Lisa is joined by Clive Wynne, Ph.D, who talks about his book, Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You. CLIVE D.L. WYNNE, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University. Previously, he was founding director of the Canine Cognition and Behavior Laboratory at the University of Florida, the first lab of its kind in the United States. A native of the United Kingdom, Wynne has lived and worked in Germany and Australia as well as the United States and gives frequent talks to audiences around the world. The author of several academic books and of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that count among the most highly cited studies on dog psychology, he has also published pieces in Psychology Today, New Scientist, and the New York Times, and has appeared in several television documentaries about dog science on National Geographic Explorer, PBS, and the BBC. He lives in Tempe, Arizona.
Lisa and Clive discuss some of the scientific studies which prove that dogs love us.
Lisa is joined by Clive Wynne, Ph.D, who talks about his book, Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You. CLIVE D.L. WYNNE, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University. Previously, he was founding director of the Canine Cognition and Behavior Laboratory at the University of Florida, the first lab of its kind in the United States. A native of the United Kingdom, Wynne has lived and worked in Germany and Australia as well as the United States and gives frequent talks to audiences around the world. The author of several academic books and of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that count among the most highly cited studies on dog psychology, he has also published pieces in Psychology Today, New Scientist, and the New York Times, and has appeared in several television documentaries about dog science on National Geographic Explorer, PBS, and the BBC. He lives in Tempe, Arizona.
Lisa and Clive discuss some of the scientific studies which prove that dogs love us.
49:40
Owner: Lisa Davis
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
dogs , people , williams syndrome , wolves , book , human , study , human being , benji , genes , person , behavior , lives , animal , clive , home , interesting , love , question , eating
Lisa
0:00
starting on January 11, Health power we'll be posting every Tuesday instead of every Tuesday and Thursday, on Thursdays starting on the 12. You're gonna get dog eared with Lisa Davis. They write books about dogs, I interview them. So if you're a dog lover, I hope you will check it out. Tell your friends, tell your family also tell them about health power. So again, health power every Tuesday dog here with Lisa Davis every Thursday, hope you'll tune in
Lisa
0:36
If you have more than one dog, does your dog eat your other dog's poop? I'm just curious. So that's my big question. So I just read the most amazing book it is called Dog is love why and how your dog loves you it is by Dr. Clive when he's a behavioral scientist with a fascination for dogs and their wild relatives, a psychology professor who directs the canine science collaboratory at Arizona State University in Tempe, the director of research at Wolf Park in battleground Indiana and the author of dog is love. Clive or Dr. Winn. What do you prefer?
Clive
1:11
Dr. Clive, otherwise, I'd have to call you Miss Davis, wouldn't I?
Lisa
1:16
That's a good point. Welcome to "Dog-Eared Lisa Davis." I'm so excited.
Clive
1:21
Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be with you. Am I allowed to say something about that question that you first brought up about? Eating other dogs poop?
Lisa
1:29
Yes, please. I meant to ask you.
Clive
1:31
Poop eating is absolutely fascinating. And here's why Lisa. Okay, because poop eating is natural and normal and healthy. Okay, so dogs living in the wild. There's a study out of Zimbabwe in Africa, where the researchers were actually concerned about whether the dogs were eating the wildlife in a national park. And so they look at the diet of these free roaming dogs in bought in Zimbabwe. And what they find is that the dogs are getting like half of their calories from human poop. I mean, what can be more disgusting? Getting half of their calories from human poop? And the truth is, human poop has calories in it. And so why shouldn't an animal eat it? And so what's so interesting is, as you said, having a dog eating poop is one of the most disgusting things you could imagine a pet dog doing, right? You really don't want to be kissing or snuggling with a member of your household around eating poop, it's absolutely disgusting. And yet, from a from a biological behavioral point of view, it's not a behavioral problem. It's only a problem in human homes. It's not a problem, it doesn't cause any ill health effects, and so on and so on. So it's a really interesting case in point about how do we live with dogs? And how does their natural behavior and our natural behavior how do those two things interact? 95% of the time, harmoniously, so that we can love each other and we can understand each other? And 5% of the time there are these incompatibilities where we human beings say well, you've doggy you've got to stop doing that and the dogs like but this is normal for people like me, this is what most people do, you know, we boop, it's fine. So it's an absolutely fascinating insight a really opens the story up about how people and dogs live so contentedly together, 95% of the time and then as 5% where it's like, oh, presumably there are things that we're doing 5% of the time where the dogs are like human, I don't know how you can do that. You know, like, I guess I'm not exactly sure that I can think of an example of top of my head, but like eating lettuce, right? I mean, you see, you're eating lettuce, it's quite tasty. You know, even if you're not a vegetarian, you sometimes eat lettuce or cabbage or something. And you're like, Well, that looks really interesting. And then the dog tastes it and like human power. This is disgusting.
