ISAZ 2003 12th Annual Conference

Inviting Politics to Dinner: An Ecofeminist Analysis of Meat Eating
Susanne M. Abromaitis, MS
Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Animals and Public Policy- North Grafton, MA, USA
SAbromaitis@hsus.org
smabroma@hotmail.com

Food is a constant presence in our lives, serving many functions from sustenance to social facilitation.  Yet little research has examined the motivations involved in food choice from a socio-political perspective.  Social movements often elucidate the private into a political context and have recently drawn attention to this previously unstudied issue.  Examining food selection from the critical socio-political perspective of ecofeminism casts many commonly acceptable behaviors in a new light.  This paper proposes meat eating is a social construct that normalizes this behavior and perpetuates patriarchal values.

Gender roles are also a social construct; feminine gender roles dictate a series of behaviors and beliefs that women have traditionally adhered to in Western society.  Feminism, a socio-political movement, has called the system of male privilege into question and demands closer examination of women’s treatment and role in society.  The animal protection movement also calls into question the treatment of non-human animals, and reveals similar patterns of institutional oppression normalizing this behavior.

Ecofeminism sees oppression in broad strokes across a patriarchal society where women and non-human animals are both oppressed, and raises diet as a political issue important to both feminists and animal protectionists alike.  At this junction between both movements, meat-eating is no longer a private issue.  Some ecofeminists advocate eating that does not harm other beings and recommend strict vegetarianism as an expression of wholesale rejection of such oppressive values.

Curious how widely ecofeminist thought has penetrated the feminist community, interviews were conducted to gauge women’s knowledge of and emotions concerning meat production and how/if ecofeminist ideals had impacted their lives.  Three distinct groups of women were interviewed: self-identified feminists active in political organizations, evenly split between mainstream and ideologically radical feminism, and women not active in the feminist movement.

Knowledge of and emotions concerning diet were influenced by women’s type of feminist views, with ecofeminists expressing the most potent ideology, women not involved in the feminist movement the least potent, and mainstream feminists showing varying degrees of congruence with ecofeminist philosophy.  This transmission of political ideology to women’s thoughts and habits regarding meat eating can be interpreted best through a model of policy diffusion that likens levels of ideological penetration to concentric orbits or “onion skin

Dogs in the Lives of Brontë, Dickinson, Barrett-Browning, & Woolf
Maureen Adams
University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
adams1@vom.com

The connection between early attachment history and the development of a coherent sense of self is clear from recent research in psychology and neurobiology. Through consistent, responsive, and nonverbal interactions with a caretaker, usually the mother, an infant learns how to regulate emotions. At the same time, he or she begins to experience a coherent sense of self.  Ideally these both occur in the first three years of life, but it is possible to repair attachment deficits later in life within an attuned relationship with a partner or a psychotherapist (Lewis, 2000; Schore, 2002). My paper suggests that a relationship with a dog can provide a similar opportunity for healing and reveals the crucial roles played by dogs in the lives of Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Virginia Woolf.

    Each of these writers experienced the loss or absence of her mother and as an adult had difficulty in establishing and keeping intimate relationships. In very different ways, each woman depended on a dog for emotional support, to act as a buffer with other people, and as mirror of her inner world. They wrote about their dogs Keeper, Carlo, Flush and Pinka in their diaries and letters, and glimpses of the four dogs can be seen in poems, novels and essays. Using those sources, I trace the history of each relationship, pointing out similarities, such as the way all the dogs, no matter what their gender, breed, or temperament, represented a maternal presence to the women.

    All the dogs served as companions and guardians, but each relationship met different psychological needs as well.  Emily Brontë’s attachment to Keeper was one of the few she ever made, although there were times when she used him as a scapegoat for her pent-up rage. Emily Dickinson depended on Carlo to soothe her anxiety and as an audience for her poems. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Flush helped her to emerge from a life-threatening depression. Flush witnessed her transformation from a dependent invalid to an autonomous woman. Virginia Woolf relied on the dogs in her life, especially Pinka, to connect her to nature and to play. She also used dogs as symbols of intimacy in letters and in Flush: a Biography. These analyses of specific human-dog relationships reveal the unique ways an attachment to a dog can be healing in itself and can also serve as a bridge between people.


Avian Wellness: The Proper Care Of Birds In Institutional Settings
P. K. Anderson*, Ph. D.; D. Coultis, CEO & President; & K. R. Welle, DVM Dipl. ABVP (Avian)
Western Illinois University; People, Animals, Nature, Inc; All Creatures Animal Hospital
PK-Anderson@wiu.edu

Since animal companionship has been demonstrated to positively influence human physical and psychological health, animals, including several species of birds, are commonly kept in institutional settings. However, in many cases, the people who care for these birds are unaware of their needs and the birds suffer from a lack of understanding. This presentation focuses on the special health care concerns of birds kept at institutions (e.g., schools, daycare centers, long term care facilities, correctional facilities) and is directed toward the education of health care staff, educators, and others who may care for birds in institutional settings.

Recent advances in avian medicine, nutrition, and behavior reveal that birds have specific needs concerning air quality, nutrition, lighting, housing, sleep, and social and psychological stimulation. Avian behavior should be charted on a daily basis. The services of a qualified avian veterinarian are important in maintaining the health of the birds, and to prevent the spread of zoonoses, such as psittacosis, to clients and staff. It is important that caregivers understand how to visually evaluate the wellness of their avian charges, but this is not a substitute for proper veterinary care because subclinical illness can only be detected through diagnostic tests. The location and arrangement of the cage, and the materials that it is composed of, may also affect avian health and behavior. The role of enrichment, including proper toys, time out of the cage to socialize with caregivers, and or/the introduction of other avian companions, will be discussed.  Other important topics of discussion include the costs to provide proper equipment, food and veterinary care, and how to safely introduce birds into schools and health care facilities that already have other residential animals.

With some basic understanding of their needs, health care professionals can create a safe and humane environment for birds, ensuring their wellness, longevity, and continued companionship.


Off-leash Dog Parks: What Makes Them Work?
Melissa Bain*, Benjamin Hart, Kelly Cliff, Lynette Hart
School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, California, 95616, USA
mjbain@ucdavis.edu

With increasing urbanization, dog caregivers are increasingly drawn to dog parks.  However, expanding use of off-leash parks has sparked controversy in communities with dog parks.  This project set out to learn what characteristics were important determinants of success with regard to achieving harmony with the community, while providing enjoyment for users.  Seventeen dog-only and multiple-use parks were visited in California.  Visits involved 2 investigators interviewing park managers, surveying physical characteristics, performing scan-samples, and interviewing users.  Park success was measured with derived rankings assigned by investigators based on a combination of characteristics, including perceived harmony with the community and its appeal to park users.

In general, maintenance, size, and a qualitative score of the substrate type were significantly correlated with a derived measure of park success.  For the 12 dog-exclusive parks, all being 3 acres or less, only maintenance was significantly correlated with success.  Safety to people and other dogs, noise, and sanitation were most frequently mentioned by the community decision makers as concerns.  Injury to people and other dogs was never observed during the visits, and was reported by park managers to be of extremely low incidence.  Noise levels in periods of low-use and peak-use did not correlate with park success, nor did a measure of fecal density.  Issues identified by investigators that appear to pose potential problems for the community include park users allowing dogs off-leash outside park boundaries, and use of parks by dogwalkers, who appear less responsible than owners in picking up feces.


Animal and Human Interaction:  A Survival Strategy for Both
Alan M. Beck
Center for the Human-Animal Bond
School of Veterinary Medicine
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2027
abeck@purdue.edu

It is well documented that people denied wholesome interactions with others do not do well. One way people can be protected from the ravages of loneliness is animal companionship. Early laboratory observations of people with animals encouraged a period of research to identify, document, and assess the beneficial health implications of our relationship with companion animals. All indications are that companion animals play the role of a family member, often, a member with the most desired attributes. Ordinary interactions with animals can reduce blood pressure and alter survival after a heart attack. Pets, for some, afford increased opportunities to meet people, while for others they permit people to be alone without being lonely.
People are not the only beneficiaries of the human-animal relationship. Common companion animals appear to thrive with human contact. The very nature of the human-animal interaction predisposes both to experience improved health.



Cats, Houses and People
Penny L. Bernstein
Biological Sciences, Kent State University Stark, Canton, OH 44720
pbernstein@stark.kent.edu

Cats have traditionally been allowed outdoors by their owners on demand. However, evidence suggests that this has been changing in recent years for a variety of reasons (e.g. health issues, safety, predation on other animals). As part of a larger study on the behavior of cats and people in the home, data were gathered on whether cats were allowed outside to examine this behavior in a large population of owners. 

Questionnaires were filled out by a diverse, self-selected, wide-ranging population of owners in response to a number of solicitations, including articles about the research in newspapers, magazines, and on websites. Data for this study came from single, two, three, and four-cat households, expanding on a previous study of just single and two-cat homes. Despite having almost double the number of cats (N = 503 vs 258) and nearly 1.5 times the number of homes (N = 256 vs 178), results were remarkably similar between the two studies. That is, 50% of all cats were kept indoors at all times; only 30% were allowed out on demand; 15% were allowed out with restrictions, such as being kept on a deck with the owner, walked on a leash, or confined to a yard enclosed by a fence with a top. However, looking at households directly provides a more complex picture. Although 50% of all households kept cats indoors, 54% let at least one cat out, with or without restrictions. That is, owners seemed to be making a mixed set of selections, based in part on the cats themselves. Understanding the implications of these seemingly conflicting data will play an important role in advising owners in the future about letting their cats go outside.


How to Change a Chimpanzee’s Mind:The Impact of Enculturation
Dr. Sally Boysen
Dept. of Psychology & Dir., The Ohio State University Chimpanzee Center, Columbus, OH  43235
boysen.1@osu.edu

Recent genetic and paleontological evidence provide strong evidence that the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and humans (Homo sapiens) have a long shared evolutionary history.  Many more scientists now agree that differences and similarities between the two species are ones of degree, not kind.  However, the uniqueness of speech and another possibly unique capacity in humans, theory of mind (ToM) are viewed by a segment of the scientific community as critical for some higher-order conceptual learning and problem solving capacities in humans.  This, in turn, suggests that although the functional and anatomical areas of the chimpanzee and human brain appear to be quite similar, humans are alone in their ability to attribute mental states to others.  Further, it has been suggested that this ability to name and conceptualize possible differences in knowledge states among others is dependent upon language. 

