Developing a better working dog

From pups to adults: These service dogs go through rigorous training from a young age. Cognition studies benefit all involved – from dogs to owners to companion animal veterinarians. Photo copyright credit: Canine Companions® Copyright and Photo Credit: Canine Companions Dogs enrich our lives in many ways. Working dogs, in particular, perform various tasks to assist humans. Guide dogs, service dogs, hearing dogs, and dogs that detect seizures, cancer, drugs, or explosives are some of the canines carefully bred and trained to lend their talents to improve our lives and keep us safe. Extensive resources are invested to breed, raise, and train these dogs, but success rates from training programs are reportedly only 35-50 percent. Much attention and research is currently directed at improving this success rate to reduce expenses, decrease the waiting period for obtaining a service dog, and meet the growing demand for American-bred detection dogs. With funding from the American Kennel Club (AKC) Canine Health Foundation (CHF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the health of all dogs and their owners, investigators are exploring the temperamental traits and cognitive skills that create a successful working dog. Identifying these traits and determining when they first appear and how stable they are over time are critical to more efficient development of working dogs. About CHF With more than $62 million in funding to date, the AKC Canine Health Foundation provides grants for the highest quality canine health research and shares information on the discoveries that help prevent, treat and cure canine diseases. Veterinary professionals are integral to maintaining and optimizing the health of working dogs in their care. Due to the emotional and financial investment behind every working dog, veterinary support for research into the development of successful working dogs is also key. Temperament versus cognition Temperament is defined as an animal’s nature or behaviors that are relatively independent from learning, values, and attitudes. In contrast, cognition is the ability to assimilate information obtained from thought, experience, and the senses into knowledge and understanding. In his 2018 publication,1 CHF-funded researcher Dr. Evan MacLean describes the difference like this: We can train a dog to pick up a set of keys, but what if those keys are on the floor and partially covered by a book? What if the closest door to the room where the keys are located is closed? He notes cognitive flexibility is what allows dogs to solve these problems. Dr. MacLean started researching the cognitive skills that predict a successful working dog while completing a post-doctoral fellowship and serving as co-director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University in Durham, NC. Alongside post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Emily Bray, their research continues through the University of Arizona Canine Cognition Center. Their results show great promise in improving our understanding of working dog success. Not just semantics Temperament: An animal’s nature or behaviors that are relatively independent from learning, values, and attitudes. Cognition: The ability to assimilate information obtained from thought, experience, and the senses into knowledge and understanding. Dr. MacLean and his team explored how selecting for a more placid temperament in service dogs might affect cognitive performance (an example of the emotional-reactivity hypothesis). They compared the performance of pet dogs and service dogs on a problem-solving task (going around a clear barrier to reach the experimenter with a food reward). Using tail-wagging rate to indicate arousal, the baseline arousal of pet dogs was higher than that of service dogs. When arousal level was increased by verbal encouragement, results followed the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which states performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point (Figure 1). Service dog performance improved with increased arousal. Since pet dogs had a higher baseline level of arousal, increased arousal took them beyond the point of improved problem-solving ability and their performance worsened. These findings demonstrate selection for temperament can influence problem-solving abilities, and may inform such processes in working dog populations. From Bray, MacLean, and Hare. 2015).2 Can we predict success? Numerous studies, like the one just described, have demonstrated strong associations between various behavioral and temperamental traits and training outcomes. However, working dog breeders, trainers, and providers need a way to accurately predict the success or failure of dogs in their respective programs. Predictive tools would allow them to focus resources on a subset of dog candidates that are most likely to achieve success. In one study,1 investigators examined the accuracy of scores obtained during cognitive skills testing in predicting a dog’s ability to help humans. They completed cognitive tests designed to assess skills for reasoning about the social and physical world, as well as general cognitive processes, on service dog candidates being trained through Canine Companions in California, explosive detection dogs being trained at K2 Solutions, Inc., in North Carolina, and volunteer pet dogs from North Carolina. After identifying a subset of tasks that were associated with success as a service or detection dog, they administered these sub-tests to new groups of service and detection dogs. Results showed the service dog sub-test accurately predicted career success for