Category: Research

Farewell Lyudmilla

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Lyudmilla Trut“Deep inside my soul is a pathological love for animals.”

Lyudmila Trut

It had just been announced that geneticist Lyudmila Nicolaevna Trut died on October 9th, 2024.

She started work on Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyayev’s extraordinary longitudinal study onto the genetic basis of domestication in 1958 and kept it running throughout the vicissitudes of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when neither humans nor foxes had easy access to the basic necessities for life.

Both Belyayev and Trut were internationalists and looked outwards to fellow scientists when the official stance was of hostility both within and against the Soviet Union and Russia. Their courage and scientific rigour under very difficult circumstances not only kept the flag flying for Darwinism during the post-Stalin years when Lamarckism was advocated but helped to prove what Darwin could only have surmised at a time when the study of genetics was barely in its infancy.

Belyaev died in 1985 but Trut and her dedicated colleagues continued his work, devising experiments to support their theses and continually battling for funding, sometimes standing in the road outside the farm in Novosibirsk hailing passing cars to solicit donations. It was her article published in American Scientist that brought the work to wide attention and garnered enough practical and financial support to sustain the experiment. The experiment is now in its 66th year and continues to inform our understanding of the origin of the domestic dog and other species.

Trut said “One day I will be gone but I want my foxes to live forever.”

Now that that day has come, it is our duty to ensure that it does.

 

Bananas Or Abominable?

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Banas or abdominal Renowned behavioural scientist Clive Wynne recently wrote a book entitled Dog Is Love. It raised a few eyebrows amongst canine behaviourists, perhaps because of an earlier book by Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us. This book describes a seminal study which was the first to train dogs to tolerate an MRI scanner and which has led to further groundbreaking studies. None of those studies show “how dogs love us” as it was never the intention.

Wynne’s title however, was not mere clickbait. He in fact describes peer-reviewed research that could quite plausibly be used to conclude that dogs can  “love” humans.

Whether you attribute canine reactions to humans as “love” or not, it might have seemed that Clive Wynne would be an unlikely participant in a study that justifies using shock collars.  It’s not the first time that dogs have been electrocuted in the name of science, but now we have ethics committees that should not even countenance it. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of peer-reviewed papers that show clearly the deleterious effects of punishment used during training and the opposite effects of positive reinforcement training. Not only is the use of fear and pain-inducing methods unethical it is, in the long term, ineffective.

This is a poorly designed study that seems to have passed into publication much more quickly than is normal in the peer-review process and that has been highlighted as, at the very least, demonstrating that, not surprisingly, shocking dogs with electricity hurts. This is rightly condemned by ethical professional training bodies.

This study should be withdrawn, not only because it is unethical, but because there are serious concerns about the methodology and the validity of its conclusions. Using shock collars has real-world consequences for dogs. Shock collars often cause more problems than they are intended to solve and can result in dogs and people being injured or worse whilst doing nothing to protect wildlife and livestock.

So when will the government pull its finger out and ban shock collars in England and Wales? We might smugly designate ourselves as a “nation of animal lovers” but we are way behind where this is concerned. It is seen in some quarters as being politically more expedient to persecute people for hunting with hounds and the current incumbents at Westminster propose to ban even trail hunting.

The consultation on banning shock collars has been kicked into the long grass since 2018 in spite of the conclusion that it should be included in provision of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Had it been in place, Wynne’s study would not even have been considered.

Meanwhile, don’t shout “Banana” at your dog in the hope that he will stop chasing livestock and wildlife, get positive reinforcement training from a qualified professional and learn how to do it effectively and ethically.

 

Buck Up Britain

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Buck Up Britain Poor conformation in dogs is a major reason that canine welfare is compromised and concerns have been voiced since the 1960s.

It beggars belief that 65 years later, the situation has only got worse, with many breeds of dog suffering hugely.