Lisa
4:03
So I always ask the guests the same question. First question, which is when did your love of dogs begin?
Clive
4:10
Well, I don't really remember I think I think I'd have to say when we got the dog of my childhood, and I was in middle school when Benji entered our lives so I don't know what age would I have been in middle school 1213 Before that, we didn't have you know, if you don't have a dog in your own family, you see other people loving dogs, but you don't really know what it's about. I guess it's the same as with children. Yeah, so that was that would be where my love of dogs could be dated from.
Lisa
4:41
So I have a Benji you had a Benji and I was gonna say you write in your book about growing up on the Isle of Wight in the 1970s and you had such a funny line in there about you know Benji just being you know, Lady Killer and while you were coming down a nerd with acne, he was just like, prowling around. Everyone's like, whoa, Benji,
Clive
5:01
yeah, I forgot not written that. Did I write a bit about how his did I write a bit about how his, his identifying tag on his collar had his name? And our phone number on it said, Hi, I'm Benji, my phone number is such and such. Did I tell the bit in the book about how we used to joke that it ought to say on the other side of titled say, Hello, darling, what's your name? Yes. The kind of kind of character he was, yeah.
Lisa
5:27
Oh, that was so funny. Well, what you do in this book that is so brilliant as you basically scientifically show us that dogs love us. Like we all know, we love our dogs. I mean, I the love for my dogs is so immense. I love dogs so much. And what was so interesting is the way that you went about it and you go through all these different studies, some of them done by yourself and another woman, a couple other women. You mentioned, some of them were done by in the late 90s, by Adam Miklos of hungry and Brian here from Georgia, but they were looking at canines being smart, and that was making them special. And you were kind of in that camp and then something changed what happened and tell us a bit more about that camp.
Clive
6:08
Sure, absolutely. So So you know, I mean, psychologists, behavioral people have been studying dogs at least since Pavlov right? Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Lisa
6:17
Familiar buzzer by the way which you share.
Clive
6:22
But dogs for various reasons got forgotten until the very end of the 20th century when in the late 1990s. Two guys, Adam McCloskey, as you said in Budapest, Hungary, and Brian hare who's now he was in Georgia, he was in Germany, he's now at Duke University in North Carolina. They kind of like rediscovered dogs. And the question that they are asking, which I think is the underlying fundamental question is what makes dogs special, right? I mean, here we are. We live in the United States, there are like 80 million dogs here, there are only a few 10s of 1000s of wolves. All of our dogs are descended from wolves, the wolves are more or less extinct, very close to extinct. Whereas dogs are everywhere, vast numbers, numbers only growing, what is the secret of dog success? And obviously, it's something about how dogs get along so well with us human beings. That's clearly some that's clearly the crux of the matter. But then the question becomes, well, what is it about how dogs relate to human beings and Brian hare and Adam McCloskey, we're convinced are convinced that dogs have special forms of intelligence, special ways of grasping what people mean, when they do different things that to Brian and Adam is the crux issue. At first, I thought that seemed quite plausible. And we did our own experiments on dogs This is getting on for 15 years ago, copying what they had done and finding similar results to what they had found. But if you want to claim that a species has some unique skills, you need to compare what it can do to what other species can do. And in the case of our dogs, if we want to make claims about what makes dogs so special, we compare what dogs can do to what their ancestors wolves can do. All of our dogs are descended from wolves and only wolves. And so the crucial comparison is dogs, to wolves. And that's where Brian and Adam and I parted our ways. Brian and Adam claimed that they tried the same kind of tests on wolves as they had previously developed for dogs. And whereas the dogs were so successful in grasping what people were up to the wolves, they said, could not understand what people were doing. We went out to wolf Park in Indiana, this is money kewdale and I, we went out to wolf Park in Indiana because the staff at Wolf Park, they have been hearing about this research and they didn't believe it. They had the feeling that the wolves that they spend their working days with at their facility that they had hand reared since these wolves were 10 day old pups really intense hand rearing procedure, they had the feeling that those wolves grasped what they were up to, to just the same degree as the dogs that they would go home to when they finished work. And so we went out there and cut a long story short, they were 100%. Right? The wolves that they have that are so beautifully reared, and the Interact you know, they spend every day of their lives with people from 10 days of age, those wolves are every bit as good at grasping what a human being is up to, as any pet dog. And so that, for me, blew out of the water the idea that dogs have some special kind of intelligence. And in the meantime, people have studied many other species or many species. The crucial thing is, if you want an animal to understand what a human being is doing, you have to bring that animal into a human home very early in life, and give it very intense contact with human beings and then it will grow up to pay attention to what people are doing. Of course it will, it needs to even even a wild type animal like a wolf, or for that matter, a lion, right? I mean, I'm not advocating for keeping lions as pets. But you know, lion tamer is a real profession, they really are lion tamers, they really do have a strong relationship with their animals. Okay. So then it becomes, it falls to me to explain if I don't think that's what makes dogs special. If I don't think it's their intelligence, then what is it? And in retrospect, it's kind of like you could say, It's too obvious and too easy. I mean, you ask people, people who have really smart dogs, and you ask them what's special about your dog, and they will refer to them intelligence, but you also meet any number of people. And I am one of these people who will freely admit that their dog is not at all smart. My poor therefore, us, you know, we still have the problem that if I go one side of the lamppost, and she goes the other side, the lamppost, we just grind to a halt. And she has no idea what to do about this. And we've been walking together now, for a decade, every twice a day for 10 years, and she still can't figure it out. And yet, there is something special about her, there is something really remarkable that jumps out at everybody who's ever thought about what dogs are like, and this goes back over over 2000 years, right? People have been writing about books for over 2000 years. And and it's their ability to form these strong, intense emotional bonds with people it's their love for us. That is their their not so secret superpower.