Human language, while clearly unique, shares some features with other types of referential animal communication although, to date, no studies of the natural vocalizations of any of the great apes have shown representational features.  Several recent studies with chimpanzees will be discussed, including recent work that provides preliminary evidence for referential information available from the acoustic features of chimpanzee food bark vocalizations, and new data from studies exploring ToM in chimps.  Together with the archival literature documenting significant cognitive capacities in chimpanzees, the impact of enculturation of chimps within an artifact-laden human environment likely changes the anatomical structure, neural pathways, and dendritic density in the brains of chimpanzees raised under these conditions.  Taken together, the considerable cognitive flexibility, neural plasticity, and referential content of chimpanzee food calls demonstrated by enculturated chimpanzees suggests new hypotheses to explain the apparently sudden, exponential leap in brain size in humans and shared ape adaptations for communication that ultimately emerged as spoken language.


Psychophysiological effects of positive human-animal interaction
Alexali Brubaker*, Joey Lau, Julia Schaeffer, Dr. Mark Geisler
San Francisco State University, California
brubaker@sfsu.edu

Positive human-animal interaction has been demonstrated to have stress-reducing and depression-alleviating benefits, as quantified by various physiological parameters.  The present study examines the effect of spending time with a friendly pet dog or cat on electrophysiological phenomena associated with anxiety (especially frontal midline theta waves (4-8Hz) and depression (frontal EEG asymmetry). Subjects’ perception of animals was measured via the Pet Attitude Scale. Their EEG patterns at the electrode sites F3, FZ, and F4 were recorded during each of 4 (counterbalanced) conditions: (a) resting with a real pet, (b) resting with a toy pet, (c) performing the PASAT (Paced Auditory Serial Attention Task—a standardized laboratory stressor task) with a real pet, and (d) performing the PASAT with a toy pet.  Heartrate was also recorded for comparison with prior studies.

Preliminary results show that activation in the theta band was greater with the real pet across resting and PASAT conditions.  EEG alpha asymmetry was attenuated in both conditions with real pets, and in some subjects the attenuation effect was more pronounced during the PASAT condition.  Heart rate increased as expected during the PASAT.


Nature’s Laws Broken:  representations of modernity and postmodernity in du Maurier and Hitchcock’s “The Birds”
James Canacci
English, Kent State University Trumbull, Youngstown, OH
jcanacci@kent.edu

“If anything deepens belief in a Creator it is by watching wildlife in the countryside, a constant miracle, and nothing that changes in their routine through the seasons…they are obeying nature’s law”
--Daphne du Maurier, "Things Unknown" from Enchanted Cornwall

It is this quote by du Maurier that sets  up this connection between nature, specifically the migration of swallows, and humanity.  Her view of the laws of nature and birds is explored in her short story “The Birds” which takes place in the English countryside.  Here begins an examination of larger questions arising from the influences of war and politics, human creations, during the Cold War.  These themes are reiterated in Alfred Hitchcock’s film based on the story.  Despite his contentions to Evan Hunter, the writer of the screenplay, that it had nothing to do with du Maurier’s story other than the birds attacking people, the relationship between nature/culture, du Maurier/Hitchcock, modernity/postmodernity as represented in the short story and the film is the focus of this exploration.

Using Daphne du Maurier’s short story and Alfred Hitchcock’s film as the primary sources, the paper examines modernity/post-modernity and its connection between birds and humans (nature/culture) in these cold war texts.  Linda Hutcheon’s The Politics of Postmodernism, David Harvey The Condition of Postmodernity, and Alan Nadel’s Containment Culture provide a theoretical base for this examination of modernist/postmodernist interpretation and criticism while du Maurier’s biography Enchanted Cornwall, Hitchcock’s notes and interviews on the firms from various sources provide both insightful and necessary connections to the texts.


The Social Life of Rabbits
Margo DeMello
Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
margo@rabbit.org

European rabbits are amongst the most gregarious of animals, living in the wild in large, complex warrens of up to one hundred individuals, yet their
Cindy Norton, David Sinn,social lives are poorly understood, and even less respected. Domestic rabbits, for example, are commonly kept as single pets, often in hutches in the backyard, with little to no contact with others of their own kind, other animals, or even humans, and laboratory rabbits are kept in equally bleak circumstances. Studies of rabbit social behavior are also slim, particularly when compared to other well-known social animals such as wolves, primates, or elephants, whose lives have been well documented in both the popular and academic presses.

This paper is an attempt to begin an understanding and appreciation for rabbit social life by focusing on the lives of twenty-five rabbits living in a domestic “warren” in my own home. Because the rabbits in my home are not struggling for survival, food, or reproduction, they are free to devote themselves to playing, napping, eating, and creating and maintaining social relationships and an ever-changing social hierarchy.

I have observed that rabbit social structure is based around multiple, overlapping circles, with a leader in each, along with a number of
unattached individuals who don’t fit with one group but who come and go between the groups. The groups themselves are arranged hierarchically,
with some groups—and their leader—dominating the others.   High status groups, or cliques, for example, pick the best nap spots, get first pick
at food, and can offer protection to lower status rabbits (if they choose).

As a cultural anthropologist who simultaneously runs a rabbit rescue organization, I hope to not only demonstrate the complex social lives of
an animal long ignored by behaviorists, but to widen the field by bringing in the perspectives of those who, like myself, speak from both an academic
as well as an activist position.


Relating to Animals After Death:  Virtual Pet Cemeteries and the Public Act of Grieving on Line
Jane Desmond
American Studies Department, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Jane-desmond@uiowa.edu

This paper examines the current range of web-based pet memorial sites, from personal web pages to large professionally produced group sites called “virtual pet cemeteries,”  Language, visual design, motion and sound effects are analyzed for their contribution to the design.

I argue that these sites operate in the realm of the public/private domain, allowing for an expression of sentiment and sentimentality toward a specific animal that is only rarely socially acceptable off-line in everyday life.  In this way women (as the chief architects of these sites) innovatively use the net to create new social relations (a virtual “community” of like-minded people who also post on and presumably “visit” memorial sites.)

However, unlike other on-line communities connected via chat rooms, newsgroups, etc., the posting of a memorial is usually a one-way communication.  Therefore the “virtual community” of mourners for animals that it creates is always an imaginary/imagined one of unidentified like-minded people the only evidence of which is the presence of these sites themselves.  Still, these practices of memorialization in the virtual realm of the web have the potential to model and validate behavior that may eventually carry over into non-web interactions such as seeking the publication of pet obituaries in local newspapers which is not currently done.

The paper will close with a comparison of virtual pet cemeteries and real ones.  Pet burials, with their additional cost and three-dimensional location, are harder to achieve but provide a place of pilgrimage and an on-going sense of physical relation to an animal that the virtual cemeteries, which function as a cross between obituary, eulogy, and memorial service, can never provide.  Virtual cemeteries connect people to people via the death of a pet.  Physical pet cemeteries, on the other hand, while providing a sense of shared grieving space for lost pets, primarily reinforce the relationship of the individual mourner to her/his individual pet.  They give a material form to human/animal bond that survives death.


Understanding the mind of the horse: the relationship between scientific and non-scientific knowledge
Lisa Dorn
University of California, Davis.  Davis, California, USA
ldorn@ucdavis.edu

The pivotal importance of the horse to human civilizations has
resulted in deep reservoirs of knowledge about horse behavior. However, this knowledge is primarily contained in non-scientific communities and is rarely tapped by science due to the reluctance of behavioral science to study domesticated species.  Likewise, schools of horse handlers and other horse professionals have only sporadic access to scientific studies of animal learning and large ungulate behavior.  This provides an interesting opportunity to examine the relationship between scientific and non-scientific knowledge. 
I will be presenting a socio-historical paper looking at the ways in which knowledge reservoirs of horse behavior are accumulated within different communities.  The study focuses on three major knowledge groups: traditional training schools, the more recent 'natural' training schools, and the scientific community. Traditional training methods primarily rely on negative feedback techniques such as "breaking" horses.  Newer training philosophies claim to use information about horse ecology and social behavior to design their techniques.  The scientific literature I will be focusing on deals with horse personality and cognition.  Each of these communities makes its own set of assumptions about horse behavior.  For example, natural training schools point to the social nature of horses to explain and predict many
behaviors.  I will be tracing how knowledge of horse behavior has developed within each community with a particular emphasis on the patterns of communication between science and the training schools.  Communication between the different communities has been limited not only because of science's reluctance to study horse behavior but also because the trainers have limited access to scientific literature. Understanding the effects that these limitations have had can lead to improvements in scientific knowledge of large ungulate behavior and in the effectiveness of training schools.


“Psychiatric Service Dogs:  Practice and Evidence” I & II
Joan Esnayra, Ph.D. and Craig Love, Ph.D.
Psychiatric Service Dog Society, Westat, Rockville, MD
jesnayra@nas.edu

Previously, dogs that provided companionship to persons living with mental illness were called ‘Emotional Support Dogs’.  They were viewed not as ‘Service Dogs’, as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.  Rather, they were household pets that provided comfort to their owners during episodes of acute illness. 

In October 1997, Dr. Esnayra coined the term, ‘Psychiatric Service Dog’ (PSD) in response to semantic limitations inherent to the ‘emotional support dog’ terminology.  She established an online community called ‘Service Dogs Invisible Disabilities’ so that others like her would have a safe place in which to articulate how dogs could be trained to mitigate disabling psychiatric symptoms.  Five and a half years later, this online community of mental health consumers has blossomed into a legitimate grassroots movement.  Community members around the country speak publicly about PSDs, give interviews, write articles, develop websites, participate in television documentaries, and present at medical conferences. 