the 25 percent highest scoring dogs. These dogs were more likely to engage in eye contact with the human tester when faced with an unsolvable task or when social interaction was interrupted. Since service dogs must work closely with a human partner, investigators postulate a natural tendency to seek the human face is a reasonable fundamental skill for success in this role. The successful service dogs also scored higher on inferential reasoning tasks, indicating their ability to infer the location of an object based on seeing where it was not located. Given detection dog success was not defined by any single measure, such as graduation from a service dog training school, a predictive test could not be created. However, results did show successful detection dogs (as determined by scored training records or handler surveys) scored higher on tests indicating sensitivity to human gestures and two measures of short-term memory. Investigators postulated these skills would help a detection dog work at a distance from their human handler and remember verbal commands while carrying out a complex search. In another study, investigators examined the potential of two existing tools, the Canine Behavioral Assessment & Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ) and In-For-Training test (IFT, a standardized temperament test used by Canine Companions) – both individually and in combination, to predict success as a service dog. Results, published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science,3 showed each individual test was most accurate in identifying the 20 percent of dogs least likely to succeed (defined as placement as a service dog for at least one year). The accuracy in identifying these likely unsuccessful dogs improved slightly when data from both questionnaires was combined. Investigators note these results are reasonable since CBARQ and IFT were primarily designed to identify problem behaviors. These promising results indicate behavioral and cognitive testing may be helpful to refine the pool of working dog candidates that progress through each phase of training. Of course, it will be up to each individual service or working dog organization to evaluate these new tools, and determine the acceptable risks and return on investment for their unique goals. Development of cognitive traits Additional research is looking even earlier in a dog’s life to determine when these success-predicting traits appear, how stable they are over time, and what developmental factors affect them. Dr. Bray adds, “Understanding behavior – the range of different reactions, when various skills and behaviors emerge, and how to they change over time – is important for all veterinary practitioners. Recognizing behavior that is outside of the normal range is a good red flag for medical issues during all life stages. The human-animal bond is central to our research. The bond can be strengthened by understanding an individual dog’s temperament and strengths. The fact these traits are strongly influenced by genetics has implications for theriogenologists, and dog breeders, too. There is a genetic basis to various behavioral traits – both desirable and undesirable.” Results from a study published in Animal Behavior4 demonstrate that by eight to 10 weeks of age, puppies exhibit social communicative skills, flexible thinking, and self-control, but all to lesser degrees than adult dogs. A follow-up study5 repeated testing on these same puppies at 21 months old and showed performance on the majority of tasks improved with age, especially those that involved memory, inhibitory control (the ability to defer immediate reward and make a choice that would ultimately be more productive), and reversal learning (the ability to learn a new response when a previously preferred solution was no longer available). Behaviors that were socially motivated, such as retrieving, looking toward humans, and using communicative cues, were also performed better at the older age. Tasks for which performance was relatively stable at both ages included laterality (right or left sidedness, similar to human right or left handedness) and sensory discrimination tasks (success at seeing or smelling the location of a food reward after its initial placement). Photos courtesy Canine Companions® Additional studies have highlighted the unique nature of this inter-species communication, showing dog puppies are more skilled at understanding human communicative gestures than wolf puppies,6 and even other primates.7 Early in their development and prior to any significant socialization with humans, dog puppies show a strong sensitivity to human communicative gestures, and this sensitivity is under genetic control.8 Investigators conclude dogs appear to be biologically programmed for communication with humans. This finding is pivotal to working dog development since dogs that are more skilled at understanding human gestures are more successful as detective or assistance dogs. “We now have the longitudinal data and a sufficient sample size to analyze the bigger picture as it relates to cognitive development in dogs,” Bray says. “We have definitive evidence communicative behaviors emerge early in canine development and are under genetic control. As we examine other, non-social skills, such as impulse control and memory, I think we will find the results relevant to maintaining the emotional and mental well-being of all dogs – regardless of their career as working and/or pet dogs.” Effects of early life experience As the exploration into more efficient processes for breeding and training working dogs continues, investigators are examining the effects of the dam’s