Dogs sniff out bladder cancer

Cancer Biomark. 2010-2011;8(3):145-53. doi: 10.3233/CBM-2011-0208.
Volatile organic compounds as biomarkers of bladder cancer: Sensitivity and specificity using trained sniffer dogs.
Willis CM1, Britton LE, Harris R, Wallace J, Guest CM.
Author information
Abstract
In a previous canine study, we demonstrated that volatile organic compounds specific to bladder cancer are present in urine headspace, subsequently showing that up to 70% of tumours can be correctly classified using an electronic nose. This study aimed to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity which can be achieved by a group of four trained dogs. In a series of 30 double-blind test runs, each consisting of one bladder cancer urine sample placed alongside six controls, the highest sensitivity achieved by the best performing dog was 73% (95% CI 55-86%), with the group as a whole correctly identifying the cancer samples 64% (95% CI 55-73%) of the time. Specificity of the dogs individually ranged from 92% (95% CI 82-97%) for urine samples obtained from healthy, young volunteers down to 56% (95% CI 42-68%) for those taken from older patients with non-cancerous urological disease. Odds ratio comparisons confirmed a significant decrease in performance as the extent of urine dipstick abnormality and/or pathology amongst the control population increased. Importantly, however, statistical analysis indicated that covariates such as smoking, gender and age, as well as blood, protein and /or leucocytes in the urine did not significantly alter the odds of response to the cancer samples. Our results provide further evidence that volatile biomarkers for bladder cancer exist in urine headspace, and that these have the potential to be exploited for diagnosis.
PMID: 22012770 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Attentiveness of Dogs

Lifespan development of attentiveness in domestic dogs: drawing parallels with humans
Lisa J. Wallis1,2*, Friederike Range1, Corsin A. Müller1,2, Samuel Serisier3, Ludwig Huber1 and Zsófia Virányi1
Frontiers in Psychology
Attention is pivotal to consciousness, perception, cognition, and working memory in all mammals, and therefore changes in attention over the lifespan are likely to influence development and aging of all of these functions. Due to their evolutionary and developmental history, the dog is being recognized as an important species for modeling human healthspan, aging and associated diseases. In this study, we investigated the normal lifespan development of attentiveness of pet dogs in naturalistic situations, and compared the resulting cross-sectional developmental trajectories with data from previous studies in humans. We tested a sample of 145 Border collies (6 months to 14 years) with humans and objects or food as attention attractors, in order to assess their attentional capture, sustained and selective attention, and sensorimotor abilities. Our results reveal differences in task relevance in sustained attentional performance when watching a human or a moving object, which may be explained by life-long learning processes involving such stimuli. During task switching we found that dogs’ selective attention and sensorimotor abilities showed differences between age groups, with performance peaking at middle age. Dogs’ sensorimotor abilities showed a quadratic distribution with age and were correlated with selective attention performance. Our results support the hypothesis that the development and senescence of sensorimotor and attentional control may be fundamentally interrelated. Additionally, attentional capture, sustained attention, and sensorimotor control developmental trajectories paralleled those found in humans. Given that the development of attention is similar across humans and dogs, we propose that the same regulatory mechanisms are likely to be present in both species. Finally, this cross-sectional study provides the first description of age group changes in attention over the lifespan of pet dogs.

