What wil we find next?

 I found this one pretty interesting.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W9W-51J17KJ-1&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2011&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1626092643&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b25fc0616d2f09e2611156702843293d&searchtype=a

This is interesting. I believe that one of our listees is researching along these lines.  I would love to see where we will be in 20 years with this

I just might try and nudge her to give us a response...

 Rereading your OP, PO, I am struck by how it speaks to Hume's skeptical claim that we cannot know for certain what causes an effect.  You can always find an intermediate agent between the two (this is just the reverse problem of the age old infinite  regress of trying to state a first cause of everything).  Whitehead saw nature as an interconnected network of all things, much like the butterfly wings causing a hurricane.  Whitehead famously states "Seek simplicity, and distrust it."

I ordered Panksepp from the library.

Tangential to this, a friend of mine was pursuing his PhD in physics and his thesis was chaos theory as applied to Poincare's three-body problem. And the mathematical study of chaos shows that there are patterns within the chaos. That, in some ways, the universe is finite in outcomes, though the scale of things is orders of magnitude beyond our understanding and measurements.

The butterfly thing is, I think, an early attempt at understanding chaos. Then again, is there really chaos and we cannot contemplate it so we ascribe a narrative to it to make us feel safer?

Bad ron, bad ron ...

TheMilkyWay

I found this one pretty interesting.

That's good! Because I'm doing my PhD on cognitive bias in dogs. It is very interesting. I am not sure how useful it will be. Possibly phenomenally useful, possibly slightly useful. Mendl's group did a study they published late last year on dogs with separation-related distress having a negative cognitive bias. I have a sneaking suspicion completely unfounded in any kind of fact or data that there are a lot of stressed dogs out there in the western world. My feeling is that we ought to be breeding dogs that aren't so prone to it. There's this bouncy little mop of a dog we see at the park sometimes that has no fear with my big, boisterous dogs. He gets bowled over by Kivi and just bounces back on his feet and keeps running. When I asked his owner about him she told me he was a rescue dog and had been terrified of other dogs and people when she got him. She didn't do much, just kept bringing him to the dog park. What a remarkably resilient little dog! Why aren't we trying to work out how to breed more of them?

I think that there is some work to be done with setting arousal and emotional conditioning. I am truly amazed at what our Thundershirt does to Erik. It is fascinating. I have been interested to discover the profound effect bringing arousal down at the start of the day can have. I have also been interested to see how many problem behaviours disappear when arousal is lowered. Why aren't we paying more attention to this? I guess we are a little with the introduction of Thundershirts and Calming Caps and tryptophan supplements, but I don't think we entirely understand the far-reaching benefits to be had.

As far as one-shot learning goes, I think we can use this to our advantage in creating a positive surprise. Several animal trainers know about this. If animals are surprised by a reward, they learn it straight off and it lasts. But as Ken Ramirez pointed out, it can go the other way as well. He recounted a training session he had with some monkeys who were not used to his exuberant training style and took to the trees at the first marker and wouldn't come down for anyone for several days.

Burl

I am struck by how it speaks to Hume's skeptical claim that we cannot know for certain what causes an effect.  You can always find an intermediate agent between the two (this is the infinite  regress of stating a first cause of everything in reverse). 

Yes, it is still a perplexing question.Obviously reserachers can tell us what the approximate anatomy is and explain the process of the "affect of an Affect.". Yes and understanding this process is key to many new discoveries...

I am glad you are getting Panksepp. It is a good book. You might want to try this source www.fishpond.com.au

corvus

I have a sneaking suspicion completely unfounded in any kind of fact or data that there are a lot of stressed dogs out there in the western world. My feeling is that we ought to be breeding dogs that aren't so prone to it. There's this bouncy little mop of a dog we see at the park sometimes that has no fear with my big, boisterous dogs. He gets bowled over by Kivi and just bounces back on his feet and keeps running. When I asked his owner about him she told me he was a rescue dog and had been terrified of other dogs and people when she got him. She didn't do much, just kept bringing him to the dog park. What a remarkably resilient little dog! Why aren't we trying to work out how to breed more of them?

