how does it impact our understanding of dog behavior? I want to make sure I pronounce the researcher's name correctly — the senior author of the study Péter Pongrácz, an associate professor in the department of pathology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. How was that?

DR. FURLONG  3:47 
Yeah!

PHIL   3:50 
Studied dog cognition, and based on the article it sounds like years ago researchers studied dog cognition and then kind of moved on. Okay, dogs are not really self-aware They aren't aware of their body in space the way humans, and as it turns out many other animals are. But tell us how — I'm gonna take another shot at his name — Professor Pongrácz re-imagined how to do this study.

DR. FURLONG  4:22 
Yeah. So this question of self-awareness is one that has been really a big part of animal cognition research in general for many years. Gordon Gallup back in the '70s did some research with chimpanzees looking at whether they had a sense of self and the way that he did this work was a now famous study called the rouge test where he took some rouge some — no sorry my dog is coughing...

PHIL   4:52 
That's fine on this show.

DR. FURLONG  4:53 
Yeah. So he took some rouge and marked the faces of chimpanzees and then presented them with a mirror. And he found that chimpanzees who had had experience with mirrors in the past, so they knew something about mirrors...

PHIL   5:08 
And what they should look like in one.

DR. FURLONG  5:09 
And what they should look like in one. Exactly. Would approach the mirror and look in the mirror, and at the same time try and remove the spot on their forehead. And so he concluded that chimpanzees then had some sense of self-awareness. That that was them in the mirror and there's a spot on their face that shouldn't be there. And then they worked to remove the spot on their face. Since then, researchers have done the same test – the mirror self-recognition test — with lots of species, including humans. So human toddlers began to do the same thing, approach the mirror, wipe the funny spot off their forehead, when they're about a year and a half old. And there's been some really interesting findings with a variety of species on this topic. Chimpanzees, as I mentioned, do quite well on it. But other species you might expect to do well don't do so well. Gorillas, for example, when presented with the mirror self-recognition task, did terribly at first. And researchers were sort of baffled by this because gorillas are social creatures. They are pretty smart. They should do well on it.

PHIL   6:17 
Maybe they're just less vain?

DR. FURLONG  6:20 
Maybe. It turns out that there's actually a good ecological reason why they're bad at the test is because we have developed a test that's a very human oriented test, and then expected other species to do exactly what we would do as humans,

PHIL   6:40 
Kind of we anthropomorphize everything.

DR. FURLONG  6:42 
We anthropomorphize everything!

PHIL   6:44 
And then it gets reinforced by, "This test works on chimpanzees." So that becomes the test.

DR. FURLONG  6:49 
So that becomes the test. Exactly. But for gorillas, it's very rude to make eye contact. And so they're not going to approach a mirror, look in the mirror and remove a spot on their head. Because in doing so they're making eye contact with themselves in the mirror. So that's very rude. That's a no no. So they failed the mirror self recognition test. But if you look at what they actually do when they're presented with the mirror and the mark test, they sort of approach it sideways, look at themselves out of the corner of their eyes and remove the mark with their hand and then check back do a quick side-eye check back to see if the spot's gone. But that wasn't meeting the criteria as how humans would do it. And so they failed the test. So if you really look at their behavior, it does seem like they have a sense of self-recognition. They just failed the test because we were holding them up to human standards and not gorilla standards.

PHIL   7:45 
Wellclearly, that sort of test is not getting to work very well with dogs. Because even though they can put their paw on their face, it doesn't seem like something they would care about. Because walking Peaches, she'll roll a pile of leaves get up and have a leaf hanging off her mouth, and walk for the next few blocks until it falls off. Doesn't care.

DR. FURLONG  8:07 
Doesn't care. Yeah.

PHIL   8:08 
Probably knows it's there but doesn't care.

