How cool is this! Not only do dogs teach children how to be better people; they actually reduce allergies too!

Thanks to The Register for this article.

Dogs reduce allergies in kids
The benefit of mutts as pets
By Lester Haines
Published Tuesday 29th April 2008

German researchers have apparently confirmed that keeping a dog as a family pet will reduce the chance that kids will develop allergies - a finding which backs a theory that having a mutt about the house “trains the immune system to be less sensitive to potential triggers for allergies like asthma, eczema and hay fever”.

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Thanks to the L.A. Unleashed Blog for putting me onto this interesting new research at Ball State University.

New study could lead to improvement in placement of companion animals
(4/22/2008)

Pet owners often intuitively describe themselves as “cat people” or “dog people,” but a study from Ball State University confirms that success rates of animal adoptions could be greatly improved if personalities of both human and animal were better matched.

A study of dog and cat guardians found that it is the fit between owner needs and pet personality, rather than pet type, that best predicts companion animal attachment, said Lucinda Woodward, a professor of psychological sciences and personality researcher

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But remember, its not just pollutants that can damage our furbabies; things like lawn products can hurt them too. Who spends the most time rolling around on those artificially green lawns with all those weed and bug killers? Dogs and cats, of course. So while pollutants are terrible things please keep in mind that we can protect our furbabies from some things.

Meanwhile, join Eddie at his blog and the Pets for the Environment to work together against the pollution killing us all.

Thanks to the Environmental Working Group for letting me know about their recent report on taxic contamination in pets. How sad!

On the other hand, Dogster Eddie is leading the way for all dogs, cats and other pets to take a stand (or sit) for the environment. I look forward to hearing more from Pets for the Environment!

Hi Joy,

I just wanted to give you a heads-up about a report EWG is releasing today on pet body burden. We tested 60 dogs and cats for 70 different toxic chemicals and found that in many cases, pets are even more contaminated than people.

Considering rising rates of cancer in dogs and rampant hyperthyroidism in cats, we think there’s cause for concern. You can see the report at the Environmental Working group site.

We’re launching a campaign to go along with the report: Pets for the Environment — the idea is to rally pet lovers to advocate for toxic chemical reform while providing tips to help us all keep our pets healthy. We’ve got a supercute spokesdog named Eddie (who’s on dogster, of course!), and supporters can even upload their own pet photos to Eddie’s Wall of Cute.

Here’s the article:

High Levels of Toxic Industrial Chemicals Contaminate Cats And Dogs
Summary and Findings

They are trying their best to warn us.

In the first study of its kind, Environmental Working Group found that American pets are polluted with even higher levels of many of the same synthetic industrial chemicals that researchers have recently found in people, including newborns.

The results show that America’s pets are serving as involuntary sentinels of the widespread chemical contamination that scientists increasingly link to a growing array of health problems across a wide range of animals—wild, domesticated and human.

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Here’s some excellent news for dog parents with children.

Thanks to Israel21c for this article.

Dogs may help lower children’s blood pressure
By Samuel Levine
April 13, 2008

Dogs, long known as man’s best friend, may be more than just loyal companions: they may also have a positive impact on your children’s health, according to new Israeli research.

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Dogsters and Catsters know that dogs, cats and others animalshave a different yet important type of intelligence. So this National Geographic article will probably not surprize you too much. Bit it will confirm some of what you already feel and know.

Personally, I’m thrilled to see this information talked about openly by reputable publications because there are way too many people who still believe that there is nothing we can learn from dogs and other animals.

Those of you who have visited me at the science fiction conventions know I am usually on panels about how humans view and write about non-humans. A few years ago I was on a panel with a successful writer who actually has a good-selling series with aliens. But he has little interest in non-human animals on THIS planet. When i asked him why he said it was because there was nothing else we could learn from other species on Earth. I hope this writer gets a chance to read this article. There are so many excellent scientists who know better. I hope the writer and others like him can learn from these true scientific pioneers.

There is so much we can learn about and from our canine and feline symbiotes, as well as the other species with whom we share this planet.

Thanks to Michael K. (who saw the convention panel with the other writer) for barking in this article from National Geographic.

