White Mountain College for Pets - Blog
The Animal Mind in Human Terms
Posted by Mike on February 3, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | 
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Baby gorilla pictured ‘relaxing’ in human-like pose: “It’s a hard life for some but not for this baby gorilla pictured relaxing in a
human-like pose resting in the sun.”
Posted by Mike on February 1, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Cats manipulate their owners with a cry embedded in a purr [Not Exactly Rocket Science]:While dogs can often be taught new tricks, cat-owners will be all too aware that it can be very difficult to persuade them to do something they don’t want to do. Eddie Izzard summed it up best in his legendary Pavlov’s cat sketch, where felines are quite capable of outfoxing (outcatting?) eminent Welsh-Russian psychologists. Real cats may be less devious, but only just - new research suggests that they are very skilled at getting their human owners to do their bidding.
When they want food, domestic cats will often purr in a strangely plaintive way that their owners find difficult to ignore. By analysing the structure of these calls, Karen McComb from the University of Sussex has found out why. On the surface, the ’solicitation purrs’ are based on the same low-pitched sounds that contented moggies make, but embedded within them is a high-pitched signal that sounds like a cry or a meow. It’s this hidden signal that makes the purr of a hungry cat so irresistible to humans.
McComb has a long history of research into animal communication and she has studied the calls of African elephants, red deer, lions and macaques. But it was her own cat, Pepo (pictured above), who provided the inspiration for this study.
‘He consistently woke me up in the mornings with very insistent purring,’ she said.”I wondered why this purring sounded so annoying and was so difficult to ignore.’ Talking with other cat owners, I found that some of them also had cats who showed strikingly similar behaviour.’ As I was an academic who actually worked on vocal communication [in mammals], I had the right background, tools and collaborators to tackle this question directly.’
Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…“
(Via ScienceBlogs: Life Science.)
Posted by Mike on under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Now that you have determined the object you would like your dog to locate, we can begin to teach the dog to discriminate the scent of your specific object. For this tutorial, we will use a small stick that has been “primed” with a couple drops of vanilla scent. Remember that you don’t have to use a stick, but can use any object you desire. I recommend “priming” the object with a specific scent, if it doesn’t have one naturally. Over time we will decrease the amount of “priming” scent that we apply, but that will be addressed in a later tutorial.
Begin with the stick in your hand and the dog nearby. Hold out the stick and soon as the dog’s nose touches the stick ( which should happen rather quickly, to investigate the new object ), mark the moment with a “good!” or a clicker click ( if the dog is clicker trained ), and offer a small piece of food reward. Retract the stick and move a few feet away. Repeat the exercise in this manner five more times.
By this point, your dog is likely associating that touching the stick earns both praise and treat. Work on this a few times each day, then watch for part three of this tutorial.
Questions during the process? Please don’t hesitate to comment or send a message!
At the end of this tutorial series, we will be accepting video of your dog’s progress to be posted in our video section and possibly included in one of our online lessons.
Posted by Mike on January 29, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Annoyed by your dog’s nose being “velcro’d” to the ground? Why not harness his desire to sniff with a scent game or two…
It is a cold winter here in the Northeast and many of us heat with wood. Kindling ( the small bits of wood used to start/renew a fire ) supplies start to dwindle as the season wears on. You and your dog walk past oodles of twigs and fallen deadwood on your walks; why not teach him to scent out and retrieve those sticks and twigs? If firewood isn’t your thing, this skill can easily be transferred to locating money, kids, antlers….the list is endless.
The first step is to determine what it is you would like your dog to locate. Every other day or so I’ll post instructions on the next steps.
Posted by Mike on January 26, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
New Hampshire Moves to Make Antifreeze Less Dangerous to Pets (and Children)
Several years ago a California state legislator made news with a gimmick. He invited school children in his Bay Area district to enter a contest through his office. Each entrant would draft a desired state law. The winning entry would be submitted to the state legislature for a vote.
When I first heard of the contest I thought it was silly. But the winning entry was brilliant. It required that antifreeze sold in California be made to taste bitter. The bill was submitted to the legislature, where it passed. Later it was signed into law.
The result has been a dramatic decrease in antifreeze toxicity in pets (and, I imagine, children) in California.
Antifreeze contains a compound called ethylene glycol. This chemical has a sweet odor and taste. It is attractive to pets and children.
When it is consumed, ethylene glycol initially causes the poisoned individual to feel drunk. However, the body metabolizes the chemical into products that clog the kidneys and lead to kidney failure. Ethylene glycol is one of the most toxic chemicals in common use.
Several other states now have laws similar to California’s. These include Virginia, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, Tennessee, and Maine.
And, if the New Hampshire House of Representatives gets its way, that state will be next to join the list.
That, of course, is good news. But I have to wonder why this simple, common sense proposal is spreading slowly state-by-state rather than through federal action.
Posted by Mike on December 5, 2009 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Ecographica: Prehistoric Guinea Pigs from Egypt: ”
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Posted by Mike on November 13, 2009 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Critics Challenge ‘Dog Whisperer’ Methods
JonBee jumps up at Cesar Millan, his sharp teeth snapping repeatedly. Millan calmly yanks on the leash and pulls the wolf-like Korean Jindo away. This continues for over a minute, with Millan’s face remaining undisturbed and JonBee’s owners gasping on the other side of the living room. Finally, the dog shows a moment of weakness. Millan quickly pins him to the floor and rolls him onto his side. Millan’s calmness seems to be reflected in the dog now lying frozen in submission.