DR. FURLONG  8:11 
But doesn't care. Exactly. And you know, I've seen Cleo use mirrors before in some kind of sophisticated ways. When — Cleo is my 17 year old Australian shepherd. And when she was younger, she used to run with me all the time. We would go on lots of lots and lots of long runs together. And she loves to run but she's too old to do that, now. Her arthritis won't let her. So instead, I've been – with the weather being what it is — I've been running on the treadmill, which is in our guest room. And on the other side of the wall from the treadmill is one of those big, long tall mirrors, and Cleo will sit in front of the full length mirror and watch me run on the treadmill behind her. So clearly, they know something about mirrors, right? That it's giving them information about the world behind them. And you can see the same thing with young kids. Kids younger than 18 months or so, year-and-a-half, are pretty good at using mirrors to gather information behind them. But they don't necessarily connect the little person in the mirror to themselves until they're a year-and-a-half. And so in previous studies with dogs it's kind of seemed like dogs are doing just that, right? They're using the mirror, because they know they're getting information from behind them. But they're not really recognizing that that dog in the mirror is them. You'll see sometimes, there's funny videos of dogs trying to interact socially with the dog in the mirror, right? They try and — they do about a play, they bark at it. So they don't really necessarily seem to connect, but that's them.

PHIL   9:42 
Related to that — at least as a non-expert, I think it's related — I've talked on the show several times about Oakley. And we had Oakley's foster parent Jesse on when he was a Parvo puppy. But pre-Parvo and post-Parvo Oakley and Rosa, Jesse's other dog, would come over to our house and play. And Rosa really isn't a very playful dog and Peaches is and so that was an opportunity to socialize Oakley and learn play behavior. And it was adorable. Of course, we would video it. And sometimes Jesse would leave them here while she would run errands. And she would get back and we'd show her the videos on a 54-inch screen. So a life-sized version of them is being presented. Peaches never cares. She'll walk through the room or she'll be laying in the room, doesn't even turn her head. Oakley would hear the play noises and be off in another room doing something and would come running in and would just be fascinated.

DR. FURLONG  10:42 
Yeah.

PHIL   10:43 
And watching — we assume — himself or some other what he thinks might be another dog. And he'd look at us, wag his tail and pant and look back at that dog and just be so happy. And sometimes he would sit down and just be rapt in attention of this dog and again, Peaches never cares. Sometimes she'll watch TV. Like we watch Captain Aty the otter. And if anyone doesn't watch Captain Aty, A-T-Y, on YouTube, you're missing out on a fascinating study in human animal interaction. But Peaches watches that. So she watches TV, but doesn't care about herself or or Oakley but Oakley seems to notice and care.

DR. FURLONG  11:27 
Yeah, it's really fascinating. There are some pretty big individual differences in that. We, we had a cat who unfortunately passed away a couple years ago, but she used to watch A River Runs Through It whenever it came on the TV. She was obsessed with A River Runs Through It

PHIL   11:45 
I think that would be a wonderful movie for a cat. Fishing and the wide outdoors and good looking people.

DR. FURLONG  11:52 
Exactly! No other movie. no other TV show. But she'd stopped in her tracks for A River Runs Through It. But yeah, you can see these really interesting different ways that dogs interact with the television. We have a big screen TV in my lab so that owners can sit in sort of the waiting room area of the lab and watch their dogs participate in studies just in the next room over. And sometimes owners will have two dogs. And so they'll have one dog in there with them while the other dog is participating in the next room. And about half of our dogs really watch their sibling doing the study. And we joke that while if you've seen it, you can't do the study, because now you know how it works.

PHIL   12:36 
Yeah. A blind study doesn't work if you're...

DR. FURLONG  12:38 
Exactly!

PHIL   12:39 
...watching it from the other room.

DR. FURLONG  12:41 
So yeah. So sometimes they're really, really interested in what's happening on TV and other dogs really aren't. It used to be that dogs really couldn't see television. Because the way that their eyes work, they have a higher refresh rate than we do. So TVs used to just kind of look like they were like flashing images instead of a steady stream of images.

PHIL   13:01 
Kind of like in the old days when you would see a TV on TV.

DR. FURLONG  13:05 
Exactly.

PHIL   13:06 
And the refresh rates aren't synced up. It's unwatchable.

DR. FURLONG  13:10 
Exactly. And that's what it used to look like for dogs. But now with digital TVs, they see the same kinds of things that we see. So it's much easier for them to watch television. There are in fact, some dog TV programs and apps that have things on them exactly like you're saying. Like dogs that are playing or going for a walk or even sometimes just kind of calming images of scenery or whatever that are specifically for dogs to watch, say when their owners are at work. So, you know, there are some fascinating differences. I think one thing that is really interesting that connects this TV stuff to the self-recognition stuff, is that one thing that seems to be really important, at least for really young kids, in terms of, "Is that me in the video or is that not me in the video?" is contingent movement. So for example, they've done this work with infants. So like 5-month-old infants, I think, when they're in their little bassinets, and they set up a video feed of the baby and then the baby can watch the video feed. So what's important there is if the baby, say, kicks their right leg, and then they see the video feed the baby in the video also kicks their right leg, right? So they seem to recognize their own selves in a video.