Minds of their Own
Animals are smarter than you think.
By Virginia Morell
Photograph by Vincent J. Musi

In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, a recent graduate of Harvard University, did something very bold. At a time when animals still were considered automatons, she set out to find what was on another creature’s mind by talking to it. She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language. “I thought if he learned to communicate, I could ask him questions about how he sees the world.”

When Pepperberg began her dialogue with Alex, who died last September at the age of 31, many scientists believed animals were incapable of any thought. They were simply machines, robots programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think or feel. Any pet owner would disagree. We see the love in our dogs’ eyes and know that, of course, Spot has thoughts and emotions. But such claims remain highly controversial. Gut instinct is not science, and it is all too easy to project human thoughts and feelings onto another creature. How, then, does a scientist prove that an animal is capable of thinking—that it is able to acquire information about the world and act on it?

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Thanks to AP for this article.

Abberration Splits Dog’s Left Leg in Two
AP
Posted: 2008-04-02

AVON LAKE, Ohio (April 1) - A developmental problem split Angel the dog’s leg, making her look like a five-legged pet. Veterinarian Frank Krupka, with the Avon Lake Animal Clinic in suburban Cleveland, said he’s never seen anything like it.

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Here’s part of an informative blog post from the Psychology Today blogs.

Songs to Soothe the Panicked Pooch
Posted by Cathy Malchiodi on March 31, 2008

There seems to be an increasing body of evidence that supports the view that certain music can change a bad Bowser to a more even-keeled canine. If your furry best friend is feeling a little anxious or stressed, it may be time to pop a CD into that surround sound system. But what would be best: Metallica, Beatles, or Vivaldi?

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There is one confounding factor that no one seems to be noting; the robot is a dog-form. It may be a robot but since we as humans are so visually-oriented there is not telling how much of the cheering up was caused by the fact the robot was in a form that has co-evolved with us for thousands of years.

Marketers have known for years that if you want to sell something, make it look like a dog. Check out the recent Valentine’s day promotion by Hallmark with the talking stuffed dog. And how many people have toy stuffed dogs?

If the researchers want to clarify their findings how about introducing a robot in a less friendly form? Maybe a boxon wheels?

Thanks to the Associated Press for this article.

Study Finds Dogs, Robots Cheer Elderly
By CHERYL WITTENAUER

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Dogs may have a hard time wrapping their paws around this one: Robotic competition is nipping at their heels in the man’s-best-friend department. A study by Saint Louis University found that a lovable pooch named Sparky and a robotic dog, AIBO, were about equally effective at relieving the loneliness of nursing home residents and fostering attachments.

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I’m not sure if these scientists have just never broadened their educations to the understanding that every creature is a combination of Nature AND Nurture or they are so patently greedy that they are knowingly selling undeserved hope to a grieving woman. Either way, just cloning Booger will not guarantee that he will be the help to her that she wants.

I have no doubt that Booger II will look like Booger but all the training and experience it took for Booger to be such a help to her will NOT be part of the cloning. I feel very bad for this woman but for $50,000 she could adopt another helper Pit Bull and give the rest to help train dozens of others to help more people.

Thanks to FT.com for this article.

Ground-dog day as woman pays $50,000 to clone dead pitbull
By Anna Fifield in Seoul

Published: February 16 2008

The prospect of having nine lives is no longer the sole preserve of cats.

In a happy mix of science and commerce, man’s best friend can now live again and again - if the owner is besotted and rich enough.

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Csaba Monar barked in to tell us about what looks to be a truly ground-breaking scientific conference in Budapest, Huangary this July. If I could, I’d be there for this! If You know of anyone working in any area of canine sciences, please pass this on to them.

The Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University and Department of Neurobiology and Cognition Research, University of Vienna are organizing the first Canine Science Forum 2008 conference which will be held in Budapest, between 5-9 July, next year. The website of conference is available at this link.

We strongly feel that there is a need for an interdisciplinary forum that brings together scientists with different expertise on Canines who wish to share their research interests with fellow colleagues working on closely or more distantly related fields. This forum aims to substantiate canine biology in order to develop it as a major model of biological investigations.

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