Inspired by the passion and resiliency of this mental health community, Dr. Esnayra founded the Psychiatric Service Dog Society (PSDS), whose mission is to educate, advocate, conduct research and facilitate training of PSDs.  In her presentation, Dr. Esnayra will share personal insights into severe mental illness, explain the evolution of the PSD consumer movement, describe a range of psychiatric symptoms that may be mitigated through use of a PSD and share her vision for the Psychiatric Service Dog Society.

Dr. Craig Love is a research Psychologist and board member of the Psychiatric Service Dog Society.  In his presentation, Dr. Love will explain the importance of research in effecting change in our society. He will discuss the need for research on PSDs, in order to facilitate their acceptance and to better understand their potential.  He will share a synthesis of anecdotal data resulting from over 2 years of PSD public inquiry and describe the research agenda for the Psychiatric Service Dog Society. 



Human and Nonhuman Primate Cognition: new approaches using experiment field studies.
P.A. Garber
Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. 61801 U.S.A.
p-garber@uiuc.edu

Traditional approaches to the study of nonhuman primate cognition have centered on two contrasting methodological techniques. The majority of investigations have involved either captive research conducted under rigidly controlled experimental conditions or detailed field observations conducted under uncontrolled conditions.   Despite the strengths of each approach in identifying the range of information primates’ use in decision-making, each is subject to limitations.  In captive settings, primates are often presented with problem-solving tasks that may not accurately replicate the social and ecological contexts in which these problems are naturally solved.  In contrast, natural field studies generally lack sufficient control over, or information on, the range of behavioral options available to an individual, and therefore may lack robusticity in distinguishing among several competing hypotheses.   A third approach, which minimizes several of the limitations of both laboratory and natural field settings, is experimental field studies.  Experimental field studies offer the opportunity to examine individual and species differences in problem-solving skills and perceptual abilities under natural conditions in which the information available to the forager is controlled and systematically varied.
In this presentation, I describe the results of a series of experimental field studies designed to test the ability of wild primates to use social and ecological information in foraging decisions.  Specifically, data are presented on the ability of wild white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus) to (1) solve a foraging problem using tools, and (2) use an array of three landmark cues to compute the spatial location of baited feeding sites.  In addition to examining how factors such as dominance, social role, access to resources, and opportunities for social learning influence primate problem-solving behavior, I use these studies as a framework for discussing how differences in terminology used by researchers have hindered our ability to identify both similarities and differences in human-nonhuman primate cognition.


Geographical Distribution of Human-Animal Bond Centers, ISAZ members, University and College Courses Dedicated to Anthrozoology and Animal Issues, and  Members of Newly Formed A.S.A. Animals and Society Section
Kathleen C. Gerbasi* and Robert C. Lord
Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Maryland, USA (Gerbasi), Terra Incognita (Earth Matters), New York, USA (Lord)
kcgerbasiphd@earthlink.net

Previous research revealed somewhat contradictory perspectives on the current state of  the emerging field of Anthrozoology, also referred to as Human-Animal Studies (Balcombe, 1999 and Gerbasi, et al., 2002). The encouraging news is both studies revealed recent increases in academic interest in the area. Balcombe documented the increase in college courses and Gerbasi et al. found the numbers of doctoral dissertations recorded on topics of Anthrozoology doubled from the 1980’s to the 1990’s. This rate of rise in  Anthrozoology  dissertations significantly exceeded  the relative increase in dissertations in all other fields combined. In addition to increasing numbers of dissertations, the diversity of academic areas that were producing these doctoral dissertations also greatly  increased.  However, Gerbasi et al. (2002) also revealed a lack of organization and focus in Anthrozoology at least as related to doctoral research.  They concluded that Human-Animal Studies was a low status, high risk innovation which lacks an academic home. They suggested for the field to progress it must become better organized and valued.  This current project proposal therefore represents an attempt to contribute to the organization of the field of Anthrozoology.

The presentation will be computer-generated maps of North America and Europe using Geographic Information Systems software. These maps will represent the following variables as they are currently known about Anthrozoology: locations and or/university affiliations of ISAZ members, colleges and universities that offer courses in the broad area of Anthrozoology (as identified by those listed on the Humane Society of the United States web site and through a web search),  and locations of University housed Human-Animal Bond Centers, in addition it should be possible to add locations  of members of  the newly formed Animal and Society Section members of the American Sociological Association.

This mapping  will reveal locations where several of these variables coincide, thus making  it  possible to better identify and organize people  and institutions to support and promote the field of Anthrozoology.

References
Balcombe, J. (1999). Animals & Society Courses: A Growing Trend in Post-Secondary   
    Education.  Society & Animals, 7, 229-240.
Gerbasi, K. C. , Anderson, D.C. , Gerbasi, A.M.  & Coultis, D. Doctoral Dissertations in
    Human-Animal Studies: News and Views. Society & Animals, 10 (4), 339-346.


What Do “Top Selling” Introductory Psychology Texts Say About the Ethics and Issues  in  Animal Research and How Do Students Interpret These Texts?1
Kathleen C. Gerbasi,*  Margaret E. Gerbasi and Kari Schultz
Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Maryland, USA (Gerbasi, K. C.), Princeton University, New Jersey  (Gerbasi, M. E.), Niagara County Community College  (Shultz, K.)
kcgerbasiphd@earthlink.net

The use of animals as subjects in psychological experiments is a topic which generates a wide variety of  opinions.  The purpose of this study is to explore the portrayal of this topic as  it is presented in 12  top selling Introduction to Psychology Textbooks and to determine students’ perceptions of these messages. The first phase of the study was a descriptive analysis of  the content of these texts.  The goal was to describe the extent to which texts varied in their coverage of the animals in research ethics issue.
A large number of variables were catalogued for each text: these variables included  the area of expertise of the text’s author (s), column inches devoted to human and animal ethics, visual portrayal of animals throughout the text, (animals as caged, manipulated ,or free), the indexing of various terms, topics and names which may be expected to appear in conjunction with animal research  issues such Harlow, Goodall, Plous, Shapiro, animal communication, cognitive ethology, etc.  While there was wide variation across these variables in the content of the 12 texts, there appeared to be no pattern or way in which any of these variables correlated with the content of the Animal Ethics section of the text.
To further explore students’ interpretation of these text sections and the  possible impact of these sections on the formation of student attitudes  towards animals used as research subjects, the second phase of the study was undertaken. Animal ethics sections with no images were presented to students who were asked to rate the sections using a modified form of Plous (1996) survey of attitudes toward animal research. The twelve texts were then scored on the extent to which students perceived them as pro or anti animal research.
Three texts will then be selected, one  rated as very pro animal use, one rated as the least supportive of animal use, and one rated by students as moderate.  These 3 text passages will be presented crossed with 3  levels of  animal research images. Level one is no image, level  two  is a photo which appeared in two of the 12 texts, and is  a man seated  playing with what appeared to be happy chimpanzees, and level three is an image of an animal with an electrical device implanted in its head.  New students will be asked to read one of the passages, and decide based on the passage if a  research study of moderate invasiveness would be acceptable according to the text.  Students will also asked (using a modified Plous (1996) survey) about their own opinions and attitudes toward animal research.
This study should reveal the extent to which students’ opinions about the appropriateness of animal research is influenced by their pre-existing attitudes about animal research and the presentation of text and images in introductory psychology texts.



Are cat owners more likely to be wolf lovers?   A look at the wolf-cat connection
Annie Hannan
School of Natural Resources and Environment, The University of Michigan, USA
lhannan@umich.edu

People’s attitudes towards wolves and towards dogs appear to be correlated (Hannan, this conference).  This finding seems intuitive since wolves are viewed as wild relatives of dogs.  Levinson (1972) stated that ‘the way we keep pets reflects our stance towards the natural world’ so it seems reasonable to make a connection between our feelings towards dogs and our feelings towards wolves. 

In the course of her study on people’s attitudes towards dogs and wolves, Hannan (this conference) additionally found that cat ownership was also a significant factor in predicting positive wolf attitudes.

When it became clear from demographic data collected in the wolf and dog attitude survey that the ‘cat only’ pet owners were scoring higher wolf attitude scores than ‘dog and cat’, ‘dog only’ or ‘no pet’ owners, a follow-up survey was prepared to test cat attitudes.  The follow-up survey solicited people’s attitudes towards wolves, determined past and present dog and cat ownership patterns, and asked several cat characterization questions.  The ‘cat’ survey was administered to 63 adults in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

Respondents had strong positive agreement on only two of the cat characterizations: 
1. Cats are good predators/hunters, and 2. Cats are independent creatures.  The other four characterizations (cats are more wild than dogs; I love the wildness in cats; cats need lots of attention and affection; and cats are cuddly creatures) had equivocal response patterns. 

When respondents’ wolf attitude scores were correlated with the cat characterizations, only two were significantly different from no correlation and both of these were weak correlations.
 1. cats are predators/hunters with Rs of .20, and 2. cats are more wild than dogs with Rs of.10. 

The author concludes that current or previous ownership of household cats may provide an alternative predictor for positive wolf attitudes. She speculates that when people positively view their own cats as ‘hunter’, ‘predator’, and ‘wild’, this association may lead to greater understanding of the wildness and hunting nature of wild predators including wolves. 

This particular association was not true for dog owners (in previous Hannan survey) who tended to view their dogs as companions and friends rather than wild animals and predators. The cat connection may provide a novel approach to educational programs aimed at greater appreciation of wolves and other wild predators.


Tracking the pet connection: influencing contemporary attitudes towards wolves
Annie Hannan
School of Natural Resources and Environment, The University of Michigan, USA
lhannan@umich.edu

Contemporary attitudes towards wolves and towards dogs are documented in numerous reports, but empirical evidence specifically linking wolf and dog attitudes has not been investigated.  The author suggests that since dogs and wolves are closely related, and  people tend to view dogs positively, then various methods of exposure to dogs may exert a positive influence on people’s attitudes towards wolves.

This presentation examines two propositions: 1) ‘people don’t change attitudes formed in childhood and educational exposure only strengthens previously held biases’ (Kellert, 1985, 1996),  and 2) ‘the way we keep pets reflects our stance towards the natural world’ (Levinson, 1972).  Additionally Serpell and Paul (1994) suggest that ‘people’s perceptions of animals do change…and these changes can be encouraged through exposure to certain kinds of positive animal-oriented experiences.’
 