Lisa
11:46
Yeah, well, it's funny, because when I talk about my dogs, I talk about how loving they are first, and then I'll say blue, my pity is like insanely smart.
Clive
11:55
And as I say, people have noticed this, going back at least 2000 years, and probably I mean, 2000 years, we have written records, people who have been terrible, taking great care to bury their dogs with all the kind of ritual that they would use for their human family members. And that goes back 10,000 years or even more, I mean, really, a long way back in human history, people seem to have wanted to convey how much of a bone they felt with their dogs.
Lisa
12:27
You know, what's interesting in the book, too, is that you would learn about a certain study or test or something, and you'd say, This is good, but I need more. And you would always get more you either do it yourself, or you would do it with Erica, or you would look at what people are doing in other parts of the world. Tell us about Eric has garage study.
Clive
12:44
Oh, yeah. Well, that's one of my favorites. So I, I mean, it's all it's all good, right? All different kinds of science are good. But my personal and so in the book, you know, I talk about Gregory Burns is amazing studies where he has these altered been trained to lie perfectly still in MRI scanners, which if you've ever had an MRI scan is quite an amazing thought that dogs would keep calm and still with that crazy machine buzzing all around them. But what I like best are the simplest studies, because I think they're the most compelling. And so a question that people think about, like my mother, for example, she wanted to say, well, your dog doesn't really love you. It's just what British people call cupboard love, right? It's just love, because you're the one who provides the food. And a lot of people, if you bring this up, a lot of people will say, Well, you know, my dog likes me. But I think maybe my dog likes food better. But the everyday experience is not a well controlled test. The everyday experience is I'm here with my dog, and we're doing something and she's reacting to me. But now I go and grab some food. And she's now much more excited. And a lay person might think that that means that the dog likes the food more than the dog likes you. But that's not a well constructed study, because you're not giving the dog a choice between you versus food. You're giving the dog a situation where there's you without food, or there's you plus food. And obviously you plus food is obviously better than you with our food. I mean, I'd rather have my wife and a chocolate bar than just white, right? I mean, let's, let's be serious here. So what Erica and I developed was we thought about this, we need a situation where a dog is deprived of both their human and our foods, so they have no access to either of these things for the same length of time. And then we need to give the dog a choice, not human plus food, but human or food. And so you know what I'm telling this story to audiences overseas. I need to explain that in the American suburbs. Many homes are built with a garage that connects directly to the main living area. But of course, your listeners will be familiar with how American homes are constructed. So what we do is we have a person who are out at work all day, let's say eight hours, which I'm not in favor of, but we're doing it just for the purpose of the study, right, the dog is home alone with no food and no human company for the whole working day. And then we set up in the garage by the door that connects the garage to the main part of the house, we set up, here's a spot with a bowl of food, here's a spot with your human being on it. And then an assistant opens the door, and that the dog who heard the people come up is already waiting at the door for the door to open, is confronted, do I want to go let's say left and have food or do I want to go right and have my human being. And what you find is the very first time you do it, eight out of 10 Dogs choose that human being as if you keep doing it. So if let's say that's Monday, and then we repeat the study on Tuesday, and we repeat the study on Wednesday, gradually, the dogs learn what's going to happen when the door opens. And they realize I don't really have to choose, what I can do is I can fill my house with food, and then go and talk to my owner, while I'm digesting what I've taken. So the preference lines as the days of the week go on. But in the pure test where the dog is just confronted and has never had a chance to think about what's going on before the dogs will choose their human being eight times out of 10. Now Erica went out to a wolf Park in Indiana and did the same thing with the hand Red Wolves. And in that situation, you get the exact opposite or even in fact, even more extreme, it's something like nine out of 10 Wolves choose food in preference to the person even though this is a person that they've known probably longer than a typical pet dog knows the human being that it lives with as an adult, right? Yeah, these are wolves who've known that person since they were 10 days old, you know, they were pups with that person. And they do definitely have a relationship with that person. But it's not as powerful as the relationship that our dogs formed with us. So that's pretty, pretty cool. And anybody who's tried, you know, it's, it doesn't require an MRI scanner or any other fancy technology, a little bit of patience and cat, it's really easy to do.