PHIL   14:29 
Yeah, "I'm making this happen."

DR. FURLONG  14:30 
Yeah, "It's me that's making that happen. Those are my legs that are moving there." So contingent movement seems to be really important for animals, for humans, for everybody figuring out how mirrors might work in the first place, how a video image of yourself might work as well. And that's actually part of the study. So the question that they were really asking is, "Is this question of self-awareness a sort of body awareness?" And there are lots of different ways to ask this. So far, we've been talking about kind of really human-centric ways to ask about self-recognition, you know, using a mirror, using video, those are really things.

PHIL   15:07 
Using using makeup.

DR. FURLONG  15:09 
Using makeup. Exactly.

PHIL   15:11 
That seems very human-centric.

DR. FURLONG  15:13 
Very human-centric. Yeah. But a lot of times we have to stop thinking in a human way, and start thinking in an animal way. So put yourself in the shoes of the animal that you're doing some studies with. And when you do that, you can find some really interesting findings. So...

PHIL   15:30 
Well, and Professor Pongrácz, almost literally put himself in the shoes of his test subjects. Focusing on the feet.

DR. FURLONG  15:40 
Focusing on the feet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So he modified a study that was originally talked about by Jean Piaget, who is one of the sort of founders of developmental psychology. A lot of the ways that people think about children and child development were really started by a Piaget, he was really foundational. And actually, there's a big crossover between developmental psychology, so studying human development from infancy through adulthood, and studying animal cognition. And the reason is exactly this one, which is that those of us who study animals face the same kind of problem that people who study young infants face, which is we can't talk to our subjects. I mean, we can talk to them, but they're not going to talk back.

PHIL   16:24 
They can't fill out a questionnaire.

DR. FURLONG  16:27 
They cannot fill out a questionnaire as much as we would love them to.

PHIL   16:30 
They'd eat the questionnaire, more likely.

DR. FURLONG  16:33 
Exactly. Exactly.

PHIL   16:35 
Which can happen certainly with children.

DR. FURLONG  16:36 
It can happen with children. It can happen with dogs, with chimpanzees. You name it. So we often will steal the methods that have been done with human infants, and use them with whatever species we're working with. And in this case with dogs. So what Piaget first talked about back in, oh, you know, 60, 70 years ago, his first observation was that, if he asked a child to hand him something that they were sitting on, the child would try and tug at it, and hand it to him, and then realize that their own body was interfering with the ability of them to pass the blanket or the whatever they were sitting on over to the adult, and so they would get up and move off of the blanket and then hand it over. And so in this study with dogs, they did the exact same thing with dogs asking the question, "Will dogs understand that their own body is serving as an obstacle to them completing this task of handing over a toy to a human experimenter who's asking for it?" So it's asking a similar kind of body-awareness question, as the mirror test asks, "Do they understand that they have this body, that they're in control of this body, and that this body can interact with objects in helpful or unhelpful ways around them." So to do this, he presented dogs with a toy that was attached to a mat that the dogs were standing on. And a researcher just said, "Hey, give me that toy." And so the dogs would try and lift the toy up. And in doing so they would move the mat that was underneath their feet. And if they have body-awareness, they should then get off of the mat, so that then they can pick the toy up and hand it the toy plus the mat up and hand it to the researcher. If they don't have body awareness, and they shouldn't have any reason to get off the mat, because they don't think they're the one that's impeding the ability to get...

PHIL   18:29 
There's just something wrong with the toy.

DR. FURLONG  18:31 
There's something wrong with the toy, exactly. But they got off the mat. So they really seemed to understand that it was themselves, their own body, that was causing the problem and that they needed to move their body in order to solve the problem. So this is some interesting support here for the idea that they do understand something about their own body, and they have some awareness of their body.

PHIL   18:57 
Well, with studies, a lot of times, maybe you're getting the answer to a different question than what you're asking, or you're asking the question wrong. But ultimately, you learn something from the study, either your hypothesis was correct, or your hypothesis was wrong, or you need further research. But then it also can raise other questions. So now that we have apparently this answer about self-awareness in dogs, what is next? What questions does this raise that we want to answer?