The first proposition is tested by exposing two separate groups of Michigan adults (college student in freshman science course, N=220, and a diverse group of adults, N=566) to photos of dogs just prior to administering a set of wolf attitude questions.  Wolf attitude scores of photo-exposed respondents are then compared to a control group who answered the wolf attitude questions but saw no photos.  A third treatment group viewed wolf photos then took the wolf attitude questions.

The second proposition is tested by asking a set of wolf attitude questions and then recording respondents’ current  pet ownership.  Wolf attitude scores of the ‘dog and cat’, ‘dog only’, ‘cat only’, and ‘no  pets’ groups are compared and trends examined.

Evidence supports Kellert’s assertion of ‘no change in attitude’ if the pet treatment was simply an ephemeral exposure to dog photos.  Additional evidence supports the ‘Serpell/Levinson’ proposition of ‘possibility of change’ in that there is a clear difference in wolf attitude scores between pet owners’ and non-pet owners’ wolf attitudes.  There is a surprising result with current cat owners’ wolf attitudes. 

Short-term exposure treatments such as the photo treatment are not promising tools for affecting attitude changes.  Our intimate and longer associations with pet dogs and cats does seem to hold greater promise as a method of affecting long-term attitude changes towards wild relatives of our pets.

Evidence from portions of this study could be used to promote different styles of appreciation for predators such as wolves:  introduce children and adults to dogs and cats first during wolf advocacy programs, then stress similarities between species rather than differences.



COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR IN HUMANS’ OLDEST WORKING COMPANION, ELEPHANTS
Benjamin Hart* and Lynette Hart
School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA
blhart@ucdavis.edu

Perhaps the longest enduring relationship between humans and animals in a working relationship, without the genetic aspects of domestication, is with Asian elephants.  Hannibal dramatized the extent to which humans could partner with elephants in war.  The close relationships are built on three attributes of elephants: their large size and concomitant strength; their manipulative trunk that approaches the functions of a hand; and their cognitive abilities conferred by a large brain with twice the associative, non-sensorimotor cerebral cortex as humans.   That is, they have a higher absolute capacity for cognitive behavior than any other terrestrial species.  Elephants have been taught a broad range of tasks beyond that of other animals, for stage performance, warfare, logging, and transport.  A hallmark of cognitive ability in animals is in the use and manufacture of tools, which is well-known among chimpanzees and orangutans who use tools for obtaining energy rich food items such as termites and nuts.  Investigators of animal cognition may raise a question, however, about the infrequent spontaneous display of cognitive ability by wild elephants, especially the use of tools.  In contrast to the use of tools by chimpanzees and orangutans while foraging for energy-rich foods, elephants, not being omnivores seeking energy-rich foods, spend most of the day foraging on low energy food where tool use would be of little value.  Probably the most frequent and creative use of tools by elephants is in the use of branches as fly switches by wild Asian elephants.  Captive elephants living under naturalistic conditions and possibly wild elephants modify or “manufacture” fly switches from available branches.


Forty Thousand and One Dalmatians:  Booms and Busts in the Popularity of Dog Breeds
Harold Herzog* and Robiyn Mims
Western Carolina University    North Carolina, USA
herzog@email.wcu.edu

Established in 1884, the American Kennel Club (AKC) is by far the largest registry of purebred dogs in the United States. The organization recognizes 150 breeds with a million new registrations each year.  We obtained data from the AKC on the number of new registrations of each breed between 1946 and 2001.  This large data set  (n = 48,280,840) provides a window into fluctuations in preferences for breeds of dogs in American culture.
While most breeds had relatively stable populations, some showed explosive “boom and bust” cycles.  This pattern was most evident in 11 breeds (Afghan Hounds, Alaskan Malamutes, Boxers, Chow Chows, Dalmatians, Doberman Pincers, Norwegian Elk Hounds, Irish Setters, Old English Sheep Dogs, Rottweillers, and Saint Bernards).  At the height of their booms, these breeds showed an average increase of 1,165% above their baseline population (range = 512% to 4,238%). These increases were typically followed by precipitous declines in which the breeds dropped, on average, to 18% of their population high point (range = 5% to 28%).  The boom stages of these cycles lasted an average of 11.2 years and the declines 14.4 years.  The causes of these dramatic fluctuations were sometimes apparent.  For example, explosions in the number of Old English Sheep Dogs and Dalmatians closely followed the release of popular Disney movies featuring the breeds.  In other cases, causes of booms were unclear. These findings are discussed in the contexts of several questions: (1) Is there a population size threshold (“tipping point”) associated with large increases in breed popularity? (2) Are “busts” associated with increases in the frequency in which unwanted purebred animal are relinquished to animal shelters? (3) Are dog breeds “memes”? 


Looking at Animals "from Bottom-Up": For an Historical Perspective of Agency
Jason Hribal
Department of History, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH
jasonchribal@cs.com

This presentation will ask the audience to consider the active role that nonhuman animals have played in the shaping of history. We will explore this possibility of agency by reexamining and further elaborating on two modern historical events--the agricultural and industrial revolution, and the creation of the animal rights movement.

The first step will be to look at the role of animals in the creation of capitalist agriculture and industry--that is, their unwaged labor. For example, horses and oxen plowed the enclosed fields. Horses and oxen powered the machines (whether crushing sugar cane, ginning cotton, or milling textiles). Cows, chickens, pigs, and cattle fed the new urban, industrial, and plantation centers (which themselves could not exist without the supplying of flesh, milk, and eggs). Horses and mules transported the goods (both people and products) via roads and canals. Horses and oxen skidded and teamed the timber from the forests. And Pit-ponies hauled the coal from the mines. Indeed, the agricultural and industrial revolution was, in so many ways, produced by the work of the above animals.

 The second step will be to reexamine the creation of the modern animal rights movement. It is not a coincidence, I argue, that this movement burgeoned out of the urban centers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--for these temporal localities were areas where one could not avoid witnessing the rapidly accruing exploitation of other creatures. Here, animals were working in greater and greater numbers. Here, they were resisting these impositions--whether through violence (kicking, biting, charging) or nonviolence (escape, crying out, refusal to work). Here, they were criminalized, both physically and ideologically, for that resistance--for there would be no need for the whip or bridle and bit if horses obeyed. And it was these actions--laboring, resisting, and being punished for it--which created the growing concerns for their welfare. Indeed, it is, again, not a coincidence that the birth of the animal rights movement occurred at the same moment in history (the dawn of the nineteenth century) as the birth of the working class--for their formation is interrelated and interwoven. Animals are part of the working class.


THE PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF PET DOG CHOICES
Deborah Jones, Ph.D.
Psychology, Kent State University Stark Campus, Canton, OH
djones@stark.kent.edu

People have a variety of practical and psychological reasons for sharing their lives with pet dogs.  Protection, companionship, status, power, physical form, and function are only a few of the reasons that people choose specific types of dogs.  Unfortunately, a poorly considered choice can lead to unhappiness on the part of the owner and, possibly, rehoming or even death for the dog.  For these reasons it is important to understand the psychological processes that underlie dog choice in pet owners.

In human social psychological literature there are two areas that can be applied to human/canine relationships.  These are stereotypes and attraction.  The causes, process, and consequences of stereotypical thinking will be discussed.  This information will be applied to common beliefs about specific types/breeds of dogs.  Theories about interpersonal attraction and the reasons for specific choices will also be considered.  Literature on status, power, and physical attractiveness will be applied to pet dog choices.

Several informal cognitive models of dogs ownership (the assumptions on which people base their relationships with dogs) will be presented.  The models include ‘Lassie’, ‘baby’, ‘macho’, and ‘dominance’.  Each model leads to a very different way of perceiving and interacting with pet dogs.

The role of unconscious choices, motivations, and decisions will also be considered.  Pet owners are often completely unaware of the underlying psychological factors that influence their behavior and expectations regarding their dogs.


Pegasus Farm: A Stable Environment II
Tamara Jones
Pegasus Farm, Hartville, OH
tjones@pegasusfarm.org

This presentation will focus on the behavior of the horse in the special situation of therapeutic riding. Pegasus Farm is a therapeutic equestrian center for persons with disabilities, located in Hartville, Ohio.  Horseback riding is a recognized form of therapy that makes the most of the axiom "the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man".  At Pegasus Farm there is a powerful and beneficial connection between horses and humans, a connection that goes beyond physiotherapeutic exercises.  The horse becomes both a partner and companion, offering an extremely rewarding relationship to their special riders.


Human Explanatory Style for Companion Animal Behavior
Linda M. Kline
California State University, Chico
(lkline@csuchico.edu)

It has been estimated that each year in the United States, 8-10 million unwanted dogs and cats are either released as strays or given to animal shelters (HSUS, 2000).  Other estimates (e.g., Moulton et al., 1991) place this number closer to 15 million animals.  Salman et al. (1998) indicated that behavior problems were one of the most common reasons for relinquishing dogs to shelters and it is likely that this is also a reason behind releasing animals as strays.  It seems logical that individuals who relinquish their pets because of behavior problems may interpret the behavior problem as one that cannot be remedied.  The cause of behavior (attribution) is internal to the animal and expected to occur again.  This type of attribution would imply a potentially difficult future with the animal.

The process of attribution in humans has received a great deal of attention from researchers (e.g., Seligman, et al., 1990; Wiener, 1995), however, less is known about the attributions people hold of animal behavior (Rajecki et al., 2000).  The present study sought to examine the possibility that humans have an explanatory style with which they understand companion animal behavior.  Following from the concept of explanatory style of human behavior (e. g., Seligman, et al., 1990), a questionnaire was developed to assess whether individuals generally view animal behavior as internally or externally caused, permanent or temporary and global or specific to a given situation.

One hundred twenty-three undergraduate students (83 females and 40 males) completed a questionnaire containing 24 scenarios.  Twelve scenarios involved cat behavior (6 positive and 6 negative behaviors) and 12 addressed dog behavior (6 positive and 6 negative behaviors.    