Lisa
17:17
I know I should have done it, I will have to try it and then have you back on and we can talk about it. You know what I there was so many fascinating things in the book, one thing that jumped out was Williams Syndrome, which is I've never heard of, and I tend to think I do I haven't I am super gregarious, I love talking to strangers, I love to you know, go to the grocery store and just make conversation. And that you talked about this connection between the behavior of kids with Williams Syndrome and how dogs behave intuitively. And you asked this great question, Could this be the missing link the long sought clue about what makes dogs remarkable beings that they are? That was a quote. So tell us about this?
Clive
17:53
Absolutely. So Williams Syndrome is extremely rare. It's extremely rare. And it's a genetic disorder, it's actually damage to part of a chromosome. And so these people it varies a little bit from case to case. But on average, they've lost about 28 genes. And that's a lot. That's a lot of genetic material to lose. And because it involves so many different genes, it actually has a wide range of impacts on a person. They have a somewhat strange facial structure, they look a bit strange. They have no you don't look.
Lisa
18:29
No wonder
Clive
18:32
they have strange facial structure. They have problems with their heart and their circulation. They have intellectual problems. But the most the standout symptom is that they are unbelievably friendly. The medical literature calls them exceptionally gregarious and informally, people have described them to me, I've never met a person like this, but I have met some people who've known people with this syndrome. And I've heard them described as like the friendliest people at a cocktail party. So they've they have as children, it is absolutely impossible to teach them the notion of Stranger danger. They just cannot accept the idea that any harm could come from anybody, which is, in some ways a nice thing. Now. I got put onto this because a young geneticist at UCLA published a study. Her name is Bridget Vaughn hold and she was a graduate student with Bob Wayne passed on just last month. Sadly. He was one of the world's experts in the genetic code of dogs and wild canids. She was studying with him and she did this, you know, genetics to me is just magic really. Somehow she did a study where he went through the genetic material of the dog and she identified parts in the genetic code of the dog But showed signs that they had changed recently. And if recent, of course to a geneticist means in the last 10s of 1000s of years, right, not like last Tuesday, but 10s of 1000s of years in recent time. And so when she says that here are parts of the dog genetic material that have changed recently, what she means is here are the parts of the dog genetic material that are unique to dogs that are part of the journey from wolf to dog in the last 20,000 years. Right. And this paper, I could tell that this had to be important, right? I yeah, I don't know, genetics, but I knew enough to know. I read it time and time again. And I had a lot of difficulty making sense of it. But finally, I noticed that she said that there was one part of the genome of the dog that showed recent changes. And if the if that part of the genome changed and a human being, it led to this thing called Williams syndrome, and so then I look up at him syndrome, and I read that, you know, facial structure, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the interesting thing is this what as I say they call exceptional gregariousness, which is friendliness love. Okay. So then what happens is that the student who was the author of that paper, Bridget Barnhart, she meets my past student Mani kewdale at a conference and they get to talking. And Monique says, Well, how about I do some behavioral tests on dogs and wolves that look at their degree of affection and interest in people, and we send you samples that you can then extract the genetic material from, which is just a mouth swab, it doesn't hurt or anything. And so the two of them did this. And we ended up publishing together a paper where we showed that when you look at the differences in friendliness in lovingness, between hand red wolves and dogs, those can be accounted for by changes in three of the 28 genes that are involved in Williams syndrome. And independent research, using mice and lab animals and so on, has already identified that those three genes are crucially involved in friendliness, gregariousness, lovingness, so there's a connection. There's this amazing connection between dogs, and this rare syndrome in human beings. Now, when this came out, you know, you have to think, well, we many people love their dogs. And yet, it's still an insult to call a person a dog. Right? It's still I mean, obviously big is one of the most intense insults but even dog you know, you're like a dog, right? That's still an insult. So I was I was, I was uncomfortable or nervous or anxious how people with Williams Syndrome and their families would react to being told that they share a trade with dogs. Now, when the research came out, some news media wrote about it. And of course, journalists don't suffer the same inhibitions that that I do. So a journalist reached out to the president of the Williams Syndrome parent Association of America, and asked him What did he think? And he said, it makes perfect sense to me. I always thought if our children Williams Syndrome, children had tails, they'd be wagging, though. And that's obviously that's such a nice way of putting it. So there was no hint there that he was offended by having that commonality pointed out, and it's just, it's just tremendously cool to think that we've, I mean, it can't be the whole story. But that here's a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that were that were slotting some pieces together. It's really cool.
Lisa
23:45
What were some of the other pieces of the puzzle that made you go whoa, okay, dogs love us. I mean, come on.
