According to a study that took over six years to complete, many of the chemicals used can raise your dog’s chances of getting CML, or canine malignant lymphoma.  The study too place at the Foster Hospital for Small Animals at Tuft’s University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, and studied all of the main stream, professionally administered chemicals in use today.

The dogs that find themselves at the top of the risk pool for CML are often dogs over 50 pounds, and were living in homes where pesticides and herbicides are used.  The study also took into account for lawn care products with insect growth regulators, which are also known as chemical killing agents.

The other type of cancer that has been linked to these chemicals is bladder cancer.  The dogs were often found to have high levels of the toxins in their urine, which has to pass through the bladder eventually.  Combine the fact that many dogs spend a good deal of time laying on the grass in the family yard all summer, with the fact that many of these toxins can be carried on the wind and into the lives of dogs whose family doesn’t use these chemicals.

The studies conducted here were only one over a six year period, which normally isn’t long enough to get a good grasp of everything that is going on.  However, all of the dogs studied had alarming amounts of toxins and chemicals in their systems.  All of this, just or a weed free lawn during the summer.  It’s something to seriously consider, because if it’s bad for them, it’s probably bad for us too.

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Ultimately, the study out of Manhattanville College in New York ended up showing no real difference in “quality of life” between those with, and those without pets.  They measured levels of happiness, positive emotions, negative emotions and major personality traits.  It turns out there is little to no difference between the two groups at all.

The only real differences found out were pet owners had a slightly higher number in the “more satisfied with life” category, and dog parents scored higher than cat parents an all measures of well-being.  So basically, dog parents are slightly happier in life than cat parents.

According to the published results,   “It’s unclear whether the lack of differences between pet owners and non-owners are due to adaptation to pet ownership or if pets do not have a strong effect on well-being.  Dog owners were happier than cat owners, which can be partially explained by personality, emotion regulation style, and need satisfaction.”

So there you have it.  Scientific proof that dog lovers are happier than cat lovers!

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Some of the tests conducted involved a specially designed touchscreen.  Not only were the older dogs able to learn the touchscreen’s functions, the senior dogs were able to show a level of logic when using it that was at a higher degree than the puppies taking the same tests.

The researchers at the Messerli Research Institute at Vetmeduni, Vienna tested the abilities of 95 border collies, also known as sheepdogs.  They ranged in age from five months to 13 years old.  This has become a very popular breed as of late, and they believe that it’s this ability to be trained that makes them so popular.

The dogs were all brought to the “Clever Dog Lab” by their humans.  The picture below gives a sample of what would come up on the touchscreen for the dogs.  The first part of the test had the dogs try to correctly select four positive abstract pictures from a total of eight on the touchscreen.  When they would select a picture with a positive association, they were rewarded with a treat or a bit of food.  If the dogs selected the wrong picture, they would get a short time out, and no treats were given out.

After all was said and one, the researchers were quite surprised by the results.  One of the study authors, Lisa Wallis said “Older dogs required more trials than younger ones before they were able to solve the task correctly.  The test also showed that older dogs are less flexible in their way of thinking than younger ones.  As in people, older dogs find it more difficult to change old habits or what they have learned.”

Well, so much for the old adage “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks!”  You actually can, it just takes a little longer.

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As dog lovers, we all already know how emotionally perceptive our dogs are.  Their happiness is amplified by ours, and they are always ready to lick our tears away.  But now there is science to demonstrate that dogs are the only other animal known to be able to recognize human emotions.

Dogs have been humans’ companions for over 10,000 years, so they’ve had plenty of time to get to know us.  Researchers have shown that dogs are able to distinguish emotions in people by using multiple senses.

Psychologists and animal behavior experts at the universities of Lincoln and Sao Paolo teamed up to see how well dogs could understand emotions and how they are displayed.  Veterinary professor Daniel Mills had 17 dogs sit in front of a screen and see images of another dog.  One image showed the dog looking happy, the other angry.

A tape was also played of a dog barking, and which face the subjects looked at was noted.  During excited barking, the dogs spent more time looking at the happy image.  When they heard growling, the dogs tuned in on the angry face.

By using both vision and hearing, the dogs were able to assess the emotional state of the dog in front of them.  A similar test was performed by showing the dogs photos of a happy/angry person, and the results were the same.

“It has been a long-standing debate whether dogs can recognize human emotions. Many dog owners report anecdotally that their pets seem highly sensitive to the moods of human family members,” Professor Mills said.

“However, there is an important difference between learning to respond appropriately to an angry voice, and recognizing a range of very different cues that go together to indicate emotional arousal in another.

“Our findings are the first to show that dogs truly recognize emotions in humans and other dogs.”

Because none of the dogs were trained to determine the moods of the individuals they were seeing on screen, this study suggests that their ability to combine such cues is inborn.

“Previous studies have indicated that dogs can differentiate between human emotions from cues such as facial expressions, but this is not the same as emotional recognition,” explained psychologist Kun Guo.

“Our study shows that dogs have the ability to integrate two different sources of sensory information into a coherent perception of emotion in both humans and dogs.

“To do so requires a system of internal categorization of emotional states.

“This cognitive ability has until now only been evidenced in primates and the capacity to do this across species only seen in humans.”

Emotional contagion, a basic building block of empathy, is when an individual spontaneously shares an emotion with another. Another recent study just proved that this exists in dogs, causing them – like humans and other primates – to mimic one another’s facial expressions.

“If you live in a group and you share with companions many interests and goals, you must understand his or her emotional state, and the only way to do that is to ‘read’ his or her behavior and facial and body expressions,” said lead author Elisabetta Palagi.

Some oblivious humans could learn a lesson from dogs.

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A study was conducted on wolves and their behavior in relation to each other as a pack.  What was found that the key to the wolves’ success in the wild has something to do with them having a built in tolerance that’s higher than seen with domesticated dogs.

According to lead author of the published report, Friederike Range, “Wolves cooperate more in terms of breeding, defending territories and probably hunting.  Dogs are scavengers.”

Initially, the researchers were of the mindset that domestication had bred a higher tolerance in dogs.  This made it seem like dogs were a better social partner for man.  This new study rethinks that concept.

It’s now believed that wolves most likely already had the social skills.  It really came down to a matter of losing their fear early man.  Once the fear issue was eliminated, dogs became the obvious choice to aid in the survival early man.

The study also found another key difference between dogs and wolves.  With a wolf pack, the higher ranking wolves seem to allow the lower ranking a bit more leeway when it comes to matters of hunting for food and territory.

Range said, “This means that in the wolves, the higher-ranking partners were more tolerant of the lower-ranking ones.  In the dogs, the lower-ranking ones did not dare to challenge the higher-ranking partners.”

The pack mentality with wolves compared to dogs is also a completely different dynamic.  When you have a “dog pack,” you’ll have multiple males and females, and they are commonly not blood relatives.

With wolves it’s very different.  There’s usually an alpha male and female with dogs.  They are together with their offspring for a longer period.  This makes for more of a family like atmosphere with wolves.

It would seem that for every similarity there is between wolves and dogs, there are an almost an equal number of differences.  But no matter what , dogs really do make awesome pets and social partners.  dogs are called “man’s best friend” for a for a lot of very good reasons.

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