Preliminary analyses revealed Cronbach alpha of .83 for the attributional style questionnaire.  Paired samples t-tests revealed that individuals rated positive dog behavior (compared to negative dog behavior) as internally caused (t (122) = 4.20, p = .001) and stable (t (122) = 3.33, p = .001), however negative cat behavior (compared to positive behavior) was rated as internally caused (t (122) = -5.64, p = .001).  Comparison of negative cat and dog behavior indicated that persons perceived negative cat behavior (compared to negative dog behavior) as internally caused (t (122) = -11.70, p = .001) and stable (t (122) = -4.32, p = .001).  Though the present findings are based on a convenience sample of college students, the results are useful in exploring human attributional or explanatory style of companion animal behavior.



Canine Aggression to Owners: Is It Really Based on Dominance?
Andrew U Luescher*
Purdue University, Indiana, USA
luescher@purdue.edu

Canine aggression to owners is the problem most commonly referred to behavior specialists. The traditional interpretation is that the dog is part of the family hierarchy and strives to assume the alpha position. Once it has reached a high social position and is challenged by an owner, the dog shows dominance aggression. This concept would predict that aggressive dogs are mature when the problem starts, mostly intact males, self-confident, dominant to other dogs, and show offensive body language when aggressive. However, the facts are inconsistent with a diagnosis of dominance.

Neutered males were most likely and intact females lest likely to. Over 50% of dogs started to exhibit aggression at less than 1 year, many at 2 months of age. Body language is ambivalent. Aggressive dogs are more fearful and excitable. They may act submissively to owners and other dogs in various situations.

Dominance is obviously not a valid diagnosis for these cases. The following alternative explanation is offered. Aggression may be shown early on as play aggression, fear aggression, or as an expression of conflict, and then be reinforced by avoidance-conditioning (person retreating).

The above concept challenges us to interpret the social relationship between dogs and owners in a more sophisticated way than as a dominance-submissiveness relationship. It points out the inappropriateness of domination techniques and any form of punishment for these cases. It points out the importance of considering the development of a behavioral problem and the disposition of an animal when making a diagnosis. It necessitates a new approach to treatment, and leads us away from the idea to dominate.

Treatment should address the dog’s management, basic disposition (e.g., fearfulness) and the cause of conflict. The situations in which confrontations are likely should be avoided. The dog should be re-introduced to such situations only in the context of systematic desensitization and response substitution. Owners are instructed to avoid all casual interaction and only interact in a command-response=reward format. Obedience and especially clicker training is useful.

A head halter with a leash attached is placed on the dog, so that the owner can control all aggression-inducing situations in a non-confrontational, consistent way. No punishment, no choke chain, no scolding is to be used. Regular exercise will reduce excitability. Situations in which the dog still shows aggression are addressed by systematic desensitization and response-substitution.


Canis Lupus Cosmopolis
William S. Lynn, Ph.D.
Research Scholar and Executive Director, Center for Humans and Nature, 109
West 77th Street, #2, New York, NY 10024, USA
williamlynn@humansandnature.org

The subject of wolf recovery in North America sparks heated controversy, pro and con. This paper explores how this subject is informed by cosmopolitan worldviews. These worldviews pull nature and culture into a common orbit of ethical meaning, with implications for the normative relationships that ought to pertain in landscapes shared by people and wolves. This theoretical outlook is illustrated using the controversy over wolves in the northeastern region of the United States. I conclude with a set of reflections on theorizing the cosmopolis, the interpretation of cosmopolitan landscapes, and living with cosmopolitan wolves.


From Pet to Domestic Animal: a Shared Odyssey
Elizabeth Mancz
University of Akron, Akron, Ohio
eamancz@uakron.edu

In 1883, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, suggested that pet-keeping was a predecessor to the domestication of animals.  This theory was discounted at the time, but recently, has received support from a number of zooarchaeologists.   The ethnographic literature shows a wide variety of animals kept as pets by various hunting and gathering people around the world.   But why do some of these animals become full-fledged domesticates while others remain wild, with the occasional tamed individual?    Is pet-keeping, in fact, the key to domestication?  Or is there another route from wild to domestic animal?    The answer lies in prehistory – in the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and is very much intertwined with the accompanying human transition from hunting and gathering to farming. 

In examining this transition, from wild to tame to domestic animal, a number of factors must be considered.  How significant is the social structure of the animals tamed or domesticated?  Did some of these animals fulfill one or more functions which ancient peoples found useful?  How significant were such functions to eventual domestication?  How important was familiarity with a species?  A number of early domestic animals, such as sheep, goats and cattle, originally had very specific and limited ranges.  Yet this does not seem to have inhibited their spread into very different environments, eventually all over the world.  Other early domesticates in the same circumstances, such as camels, yaks and water buffaloes,  have never spread far from those original areas, except as curiosities.   Why?  Finally, having made the transition from tamed pet to domestic animal, why do some of these animals make the transition to domestic pet, while others do not? 

This paper will seek to answer these questions using evidence from ethnography, archaeology and behavioral studies. 
   


Blending interpretations of human-dog interaction in the herding paradigm
Eve D. Marschark*, Ronald Baenninger
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
spin@fast.net

Humans and dogs interact on multiple levels during the process of learning how to herd livestock. Two perspectives that can be used to understand how this social communication occurs are ethology and behavior analysis.  Traditionally, the question of nature-nurture is addressed from one side of the equation only, but the herding paradigm offers us a unique opportunity from which to examine the boundaries of each.  Here, the relations between “instinctive” and learned behaviors can be analyzed at the ontogenic level in naïve herding dogs.  While some “innate” behaviors remain fixed, man and dog learn to work together by changing the behavioral elements of specific predatory motor patterns that are modifiable.

There is heuristic fodder in this discussion of how humans and dogs interact in the herding paradigm.  Social elements of the relationship affect how quickly the dog progresses in training, and indeed the emotional experiences of both the owner and dog in the process.  Voice modulation of the human, personalities of both the dog and owner, and encouragement for both dog and owner by the trainer can all impact learning how to herd sheep.  Implications for other human-dog situations can certainly be made.

A presentation of this blended interpretation of ethology and behavior analysis was well received at the 5th meeting of the Maryland Association for Behavior Analysis in November 2002.  It would seem that ISAZ is not the only organization that is ready and eager to consider a more inclusive interpretation of behavior.  At the 9th Annual Conference of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers in September 2002 national best selling author, Jean Donaldson made a call for more research in the area of human-dog interaction.  The applied field of dog training is actively seeking a scientific basis for guidance in developing a comprehensive, well founded training protocol as an industry standard towards nationally recognized certification for dog trainers. 

To this end, a study is currently underway to test whether dogs respond in a social seeking or distancing manner to six human postures. This next step of research grew out of the herding work and observations that human physical movement seems to evoke reliable responding in dogs. 


Developing and Implementing an AAA/AAT Program in a Pediatric Hospital
Ken McCort
Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Akron (Akron, Ohio, USA)
kmccort@neo.rr.com

Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio has been conducting a visiting animal program (dogs and a pony) in their facility called the Doggie Brigade since 1990.  After almost a year of discussions of concerns, the first teams were screened and permitted to visit in 1991.  The program started out with eight teams who visited on one floor on one day each week.  Dogs and handlers were conducting animal assisted activity programs with the few patients they were permitted to see.  After 6 months, another unit was opened to the program.  Slowly, the entire facility, with few exceptions, was allowing Doggie Brigade team to enter.

Today, the program is hospital wide. Teams, now numbering over 60, visit 7 days a week.  They are permitted access to the general population, but also the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, the Oncology floor, the Burn Unit, and Emergency.  Physical therapy utilizes the teams as a modality for treatment every Tuesday and Thursday.  Hospital staff members are constantly coming up with new ideas on how to get the dogs to benefit the patients and the hospital.

To date 12 local hospitals have developed similar programs modeled after this successful and award winning endeavor.  This presentation will cover the history of the program from inception in 1990 to implementation in 2003 highlighting its successes and adjustments made to better the interactions between humans and animals.


Saving Ryan's Privates: An overview of the pertinent bond, physiological and behavioral factors that contribute to companion animal neutering
Myrna Milani, B.S., D.V.M.
TippingPoint, Inc
milani@cyberportal.net

Within the United States, the relationship between responsible pet ownership and neutering one's dog or cat is so firmly entrenched in pet-owner ideology that most people automatically assume that the reasons underlying this connection are medically and behaviorally as well as ethically sound. However, a review of the literature suggests that any such justification for pet canine and feline sterilization came after the fact and is sometimes tenuous at best.
If population control truly was the driving force behind the practice, why did the wide-scale surgical sterilization of female dogs and cats precede that of males by several decades? And why were veterinarians routinely taught to spay females before they came into heat but to delay castrating males until after they were sexually mature?

To answer these questions, the presentation opens with a brief discussion of the history of castration and ovariohysterectomy in both humans and food animals, and this information is then compared and contrasted to that related to pet dogs and cats. Doing so raises the possibility that the choice of companion animal veterinary practice to align itself with human rather than food animal medicine (and the willingness of the public to accept this alignment) lies at the heart of the more emotion-less science-driven approach to neutering. The presentation closes with a brief exploration of the health and behavioral effects of gonadectomy. Although gonadectomy may prevent certain medical problems, given the recent surge in studies on the nonreproductive effects of reproductive hormones, touting the health benefits of gonadectomy may become increasing more difficult to do in the future. In the behavioral realm, once again the traditional justification given for the surgery doesn't jive with the timing of the surgery and scientific fact, or with what those working with dogs and cats displaying behavior problems see every day.

 Obviously an entire meeting could be devoted to all the medical, behavioral, ethical, psychological, sociological, political, historical, and other aspects of companion animal neutering. The purpose of this presentation is simply to nudge this foundation of responsible American pet ownership and see if it's worthy of that position.