I think that we have had a huge shift in living styles, and the dog breeds haven't kept up. I often re tell how my older dog Cadbury grew up, how it ws entirely ok for him to have a large part of his play needs met at the local park. How he could roam the neighbourhood. Today he would be unmmaneagable.

Personally, i have a belief that many of our popular dogs just don't cut it for low exercise, low stimulation environments which is what humans have become over the last 20 yeas.. For a working dog, I prefer a dog that is pretty go go, but for pet dogs they are a handful. Having said that it is good to be able to dial the arousal level. There are ways to do this, and many of them are counter intuitive. I like the idea of the thundershirts amd the dietary supplements.

I think we under rate the benifts of habituation for dogs that don't have a legacy of anxiety. It is amazing how exposure changes the repsonse of these dogs. But first we have to breed the lower level of anxiety. To get that we probably need to teach humans to be less anxious around their dogs too.I have noticed this of late, that anxious dog nearly aways means anxious owner. Even after dealing with a class full of realtively aware people, so many of them give their anxiety away with stiff body movements etc. I think that one of the things that happens is that there are sort of panic absolutes in even R+ circles. The fear that we may not be setting the dog up for success (actually who cares? If we make a mistake we get to drop the criterea) , and this overwhelming stressful obsession with anxiety and stress.

Getting the dose right for this one shot reward is interesting. Luci is easy, Sam more difficult. It would be good to codify it better..

I could also say some pretty true things about show dogs, but i won't.  :)

Excellent point, Poodle. For the most part, we don't work our dogs per what their breed was bred for. And an excellent working dog can be a problematic pet, at times. Our next door neighbor has a hound mix named Gracie. She is half Shadow's size and speed but she can scale and get out of a 9 foot tall wooden fence, though she won't attempt chain link. Anyway, as a hunting dog, that is a perfect asset. She can get over any obstacle in pursuit of prey.

corvus

TheMilkyWay

I found this one pretty interesting.

 

That's good! Because I'm doing my PhD on cognitive bias in dogs. It is very interesting. I am not sure how useful it will be. Possibly phenomenally useful, possibly slightly useful. Mendl's group did a study they published late last year on dogs with separation-related distress having a negative cognitive bias. I have a sneaking suspicion completely unfounded in any kind of fact or data that there are a lot of stressed dogs out there in the western world. My feeling is that we ought to be breeding dogs that aren't so prone to it. There's this bouncy little mop of a dog we see at the park sometimes that has no fear with my big, boisterous dogs. He gets bowled over by Kivi and just bounces back on his feet and keeps running. When I asked his owner about him she told me he was a rescue dog and had been terrified of other dogs and people when she got him. She didn't do much, just kept bringing him to the dog park. What a remarkably resilient little dog! Why aren't we trying to work out how to breed more of them?

I think that there is some work to be done with setting arousal and emotional conditioning. I am truly amazed at what our Thundershirt does to Erik. It is fascinating. I have been interested to discover the profound effect bringing arousal down at the start of the day can have. I have also been interested to see how many problem behaviours disappear when arousal is lowered. Why aren't we paying more attention to this? I guess we are a little with the introduction of Thundershirts and Calming Caps and tryptophan supplements, but I don't think we entirely understand the far-reaching benefits to be had.

As far as one-shot learning goes, I think we can use this to our advantage in creating a positive surprise. Several animal trainers know about this. If animals are surprised by a reward, they learn it straight off and it lasts. But as Ken Ramirez pointed out, it can go the other way as well. He recounted a training session he had with some monkeys who were not used to his exuberant training style and took to the trees at the first marker and wouldn't come down for anyone for several days.