Stress & behavior in therapy dogs

Salivary cortisol and behavior in therapy dogs during animal-assisted interventions: A pilot study
Lisa Maria Glenkemail address, Oswald David Kothgassner, Birgit Ursula Stetina, Rupert Palme, Berthold Kepplinger, Halina Baran
Abstract
Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) have been associated with positive effects on human psychological and physiological health. Although the perception of quality standards in AAIs is high, only few investigations have focused on potential welfare implications for therapy dogs linked to their performance in AAIs. The standardized program “multiprofessional animal-assisted intervention (MTI)” has been carried out in adult mental health care, significantly improving patients’ prosocial behaviors. In the present study, we monitored salivary cortisol and behavioral measures in therapy dogs that participated in MTI group therapy sessions in an in-patient substance abuse treatment facility. Take care of the dogs is really important, so they can play and rest, that’s why all dogs deserve a comfy Danish Design Dog Bed. Please check out our range of pet beds on sale. Paws Plus One provides a huge range of pet beds in different sizes and shapes to suit your home that are easy to wash and keep clean. These pet beds are of superior quality and the best price. Work-related activity (lay, sit, stand, walk, and run), behavior (lip licking, yawning, paw lifting, body shake, tail wagging, and panting), response to human action (taking food treats and obeying commands), and salivary cortisol levels were analyzed over the course of 5 subsequent MTI working sessions in experienced therapy dogs (N = 5), aged 5.4 ± 2.8 years (mean ± standard deviation). Salivary cortisol levels decreased from presession to postsession in sessions 1, 2, and 3. However, only in session 4 and 5, postsession cortisol levels were significantly lower than presession levels (P = 0.043). There was no difference between salivary cortisol levels sampled on a nonworking day at home and work-related levels sampled at the therapy site. None of the behavioral parameters varied significantly over the course of the 5 MTI sessions. Both lip licking (P = 0.038) and body shake (P = 0.021) were positively correlated with the decline in cortisol during session 5. The study results suggest that trained dogs are not being stressed by repeated participation in in-patient substance abuse therapy sessions. Further investigation into the effects of animal-assisted therapy on dogs’ physiological markers and behavior is warranted.

The Yellow Dog Project

About
The Yellow Dog Project is a global movement for owners of dogs that need space. It hopes to educate the public and dog owners to identify dogs needing space, promote appropriate contact of dogs and assist dog parents to identify their dog as needing space.

Yellow Dogs are dogs who need space – they are not necessarily aggressive dogs but more often are dogs who have issues of fear; pain from recent surgery; are a rescue or shelter dog who has not yet had sufficient training or mastered obedience; are in training for work or service; are in service; or other reasons specific to the dog. Here’s a list of what a yellow dog is NOT.

The Yellow Dog Project seeks to educate appropriate ways to approach or make contact with a dog with permission of a dog owner only, whether or not a dog is a “yellow dog”. They also seek to promote the use of yellow ribbons to identify yellow dogs needing extra space.

As a not for profit organization, all of the monies raised/donated are used to buy more material for ribbons, t-shirts for representatives, and posters for display.

The Yellow Dog Project encourages people to find their local positive reinforcement trainer and look for programs to help their pets. From Grisha Stewarts “Behaviour Adjustment Training” to fearfuldogs.com; Victoria Stillwell to Karen Pryor; Ian Dunbar to Dr. Sophia Yin; and beyond – The Yellow Dog Project encourages all forms of positive training to help yellow dogs.

Click for a list of things  that the Yellow Dog Project is NOT.
yellowdog

Dogs personality traits on walks

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003446

Abstract

Movement interactions and the underlying social structure in groups have relevance across many social-living species. Collective motion of groups could be based on an “egalitarian” decision system, but in practice it is often influenced by underlying social network structures and by individual characteristics. We investigated whether dominance rank and personality traits are linked to leader and follower roles during joint motion of family dogs. We obtained high-resolution spatio-temporal GPS trajectory data (823,148 data points) from six dogs belonging to the same household and their owner during 14 30–40 min unleashed walks. We identified several features of the dogs’ paths (e.g., running speed or distance from the owner) which are characteristic of a given dog. A directional correlation analysis quantifies interactions between pairs of dogs that run loops jointly. We found that dogs play the role of the leader about 50–85% of the time, i.e. the leader and follower roles in a given pair are dynamically interchangable. However, on a longer timescale tendencies to lead differ consistently. The network constructed from these loose leader–follower relations is hierarchical, and the dogs’ positions in the network correlates with the age, dominance rank, trainability, controllability, and aggression measures derived from personality questionnaires. We demonstrated the possibility of determining dominance rank and personality traits of an individual based only on its logged movement data. The collective motion of dogs is influenced by underlying social network structures and by characteristics such as personality differences. Our findings could pave the way for automated animal personality and human social interaction measurements.