When the Pet Becomes Parent to the Human: The behavioral and bond ramifications of on-going domestication in companion animals and humans
Myrna Milani, B.S., D.V.M.
TippingPoint, Inc
milani@cyberportal.net

For more than five decades, Russian scientists have been studying the effects of domestication in animals and these studies have demonstrated two concepts of value to those interested in domestic animal behavior and/or the human-domestic animal bond. The first is that domestication results in a physiologically and behaviorally immature animal when compared to its wild predecessors. The second is that animals evolve as a mind-body unit; one cannot change physiology without changing behavior any more than one can change behavior without changing physiology. Although we members of the human species have a way of viewing ourselves as "above" animal behavior and equating our own greater domesticity with greater maturity, logic and our willingness to accept the results of animal studies in the strictly physiological arena and the forays evolutionary psychologists are making into the human behavioral realm argue against this. If we accept that our greater domesticity actually makes us more physiologically and behaviorally immature than those animals over whom we claim superiority, this opens the door to new understanding of previously troubling companion animal health and behavior as well as human-companion animal bond problems. 

Could, for example, co-evolving human and companion animal behavioral immaturity explain the increasingly intimate relationship we have with our pets?  Obviously, if human and companion animal needs complement each other, no problems arise. But what happens to the companion animals whose care-givers may be more physiologically and behaviorally needy and dependent than the animals themselves?  Using canine aggression as a model, this presentation explores how the dog's inbred immaturity and need for a stable pack may combine with the human desire for a protector to result in serious consequences for the animal's health, behavior, and the human-animal bond.


Why (and how) do we talk to dogs? Baby talk in human-dog play interactions
Robert W. Mitchell
Department of Psychology, Eastern Kentucky University,
Richmond, KY 40475 USA
robert.mitchell@eku.edu

Many people talk to dogs, even though they know that dogs do not understand much of what they say. The same is true of people's talk to very young human infants ("baby talk"), but this speech is often explained as having the function of teaching infants language, a function which talk to dogs clearly does not have. To explore similarities and
differences between talk to infants and dogs, I analyzed talk by 23 people to their own and another's dog while playing with them, using methods employed to analyze talk to infants. I then compared this talk to dogs with talk to infants (from previous studies), to determine if these forms of talk are indeed strikingly similar, to detect any differences between these forms of talk (which might support a teaching function distinct to baby talk), and to evaluate the significance of these similarities and dissimilarities in relation to the functions of talk to dogs and infants. I examined talk to dogs for prosodic, lexical, complexity, redundancy and content features of baby talk, compared men's and women's talk to dogs, and examined evidence in both forms of talk (to infants and to dogs) for various hypotheses concerning functions of baby talk. 

 Talk to dogs and talk to infants share prosodic features (e.g. high pitch, whispering, extended word duration), lexical features (e.g.frequent attention-getting devices, distinctive words), complexity features (e.g. low MLU, many grammatically acceptable utterances, many one-word utterances), redundancy features (e.g., high repetition), and content features (e.g., mostly present tense verbs, mostly about action, infrequently about mental states). But talk to young infants has a higher MLU; more phatics, questions, declaratives, and deictic utterances; and fewer exact repetitions and imperatives than talk to dogs. Although there are several differences in baby talk by fathers and mothers, there were few sex differences in the talk to dogs during play.

My examination of similarities and differences between talk to infants and dogs suggests that baby talk serves multiple functions. Four of these functions are common to both forms of talk (to dogs and to infants). One common function is to control the addressee's attention, interest, and/or behavior in relation to an item or activity for several seconds. A second is to communicate with an inattentive addressee with limited understanding. A third function is to indicate friendliness and affection, accomplished almost exclusively by prosodic means (high-pitched speech, whispering, and "slow" extended words). A fourth function is maintaining the pretense that the addressee is a conversant, even though he or she is not. The function of tutoring was found only in talk to infants, and was expressed through deictic utterances and imitation of the infant's sounds, both of which are exceedingly rare in talk to dogs.


Dairy Herd Expansion and the Stockperson-Animal Relationship
Aaron S. Moore
Illinois State University, Department of Agriculture, Normal, Illinois  USA
amoore@ilstu.edu

Public interest in the impact that farming systems have on the welfare of animals continues to increase as the intensification of animal agriculture becomes more ubiquitous.  One area of concern is the amount of individualized attention and opportunity for positive human-animal interaction that is available to animals as farms increase in size and mechanization.  It is widely recognized that positive human-animal interactions help to reduce the fear response of animals while strengthening the human-animal bond, thus enhancing animal welfare.  Over the past decade, the dairy industry has undergone significant restructuring as producers pursue herd expansion opportunities in order to realize economies of scale and to adopt emerging technologies.  The aim of this study was to explore the nature of the stockperson-dairy cow relationship.  In addition, dairy producers’ perceptions concerning the impact of herd expansion on stockperson-animal interactions were characterized. 

Ethnographic content analysis was used to record specific information concerning the nature of stockperson-animal relationships and the impact of herd expansion.  Archival data from producer interviews, public forums and postings to Internet discussion groups concerning dairy herd expansion were analyzed to develop this qualitative characterization.  An a priori coding scheme was employed as producer responses were analyzed for the occurrence of words or phrases.  Responses were subsequently classified into one of three common types of stockperson-animal relationships -- ownership, partnership or stewardship.  More than 80% of recorded responses were categorized under partnership or stewardship.  Human interaction was cited as important to the welfare of a dairy cow.  Concern for “cow comfort” surfaced as a recurring theme and was often cited as an important provision that the stockperson contributes to their cattle.  In this sense, the relationship was characterized by a sense of stewardship.  At the same time, producers were very cognizant of the link between cow comfort and milk yield, suggesting interdependency or a partnership between the cow and producer.  Responses classified under ownership primarily consisted of references to animals as capital or as resources that were to be maintained.  However, the evidence suggests that the stockperson-dairy cow relationship contains elements that are consistent with all three types of human-animal relationship and herd expansion did not appear to alter this.


Assistance Dog Placement in the Pediatric Population: Benefits, Risks, and Recommendations for Future Application
B. Witkind Davis, K. Nattrass*, S. O'Brien, G. Patronek and M. MacCollin
Center for Animals and Public Policy, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, Massachusetts (BWD, KN, GP, MM), Tufts University Center for Children, Massachusetts (GP, MM), and the National Education for Assistance Dogs Services, Massachusetts (SO)
Address correspondence to: Kathryn.Nattrass@tufts.edu

Assistance animals have long been recognized for their value in enhancing the lives of disabled adults by increasing the physical independence, confidence, and social lives of their handlers.  Recently this concept has been applied to the growing population of physically disabled and developmentally impaired children, though the benefits and risks of these placements have not been thoroughly assessed.  Our study used interviews to evaluate the outcome of placing assistance dogs in the pediatric population, looking specifically at the unique advantages and disadvantages of this new application of the human-animal bond. 

We administered a structured interview assessing risks and benefits of assistance dog relationships to 17 families with a child under 18 years who graduated from a single provider over a five year time period.  Benefits were found in 88% of families, and were overwhelmingly social and cognitive, with additional physical and medical benefits for the pediatric client.  Other family members also reported benefits from the presence of the assistance dog in the home.  However, risks, including behavioral, financial, and time-cost issues were significant, becoming a burden in 53% of families.  Perhaps more than with disabled adult placements, we found that it was of prime importance to understand the assistance animal in the context of the family, rather than in relation to the disabled individual alone.  Though most families reported positively on their experience with the assistance dog, children’s and families’ complex and changing needs should be kept in the forefront of deciding whether to acquire an assistance animal.  It is hoped that results of this and future studies will enhance the welfare of both client and assistance animal, as well as the overall success of this unique human-animal relationship.


Perceptual and acoustic comparison of domestic cat (Felis catus) and African Wild Cat (Felis silvestris lybica) vocalizations: evidence of adaptation?
Nicholas Nicastro
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
nn12@cornell.edu

As part of an ongoing program of research on possible anthropogenic selection effects on the meow cry in domestic felids, vocalizations by domestic cats (Felis catus) were compared with context-matched cries by their likely ancestor, the African wild cat (Felis silvestris lybica). Recordings of the former were obtained in their home environments; the Wild Cats were observed and recorded at the National Zoological Gardens, Pretoria, South Africa. Comparisons included analysis of basic acoustic characteristics and perceptual experiments with human listeners. The latter gathered data on human judgements about the meows, including listener ratings of the pleasantness and urgency of calls by the two species. Both the acoustic and perceptual comparisons revealed clear differences between domestic and wild cat vocalizations: among other contrasting features, the domestic cat meows were significantly shorter in mean duration than the wild cat meows, showed more spectral continuity, and exhibited a higher mean fundamental frequency. Human listeners at all levels of experience/affinity for cats rated domestic cat meows far more pleasant but less urgent-sounding than context-matched wild cat vocalizations. Based on these results, it is argued that human perceptual biases have applied selective pressure on cats since domestication, leading to vocalizations that have more “ear-appeal” for humans


Why it is okay to talk to your dog
David W. Paxton
Queensland, Australia
paxtoned@ozemail.com.au

Darwinian principles of evolution by natural selection apply to complexes of species as well to individual species, so long as no species in the complex is disadvantaged.  Dogs and people are arguably one such complex; they are extended phenotypes of each other. Bipedalism was a survival trait of hominids: in the emerging savannas they could see better, carry things such as food and weapons, and apply their forefeet to making and using tools.  The rotation of the head of evolving hominid bipeds was physically necessary if the centre of gravity of the head was to align better with an increasingly upright spinal column. Some hominids such as the Neanderthal survived without this change and retained a muzzle and heavy neck muscles in a what, with hindsight, now seems an overly conservative form of evolution. In some hominid variants, however, rotation of the head and a routinely upright stance resulted in a “falling” of the face, better stereoscopic vision and enhancement of the “voice box” as the larynx, suspended by the hyoid bone, pointed upward and backwards into the pharynx to form a resonating space.  Falling of the face led to impaction of the teeth and shortening of the tongue into a blunt piston.  This combination is ideal for creating the components of spoken words.  However the capacity for smell in the evolving flat human face was compromised because turbinate bones and the area of nasal mucosa became reduced.  Capacity for smell is an important survival trait and its loss would seem to be a lethal affliction for variants with fallen faces. But, if the capacity for smell was being provided by another animal in the complex, afflicted human variants would be protected and could survive to reproduce in a process leading to an even more important survival trait for human beings, the capacity for speech.
Hominids are characterised by an increasingly high brain to body weight ratio.  They had the capacity to organise for survival.  Those with a developing capacity for speech, the human variants, could organise better, eventually creating a novel ecological niche:  the human home base.  Human variants continued to evolve in these bases and so too did other species, especially a canid variant which became the dog.  The superb sensory powers of the canids benefited developing human variants within that base.  Humans survived and continued to be naturally selected for improving capacity for speech.  This in turn led to home bases that were organised better.  Those canine variants which best fitted in to those bases were naturally selected for survival and reproduction.  The characteristics of the dog evolved until it became differentiated from its ancestors.  The human-dog complex has proved robust.
This paper refers to circumstantial evidence from evolutionary theory, palaeontology and molecular biology for the assertions above and points to the evolutionary success of the human being and the dog vis-à -vis their forebears.    It is human nature to associate with dogs and vice versa.  Speech is our ultimate tool for survival and was possible only because we associated with the dog.  That is why it is okay to talk to your dog.