Clive
23:51
So, I mean, I'm fundamentally a behavioral guy. I'm a behavioral psychologist, I take behavior at its at its, I believe behavior, I believe that what you do is is who you are, especially if you're a dog. So So My favorites are always and as I already said, I love simple because simple is easier to understand. So we talked about Erica's experiment with the dogs and when they come home and whether they choose the food or do they choose their person, right, I think you can just believe the evidence of your senses. When you come home and your dog is thrilled to see you. I think you can believe that your dog is thrilled to see you. I think that that is the truth. I like our experiment where we have people climb inside a box and then call out in distress. And not all the dogs. But we can talk about that if you're interested but some dogs will rescue their people from the box and all dogs are upset that their person is in the box. The problem is if you don't teach them how the box opens, more than half of the dogs we tested just aren't smart enough to figure out what needs to be done but they're all distressed, right? If you Sit down on the sofa and pretend to cry. Your dog will be concerned. Now if you're doing it that way, because our listeners are not seeing me, but I've just put I, when I pretend to cry, I usually put my hands over my face, which would make it difficult to see what my dog's doing but set up your cell phone, corner of the room. So you get a video recording of what your dog is doing. And you'll be able to see your dog is quickly very, very upset that you're upset. Yeah. So for me, as I say, as a behavioral guy behavior is what it's about. But the evidence goes way beyond behavior. You know, there's this fascinating guy in Japan, who are as well as doing behavioral studies. He also has the equipment to do hormonal studies. Yeah, that was fascinating. And so he has looked at what people call the love hormone oxytocin, which is this hormone that rises in levels when mothers interact with their babies or newly enamored couples are interacting with each other old married couples have nothing.
Lisa
26:07
Dogs.
Clive
26:11
But you know, newly enamored couples, you get this spike in oxytocin. And so he did a very simple study his group, they just had people sit down and be there with their dogs. And if the people they weren't told what they had to do, but the people who looked more into their dog's eyes, they showed higher increases in oxytocin. And the dogs also showed increases in oxytocin. So both sides of the partnership are showing these hormonal increases. That's, that's really cool. I mentioned Gregory Burns, who trained the dogs to lie still in MRI scanners. There, that means that you've got a scanner that actually produces a real time image of activity in the brain. And he did a really cute experiment where he showed the dogs a signal, that meant I'm about to give you a small piece of sausage. And he showed them a different signal of a man and your beloved human is just around the corner. And so he's able to measure how the activity and the reward centers of the dog's brain spike up when they're given a signal for a sausage or given a signal for their person. But for most of the dogs, the signal is stronger for the person than it is for the sausage. So in most cases, not all because because we know there's individual differences, but for most just as there are with human beings, but for most dogs, they're human being is a more rewarding object than a piece of sausage. And you see that in their in their brain activity. That's amazing. So many cool things going on. Now, the thing lessor is, you know, up till now, I'm talking about dogs, like they're all clones, there's only one way they can act. Right, right. I mean, people often ask me about these genes, the Williams Syndrome genes, people often ask me, do they differ between individual dogs? And the answer must surely be yes. And yet nobody has studied it yet. Right? I mean, we need to do studies, people often ask the do they differ between breeds? Well, probably. And do they differ between individuals? Well, surely. And yet, none of that has yet been studied. I mean, our lives with dogs, right? It just like our lives with other human beings there are there are particularly extrovert human beings. And there are much more introvert and withdrawn human beings. And the same is true for our dogs. So my dog is like the one of your dogs that you described, if we have a friend come to the door, or really anybody come to the door, who we greet. And it's very interesting to me that my dog, although not smart, does recognize human social interaction. So that if we talk in a calm wave, shake hands, the dog perceives that person as a friend, and this dog would certainly snuggle up to that person if they come into the living room and sit down, that seems very important to her to build these emotional connections to anybody who comes in and appears to be accepted by her human family. But we know that's not every dog. There are dogs who are intimidated, and it takes them a long time to warm up to somebody. Now, that has to be I mean, I'm just talking from first principles of biology. Would genes play a role in that? Absolutely. Genes set things in motion. But then what about individual experience, individual experience from the instant of conception, even to the point that and I described this in the book. I visited a guy here in Phoenix who's now sadly deceased, who had had his dog cloned, which is something you can do nowadays. What I'm about to tell you will make clear that it's not really worth spending your money on it is not but if you want it to you can have Your Dog clone, and I went and visited him and he had the two offspring of the cloning. But the parent animal was also still alive. So he had three dogs with him who were genetically completely identical. Now one of them was 12 years older than the other two. So it's not surprising that that older ones behavior was different. But the two, who were the offspring of the cloning, they were genetically identical to each other, they have been conceived in the same instance, in the same test tube, or however it's done. They have been carried in the same mother's womb, they have been born within moments of each other, and had never left each other's company since then. And so everything we know about their genetics and their environment, from the moment of conception have been as identical as it could possibly be. And yet, their personalities were complete your countries, one of them was super friendly and extrovert, and the other was much quieter, much more withdrawn. And so that tells you that even if you try and keep the environment constant, you can never really succeed at that task. Environments are always acting differently on to individuals, even if they're in the same space. And so yeah, everything about your life determines how your adult personality will turn out. And so we're never, you know, dogs are not robots, just like people are not robots, we're never going to be able to predict exactly how they will behave in every circumstance. Even if we knew everything about all the relevant genes, it's still going to be a very complex thing. You know, when I talk about dogs, as a, as a group, there's a risk that I'm losing that vision of the beautiful individuality of each individual. Which, yeah, which which we have to recognize it's part of the wonder, isn't it?
