Roles for referential focus in effective and efficient canine signaling: Do pet and working dogs differ?

Effects of Changing Veterinary Handling Techniques on Canine Behaviour and Physiology Part 1: Physiological Measurements

“…Prior to enrolment, pet owners were asked to complete the WDQ—PET questionnaire ( Figure S1 ). This questionnaire has been used in dogs across contexts, and when compared with provocative tests for problematic behaviours (aggression, noise reactivity, fear, and separation anxiety) has been shown to accurately portray patterns of behaviour with a low level of false negatives and false positives [ 28 , 29 , 30 ]. The questionnaire consists of 78 questions and is broken down into six parts: demographic information, reward/reinforcement-based questions, questions about reacting to the environment, general behavioural patterns, husbandry information, and general behavioural and medical history, which included response to absences and noises, ritualistic behaviour, an aggression screen, and age-related changes.…”

Canine perspective-taking

“…Several studies have now shown that dogs are sensitive to behavioural and environmental cues that are associated with others' seeing and paying attention: (i) they steal prohibited food more often when humans are distracted, absent, close their eyes, or turn their back to the dog compared to when humans are looking at the dogs intently (Bräuer et al 2004;Call et al 2003;Kiss and Topál 2019;Kundey et al 2012;Schwab and Huber 2006); (ii) they discriminate between attentive and inattentive humans based on orientation of head, body, and visibility of the eyes while playing fetch, obeying commands, and begging for food (Gácsi et al 2004); (iii) they obey a command more promptly if the human is facing them than when the human orients into distant space, faces a second person (Virányi et al 2004) or turns her back to them (Bryant et al 2018;MacLean et al 2014); (iv) they follow the pointing gestures of a forward-facing experimenter more often than those of an experimenter whose back was turned (MacLean et al 2014); (v) they are more likely to beg or seek interaction from a cues of approach) = dogs that chose to approach the food through the opaque tunnel when the experimenter remained visible after forbidding to take the food: 52%; when the experimenter left the room after forbidding to take the food: 43%; when the experimenter encouraged the dogs to take the food: 40%. Exp.2 (concealing auditory cues of approach) = dogs that chose to approach the food through the silent tunnel when the experimenter remained visible after forbidding to take the food: 87%; when the experimenter left the room after forbidding to take the food: 53%; when the experimenter encouraged the dogs to take the food: 44% (Horowitz 2009).…”

“…Several studies have now shown that dogs are sensitive to behavioural and environmental cues that are associated with others’ seeing and paying attention: (i) they steal prohibited food more often when humans are distracted, absent, close their eyes, or turn their back to the dog compared to when humans are looking at the dogs intently (Bräuer et al 2004 ; Call et al 2003 ; Kaminski et al 2013 ; Kiss and Topál 2019 ; Kundey et al 2012 ; Schwab and Huber 2006 ); (ii) they discriminate between attentive and inattentive humans based on orientation of head, body, and visibility of the eyes while playing fetch, obeying commands, and begging for food (Gácsi et al 2004 ); (iii) they obey a command more promptly if the human is facing them than when the human orients into distant space, faces a second person (Virányi et al 2004 ) or turns her back to them (Bryant et al 2018 ; MacLean et al 2014 ); (iv) they follow the pointing gestures of a forward-facing experimenter more often than those of an experimenter whose back was turned (MacLean et al 2014 ); (v) they are more likely to beg or seek interaction from a person who can see the dog or the reward being requested than someone who cannot (Cooper et al 2003 ; Gácsi et al 2004 ; Udell et al 2011 ); (vi) they take into account humans’ field of view when communicating and interacting with us (Hare et al 1998 ; Savalli et al 2013 ); (vii) they take into account a human’s visual attentional state when communicating, by increasing communicative behaviours once eye contact is established and when the human attends to them (Kaminski et al 2017 ; Savalli et al 2016 ); (viii) they show susceptibility to an audience effect across different tasks by modulating their communicative behaviour (gaze alternation) depending on a human recipient’s attentional state (Kiss et al 2020 ; Marshall-Pescini et al 2013 ; Savalli et al 2014 ); and (ix) they are sensitive to and can manipulate conspecifics’ attentional state during play (Horowitz 2009 ). In sum, dogs recognise and react appropriately to many different cues of visual attention, have some understanding of humans’ visual field, and can make use of this information in a functional way both in cooperative (e.g., begging, obeying a command) and competitive contexts (e.g., stealing).…”

Review of epidemiological, pathological, genetic, and epigenetic factors that may contribute to the development of separation anxiety in dogs

“…Lack of information may worsen anxiety and may affect the extent to which a dog can calm itself. [54][55][56][57][58][59] Teixeira and Hall 56 evaluated whether high arousal or excited departures and greetings lead to increased frequency of separation-related behavior in newly adopted shelter dogs. They hypothesized that dogs exposed to high arousal (vs low arousal) interactions would spend more time following their owners' departure by the door through which their owners exited, be more active and vocal when left alone again, and would have increased responses to high arousal interactions over 10 interactions.…”