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Marty CondonBackerFun!Aug 27, 20140
Stacy Braslau-SchneckBackerSo glad you are advancing canine science as well as helping shelter dogs!Aug 20, 20140
And1BackerSaw the AMA yesterday! Awesome stuff. Keep it up!Aug 15, 20140
Katie FerrisBackerLove what you're doing, looking forward to more ways to help!Aug 14, 20140
Heidi LynResearcherThanks so much!Aug 14, 20140
Sharon EllerBackerGood luck with your funding! This is such a great project and I enjoyed volunteering this summer.Aug 14, 20140- Heidi LynResearcherThanks Sharon!Aug 14, 20140
Alison CarrFirst off, I am an avid dog lover, amateur dog trainer, and am working on a doctorate in psychology, so this experiment sounds super interesting to me! I re-read Stanley Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs probably 50 times through my teen years... so this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I'm curious as to how an intelligence test will give insight into the adoptability of shelter dogs? In your abstract, you describe test you plan to develop for shelters will include measures of spatial memory, understanding of numbers, and physical properties, as well as such constructs as attention, communication, and problem solving. How do you envision such a tool being used to match up dogs with families? This is a genuine question, not an antagonistic one. The main reason I ask because my understanding is that shelter dogs are far more likely to have ended up there because of temperament issues, not intelligence issues; the same goes for reasons why they are returned. Have you considered adding a temperament component to your test, for the benefit of the shelters?Aug 14, 20140- Heidi LynResearcherHi Allison, this is an excellent question and one we are hoping to clarify. The most important aspect of our testing for the development of the behavioral assessment is that my students and volunteers spend several hours with each dog - far more than can usually be expected from overworked shelter staff. We walk the dogs, take them past other animals, outside, in an enclosed space, toward strangers, etc. We get to see their distractability, their treat motivation, their attention span. Some of that information may correlate with the tests we run on cognition, but many will not. For those we will definitely be adding a temperament component to the set of test.Aug 14, 20140
- Scott OpenshawBackerGood luck! Great project!Jul 29, 20140
- Heidi LynResearcherThank you! We really appreciate it!Jul 29, 20140
Oscar JasklowskiBackerIt seems like this could be a godsend for breeds in shelters that are assumed to be aggressive. Awesome stuff, Heidi :)Jul 24, 20140- Heidi LynResearcherThank you so much, Oscar - I really appreciate it! Hopefully our video will be up soon, so you can see more about what we're doing. ;-)Jul 28, 20140