As the owner of a dog that exhibits "one trial learning" with frightening regularity, I can identify with Ken Ramirez' point;-)  As to the breeding for temperament, I think one reason we don't do it is that breeders are interested in preserving some other characteristic that may be incompatible with docility.  For example, the show lines of Aussies are generally more docile than the working lines, because they've been bred for conformation and performance, but many of them aren't herdy enough to satisfy someone who wants them to keep their cattle in line, or win a WTCH.  The stock dog breeder doesn't care as much if a little dog has a beautiful white collar or is exactly straight legged - but does care "can the dog work stock and remain healthy enough to do it for a while"?  The more white on a dog, the more docile, generally speaking.  But, if you notice, many of the working dogs have less white.  Just an observation.

spiritdogs

For example, the show lines of Aussies are generally more docile than the working lines, because they've been bred for conformation and performance, but many of them aren't herdy enough to satisfy someone who wants them to keep their cattle in line, or win a WTCH.  The stock dog breeder doesn't care as much if a little dog has a beautiful white collar or is exactly straight legged - but does care "can the dog work stock and remain healthy enough to do it for a while"? 

Yes,  i will push this point of reactivity, suitability and working a little further. This is entirely a point of view, no data !!! I think that world wide, many dog organisations missed the boat by estranging rather than hopping in and helping to type and get people involved with the designer dog revolution. Really it is only a mimic of the breed evolution that lead to pedigree dog organisations in the first place!

So what is the market after? Well here there are three popular xbreeds, Maltese Shi Tzu xs, Labradoodles, and anything with a poodle in it.

Personally i don't like all three, but we need to understanding why these dogs are popular and what we can do to make the situation better and get the breeding and husbandry humane. 

The  Maltese Shi Tzu x is popular because it is fluffy, low exercise requirements, and doesn't run very fast. The contra is that a fair number stil have evil temperamants and at least a fair dose of undershot jaws. They are sadly often puppy farm bred :(

Labradoodles were supposed to have hypoallergenic coat properties and supposed to combine the best properties of the Labrador and Poodle. This x breed was started and popularised accidentally by the guide dog organisation in this city, and no they do not use them!

As a x breed for pet owners,they were meant to be a low reactive, intelligent biddable dog. They can be low reactive. The type continues to be uncertain, and they carry both breeds "bad genes". But here is the gimmy, i have yet to see a x breeding where i would have been interested in either parent.

The last is anything with a poodles in it. The good work that many poodle breeders have done is sort of turned against them. Certainly if you wanted a mini poodle in this city you are going to get the fourth degree and anything suspicious is checked out with other breeders and owners. The network is pretty good! But the quantity of poodles bred doesn't meet demand, and many people do not know how to access the breeders.

So here the xbreeds hop in with ads and dogs. So what do you do? They charge more for their dogs than pedigree poodles charge for pet quality dogs.

So will we get better pet dogs? Well since we aren't selecting for them no. But if we started seriously breeding for them we might. We need to change our organisations if we want to include these people and bred for these charecteristics. So we need to develop temperament tests as well as our conformation tests. Poodles here do have a slighty sublte temperamant test, they have to show in a very "up" state otherwise they are excused. Any tail down stuff and they are gone. This may not be what pet people are after...

Personally i am interested in two specialist xs. GSP/ Lab cross used as a SAR dog in Scotland better agility, slighty more stroppy than a lab.

Cocker Spaniel/ Lab xs. Seems to be a very good SAR dog. Easier to handle, not as heavy as a lab, got tons of grunt, more suitable as we age i guess...

We have some complicated genetic problems with our dogs. We know that we have lost a lot of genetic diversity and we will need to outcross to get some of it back. So when do we start?

ron2

nd the mathematical study of chaos shows that there are patterns within the chaos. That, in some ways, the universe is finite in outcomes, though the scale of things is orders of magnitude beyond our understanding and measurements.

The butterfly thing is, I think, an early attempt at understanding chaos. Then again, is there really chaos and we cannot contemplate it so we ascribe a narrative to it to make us feel safer?

Bad ron, bad ron ...