Lisa
31:59
Oh, it is. I mean, I feel like I do the experiment all the time, just the way my two dogs act. Again, they both go excited the person, they'll both like him. But then Benji will go and sit near them, just like he does with us. And then blue will be right on top. And there are differences in breeds. So I feel like there's the experiment right there. It's all done. It's proved. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, you had said something interesting about when the person comes to the door, you make it clear by your demeanor, right? That yeah, we always say is when someone knocks on the door, we say that's just our friend, that's just a friend. So I do that, whether it's a repair guy or a friend, and they just, you know, so or when we use, like my husband come home, they would bark, but now I say that's just daddy, that's just daddy, and then they don't bark. So isn't that interesting?
Clive
32:47
Yeah, I've not thought to try that with my dog. Partially because I've just been so interested in watching what she does spontaneously. And so I found it very interesting that she's drawn up her own rules, from her little doggy mind. And I find it interesting how those rules are pretty close to what we want, and would need her to do if we actually had to worry about the people here. So anybody and anything that stays on the sidewalk, no reaction. If an individual turns and walks the, I don't know, 20 feet to our front door, now more of a reaction is needed. And if she recognizes the footsteps, then she'll start to cry, you know, this is a some kind of a submissive behavior, some kind of friendly behavior. And if she does not recognize the footsteps, then she'll start to bark, which is some kind of an alerting reaction. And then if I opened the door, and I Speak gently and calmly to this person, she immediately stops and immediately wants to also be friends with this person. Now, I've never tried using spoken words to communicate to her what kind of thing is happening. I hadn't thought of trying that. But what I've also not tried, which would be kind of interesting, would be so supposing somebody comes to the door, a stranger and she's barking, if I was to now shout at this person, instead of greeting them calmly, and then that person came back the next day so that now their footsteps are familiar, it'd be kind of interesting to see. There was a period where I was interested to see whether she, how good she was at accurately detecting that we had parcels being delivered. And it seemed to me that she was actually doing a pretty good job. But then so I started being the scientist that I am I started keeping records on how often she detected and so on, and it turned out so I'm not sure what it's like where you live, but where we are. We have parcels delivered by FedEx, UPS, and sometimes by diesel, Amazon trucks. sometimes quite often, Amazon have parcels delivered in private cars, which are gasoline, not diesel. And what that now was that Zephyros was detecting the difference between diesel and gasoline vehicles. And any diesel powered vehicle that slowed right down near us. Not necessarily to deliver to us could be the people across the road or the neighbors, she would get very, very excited. But the gasoline driven vehicles that are quite common about half of all the Amazon parcels come in, in a private car, no reaction at all.
Lisa
35:38
Ducks are amazing. That's Wow, I love this story of how you got Zef both your wife Roz and your son Sam did the right thing. We're going to get you a birthday gift of a dog. But we're telling you, okay, don't get someone a dog otherwise, and we're going to bring you and you go to the shelter that is like for animals that have a lot of behavioral problems. And it's loud. And well, this tip is a little bit because it was such a sweet story. And I just love reading about stuff. Oh, What a sweetheart.
