Average dog smart as a two-year-old

from canada.com

Canine researcher Stanley Coren says dogs have the ability to sniff out and solve complex problems and are more like humans and other higher primates than previously thought.

In fact, Coren, a University of British Columbia psychologist, said the average dog has a “basic” ability to do arithmetic. But that’s not new to veteran Ontario dog breeder John Mitchell.

“There’s an old saying: If you don’t think a dog can count just put two cookies in your pocket then give him one and see what happens,” said Mitchell.

But Coren, who gave a talk — How dogs think– Saturday at the American Psychological Association’s convention in Toronto, said: “You’re not going to turn them into an accountant, but they know that one plus one equals two.”

Coren noted there seems to be two extremes in the way people think about dogs.

“There are a whole lot of people who think of dogs as being just people in fur coats and others who think they are biological robots with no consciousness at all,” he said.

Based on a review of numerous studies and several behavioral measures, Coren said a dog’s mental abilities are close to that of a human child age two to 2.5 years.

Coren said there are different types of dog intelligence: instinctive, what a dog is bred to do; adaptive intelligence, what a dog has learned for itself and obedience, what dogs can learn to do.

When it comes to communication, Coren said, dogs understand 165 words, signs and signals and “super dogs” — or those in the top 20 per cent of intelligence — can learn 250 words.

Coren said dogs have been “designed” to pick up bits and pieces of information to a much better extent than previously thought and more so than people tend to recognize.

“Dogs are the masters of body language and picking up gestures and slight signals,” Coren said. “If you come home and you’ve just broken up with your lover and the dog immediately starts acting very solicitously and you haven’t said anything to the dog, what the dog is doing is reading your body language.”

Mitchell said it all boils down to effective communication.

“The fundamentals of basic communication is listening,” said Mitchell, who lives in Campbellville, Ont. — just west of Toronto — and raises Labrador retrievers and Nova Scotia duck tollings. “Dogs can do that without a word being said and that creates a strong bond.”

Coren even said dogs during play are capable of deliberately trying to deceive other people and dogs.

“They’ll stand in front of you and wait until you reach for the ball and then dash away with it,” Coren explained. “If you don’t fall for that, they might drop it out of their mouth and wait for you to reach for it before grabbing it and dashing away.”

Heart Marked Puppy

This lovable chihuahua puppy was born, like its brother, with a perfect heart-shaped marking on its back.

The three-day-old pup “Love-kun” has the same parents as its two-year-old brother “Heart-Kun”, who also made headlines after its birth in Japan.

The new pup arrived in a litter of four others, none of which had the distinctive heart marking.

Both dogs were photographed together at a pet shop in Odate, northern Japan.

Dog back with owners 9 years on

Associated Press
Nine years after vanishing from outside her Australian family’s home, Muffy the dog was found alive and well this month in another backyard — 1,200 miles away — officials said today.

Inspectors with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were investigating a possible animal cruelty case at a home in the southern city of Melbourne two weeks ago when they found the fluffy white mutt sleeping outside on a scrap of cardboard, Victoria state RSPCA spokesman Tim Pilgrim said.

A microchip in Muffy’s neck identified her owners, and, after a few days of searching for a current phone number, officials tracked down Natalie Lampard, who hadn’t seen Muffy since the pooch disappeared from her backyard in the eastern city of Brisbane nine years ago.

The owners of the Melbourne house where Muffy was discovered said they found the dog about a year ago wandering along a street, Pilgrim said. But where had Muffy spent the previous eight years? And how did she get all the way to Melbourne — about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) from Brisbane?

“Nobody knows,” Pilgrim said. “The mystery continues for old Muffy.”

Michelle Obama: White House Dog Coming Soon!

from people.com

The whole world, it seems, wants to know: What kind of dog are the Obamas getting and, for goodness sake, when?

Speaking to PEOPLE at the White House recently, Michelle Obama leaned in and confided: “You’re getting some scoops here.”

So, when? In April, Mrs. Obama says – after she and the President take daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, on a vacation for spring break.

Here’s a sample of a typical family conversation on the matter: “So Sasha says, ‘April 1st.’ I said, ‘April.’ She says, ‘April 1st.’ It’s, like, April!,” Mrs. Obama recalls. “Got to do it after spring break. You can’t get a new dog and then go away for a week.”