 

Actualy, just because there are patterns doesn't exclude randomness. The idea of chaos is that for many equations that describe physcial parameters happen to be highly sensitive. So small changes in inputs give huge changes in outputs. Some are useful.

So as you say if there are a finite amount of patterns albeit a large number, then we still can have a random number of patterns.

There are a couple of tricks to play on dog trainers though. And they use this fact that " there are a finite amount of patterns albeit a large number " a bit. so lets break down a heeling exercise so that the dog has to do a random number of steps before it gets a reward. There is nearly no hope in hell BTW that a handler can do this very well. There are schemes like doubling  until it breaks but that is ahrdly random ..

So we work out a minimum number of steps and a maximum number of steps, and then take a random combination of every permation possible. We can calculate the possible permutations quite easily, the maths even looks quite simple.   We can then sort it all out... and nearly every trainer i know will "adjust it" as it doesn't feel random.

Another is with Scent Discrimination. Most Judges hardly do random combos  for this, so you could cut it down. You can do the same thing. But again, nearlay every trainer i have seen will adjust it to make it more random!!

I can always make the mathematica software available if you want to try it out. It is fun. 

I actually randomise the placement of the seekback article to some extent otherwise it does become patterned to the dog and can seem to lose skills.

Nominally, some have said that mixed breeds are healthier for longer because the mix has stopped close sanguinity breeding in a line that may have had problems. BS. As said before, mixed breeds can also carry all the "bad" genes from both breeds. But purebreeds can have problems, too. Now, given enough time and countless sacrificed generations, a line of breeding can lead to a singular mtDNA in that line but is the sacrifice worth it? Or even plausible? For there can be malformities that are not life threatening but problematic and will stay within that line. And, for mixed breeds, the problematic genes are only stopped in that first litter. Subsequent litters will allow the recessives to pop up, again. That's the way genetics is. And while mtDNA comes from the dam, the dog is actually built by the recombination of nDNA which is a reshuffling of the genetic deck, so to speak, at the moment of each conception, including multiple births, such as in a litter. That's why pups from the same litter can look different. And human siblings a few years apart can look similar or different. It depends on how the nDNA recombined at each moment of conception.

Left alone, dogs would breed without notions of "breed purity." It is only man that enforces "pure" breeding. There is no perfect line. The best one can do is check the litters of two parents several generations back in their lines to see how often a problem comes up to make a calculated risk that the problems won't show up in this generation.

We may have significant knowledge of the canid genome but that doesn't mean that we can control it. Nor, maybe, should we, even if we could do so. The market value of a dog is based on people's ideas of breed value. A few good reasons for not breeding Shadow and having him neutered. There's not a big market for Siberian Husky / Lab mixes. The hunters I have known want purebreed Labs, even with their predominance to Hip Dysplasia and tumors.

Some sled pullers only want Sibes or Alaskan Huskies (which came from mixed breeding with a specific purpose just as tightly enforced as any pure breeding. In fact, the greatest breed snobbery I have suffered was from owners of Alaskan Huskies, which has not been a recognized breed but a type of dog) in spite of the fact that a Sibe/Lab has most of the speed of a Sibe and the strength of a Malamute at less weight. (Shadow weighs a smidge more than a male Sibe.)

Also, there is no way to guarantee the factors that will make it into the litter, even if I had generations of data going back 30 years.

And, just as importantly, there is no reason to breed another litter, intentionally or accidently, that will wind up in shelters and unwanted.

But Shadow is a good dog. He doesn't bite. He would rather shoo you one way or another if he doesn't know you. He lets Jade, our cat, groom him. He likes small dogs more than he likes big dogs. (Maybe he thinks he's a cat.) He can do some great tracking on his own but his temperment and metabolism and some of his physiology is Sibe. But, at 7.5 years old, he has a benign fatty cyst that comes and goes. That comes from the Lab heritage. No HD, at present that I can detect, though it would have shown up around 2 or 3 years old if it was a problem.

But he does like to pull hard and run fast so I guess some traits can assume dominance over others.