Day 9: Are Small Breed Dogs Genetically Predisposed To Fearfulness?

This weekend is dedicated to watching the SPARCS conference. Of course not everything is interesting to me, but I try to listen to as many presentations as I can because sometimes you find hidden gems in most unlikely places. Like James Serpell’s presentation on C-BARQ.

C-BARQ is an online questionnaire that was developed as a tool of measuring dog behavior problems. You can go over to http://vetapps.vet.upenn.edu/cbarq/organization-signup.cfm, answer a bunch of questions about your dog and get a score on his fear/aggressiveness/etc. It will also show you how these scores compare to other dogs of same breed and your data will be entered in their database. They say it currently contains data for more than 25,000 pet dogs and 22,000 guide/service dogs. So… a lot.

Now this is all interesting, but I have filled Ruby’s C-BARQ questionnaire two years ago so this was old news to me. James started with explanation about how it was developed and why they think it’s valid and reliable (yawn), so I went to the kitchen to bake some muffins instead. Then something attracted my attention. You see, with such huge numbers of participants you can get some interesting information about how breeds of dogs differ. He only showed the 30 most popular breeds in USA so unfortunately there is no information on whippets, but the statistics are fascinating nevertheless.

Keeping in mind that he only showed the 30 most popular breeds in USA, the breeds most likely to exhibit stranger-directed fear were: Chihuahua, Dachshund, Dachshund (Miniature), Maltese, Poodle (Toy, but not Miniature or Standard), Shetland Sheepdog, Yorkshire Terrier

The breeds least likely to exhibit stranger-related fear: Golden Retriever, Rottweiler, Siberian Husky

The breeds most likely to exhibit dog-directed fear were almost the same as for stranger-directed fear: Beagle, Chihuahua, Dachshund, Dachshund (Miniature), Maltese, Poodle (Toy, a bit less Miniature, but not Standard), Shih Tzu, Yorkshire Terrier

Did you notice that all these breeds are small? Look at the graph above, there are plenty of big breeds up there… But obviously not all small breeds tend to be fearful, some stay well below that red line.

For nonsocial fear: Beagle, Chihuahua, Dachshund, Dachshund (Miniature), Maltese, Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Poodle (Toy), Sheltie Sheepdog, Shih Tzu, Yorkshire Terrier

For stranger-direction aggression: Chihuahua, Dachshund, Dachshund (Miniature), Maltese, Miniature Schnauzer, Poodle (Toy)

The statistics also show that stranger-direction aggression and stranger-related fear are correlated, which isn’t too surprising since fear can be a powerful motivator behind aggression.

The relationship between body size and fear looked very interesting as well, though it is clearly not a straightforward one. The lighter the dog, the more fearful they tend to be:

(Mostly) same breeds and (mostly) small also scored higher than average on owner-directed aggression and attachment/attention seeking. Serpell states several possible reasons for this, some of which are related to how owners treat small dogs. But interestingly King Charles Spaniel and the Havanese don’t show these anxiety-related traits despite their size, so he postulates that these behavioral differences could reflect genetic/physiological correlates of selection for small body size.

Interestingly there are some studies actually showing that miniature poodles have significantly lower serum levels of Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF1) (Eigenmann et al., 1984; Guler et al., 1989). In another study German shorthaired pointers were selected deliberately for nervousness/fearfulness and the more fearful they were the lower their IGF1 levels were (Uhde et al, 1992). Molecular geneticists have even found gene pairs associated with the IGF1 gene that are present in toy or miniature dog breeds, but are absent in wolves and very rare among large dog breeds (Sutter et al., 2007; Grey et al., 2010). He says that this doesn’t prove that low IGF1 levels cause those behaviors, but some connection is there.

I think we wrongly assume that we can select for dog’s outward appearance when breeding and the behavior will remain the same. The Poodle tells a clear story: Standard poodle being less fearful and aggressive then his Mini and Toy counterparts. This is the same breed! And it doesn’t end with selecting for size, either. The English Cocker Spaniel Rage Syndrome has been found to vary greatly by the coat color, with solid colored dogs being more affected than parti-colored. The English Springer Spaniel also suffers from Rage Syndrome. Wikipedia says “In English Springer Spaniels, the appearance of rage syndrome has been traced back to a winner at the Westminster Kennel Club show who went on to become a top stud.” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_syndrome)

You probably know where this is going. We cannot afford to breed dogs solely on the quality of their looks. There is so much more that goes into a good companion – physical health, mental health, ability to do the task it was originally created to do. I hope the world wakes up before it’s too late.

Day 7: Rally Obedience Training Notes

I’ll get to Rally obedience in a minute, but first I need to alert you to another source of excellent (and free!) information on dog training: the SPARCS conference this weekend. They offer completely free live video streaming. I missed it last year; I don’t intend to miss it this time! The themes are:

Friday: Aggression and Conflict

Saturday: Temperament and Personality

Sunday: Science in Training

Here’s what I think we need to train according to the weaknesses exposed by Sunday’s Rally Obedience class:

• Get a reliable and pretty much error-free performance of all RO I exercises when I don’t have food in my hands and I don’t have the treat pouch on. Ruby is pretty forgiving of training without the treat pouch (in agility this is the sign that the real fun is about to begin!), but before I try to improve performance of several exercises without a treat pouch I first need to be sure that he can do them well in isolation.
  • First with treats coming from my pockets
  • Then mixing with rewarding from a food bowl
  • Try it in different environments

• Which brings me to the question of when will I reward. I don’t like to always reward after the exercise is finished because I think Ruby will learn the patterns of exercises (example of an exercise: heeling, recall to front, sit, go around me into heel position, get a cookie) and the intermediate behaviors will loose their value because he will know for a fact that he only gets a cookie after going around me. This is a behavior chain so one could also argue that every next cue will reinforce the behavior before it and therefore there is no need to reward variably. I don’t know…  I’m sure there is excellent information out there about whether always rewarding at the end will hurt the chain, I just need to do some research.
• Keep heeling with eye contact even when there is food on the ground (on the first pass!)
• For myself: remember to say Sit after recall, not Down! 🙂
• It would be nice to find a way to straighten his downs when there is a bowl of food present. I played around with a platform in the living room and of course that’s no issue. But even on the ground it won’t be a problem at home I think… Only at the club. No idea there yet.
• Also his recall could be straighter 😉 Need to refresh recalling by a bowl of food!

• Sending him around my back while there is a tempting bowl to my right.

• Maybe teach him to walk toward me without jumping up 😉 Not really a priority right now as I don’t think that exercise is a part of RO I

And a video of the second part of RO for those who didn’t get tired of it last time (same course, 2nd try):

Notes to self:

• Keep rewarding from the hand until there is a really good behavior to reward. Use send to bowl as a jackpot, not as a random reward.

• Engage him for the whole session just as if he would be a highly distractible dog. It breeds excitement and focus which breeds speed.

A short update on Java: she is having short walks on leash and light tricks training at home, making sure we are not unduly stressing her wrist. I am currently gathering veterinary opinions on how to proceed. I expect we will know more about her mysterious swelling in a week or two and then we will also decide how to treat it.