We landed on the Moon, mosquitoes didn’t: qualitative data on animal experimentation
Monica Pivetti
Dept. of Social Psychology – University of Helsinki – Finland
Monica.pivetti@helsinki.fi

    This poster presents the methods and the results of some exploratory socio-psychological studies conducted in Italy and Finland, concerning the animal activists’ representations of the non-human animals. The chosen approach is the socio-constructivist one. Among the different theories which systematically study the humans’ interaction with their social environment, the theory of social representations focuses on collective forms of thought and belief and on communications produced under the constrain of society. Social representation is "a set of concepts, statements and explanations originating in daily life in the course of inter-individual communication". Serge Moscovici (1981) argues that in social representations we discern not only “opinions about”, “images of”, or “attitudes towards”, but “theories”, “sciences sui generis”, devoted to the discovery of reality and its order.
Using a qualitative approach, the first study investigates people’s representations and attitudes toward animal use in scientific research. Primarily in medical and psychological scientific research, animals have been considered for a long time as models for human physiology, and animal testing has played a crucial role in the development of modern medical treatments. Among the factors correlated to the attitudes toward animals, it has been found the gender, with women significantly more concerned with animal well-beings and less favouring animal experimentation than men (see Gallup & Beckstead, 1988; Pifer, Shimizu & Pifer, 1994; Plous, 1996; Pifer, 1996 among others). According to M.O.R.I. survey (1999), the most important factors affecting people positions on animal experimentation are 1) the high potential benefits of the research (e.g. to save lives), 2) the low level of invasiveness entailed by the experiment, 3) The animal species involved dissimilarity to humans (e.g. rodents). Opinion polls have shown that while Europeans seem generally opposing research on animals (Pifer, Shimizu & Pifer, 1994), most Americans support the need for animals in scientific research (Gallup Poll, 2002; General Social Survey, 2000).
Few investigations have been devoted to the qualitative study of social representation of animal experimentation. Studying the way people construe their arguments about animal experimentation during everyday conversations, can lead to a better understanding of the similarities and differences between the attitudes of animal experimentation advocates and detractors. Assuming that the way supporters and detractors conceive animal experimentation significantly affects their social behaviours, this study examines how such categories of people socially understand and represent the phenomenon of animal experimentation.
On such premises, two focus groups, in Italy and in Finland, were organised. They were composed by prospective doctors, laypeople and animal right activists. The qualitative methodology of focus group, based on interaction among participants, leads them to explore their own and others’ opinion regarding the current issues, i.e. animal experimentation. The relevant European legislation has been investigated as well. Comparative findings seem to highlight similar social representations and attitudes between the Italian and the Finnish sample. In particular 1) prospective doctors are faithful to science and favour animal experimentation; 2) laypeople share an emphatic attitude towards animal suffering; and 3) animal right activists, obviously, oppose animal experimentation, and seem to be more informed about alternatives methods.
The second study focuses in particular on the animal activists’ representations of non-human animals in Italy. Digard’s (1992) definition of domesticated and wild animals is discussed. Focus group interviews have been conducted in the city of Bologna, in the north of Italy. An interesting data may be the fact that the considered area produces up to the 16% of the Italian meat annual production, being this area the major Italian producer (source: ISMEA, 1999). The feelings of empathy towards non-humans animals have been investigated by means of a translated and validated version of the Paul’s empathy scale (2000).



Pegasus Farm: A Stable Environment I
Kathy Rubbo
Pegasus Farm, Hartville, OH
kathy@pegasusfarm.org

Pegasus Farm is a therapeutic equestrian center for persons with disabilities, located in Hartville, Ohio.  Horseback riding is a recognized form of therapy that makes the most of the axiom "the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man".  At Pegasus Farm there is a powerful and beneficial connection between horses and humans, a connection that goes beyond physiotherapeutic exercises.  The horse becomes both a partner and companion, offering an extremely rewarding relationship to their special riders. This presentation will provide an overview of this special relationship


Persistent Myths Regarding Immunosuppression and Safe Pet Ownership
by Caroline B.  Schaffer, DVM, Assistant Professor
Tuskegee University School of Veterinary Medicine, Tuskegee, AL 36088
schaffer@tuskegee.edu

Interventions that promote the physical and mental health benefits of pet companionship must be tempered with facts--both pro and con.  Despite comprehensive educational efforts by HIV/AIDS-support groups, many well-meaning friends, physicians, and other health care providers still insist that people with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) get rid of their pets.  Others, including cancer patients, diabetics, transplant recipients, infants, pregnant women, the elderly, and people on immunosuppressive medications, encounter similar advice.   By contrast, some listen to only part of the messages regarding safe pet interactions and fail to follow guidelines to prevent the transfer of zoonotic diseases from animals to immunosuppressed people.
    Educational programs such as the one at the Center for the Study of Human-Animal Interdependent Relationships at Tuskegee University’s School of Veterinary Medicine continue to encounter misinformation that threatens the social lives of animals and people.  Examples of myths that persist are:
1) MYTH: Animals living with people infected with HIV carry the virus to other people.  FACT: No scientific evidence suggests that animals other than non-human primates can get AIDS or give AIDS to people.
2)  MYTH: The medical community over-reacted--animals do not transmit diseases to people.  FACT: Over 200 diseases are said to be zoonotic, i.e. shared by people and animals.
3)  MYTH: Feline AIDS can infect people.  FACT: Cats do not get or give AIDS.  The Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) is not the same as HIV and cannot infect people.  This unfortunate misnomer has cost many cats their homes and their lives.
4)  MYTH: Animal caretakers should be fired if they are infected with HIV.  FACT: The Americans with Disability Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination in the work place due to HIV/AIDS.
5)  MYTH: Pregnant women will get toxoplasmosis from their cats.  FACT: Transmission is highly preventable.  Cats may shed the toxoplasma organism in their feces two weeks during their entire life.  Only if their egg-laden feces sits 24-48 hours before being ingested can toxoplasmosis infect people. 
    These and other important points about zoonotic diseases, safe pet ownership, health care teams, laws against discrimination, and universal precautions will be presented in this lecture to encourage mutually beneficial relationship between animals and people.  By examining persistent beliefs and fears, advocates of human-animal interactions will be better able to safeguard the welfare of animals and the people with whom they live.


A Walk in the Park: An Ethnographic Account of an Interspecies Social Community
Shelly Scott
Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois
s-scott6@northwestern.edu

This paper interprets the research I am conducting in a yearlong enthnography of residents who bring their dogs to a neighborhood park in Evanston, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. Each morning and early evening, Baker Park is overrun with people and their dogs running on the baseball diamond, alongside the basketball court and even onto the playgrounds. The small park does not contain a designated dog area, and people are frequently warned and occasionally fined by patrolling authorities who find them with dogs off-leash. This does not deter the folks who live in the nearby ouses and condos from meeting at the park and turning their dogs loose to play, because social time has become an essential part of the day for the neighbors and their dogs. As a participant-observer, I have joined the group with my own two dogs in an effort to discover how a community of people has formed around their pets. In my research, I have noted what the park-goers talk about regarding their dogs and other issues, and I have observed how they interact with one another, their own dogs, and neighbors' dogs.

There is a tradition of dogs being depicted in televisions and film as nurturing relationships between people. Both fictive and real narratives often convey that people learning to care for pets find connecting with other people easier and more rewarding. Taking dogs to Baker Park each day provides as much of a social outlet for many of the neighborhood residents as it does for the dogs. Humans have much to learn from animals about the processes of socialization and this paper explores how one group of people are educating themselves. This paper details how human-animal relationships can enhance human-human encounters and how humans and dogs together may form a social community.


Predicting Justified Punishments for Animal Cruelty and Neglect
Valerie K. Sims
University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida
vsims@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu

Research has examined ratings of justified punishments for many types of crimes, including robbery, rape, and murder.  However, little experimental research has examined beliefs about how crimes against animals should be punished.  The present experiment tested whether justified punishment is a function of several variables:  Sex of person assigning punishment, Sex of Perpetrator of the Crime, Whether the Crime Involved Abuse or Neglect, Type of Animal in the Crime, and Whether the Animal Lived Through the Incident.

Four hundred forty four undergraduates (117 Males, 327 Females) read one of  16 scenarios describing a crime against an animal, and were asked to make acceptance ratings of possible punishments and restrictions, including:  no punishment, counseling, community service, payment of a fine, jail time, inability to adopt an animal in the future, inability to work with children, and inability to work with the elderly.  Ratings were made on seven point scales indicating agreement or disagreement.

The five punishment questions were added together to obtain a composite variable, and the three restriction questions were analyzed individually.  A 2(Sex of Participant) x 2(Sex of Perpetrator) x 2(Animal Type:  Chicken or Puppy) x 2(Crime Type) x 2(Outcome of Crime) ANOVA was conducted for each dependent variable.  The composite punishment analysis yielded main effects for Animal Type and Sex of Participant.  Ratings were higher for female participants, and for the puppy scenario.  The variables perpetrator sex, crime type, and crime outcome were predictive only in conjunction with other variables.  The adoption question yielded the same pattern of results, with females and those viewing the puppy scenario more likely to restrict future animal adoptions.  For working with children, there was a main effect for Animal, and again, restrictions were higher for the puppy scenario.  For the access to the elderly question, there only was a main effect for participant sex, with females more likely to restrict access.

