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February 2017 Newsletter |
If your dog has had any illnesses or ailments, you can tell us about them at any time without having to complete the rest of the questionnaire. Simply login to your dog's profile by visiting www.dogslife.ac.uk and click on the link underneath your dog's graph.
Actions or words; which command works best for dogs?
Dogslife would like your help to find out more about gastrointestinal disease!
Actions or words; which command works best for dogs?
To answer this question, researchers at the University of Naples enrolled 25 pairs of dogs and owners (15 dogs were Labrador Retrievers, and 10 were Golden Retrievers), onto a study to find out which command dogs respond to best.
The first part of the study involved each owner and dog pair being asked into an empty room where the owner gave their dog four verbal commands: ‘sit’, ‘stay’, ‘lie down’ and ‘come’. The owner then gave their dog the same commands using hand signals alone, so they did not use their voice at all. The results of this part of the study showed that overall, dogs - especially female dogs - responded better to hand signals, as opposed to verbal commands, and male dogs faired better than female dogs when it came to responding to voice commands.
The next part of the study entailed owners giving their dogs differing verbal commands and hand signs at the same time. For example, the owner would ask their dog to sit whilst motioning for their dog to lie down. In the majority of cases, dogs responded to their owners’ hand signals, not their voice command. The study therefore concluded that gestures were more effective than verbal instructions when communicating with dogs. The only scenario in which dogs responded better to their owner’s voice, was when their owner signalled for them to ‘stay’, but walked away and asked them to ‘come’. The researchers thought this could be because dogs wanted to be close to their owners when they were obviously confused. For more details on this research, please click here.
If your dog responds in the same way that the dogs taking part in this study did, your actions will usually speak louder than words!
As a general rule, the larger the body size a dog breed has, the shorter its lifespan. Labrador Retrievers live, on average, to around twelve years of age. Of course some Labrador Retrievers live longer or some shorter than this “breed average”. A recent study has shed more light on the factors which affect this.
A group of Labrador Retrievers being used for a study of different diets were observed and assessed until the end of their natural lifespan. Of the 39 dogs, 11 (28%) lived until they were older than 15.6 years of age (which is termed “exceptional” longevity, as this is 30% longer than their breed’s typical lifespan). When comparing the dogs which had an exceptional lifespan to the rest of the dogs studied, there were no differences noted in their gender or the age at which they were neutered. The rate at which fat mass increased and at which lean mass was lost with age was slower in the dogs which lived longer, and their total bone mineral density was higher.
It is a little difficult to extrapolate the findings of this study to our own pets kept in a normal home environment. In this study, the population of dogs was relatively small, and they were kept in an idealised, controlled environment with fastidious health care monitoring, and they were not exposed to other dogs. In particular, their body condition was carefully monitored and their feeding adjusted regularly to avoid them becoming overweight. The findings suggest that maintaining lean body mass and limiting the accumulation of fat were important for a longer lifespan, which supports previous experimental studies of Labrador Retrievers. The findings also suggest that dogs fed high quality diets with detailed healthcare and husbandry can live long beyond their expected lifespan. If you want to know more about the study, you can read about it by clicking here.
Melanocytes are cells which produce pigment (melanin) in the skin and hair bulbs, which in turn result in the differences in skin and hair colour between different people (and different dogs). The pigment in the skin protects the underlying cells from the harmful effects of ultraviolet light. We are all familiar with the importance of limiting our own exposure to strong sunlight to minimise the risks of developing tumours of these melanocytes. These tumours can also occur in dogs..
Tumours of melanocytes are common in older dogs, and usually develop in areas of haired skin or in the oral cavity, but can occur at other sites such as in the eye. They account for 5-7% of all skin tumours seen in dogs. Typically they may occur at the nail bed or on the foot pad, causing a swelling of the affected toe and an associated lameness. Often (but not always) the tumour may be pigmented. Treatment requires surgical reception of the tumour, and the prognosis depends on whether the tumour has spread to other parts of the body or not at the time of diagnosis. Treatment with radiation therapy may be required if the tumour cannot - or has not - been completely resected. Chemotherapy may also be recommended. Oral melanomas account for nearly 40% of all oral tumours in dogs, and unfortunately they do commonly spread to other parts of the body which makes them difficult to treat.
The risk of melanoma in dogs does not appear to be increased by exposure to sunlight (for example, they typically occur at sites, such the nail beds, digital pads and oral cavity, which are less exposed to sunlight), although this has never been tested in a rigorous scientific manner. Similarly dogs with darker coat colours (i.e. which have more pigmented hair and skin) are perceived to have a greater risk of developing melanoma, although again this has not been proven scientifically.
Dogslife would like your help to find out more about gastrointestinal disease!
Dogslife has now been collecting information about UK Labrador Retrievers for nearly seven years, thanks to the efforts of our participants. During this period, our first Dogslife PhD student, Carys Pugh, made great progress in the development of the project and reported lots of interesting and valuable findings from the data she analysed.
We now welcome Charlotte Woolley, our second Dogslife PhD student, to the project. Charlotte will be analysing data collected by the Dogslife project since the study started, and she is particularly interested in understanding the risks of gastrointestinal disease in dogs. As part of her studies, we hope to contact a selection of our newest Dogslife members to invite them to take part in a study where we look at how the bugs in their dog’s stool change as they grow up. In particular, we are interested to find out if there are specific patterns of bugs which are more likely to promote gut health.
We know that collecting samples can be quite challenging so we will be providing a sample kit with step-by-step instructions to make the process as easy as possible. Providing samples is completely voluntary, but if you are contacted and you are able to help us, this would be a huge help to the study. Thank you again to all our members for their continued participation in the project and for helping us to find out what keeps dogs healthy!
Please note that at some point around mid to late February, the Dogslife website may be unavailable for a short time due to a server changeover. If you experience any difficulties accessing the site, please try back later. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Don't forget to come back to www.dogslife.ac.uk and update your dog's record!
