Here are my thumbnail descriptions of the studies, books, and papers available for download. I hope they help you get an idea of the contributions each of these scientists have made to my understanding of how and why dogs do what they do.

 

The first two times in the list are pdfs about 1) How to Do "The Pushing Exercise," and 2) a Symptom Scale for determining if your dog or a dog you know might have post-traumatic stress disorder.

 

Now... on to explanations of all the other files!

 

"The Animal Connection" is anthropologist Pat Shipman's brilliant look at how humans and animals, particularly dogs, have co-evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.  She discusses these ideas further in her article, "Creature Contacts." Radical Behaviorist Zing-Yang Kuo's "From Watsonian Behaviorism to Behavior Epigenetics" though a bit dated is still a much-needed critique of behavioral science and many of its failings. Karl Friston is a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. He's written two papers included here, both of them on how Freud's view of the mind as an energy system is more on target today than it was even in Freud's time. Monique Udell is one of the rare dognitive scientists who actually looks at the subject of canine cognition with a critical eye and a skeptical mind. Alexandra Horowitz is another. I've made two of Udell's and one of Horowitz's studies available here. Operating in the same critical and skeptical (meaning, scientific) way are Derek Penn, Keith Holyoak, and Daniel Povinelli. Scientists who study comparative cognition come in two varieties: boosters and scoffers. Boosters see only similarities (based on a misreading of Darwin's thoughts on the differences in mind between humans and other animals). Their book-long paper Darwin's Mistake is tough reading, but it really gets at the true differences between human cognitive processes and those of non-human animals. And some of the back and forth between the original authors and others in the field is very compelling. (By the way, Darwin didn't make a mistake, he's just been the victim of selective quotation.) Meanwhile, Randy Gallistel of Rutgers University has done a number of studies showing that learning theory needs to be replaced with a feedforward, rather than a feedback model. I've included several of his papers. Kent Berridge has written an important paper on how dopamine is not part of the brain's "reward system."  Jaak Panksepp is one of the most important scientists working today. His magazine article, "Empathy and the Law of Affect" is a gentle dig at Watson's "Law of Effect," with a polite suggestion that "The Law of Affect" (i.e., emotional learning) should replace the former. Fredericke Range has done quite a number of studies on canine behavior, some of them not so good (eg. "Dogs know when they're being treated unfairly"), while others have been quite on point. I've included one of the latter here. Nicola Rooney and John Bradshaw of the University of Southampton have written some great studies showing that despites the continuing myths, playing tug and fetch with your dog is not going to make your dog act dominant. In fact, play tends to make dogs more amenable to learning (something Dr. Panksepp would agree with). In their book Rational Animals? Matthew Nudd and the late Susan Hurley have created a stage for both boosters and scoffers to present their points of view on animal cognition. Michael Tomasello, a professed "booster,"  has written a compelling argument against modern theories of evolution where human cooperation is a product of altruism. "In contrast," he and his co-authors write in Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation, "we propose that humans' species-unique forms of cooperation – as well as their species-unique forms of cognition, communication, and social life – all derive from mutualistic collaboration," starting with the need to work together while hunting (which is also how dogs and humans co-evolved). Finally, Hugo Critchley has written an interesting study showing how "gut feelings" create "Visceral Influences on Brain and Behavior."

 

Happy reading!

 

- LCK