Every Friday night, troubled American dogs undergo a seemingly miraculous transformation on nati”
Posted by Mike on November 11, 2009 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
A Surprising Look at Rats - CBS Sunday Morning - CBS News: “”
Posted by Mike on October 26, 2009 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Two Beans, one dollar and a homeless guy: “
It was the sort of scene I can’t walk past: A muttly looking dog, a white-bearded homeless guy and a handmade cardboard sign offering: ‘Dog Tricks 1$.’
On the sidewalk along Franklin Street — the main drag in Chapel Hill — Mark Williams, after offering me some room on his bench, said he and his dog, Two Beans, have been homeless for about a year. ‘Work’s kind of slow now’ in the construction /handyman/odd jobs field, he explained.
The dog trick — Two Beans knows only one — helps rake in enough money for meals.
I’d gone to Chapel Hill for a meeting of the Board of Advisers of the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, an esteemed panel on which I still serve, despite having left my most recent newspaper job a year ago, and despite – other than doing some revisions on the book I left the business to write, and writing this website — being unemployed.
Twice a year at UNC, members of the board gather to hear what the school is up to in terms of research, fund-raising and curriculum changes, which are coming pretty fast and furious nowadays as the industry, facing declining profits, continues to try to pull new tricks out of its hat, or in some cases get a whole new hat.
This meeting was a special one because it’s the journalism school’s 100 birthday — a benchmark the university’s basketball program also hit this year. That’s pretty old, but there are older journalism schools, I learned during the festivities, such as the highly respected one at the University of Missouri, which was the nation’s first.
Getting ready to pick up my dog Ace (who I’d dropped off for a bath during the meeting) and leave town, I was walking down Franklin Street. Doing that always triggers memories of my days as a student. Thirty-four years ago, I was getting ready to graduate with my degree in journalism, and I was sending job applications to newspapers across the country. I used the seventy-some rejection letters I got then to wallpaper my room.
It dawned on me that, today, I’m in sort of the same situation – job hunting, getting a few rejections, and much more often getting no response at all. At least in the good old days they sent you a form letter. Today, many companies often don’t even bother to acknowledge receipt of your application. While students are still finding jobs, the journalism job market — like journalism — seems tighter, shallower and meaner than ever.
So bleak, in fact, that when I saw Mark Williams’ sign, I ever so briefly considered getting my own piece of cardboard, picking up my dog and setting up shop on the next bench down, offering higher-priced, upscale dog tricks (the Starbucks approach) for $5 to cover gas for my trip home.
Two Beans’ trick requires a dollar bill. Having only a $10, I asked Williams if that would work. He pocketed the ten dollar bill and pulled from his other pocket a crumpled one dollar bill. ‘Now go back in that alley and hide it somewhere, and Two Beans will find it.’
I wedged the bill behind a drainpipe, about waist high, and sure enough, Two Beans, when I called, came around the corner sniffed around, pulled it out, and brought it dutfifully to his master.
Williams got the dog from a friend, shortly before he began a stretch of life on the streets. He named him Two Beans, he said, because the dog — a golden retriever-Rhodesian ridgeback mix, he suspects — is not neutered. Williams said police don’t give him any trouble about his street business. ‘They’d rather me do this than just be panhandling like these other guys,’ he said.
In addition to providing some income — as much as $70 a day when there’s a home football game – Two Beans makes life on the streets ‘a little less miserable,’ Williams said. He said teaching Two Beans the trick cost him $3, because the dog ate the first three dollar bills
As we sat and talked, Williams, originally from Greenville, N.C., revealed that he once wrote a book about dog training. It was only 20 pages and, so it wouldn’t cost him much to mail it out, weighed only an ounce. ‘It was basically plagiarized, and not very good.’ He took out an ad in the National Enquirer, offering the mini-book for sale for $3. He says he only sold two copies, one to a customer in Virginia Beach, another to a customer in Acapulco — making him, he joked, an ‘international author.’
When he learned I was a former newspaper reporter, Williams revealed that his family was in journalism as well: His grandfather, Walter Williams, founded the journalism school at the University of Missouri.
‘That’s the nation’s first journalism school,’ I said.
‘Yup,’ he answered.
Coincidentally, I’d also recently applied for a job there, in my continuing quest to sniff out writing/teaching/multi-media positions. I received an emailed rejection, one of at least a dozen so far.
I don’t print out my emailed rejections. They don’t have the cool logos on them that I once found decorative enough to serve as wall art. I think I also take them a little more personally, now that I have experience and credentials. So I won’t be using them as wallpaper — either the kind you put on your wall, or the kind on your computer.
Instead, I’ll keep plugging along, like Williams, and waiting for the better times I keep hearing are ahead.
Until then … dog trick, anyone?
“
(Via ohmidog!.)
Posted by Mike on October 13, 2009 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Sick American dogs get first shot at cancer drugs: “Pet dogs that develop cancer can now receive experimental anti-cancer drugs before they become available for humans
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(Via New Scientist - Online News.)