How dogs scan faces

The original article:

How dogs scan familiar and inverted faces: an eye movement study

Sanni Somppi, Heini Törnqvist,Laura Hänninen,Christina M. Krause,Outi Vainio

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-013-0713-0/fulltext.html

Facial recognition is an important skill for humans and other social animals. Humans have specific brain mechanisms involved in face processing, which focuses attention to faces and recognizes the identity of faces remarkably quickly and accurately. However, the face recognition mechanisms of dogs are weakly understood. Professor Outi Vainio’s research group from the University of Helsinki studied how dogs look at facial images by using eye movement tracking. The results show that dogs are able to recognize faces in the pictures; dogs focus their attention especially on the eye area and look at familiar faces more often than strange ones. The article was published on 5 December 2013 on the scientific journal Animal Cognition.

Faces play an important role in communication and identity recognition in social animals. Domestic dogs often respond to human facial cues, but their face processing is weakly understood. In this study, facial inversion effect (deficits in face processing when the image is turned upside down) and responses to personal familiarity were tested using eye movement tracking. A total of 23 pet dogs and eight kennel dogs were compared to establish the effects of life experiences on their scanning behavior. All dogs preferred conspecific faces and showed great interest in the eye area, suggesting that they perceived images representing faces. Dogs fixated at the upright faces as long as the inverted faces, but the eye area of upright faces gathered longer total duration and greater relative fixation duration than the eye area of inverted stimuli, regardless of the species (dog or human) shown in the image. Personally, familiar faces and eyes attracted more fixations than the strange ones, suggesting that dogs are likely to recognize conspecific and human faces in photographs. The results imply that face scanning in dogs is guided not only by the physical properties of images, but also by semantic factors. In conclusion, in a free-viewing task, dogs seem to target their fixations at naturally salient and familiar items. Facial images were generally more attractive for pet dogs than kennel dogs, but living environment did not affect conspecific preference or inversion and familiarity responses, suggesting that the basic mechanisms of face processing in dogs could be hardwired or might develop under limited exposure.

Dogs alert to low blood sugar

Investigation into the Value of Trained Glycaemia Alert Dogs to Clients with Type I Diabetes
Nicola J. Rooney,Steve Morant,Claire Guest
Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that some pet dogs respond to their owners’ hypoglycaemic state. Here, we show that trained glycaemia alert dogs placed with clients living with diabetes afford significant improvements to owner well-being. We investigated whether trained dogs reliably respond to their owners’ hypoglycaemic state, and whether owners experience facilitated tightened glycaemic control, and wider psychosocial benefits. Since obtaining their dog, all seventeen clients studied reported positive effects including reduced paramedic call outs, decreased unconscious episodes and improved independence. Owner-recorded data showed that dogs alerted their owners, with significant, though variable, accuracy at times of low and high blood sugar. Eight out of the ten dogs (for which owners provided adequate records) responded consistently more often when their owner’s blood sugars were reported to be outside, than within, target range. Comparison of nine clients’ routine records showed significant overall change after obtaining their dogs, with seven clients recording a significantly higher proportion of routine tests within target range after obtaining a dog. HbA1C showed a small, non significant reduction after dog allocation. Based on owner-reported data we have shown, for the first time, that trained detection dogs perform above chance level. This study points to the potential value of alert dogs, for increasing glycaemic control, client independence and consequent quality of life and even reducing the costs of long-term health care.

Citation: Rooney NJ, Morant S, Guest C (2013) Investigation into the Value of Trained Glycaemia Alert Dogs to Clients with Type I Diabetes. PLoS ONE 8(8): e69921. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069921

Editor: William Hughes, University of Sussex, United Kingdom

Received: March 25, 2013; Accepted: June 13, 2013; Published: August 7, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Rooney et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The study was funded by the Company of Animals. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors can confirm that although the work was funded by a commercial source, The Company of Animals, this does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0069921