DR. FURLONG  19:27 
Yeah. Oh, there's a whole host of questions that this can raise. So when you think about your own sense of self, sure, it contains some sense of your body-awareness, but you also have an inner mental life, right? That is part of your sense of self. You have memories that are part of your sense of self, right? You might remember your fifth birthday, or your first day at a new school, or at a new job or something. These are all a part of the story that you tell yourself about you. We also know that a sense of self that humans have is something called metacognition which is our ability to think about our own mental states. That sounds really complicated but we can just sort of simplify it a little bit by thinking about imagine that you have a test on geography tomorrow and you have to name all the 50 state capitals. You know, I'm sitting here thinking like, "Do I know the 50 state capitals?"

PHIL   20:29 
Do I know the 50 states?

DR. FURLONG  20:30 
Yeah. Exactly! I don't know! That is metacognition, right? Is the ability to think about what you know and what you don't know and so questions about things like, "Do dogs have metacognition — the ability to recognize what their own mental states? Do they have episodic memories or these memories about events that happened in their lives like your fifth birthday or your first day in a new job? What other kinds of activities go on in their inner lives, right? What kind of mental lives do they have?" These are all really important questions that we can address and further studies. There have been some studies looking at things like episodic memory and dogs so, "Do dogs remember these particular episodes that happened in their lives?" But they're pretty narrow in focus and so it would be really interesting, I think, to sort of delve into some of these questions deeper and really explore them. You're not really going to get a full sense of what dogs' sense of themselves is until you really explore all of these aspects of dog cognition and get a sense about what their own sense of themselves might be like. So there are lots of really fascinating directions that we can head after this.

PHIL   21:29 
You say it's fascinating and humans are creatures of curiosity, that we want to satisfy our curiosity so, obviously, we pursue these fascinating subjects. But there's also a practical value. Dogs are such a big part of many people's lives not just as companions slash roommates but support animals, therapy dogs, working dogs of all kinds, whether it's search and rescue or bomb dogs, police dogs. Really understanding how their mind works, what their self-awareness might be is going to impact how you train an animal.

Yeah.

How you interact with an animal. How you rehabilitate an animal. How do you address perhaps their level of stress. If you have a search and rescue dog or a therapy dog, if it has episodic memory — it's going to remember those stressful situations or the way the human handler interacted with it or the way the suspect or therapy patient was interacting with it — is going to impact how they behave in the future but also how they handle their stress.

DR. FURLONG  23:03 
Right.

PHIL   23:03 
A better understanding of that is going to help us give dogs a better life, help us get better work out of the dogs, have better relationships with the dogs. Immense value. Untapped value.

DR. FURLONG  23:15 
Absolutely. Absolutely. The more we can understand about dog cognition the more we can understand about what their mental lives are like the more we can address their welfare needs. I teach a class on dog cognition and just the other day we were having a discussion in there about enrichment. So enrichment is really about adding new enjoyable experiences to your dog's life. And I talked about this as an ethical duty as a dog owner. You have an ethical duty to make sure that your dog is living a good life. And I had a student said one of the most fascinating things to me which is, "You know, I always think about ethics in regards to zoos or research facilities but I never really think about the ethics of my own interactions with my dog because I just assume that my dog is happy." But we can't assume that our dogs are happy for all of the reasons that you mentioned. We don't know...

PHIL   24:09 
For the same reasons that doing studies is such a challenge.

DR. FURLONG  24:14 
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

PHIL   24:15 
For the same reasons we can't just assume we know everything about their feelings and what their needs are.

DR. FURLONG  24:20 
That's right. That's right. And so the more we understand their needs, their cognitive needs, their psychological needs, all kinds of needs that they might have, then the more we can meet those needs, right? So the more ethically we can treat our animals. I think that that's incredibly crucial. We can also the more that we understand their cognition, their mental lives — you mentioned, you know, service dogs and dogs that work closely with humans — the more we can have an efficient and helpful relationship together. So maybe they can do even more things to help us than we know. Maybe we can do more things to help them. So it can be strict that goes both ways.

PHIL   25:02 
Yeah, and from the Rosie Fund perspective where we help senior and harder-to-adopt dogs find their forever home, the harder to adopt dog category a lot of times is behavioral issues. The dogs need to be socialized because they were a stray or they came from a poor home environment. Those dogs don't present well in the shelter. They can also be a barrier to adoption for someone who doesn't think they have the time to socialize or rehabilitate this dog. That also takes resources for the rescue group to rehabilitate the dog again if we have a better understanding of dog cognition and dog behavior, we can rehabilitate it more quickly, more efficiently

DR. FURLONG  25:48 
Yeah.