Clive
36:03
Oh, she is such a sweetheart. She's here now. Um, so So yeah, so we went to this shelter, which which, as you say was a sort of, I mean, this is the the law of unintended consequences that this was a no kill shelter. And, and so sadly, it, it it sort of wasn't very large. And so to some degree filled up with no hope cases, because you've got to wait out their natural lives, which is, in itself problematic. But anyway, this was a new dog who was still in the quarantine zone of the shelter. And she was a year old. And she used to do these sort of Pogo jumps. He's lost that now as he's got older. But she jumped up and she just, she just rolled over and cried. And Oxford was so sweet. So sweet. It's hard to talk about. Yeah. And so we just had to take her home and, and the feeling was that she had chosen us. And it's interesting. If you talk to many people say us ask them, Why did you select that dog, and people just have this feeling that the dog chose them. It's a very powerful feeling. You know that we've done research I forget now whether I talk about it in the book or not. But my past students, Sasha proto Popova who's now on the faculty at the University of British Columbia. She did very, very labor intensive but conceptually fairly simple studies, following people around with a video camera as they go around the animal shelter and looking at what the dogs do, and which dogs do people choose. And so one of the interesting things that she found is that if people are taking the dog out of the kennel and playing with the dog, there's so many things that dog might do, right, I thought I actually tried to discourage her from doing this study, because I thought, you're gonna make these video recordings that could go on for a long time. Nobody says you can only play with the dog for five minutes, people could be there for an hour playing with the dog, you can end up with these long video recordings. And then somebody has to go through watching these videos and coding everything the dog does, does the dog wag his tail? Does he pee on the bush? Does he do this? Does he do that. And then we want to see which of these behaviors influenced the adopters, the potential adopters to actually adopt this dog. And it could be a very thankless task, because you could spend an enormous amount of time coding these videos only to find that there are 20 different things that influence the adopter a little bit towards adopting and another 20 things influenced the dark adopter, a wave from adopting and what are you going to do with that information? Right? I mean, we list Well, it turned out that fortunately, I was completely wrong. It turns out there are any two things influence adoption, chances of all the things that dog can do, you know, pooping over here, peeing over there, being like a pogo stick, whatever, whatever. It's only two things that matter. But they actually make an enormous difference. And the first one is, when the human tries to play with the dog, whether with a ball with a Frisbee with a tug toy. When the human tries to play with the dog, the dog has to say yes, I want to play this game with you. And the difference in chance of being adopted between a dog who engages with the human in play, and a dog who knows the human is 100 fold, it's 100 times the chance of being adopted. So that's one thing that makes a difference. And the only other thing that matters is when the human is weary of playing with the dog, and the human stands still or sits down. The dog needs to rest near the human being science we use metric so we say within one meter, but that's like three foot six I think Because when it's something like that, just over three feet, when the human stops, the dog has to stop next to the human. And that has a 14 fold in two things that matter, but they actually make an enormous difference. So we didn't think at the time, but it would be kind of interesting to ask for this question, you know, is this is it? Is it? Are these the kinds of behaviors that convince people that the dog chose them? I don't actually know the answer to that. It will be interesting to ask them.
Lisa
40:33
Yeah, it is interesting. Because when we got Benji, he kind of didn't pay that much attention. But I just, I don't know, I just kind of was drawn to him anyway, you know, now it's interesting, as I'm doing these shows, where I'm like, you know, if you're gonna get a dog, let's think about what's your lifestyle with? But it seems like, some of that will go out the window, I think if you just fall in love, so you got to be correct, right? Because you want to be realistic. You don't want a bernese mountain dog if you live in a 350 square foot apartment, or maybe, I don't know, I don't know, I never beautiful dogs. But,
Clive
41:03
ya know, I'm absolutely on the same page with Lisa. Yeah, I have a lot of students at the University come and ask my opinion about what kind of dog they should get. And I asked them a little bit about their lives and usually find myself trying to talk them out of getting a dog at all. Because you know, these young people, they study hard, and then they play hard, there's not a lot of space in between, to give a dog the life that a dog needs. And then of course, you know, I'm here in Arizona, in the desert, where it's 110 every day for three months of the year. And it makes me really sad to see people with those big Alaskan malamutes and even German Shepherds, I mean, those dogs simply cannot radiate heat fast enough. And so they're stuck indoors for three or four months of the year, which I think is very cool. We don't get many street dogs here. But when you do see street dogs, feral dogs, they are very small that your hours and so on, because the smaller dogs can cope better with the heat. Yeah, by and large, you're giving your dog the best chance of a good life. If you choose a dog that's at least the right size and shape to fit into the world where you where you live. But as as we're saying, I mean, when you have that feeling that the dog is in love with you. It's fair as with humans, right? People picking the appropriate parts in life. Because they have that feeling it's hard to override it.
Lisa
42:23
That is for sure. Well, Clive, I know that one of the reasons that you wrote dog is love how and why your dog loves you, is to really be able to give our dogs even more love to say listen, yeah, they love you, you love them, what can we do to do the best for them.