temperament and maternal style and the environment during the first eight weeks of life on working dog success. Studying dogs bred, raised, and trained by The Seeing Eye, they found puppies raised with a higher level of maternal care (defined as the dam spending more time with the pups, more time nursing and grooming, and exhibiting more vigilant behavior) were slower to complete a problem-solving task and less likely to succeed in their training program.9 If maternal style can affect a cognitive skill such as problem solving, working dog organizations can refine the pool of breeding females to those whose mothering style improves the resiliency and program success of her offspring. This information will improve our ability to understand and influence the early life environment of puppies and identify and train dogs with the greatest potential for success in service work, while taking steps to understand and address the dog’s emotional health and well-being during the selection process. In addition, investigators are conducting a large-scale, longitudinal study in Canine Companions dogs, seeking to replicate and extend the findings of the previous maternal style study and continuing to track the course of cognitive development in dogs. The goal is to further characterize features of the early environment and the development of cognitive traits that predict success as an assistance dog. Types of intelligence Investigators note results from these studies support the fact individual differences in canine cognition are explained by several factors, and not likely due to a set level of general intelligence. This mirrors what has been learned in humans – there is not one single type of intelligence, rather different skills contribute to success in different situations. The practical application of this is the fact the work of a guide dog is different from that of a detection dog or a dog that works in the courtroom. We can therefore understand that different cognitive skills are needed for success in each of these roles. Conclusion An integrative approach that considers canine temperamental traits, cognitive traits, and their interactions is needed to understand working dog success. Additional research will allow us to correlate the traits of successful adult working dogs to similar traits in puppies, providing a valuable and objective way to select dogs for various working roles. These findings also have unique implications for veterinary practice and strengthening the human-animal bond. The human-animal bond will be stronger when dogs are best suited for their role as service dog, detection dog, or pet. A better understanding of canine cognition and individual characteristics will support successful pet adoptions, matching dogs to homes and families that best fit their personalities. Clients who are more bonded to their dogs are more likely to seek and follow healthcare recommendations, become more loyal to their primary care veterinary team, and provide a more fulfilling work environment for veterinarians and support staff. Ultimately, everyone wins, especially the dogs. Sharon M. Albright, DVM, CCRT, is manager of communications and veterinary outreach for the AKC Canine Health Foundation in Raleigh, NC. She graduated from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine and practiced small animal primary care medicine in the mid-Atlantic region for fifteen years. She is a Certified Canine Rehabilitation Therapist and an Elite Fear Free certified professional. Dr. Albright’s passion for golden retrievers led her to Colorado in 2015 to work on the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study before returning to the east coast for her current role at the AKC Canine Health Foundation. Dr. Albright can be contacted at Sharon.Albright@akcchf.org. References MacLean EL and Hare BA. Enhanced Selection of Assistance and Explosive Detection Dogs Using Cognitive Measures. Frontiers in Veterinary Science. 2018. 5:236. Bray EE, MacLean EL, and Hare BA. Increasing arousal enhances inhibitory control in calm but not excitable dogs. Animal Cognition. 2015. 18(6): 1317–1329. Bray, EE, Levy, KM, Kennedy, BS, et al. Predictive Models of Assistance Dog Training Outcomes Using the Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire and a Standardized Temperament Evaluation. 2019. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 6 (49). Bray, EE, Gruen, ME, Gnanadesikan, GE, et al. Cognitive characteristics of 8- to 10-week-old assistance dog puppies. Animal Behaviour. 166 (August): 193–206. Bray, EE, Gruen, ME, Gnanadesikan, GE, et al. Dog cognitive development: A longitudinal study across the first 2 years of life. Animal Cognition. October. Salomons, H, Smith, KCM, Callahan-Beckel, M, et al. Cooperative Communication with Humans Evolved to Emerge Early in Domestic Dogs. Current Biology. 2021. MacLean, EL, Herrmann, E, Suchindran, S, Hare, B (2017). Individual differences in cooperative communicative skills are more similar between dogs and humans than chimpanzees. Animal Behaviour. 126 (April): 41–51. Bray, EE, Gnanadesikan, GE, Horschler, DJ, et al. Early-emerging and highly heritable sensitivity to human communication in dogs. Current Biology. 2021. 31 (June): 1-5. Bray, EE, Sammel, MD, Cheney, DL, et al. Effects of maternal investment, temperament, and cognition on guide dog success. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (34): 9128-9133.

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Developing a better working dog

Understanding canine cognition benefits working dogs, pet dogs, and those who care for them.

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