The Nordic countries are leading the way in tackling resistance to better breeding and purchasing practices. In Sweden, all dogs and cat breeders must be registered and if breeding three or more litters per annum or keeping 10 or more animals must hold a permit. Permits are recorded on a national database. The code of practice covering welfare is compulsory. It is illegal to breed dogs and cats that have genetic conditions such as inherited diseases, inherited disabilities or behavioural disorders.

Breeding dogs with extreme conformation is also illegal in the Netherlands, Norway and Finland.

Research from Sweden covering show judges, breeders, vets and owners of French bulldogs, Boston terriers, pugs, and English bulldogs and Cairn terriers reveals that there is still resistance to improving conformation in dogs that have the potential to suffer from BOAS.

Significantly, all respondents except for show judges were largely in favour of banning breeding brachycephalic dogs.  Only 8.5% of the show judges involved in the study agreed with a partial or full ban. The study found that:

“The majority of show judges agreed fully or partly that it is essential to follow the breed standard even if it can be associated with health issues related to their physical appearance, while all other stakeholders mostly disagreed “.

Whilst it was mostly felt that breed standards should be based on knowledge about the relationship between health and conformity, significant numbers of participants from all categories surveyed disagreed that brachycephalia threatened dogs’ health, including 27.4% of judges of affected breeds. 59.3% of the show judges surveyed agreed, totally or partly, that it is essential to follow the breed standard, even if it is associated with health problems.

Breed standards and instructions have been altered in many kennel club to pay lip service to welfare, but the authors of the study felt that interpretations of, often vague standards, were subjective and may lead to promotion of anatomical exaggerations.

Just 57.7% of breeders of brachycephalic breeds were in favour of banning individual dogs from being bred compared to 87.5% of breeders of non-brachycephalic breeds. Nearly a third of of breeders of brachycephalic breeds disagreed that health problems related conformation posed a threat to the dogs’ health, possibly because clinical signs of distress have been normalised. 35.8% of the breeders of brachycephalic breeds disagreed with proposed improvements to welfare compared to 8.6% of the breeders of non-brachycephalic breeds. 

More worryingly, the study found that the appearance of the dog was an important factor for owners acquiring a brachycephalic dog, in spite of consequential  health concerns.

Until this is addressed, many dogs will continue to suffer and the UK is well behind in even making minimal improvements.

The Cruelty Of The “Vegan” Dog

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Professor Andrew Knight and vet Arielle Griffiths have ben on Radio 4 plugging their “vegan” dog food.

Griffiths claimed that “9% of land animals are killed” to provide dog food. This refers to a study led by Knight. Whether or not that is an accurate figure, it ignores the fact that most animal derivatives in dog food are by-products. That is to say, they are the bits that humans don’t eat. The animals would have been slaughtered anyway. If none of those by-products were used for animal feed, they would then have to be incinerated or go into landfill.

A peer-reviewed systematic review of the effects of feeding a “vegan” diet to dogs and cats is promoted on Knight and Griffith’s web site; perhaps in the hope or knowledge that most people won’t click on it or read it in full. The summary is worth quoting in some detail:

