We had another successful session at When Hounds Fly last Sunday. We worked with 6 dogs on a couple of our tasks -- from Lola the pug (see photo below) to Asher the Alaskan Malamute, who was probably the largest dog we have tested so far. Speaking of size, a paper just came out by Sarah Marshall-Pescini and colleagues, which investigates the effect of dog size and breed on problem solving ability -- definitely one for the 'must read' list. Whether different breeds perform differently in our tasks is definitely one of the most common questions I get asked by dog owners, but so far we haven't tested enough individuals of any particular breed to be able to answer that question (our policy so far has been anyone and everyone is welcome to participate). My intuition is that rather than being breed-related, performance may be influenced by factors including food motivation and type of training.
From L - R: Amanda, Sam, Emma (with Lola) and Julia. Thanks to Rebecca Thomas for the photo and tweet!
We were also delighted to have Verena Schleich -- a dog trainer at When Hounds Fly -- participate with her lovely doberman Athena. Verena is really interested in animal cognition, so it was great to chat with her about what we are doing. She wrote a blog post about her experience and we're hopefully going to chat more in the near future.
I'm currently in Charlotte, North Carolina awaiting a connecting flight to the Conference on Comparative Cognition in Florida so looking forward to hearing about lots of hot-off-the-press research!