And what kind of dog will soon be frolicking on the South Lawn? Mrs. Obama says she thinks she is going to look for a rescue Portuguese Water dog who is “old enough” and a “match” for the family dynamic.

“Temperamentally they’re supposed to be pretty good,” she says of the breed that Sen. Ted Kennedy has also lobbied for (he has two Water dogs of his own). “From the size perspective, they’re sort of middle of the road – it’s not small, but it’s not a huge dog. And the folks that we know who own them have raved about them. So that’s where we’re leaning.”

The Name Game
The only thing still up in the air is the name. And Mom’s not feeling it with some of the names her girls have come up with.

“Oh, the names are really bad. I don’t even want to mention it, because there are names floating around and they’re bad,” Mrs. Obama says with a laugh. “You listen and you go – like, I think, Frank was one of them. Frank! Moose was another one of them. Moose. I said, well, what if the dog isn’t a moose? Moose. I’m like, no, come on, let’s work with the names a little bit.”

Asked if she can believe the public interest in her family dog search, Mrs. Obama shakes her head. “Okay, that’s surprising,” she says. “One of the things I didn’t anticipate is the level of the excitement about the dog. I knew my kids were excited. They’ve been excited for years. They’ve even calmed down, because they feel like, ‘They said we’re going to get one, so let’s just shut up about it.’ ”

Diplomatically, and careful not to insult enthusiastic dog-lovers, she adds: “It’s all great and gracious attention. People are just being as helpful as you can imagine. So I know that we will find the perfect breed. And we’ll find people who are caring folks who will help us find the dog of our dreams.”

Dalmatian gives a birth to 18 puppies

From Scotsman news:
A Dalmatian belonging to a family in Leicestershire has given birth to a rare litter of 18 puppies - just more than a year after it produced 16.
Three-year-old Button gave birth by Caesarian section on December 23, stunning her owners Nicola and Adam Morley and their three sons.

Mrs Morley, from Melton Mowbray, said: “It was a big shock. They are all doing well but we’re only going to keep one of the puppies.

“It’s a lot of work looking after them all.”

The family had not yet named the puppy they intended to keep, she added.
The couple told the Leicester Mercury that they and their older son, Michael, 17, were working on a 24-hour rota helping the exhausted mother feed and tend to its giant litter.

Dog and Fox Trapped

BBC News, December 26th 2008

Jack Russell dog and fox trapped in water pipe

Firefighters have been trying to rescue a Jack Russell dog and a fox trapped inside an underground water pipe, which is is about 10 inches wide.

The animals became trapped in a pipe located in Queens Park South Drive, Charminster in Bournemouth, on Boxing Day evening.

Dorset Fire and Rescue crews were using a swan catcher and chimney rods to try to free the animals.

Specialist animal rescue crews from Poole are also in attendance.

It is not yet known how they became trapped.

Worlds Smallest Dog

Not even a match for a pop can in size, Heaven Sent Brandy is the world’s smallest dog — in length, that is. But we don’t care how this little gem made her claim to fame, the diminutive Chihuahua is just too cute not to cover.

The pint-sized pooch — a mere 6 inches (15.2 centimeters) in length from tail to nose — was awarded the record for world’s smallest dog in length by Guinness World Records on January 31 2005. Weighing only 2 pounds, Brandy still holds on to her crown, as she hasn’t grown a fraction since she won her title nearly 3 years ago.

With legs the size of lollipops, the 4 year old canine’s lungs are so small she can’t even bark.

Dogs can feel jealous

Scientists have discovered a jealous side to dogs, something that’s only been seen before in animals like monkeys and apes.

Tests were carried out in Austria using pairs of dogs and their owners.

Both dogs would be given a reward of food if they held out their paw for their owner to shake.

But if one dog got a reward, and the other didn’t, the dog without food would become unhappy and distressed, and soon stop doing the task.

In another experiment the dogs were separated and did the tasks on their own. When this happened the dogs continued to shake their owner’s hand for much longer, even when they didn’t get any reward.

Scientist say this shows that when the dogs are together, they can spot when they are being treated unequally.

This kind of behaviour, where one animal gets frustrated with what is happening with the other, has only been seen before in primates.

Scientists say this may due to the dog’s close relationship with humans.