“Concerns arise due to dog and cat gut physiology which has adapted to a complete meat-based diet (cats) or largely meat-based diet (dogs). Particular concerns have been raised around deficiencies in certain amino acids such as taurine, and vitamins such as B12 (cobalamin) and B9 (folate). To date, there has been no formal assimilation of the scientific evidence on this topic, with a focus on actual health impacts of diets, as opposed to nutritional composition…We found that there has been limited scientific study on the impact of vegan diets on cat and dog health. In addition, the studies that have been conducted tended to employ small sample sizes, with study designs which are considered less reliable in evidence-based practice. Whilst there have been several survey studies with larger sample sizes, these types of studies can be subject to selection bias based on the disposition of the respondents towards alternative diets, or since answers may relate to subjective concepts such as body condition…Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended…”.
The summary does note that some studies have recorded “benefits” of such a diet but, as with raw diets, they are self-reported and, as the old saw says, the plural of anecdote is not data.
It is difficult to believe that this needs stating, but dogs are not humans and cats are not dogs. Griffiths muddied the waters, perhaps disingenuously, by babbling on about the taxonomic order Carnivora which does indeed include the Giant Panda – an obligate herbivore as well as the cat – an obligate carnivore. Dogs and humans are omnivores. Taxonomy is a notorious minefield of confusion, but this is irrelevant to the discussion. Dentition is sufficient to prove what diets dogs, humans and cats evolved to eat.
But there is more to food than basic nutrition. Cats, humans and dogs gain a great deal of pleasure from eating – for some animals, not provided by their owners with sufficient exercise and stimulation, dinnertime may be the only highlight of their day. Equally, food is used as an emotional tool by humans who are killing their cats and dogs by overfeeding.
Some humans can survive on a vegan diet, others become very ill. Plants may contain as much or more protein than red meat, but that does not mean that it is bio-available to the animal eating it. At the end of the day, only the relatively rich and the poor deliberately restrict their diets. I would argue that, as with feeding raw, foisting a faddish diet onto a companion animal is in breach of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 in not providing a suitable diet – for physical or mental health.
To quote Dickens:
“Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air”. 

CMA Vet Review

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CMA Vet review The Competition and Markets Authority is undertaking a review of the small animal veterinary practice market.

There are concerns about pricing, access to prescriptions and medications and the variety of services that are available.

In the days of Alf Wight, most vets were self-employed  and often worked out of their home, much as GPs did. They did all their own out of hours work. It certainly wasn’t as rose-tinted as Wight portrayed in his James Herriot books (for a more accurate portrayal see Gareth Steel’s Never Work With Animals, Harper Collins, London, 2022) and options open to vets were several limited. Most people also had few expectations that small animals could be helped by vets in many situations and prophylactics, if used, were primitive.

Veterinary treatment options have expanded out of all proportions and people often expect the same high standard of treatment for their companion animal as they do themselves. This has to be paid for. The difference is that, shielded by the NHS where, however poor we may perceive it to be at times we do not pay at the point of receipt of care, owners therefore rarely understand how high the costs are for the provision of that treatment.

Small animal practices have changed too. They moved out of private homes into high streets and now, even independent vets often need to have more than one practice in order to survive in a competitive market. Meanwhile, independent practices were consolidated into groups and the groups are being bought out by venture capitalists. At this end of the chain, vets have little or no control over policies, practices or prices. Just as the corner shop became the high street emporium and then the out-of-town shopping “village”, the consolidation takes the individual vet further away from the business and the clientele and ultimately leads to far less choice for the client.

That’s capitalism folks.

Fortunately we still have some checks. The CMA have 3 surveys:

For owners who have paid for veterinary services within the last 3 years

For veterinary staff

For anyone not in the above 2 categories with an interest.

The survey will be open for “up to 6 weeks” which suggests that it may close earlier if sufficient responses are received.

Deceitful Dogs

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Deceitful dog Do dogs lie? Although people often attribute dogs with far more cognitive ability than they are capable of (and far less for that matter), a new study suggests that dogs practice deception.

260 dogs were trained to find hidden food in one of two covered bowls. The dogs then learned to follow the suggestion of a person they had never met who indicated which bowl contained the food. The dogs appeared to trust the new person and, once this was established, the dogs watched as another person moved the food from the first to the second bowl. The communicators were either in the room and also witnessed the switch or were briefly absent. In both instances, the communicators then recommend the first bowl which was now empty.

Half of the dogs followed the communicator’s misleading advice if the communicator hadn’t witnessed the food switch. However roughly two-thirds of the dogs ignored the communicator who had witnessed the food switch but still recommended the empty bowl.

This is more complicated, cognitively, than it appears as it suggests that dogs have at least partial theory of mind – the ability to understand and take into account another individual’s mental state.

This is video of my late dog being distracted – did Lily know what she was doing?