PHIL   25:48 
We can help it present better in the shelter so that a potential adopter can see the potential of this dog. Or even just know that, "You take this dog home, here are the strategies for rehabilitating it." Instead of, "You take this dog home and good luck."

DR. FURLONG  26:08 
Right.

PHIL   26:08 
Or, "Take this one training class. it might help. it should help." But to have something more concrete based on studies done in Hungary...

DR. FURLONG  26:17 
Yeah.

PHIL   26:18 
...we know this or at Illinois Wesleyan University, do this.

DR. FURLONG  26:22 
Yeah. You know, I'm currently working towards a different kind of certification. So I've got my PhD already and I'm working towards a certification as a certified applied animal behaviorist and what you're talking about here is exactly the kind of thing that these CAAB - certified applied animal behaviorists — do which is really take the research that we know about dog cognition and and dog behavior and dog learning and really trying to apply it to dogs who are having behavior problems. So I do a lot of training with dogs in which I think about the ABCs of behavior — the antecedent, the behavior, and the consequence. And that antecedent, the, "Why is the dog doing the behavior? What is it in what circumstance is the dog doing the behavior? What does the dogs think that they're going to get out of this behavior that we humans don't like?" is so much of understanding their psychology and understanding the research about how dogs think and behave. And so it's been really fascinating taking the work that I do in the lab of really thinking about how do dogs think and translating that into sort of real practical value. So how can we actually translate this to helping dogs with behavior problems so that they can either stay in their homes or get adopted?

PHIL   27:41 
Well, that's a great point when you say stay in their homes because a moment ago I was focusing on let's get harder-to-adopt dogs adopted. But we've had April Moore who's the Chief of the Animal Services Division for the city of Kansas City, Missouri, on recently talking about the city of Kansas City transitioned from being an animal control municipality to animal services. And that's about animal welfare and not just rounding up stray dogs writing citations for people who are reported by their neighbors. It's more about, "Let's figure out what the root of this problem is. Can we keep this dog in the home? Is it just a matter of educating this pet owner? Or is it getting resources for this pet owner who doesn't want to neglect or mistreat their dog but they've fallen on hard times? They would have a dog house if they could afford a dog house."

DR. FURLONG  28:34 
Right.

PHIL   28:34 
And so if there's behavioral issues with a dog that Animal Services can refer someone to some sort of treatment program through KC Pet Project in Kansas City or some volunteer organization that keeps a dog in its home, that preserves resources for the shelter, space in the shelter for a stray that really does need that kennel. But also it's going to be better for the dog. That it gets to stay with the family it knows and loves.

DR. FURLONG  29:04 
Exactly.

PHIL   29:05 
Instead of being put in a kennel and the stress that would come with that, being thrust into a shelter.

DR. FURLONG  29:11 
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and thinking about how to address a behavior problem. Oh, separation anxiety or I'm working with a dog now who's a digger. Digging up the whole backyard, right? What are some ways that you can meet the dog's needs while also meeting the human's needs so that both parties are satisfied in the relationship

PHIL   29:33 
Yeah.

DR. FURLONG  29:33 
And that can be really hard to think through but thinking through it can really pay off in in these these ways that you're talking about.

PHIL   29:40 
And having the mindset of, "This is inappropriate behavior." Not, "This is a bad dog."

Unknown Speaker  29:47 
Yeah, exactly.ds

PHIL   29:49 
So what is the behavior? How do we address the behavior? Instead of just punishing the dog or yelling at the dog.

DR. FURLONG  29:54 
Yeah, dogs engage in behavior because they get something out of it, right? So a dog who's jumping on people when they come to the door is getting reinforced for that because they keep doing it over and over again, right? They wouldn't keep doing it over and over again if something wasn't working for them. Even if it's being pushed away, even if it's being spoken at sharply by their owner, they're still interacting with their person, they're still getting something from it.

PHIL   30:19 
Yeah, if the dog is being rewarded with attention then that's what it wants. And it may not be categorizing your strident...

DR. FURLONG  30:27 
Yeah!

PHIL   30:27 
...shouting of "No!" or "Down!" as punishment. It's, Yeah! We're interacting!"