Clive
42:39
So I'm gonna assume that anybody who buys a book about dogs or listens to a podcast about dogs, that they're not the kind of people who are beating their dogs with a stick or you know, any any over cruelty, you know, we're talking mainly with with people who already take their dog for regular veterinary checkups and are getting, you know, I mean, there's a lot of controversy about this, which I have no expertise in, but, you know, some kind of healthy diet for their dogs and so on. So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go back over any of that. But I think there is a form of unintentional cruelty that is very widespread in our communities, and how we live with dogs. And and that is that, you know, why, why do we love dogs? Because they love us, right? I mean, they, they lift our spirits, they lift our lives, because they bring their loving souls into our homes. And that's, that's the main thing that we use dogs for, right? I mean, I know there is for dogs, and they're a Guide Dogs for the Blind. But that's a tiny fraction of the total of the 80 million dogs in the United States, how many of them are guide dogs? For those very, very few, I mean, primarily, they're coming into our lives to lift our spirits with their loving company. But I think what people fail to fully recognize is that this is a two way street. We love dogs, because they're so loving, but they need company just like we do. And you know, we live in a world where our homes are full of these very, very intelligent devices. Like we have this, I forget what the damn thing is called this Google box in the kitchen that you can tell it, you can add things to the shopping list, and it'll you know, whether, guys, you know, a lot of people have these things. And if I'm out of the house for 810 12 hours, that box doesn't get lonely. It's just turned off. It's just you know, whatever. But our dogs really do suffer from loneliness, or they can do if we don't if we don't give them the loving company. That was the whole reason we brought them to with us in the first place. You've got to give it back. You cannot, cannot unplug your dog. Right. And you know, Sweden, there's a regulation that you're not allowed to leave your dog home alone for more than four hours at a stretch that now I don't you know, I've been living in the United States for 20 years. I know well enough that there's no point. You know, we're never gonna get there from a legal point of view. But I think each and Every one of us, who shares our love with a dog and benefits from from that loving feeling that they bring to us, we should impose that rule on ourselves. Unless, you know, I mean, heck does it ever happen that paws air force has to be left alone for eight hours? Once in a blue moon? It does, right? If If, as I say, when I'm talking to students who are asking me what kind of dog they should get, I first asked questions about well, how long do you leave the house for at a stretch? And of course, as I said, of course, they're away a lot of the time and their lives, don't. I say to them, your life doesn't presently have a dog shaped space in it, right? And there will come a time when it does. And that's the you know, that'll be something you can look forward to. But right now, you know, you've got classes from eight till whatever. And then, you know, you grab something to eat very quickly, and then you're out with your friends in the evening. And for goodness sake, if you're of that age, that you're a university student, that's how you're allowed to be right.
Lisa
46:00
Yes, exactly. Wrong with that
Clive
46:03
from it. But yeah, so So that's, that's my main, my main thrust is to try and get people to grasp that you cannot unplug your dog, and your dog will suffer. I mean, the most common behavioral complaint of dogs in the United States is what people call separation anxiety. And when you give it a label like that, it sounds like a psychological disorder. Right? But I say it's not really a disorder. It's actually an understandable reaction, not commonly and understandable reaction to untenable circumstances, you should not be putting your dog in a situation where they're lonely for many, many hours of the day. So that that's my that's my main thrust at the moment.
Lisa
46:49
Well, the book is phenomenal. You've got to get this book. I was just riveted. It is by Dr. Clive, when dog is love, why and how your dog loves you and your dog loves you. It's scientifically proven. I love it. I mean, I think we all can feel it. But I'm a big science person. So I was very excited. And one of the lines in the book I have to say that cracked me up was you were talking about how you became a professor of Animal psychology focusing on rats and pigeons. Love this you right? In retrospect, I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to realize that I need to be studying dogs, their behavior. So Rich, there are dogs that snip our cancer and contraband dogs that consult trauma survivors, and dogs that help blind people across busy city streets. And dogs and humans go way back. Indeed, there is no animal with whom people have had a longer or deeper relationship. And you dive deep into this in the book. And I just want to thank you so much. Clive, where can we find your wonderful book and any other great stuff that you're doing?
Clive
47:45
So Well, thank you, Lisa. You're very kind. So the book is on Amazon. And as they say, wherever good books are sold, it should be it's a major publisher, so it should be easy to find. And I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm, I haven't updated my web page for a long time. But, but I shall You've inspired me to update it. It's just Clive wind.com. So CLI VWY n n e.com. And yeah, I really must freshen it up.
Lisa
48:16
Yes. Well, the audio book, I read the book and listen to the audio book. The audio book is wonderful. I thought it was you it was so good. But it was another gentleman with a lovely English accent. And he did a phenomenal job. When I got to the end, it was like read by so and so I'm like, wait, oh my gosh, because it was so heartfelt.
Clive
48:36
So they offered me a choice of two or three readers and and they had sought out it turns out this is a whole business right? So there are people who do this for a living reading other people's books. And and they found two or three guys have sort of roughly my age, Englishmen who've been living in the United States for many decades and who could therefore read in something close to my voice but it is it's it's it's slightly weird and uncanny. And yes, he's quite close to my voice but he's not me. So
Lisa
49:07
fed Great choice. Really wonderful. And I encourage people to do both. It's an it's such an interesting experience. And I love listening while I walk my dogs club. You are delightful. You're always welcome here on dog eared with Lisa Davis. I had so much fun and I highly recommend the book. Me too. Thanks. So everybody please keep coming back to dog here with Lisa Davis. Check me out on tick tock Instagram and Twitter if you want to see my good boy, thanks so much for listening.