These data suggest that when making decisions regarding the punishment of crimes against animals, two variables emerge as most predictive.  Females endorse greater punishment than males, and punishments tend to be stiffer when a crime was committed against a companion animal rather than a farm animal or animal that is regularly consumed for food.  Sex of perpetrator, Type of Crime, and Crime Outcome are moderating variables that come into play in conjunction with other information.  Participants also endorsed limiting access to future animals, but were less likely to endorse restriction of access to other vulnerable populations, suggesting that for many, the link between animal cruelty and human abuse is not sufficiently strong.


Wild Places, Friendly Faces: American Perceptions of Human-Wild Dolphin Interactions
Kristin L. Stewart
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida USA
kristinlstewart@yahoo.com

Today, opportunities for humans to interact with dolphins continue to increase as captive dolphin facilities offer greater numbers of ‘swim-with-dolphins’ programs, dolphin-assisted therapy gains in popularity and as growing commercial interests transport groups of people by boat out to the open waters to swim with wild dolphins.  The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has suggested that increased human interactions with wild dolphins may risk harm to both people and dolphins.  As such, NMFS developed marine mammal “viewing guidelines” and initiated a nationwide education and outreach program that includes the currently active "Protect Dolphins" campaign that challenges thousands of years of myths and legends involving human-dolphin bonds, including the extremely popular (and lucrative) contemporary stories of a bottlenose dolphin named Flipper.

The NMFS campaign is founded on the assumption that the public must be "educated" about wild dolphins; that is, that people must change their understanding of dolphins from smiling, fun-loving, compassionate friends of the sea to unpredictable, wild, potentially dangerous animals.  Does everyone want to swim with wild dolphins?  Do people today generally think of dolphins as wild or dangerous?  Or do people think they should be allowed to feed wild dolphins just as they could feed a duck at the park?  The current research is aimed at uncovering contemporary attitudes and opinions regarding human-wild dolphin interactions. Given the undeniable popularity of dolphins, the growing swim-with-wild-dolphins industry, and the recently proposed amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the time to understand public perceptions of human-dolphin interactions is long overdue. 


Program Assessment: St. Francis Of Assisi Service Dog Foundation Prison Pup Project   
*Marie Suthers-McCabe, DVM; Elizabeth Van Voorhees; Angie Krom Fournier
Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Tech, Virginia, USA
Msuthers@vt.edu

The purpose of this study was to investigate the emotional and behavioral effects of the Prison PUP (Puppies Uniting People) program on participating inmates at a prison in southwest Virginia, USA. Though similar programs have been in operation since 1981 and are currently functioning across the nation, only two studies have investigated the impact of such programs on the inmates involved.  One of these studies (Walsh & Mertin, 1995) was conducted in a women’s prison, and the other was conducted in a men’s prison but never published (Kleinberg, 2000). The Saint Francis of Assisi Service Dog Foundation, Inc. (SFOA) of Roanoke, Virginia, USA functions to assist people with one or more physical and/or emotional disabilities so that they may become more independent and self-sufficient through partnership with service dogs. SFOA seeks to increase the number of puppy raisers and, therefore, trained service dogs through the Prison PUP program. The program offers an opportunity for minimum-security prison inmates to become puppy raisers, giving of themselves to help others.

Based on the reports of the St. Francis of Assisi Service Dog Foundation, programs of this nature have an enormously positive impact on the individuals with disabilities who ultimately receive these service dogs.  This organization has estimated that over the eight-year working life of a service dog, approximately $60,000 is saved per individual through a 68% reduction in assistance hours required.  Further, while the Foundation experiences a 50% success rate with traditionally raised puppies, prison-raised dogs have been found to have a 75% success rate.  Thus, from the perspective of individuals with disabilities receiving service dogs and those who fund such programs, Prison PUP has been a tremendous success.  The next step is to assess whether the prisoners involved benefit from the program.  If the emotional and behavioral functioning of the inmates is improved by participation in the project evaluated here, this could provide the foundation for expansion into larger samples.  Further, it could stimulate further investigation of the use of animals in rehabilitative efforts with prisoners who seem most likely to benefit from such interventions.  While any findings from this study must be interpreted with caution because of the low sample size, the qualitative design allows the opportunity to uncover important issues and questions which could be fruitfully investigated in future research.


The Role of Handler Personality Traits in the Performance of Canine Explosives Detection Teams.
*Marie Suthers-McCabe, DVM; Andrea L. Henderson
Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Tech, Virginia, USA
Msuthers@vt.edu

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 have awakened a need for greater national security, particularly concerning the detection of explosive devices.  The use of canine teams for bomb detection may play a critical role in disaster prevention for police departments and airports around the country.  It is essential that both the canine and handler components of these teams operate effectively as a unit, yet there is an identified need for improvement in this area among today’s working teams.  Currently, many agencies assign dogs to their handlers according to such criteria as seniority or rank.  However, it is possible that the performance of canine teams could be enhanced if handler-to-dog matching and selection were based more on elements of human-animal companionship.  Personality compatibility between the two members of a canine detection team may fine-tune important aspects of a search mission, such as the dog’s understanding of commands and the handler’s ability to interpret the subtle behavioral changes of his partner.  

The objective of this study was to observe in an exploratory fashion whether any patterns may occur between elements of handler personality and canine performance in detection of explosives.  Such information may provide a direction for further, larger-scale studies with the goal of optimizing the selection of handlers for canine explosives detection teams.  This experiment involved assessing personality traits of four canine-detection team handlers using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Eysenck Personality Inventory.  The performance of the dogs assigned to these handlers was evaluated in previously collected data, and was analyzed with respect to the personality test results. In addition to the notable observations regarding introversion and judging, this study revealed several questions that must be addressed.  The potential value of further information of this type indicates that future, large-scale studies on the subject of explosives detection canine-handler compatibility would be extremely worthwhile.


A pioneering perspective
Victoria Voith
Animal Services Division, Department of Environmental Health, Albuquerque, New Mexico
VVoith@cabq.gov

An odyssey of an animal behaviorist through the tangle of
relationships between companion animals (domestic dogs and cats) and
humans.  A view of the field from the perspective of the animals and the
people in the trenches. A look at the development of the field and pockets of
stagnation.

Topics to be discussed include examining the link between animal and people abuse, the concept in California of people as "Guardians" instead of "owners", how animal welfare and rights have improved, public housing and pets, the development in veterinary schools and local communities of "hot-lines" re grief counseling, the still glaring lack of adequate attention being paid to the study of animal behavior and the animal's side of the human-animal bond (e.g. most progress for animals has been made because of the person's welfare related to the animal, for example, Vet schools and large vet facilities have tended to support hot lines and social worker positions before and instead of animal behavior positions).


Temple Grandin’s Sentient Animal Look and the Politics of Visual Engagement
Anna Williams
Eastern Mediterranean University, Northern Cyprus
annaw1123@yahoo.com

Over twenty years ago John Berger called attention to the function of the animal look in the zoo, in his celebrated essay ‘Why Look At Animals’. Numerous subsequent writers have examined the visual culture of the zoo and its progeny but the animal look has gone largely unexplored. However, in the late twentieth century US the bovine appeared in popular culture as the basis for a celebrated set of claims about human-animal empathy. Author and animal scientist Temple Grandin professes a unique visual identification with cattle, which she attributes to her autism. Based on her capacity for visual identification, Grandin claims special insight into the lives of animals. She describes cattle as subjects who exercise an environmentally engaged, sentient, look, a description that seems to directly challenge their hegemonic construction as instrumentalized bodies. This insistence on subjectivity has been widely received as a progressive breakthrough in the representation of animals. Grandin’s empathy is also represented as the motivation her professional work: the design of ‘humane’ meatpacking plants.
What are we to make of a narrative that so forcefully reinstates animals’ visual engagement with the world? Grandin’s designs are certainly popularly represented as compassionate interventions, motivated by a profound care for animals. Is Grandin ‘looking out’ or ‘watching out’ for animals, as popular culture insists, and is it this altruistic concern that accounts for her sustained popularity? In my paper I will explore the implications of Grandin’s account of cattle’s visual engagement with the world. I will suggest that this insistence on a distinctly visual sentience is not as inherently progressive as it might first appear. Behavior that is environmentally contingent is inherently malleable. Grandin’s production technologies exploit this facility, policing the space of the meatpacking plant in order to render cattle more compliant with the demands of industrialized slaughter. Descriptions of these technologies, notably Grandin’s celebrated ‘stairway to heaven’, typically obfuscate their coercive effects and represent cattle as voluntarily compliant with the inimical demands of production. Such depictions have extremely important implications for the cultural construction of cattle, and non-human animals in general. Killing is powerfully adiaphorized, in direct opposition to the compassion that Grandin ostensibly advocates. The recognition of animal sentience is certainly a crucial step in the improved treatment of animals, but, as Grandin’s work demonstrates, its value is not completely unequivocal.


Whistling with the weaverbirds:  representations of human-animal relationships in post-1994 South African narratives
Wendy Woodward
Department of English, University of Western Cape, South Africa
wwoodward@uwc.ac.za

Before the first democratic elections in 1994, the primary foci of South African writing were the multiplicitous effects of the racialised political dispensation.  With transformation, however, new subject matter has been emerging.  Biography and memoir have been engaging with issues of memory, satires have been exploring novel aspects of humour.  What interests me here, however, is the way a number of writers are now able to turn their attention to postcolonial relationships between human and non-human animals, positing some continuum between them.  Perhaps for the first time in South African literary writing, non-human animals are subjects capable, within heterarchal relationships, of complex interactions with humans.

In The Heart of Redness, for example, Zakes Mda represents close relationships between the amaXhosa and animals both ‘wild’ and ‘tame.’  In Disgrace and Triomf JM Coetzee and Marlene van Niekerk respectively depict relationships between humans and dogs as ontologically central for the former.  In The Madonna of Excelsior Mda has the central human characters’ traumas healed by keeping bees in the township.

This paper will consider these postcolonial relationships which raise metaphysical and spiritual questions and which make profound ecological statements about the dualisms of racism, speciesism and their reticulations.

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ISAZ
9/5/03