DR. FURLONG  30:33 
Exactly, exactly. And so then thinking about, "How do I change this dynamic so that I'm getting what I want not having the dog jump on me when I walk in the door, and the dog is also getting what they want?" Right? Getting their attention. And so it can be as simple as, "I'm going to wait till all four feet are on the floor, and then I'm going to pet you and tell you, 'You're a great dog.'" So many behavior problems are problems for the human, but they're not a problem for the dog.We have to think about what it is that the dog is getting out of it and try and get them that same goal in a way that's more appropriate for humans.

PHIL   31:08 
The dog you referred to that's digging up the yard does not have a master plan of destroying the yard.

DR. FURLONG  31:14 
Right, the dog likes to dig. So let's give the dog a spot where she can dig, right? Let's give her a sandbox. Let her dig in the sandbox. Teach her to dig in the sandbox and not in the rest of the yard. Problem solved. Then she's got an appropriate outlet for her digging and she's not digging up all the beautiful flowers in the yard.

PHIL   31:34 
I find dog behavior fascinating. Even if I didn't love dogs, just my general curiosity is piqued in exploring all of this. You mentioned that you're teaching a dog cognition class, if someone wants to enhance their knowledge of dog cognition, what is available to them to do that?

DR. FURLONG  31:58 
Yeah, so I'm actually teaching the same class, the same dog cognition class online this summer. It's a four week course. And it can be completed all asynchronously. But we also do have regular meetings once a week for people who schedule allow. It will be in June, I believe. And I can share a link with you for more info.

PHIL   32:19 
Yeah, I'll put that in the description. And a year ago, there were probably people who would have been interested but thought, "Uh, doing something online? That's a bridge too far. I don't know that I'd want to interact with someone online. I don't know, I could learn anything by doing this online." I think we've all crossed that bridge, I think we all have a pretty good grasp of how to do an online interaction. So if you're interested in dog cognition, you don't have to be pursuing a degree.

DR. FURLONG  32:48 
You do not. No.

PHIL   32:49 
You just have to have the curiosity to pursue this field.

DR. FURLONG  32:53 
Absolutely, yeah, it's a pretty fun class, I think. We have an enrichment project. Everybody takes a dog and works with that dog on enrichment. They don't have to have access to a dog, I can provide dogs who need some additional enrichment, and we develop these enrichment plans for them. So basically, one of our assignments is, let's play games with dogs. So it's all kinds of fun.

PHIL   33:16 
Any of our listeners who volunteer at a shelter, or who have been considering volunteering at a shelter, I can assure you that the staff there can pair you up with a dog that is in need of enrichment.

DR. FURLONG  33:29 
Absolutely.

PHIL   33:29 
So I have no doubt that Dr. Ellen Furlong can supply a dog to you. But also, there's plenty of shelter dogs if you don't have a dog at home. And even if you do have a dog at home, it's probably fine to do this with multiple dogs.

DR. FURLONG  33:42 
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

PHIL   33:46 
So I will have a link to how someone would get enrolled in the online dog cognition class with Dr. Ellen Furlong. I just find this fascinating and I'm so grateful that you were able to enlighten our listeners, not just on this specific study, but also this field in general. And I can't wait to have you on again. And when you get your certification definitely come back and tell us more about what it takes to get that certification and what you're doing with it. And all related fields of study.

DR. FURLONG  34:18 
Definitely, definitely. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

PHIL   34:27 
I'm Phil Hatterman and you've been listening to Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund. Thank you to Dr. Ellen Furlong for joining us today. Links to both her online credit class at Illinois Wesleyan University and community education class at Heartland Community College are linked in the description. I'm already signed up for the latter it only took a couple of minutes to create an account with the college and get registered. There are also links to the Dog Words episodes we referenced in today's interview. If you find an old episode you'd like, nbe sure to share it with your friends.

Next time on Dog Words, Brent Toellner discusses the goal of no more homeless pets and no kill shelters nationwide.

A big thank you to alternative string duo The Wires featuring cellist Sascha Groshang, and violinist Laurel Morgan Parks for playing the wonderful music you've heard on today's and previous episodes of Dog Words. Supporting The Wires supports our mission. Learn more about The Wires at TheWires.info and download their music on iTunes. Check out FiddleLife.com and learn to play fiddle and cello-fiddle online from Laurel and Sasha — even if you've never played before.

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