Need It Like A Hole In The Head

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The UKKC lists the following defects as being a problem in the Chihuahua:

  • Incorrect dentition
  • Wry jaw
  • Retained puppy teeth
  • Misplaced teeth
  • Protruding tongue as a result of incorrect teeth
  • Missing teeth
  • Incorrect bites
  • Excessively short muzzles.

You could select any one of those and feel that the poor dog would need it like a hole in the head, but that is exactly what has been added to the litany of defects for the poor Chihuahuas: holes in the head.

Our colleagues at Pedigree Dogs Exposed have alerted us to a new paper which highlights the prevalence of persistent fontanelles – holes along the suture lines of the skull that expose the encased brain. Fontanelles are normal soft spots that enable growth and birth, but that should close between 9 and 12 weeks of age.

The failure of this process is common in small dogs, especially where breeders have deliberately created domed heads and smaller and smaller dogs. Some breeders have even made a fetish of an open fontanelle in the middle of the head (designated as a molera) and supposedly designating the “purity” of the breed.

This latest finding and earlier research by the same authors shows that as many as 90% of Chihuahuas suffer from holes in the skull: the smaller the dog, the larger the hole and the larger the amount of brain area exposed. There is also an association with syringomyelia and ventriculomegaly.

The simple solution is to breed bigger dogs without domed heads and short narrow muzzles. The difficulty is in persuading the breeders and show judges – the very people who purport to uphold the best in the breed – to agree and comply.

A Mystery Solved

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Bowl of grapes It has long been known that ingesting grapes – fresh or dried – can prove fatal for dogs but the mechanism of toxicity has hitherto remained a mystery.

Now the Veterinary Poisons Information Service has revealed evidence provided in a letter to the Journal of American Veterinary Medicine Association that suggests that the culprit may be tartaric acid. Tartaric acid is a crystalline organic acid that occurs naturally in many fruits as well as grapes, including bananas, tamarinds and citrus. Its salt, potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar), develops naturally during fermentation. When mixed with sodium bicarbonate, it is sold as baking powder and used as a leavening agent.

The authors of the letter noted that dogs showed similar signs when poisoned by cream of tartar as when poisoned by grapes or raisins. The amount of tartaric acid and potassium bitartrate in grapes varies by the type of grape, growing conditions and growth stage, but is still sufficient to cause renal failure in dogs. The variation in tartaric acid concentrations means that it is not possible to ascertain the toxic dose.

Further research is required but ingestion of grapes and raisins should always be a cause for alarm and a vet should be contacted immediately for advice.

Paws For Thought

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It is common for dogs to be refused access on the grounds of poor hygiene even when this is illegal. A survey by Guide Dogs found that 75% of assistance dog owners had been refused access to a restaurant, shop or taxi. 33% of assistance dog owners surveyed were refused entry to a minicab or taxi because the driver claimed an allergy but did not hold a valid medical exemption certificate. 20% of assistance dog owners surveyed said that a minicab or taxi arrived but the driver drove off without even speaking to them.

Owners of non-assistance dogs have experienced similar problems with access being refused unreasonably and often due to ignorance and prejudice.

So it is helpful that a new study from the Utrecht University found that 72% of dog paws were negative for Enterobacteriaceae compared to 42% of handlers’ shoe soles. They also had significantly lower bacterial counts. C. difficile, a concerning source of hospital-acquired infection, was found on the soles of one assistance dog user. 81% of the assistance dog users in the study had been denied access with their current dog once or several times for reasons of hygiene.

The study authors concluded “The general hygiene of dogs’ paws is far better than that of shoe soles…Thus, hygiene measures to reduce any contamination due to dog paws do not seem necessary.”

Can You Help The Royal Veterinary College?

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Dog for sale Sales of dogs have gone through the roof during lockdown with many owners buying on impulse with little or no research. The demand for “off the shelf” dogs means that most are inevitably bred illegally and with little or no regard to welfare.

The Royal Veterinary College are undertaking a study into “pandemic puppies”.

If you purchased a puppy in 2019 or 2020, please help the RVC researchers by completing their survey and help them to improve canine welfare.