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I've had my Labrador for 12 years, she was about 1 when we rescued her. In the first week I was walking her and passed a bus stop mainly used by school kids. T
by petepete 2y ago
I've had my Labrador for 12 years, she was about 1 when we rescued her.
In the first week I was walking her and passed a bus stop mainly used by school kids. There's a small wall behind it and she dashed around and emerged with half a sausage roll hanging out of her mouth.
To this day, every time we pass that spot she enthusiastically pulls and goes round to inspect.
- fracus 2y agoThat poor dog will be perpetually disappointed. You should hide some sausage there every once in a while before your walks.
- mikestew 2y agoReminds me of the search and rescue dogs used for finding people in collapsed buildings after, say, an earthquake. Apparently the dogs get depressed after finding nothing but dead people, so the humans seed the rubble once in a while with a live human for the dogs to find. https://allcreatureslargeandsmall.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/tribute-and-memorial-to-the-search-and-rescue-dogs-of-9-11-words-and-images/ https://allcreatureslargeandsmall.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/t... "As time passes without survivors found, search-and-rescue dogs — especially those trained to find living people — experience increased stress and depression. One way this is mitigated is for handlers and trainers to stage mock “finds” so that the dogs can feel successful."
- TomK32 2y agoJust like me when I fix a bug within a minute by pure chance... I need those easy wins.
- nomoreusernames 2y ago[dead]
- ericmcer 2y agoHa yeah seriously. That makes me think of a managerial strategy that involves feeding a low performing employee softball tasks and praising them for completing them. Once they are convinced they are highly competent slowly start ramping up the complexity.
- SmellTheGlove 2y agoI do this with new people. Being new somewhere is a skill a lot of people I’ve hired don’t have. I toss them some meatballs so they can get a couple of quick, visible wins. You figure you hired them because they know what they’re doing, so help them establish their confidence early on. I highly recommend doing this.
- 082349872349872 2y agoThe way I've heard avalanche dogs are trained here is that they are rewarded for accurate information, so in principle they ought to be as satisfied with their job after finding "no people" or "dead person" as well as "live person".
- dmurray 2y agoBut in their training they find living people. During real disasters, there might not be time to focus on rewarding the dog.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoDogs are social creatures. These dogs are well aware of humans as fellow social creatures. Constantly finding dead people might be inherently distressing, in the same way it'd be distressing to constantly find dead dogs.
- gradschoolfail 2y agowizzwizz4 seems to be one of those salvated ex-losers* (in the world of Rao’s Gervais Principle), thus he may or may not engage, but here goes anyways (Shalom lakh Miryam!) in deference to 082349872349872’s curiosity, human beings can, in principle, train dogs (in this very limited context) to walk the fine line between bad faith (not exhibiting distress) and good faith (exhibiting distress). Can they, in reality? *or, maybe like Athena, born fully salvated from a crack in Zeus (athenogenesis)
- 082349872349872 2y agoI think[0] there are two distinct axes here, so ideally how we'd like our avalanche dogs to feel about their job would be: "Sometimes you find live people, which is sweet, and sometimes you find dead people[1], which is a bummer, but I am a good boi no matter which because I search thoroughly and report immediately." [0] take the above with a grain of salt; almost all my canine experience is second-hand, with scent and herding breeds, so that "ideal" is a cross between a short conversation with a neighbour who trained avalanche dogs and a friend who is a ski instructor, and believes: "Sometimes it's sunny and the clients are talented and resilient, which is sweet, and sometimes it's snowing hard and the clients have no talent and no nerves, which is a bummer, but I am a good ski instructor no matter which because I bring them to at least 80% of the improvements which could have been possible given the conditions and clients of that particular session." [1] unsolicited moralising: there are weather reports. use them. there are beacon/pole/shovel avalanche sets. buy them. there are guides. hire them. So many of the deaths reported in the local papers are because people are not good bois: they go off piste, without a guide, without self-rescue equipment, on days when there were already avalanche warnings given in the morning.
- sph 2y agoI am half serious and wondering if they do the same for drug-sniffing dogs.
- oldman_peter 2y agoWhen I'm banging my head against a problem too long I'll do a small task to have a small success. Same thing I guess.
- nomoreusernames 2y ago[dead]
- switch007 2y agoI've never understood people who say dogs are hard to train. They are SO motivated by food
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoWhich is depressingly animalistic.
- vlovich123 2y agoHow so? Humans are very much the same way in many years, particularly as children.
- pxc 2y agoFood is a primary reinforcers for all species. Neither humans nor dogs are special in that respect. I don't see why anyone should find that depressing. Spend some time training dogs and you'll also find both that food motivation can vary quite a bit (some dogs are more interested in toys than food, for instance) and also that it's quite possible to train dogs without always relying on a food reward. Generally the deeper you go with understanding and training dog behavior, the more you realize how the same learning theory that informs scientific dog training also describes human behavior. (Imo it also reveals deficiencies in thinking in terms of learning theory/behaviorism alone; idk how you could work closely with animals and seriously believe they lack cognition.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- asimovfan 2y agoWe are also the same. We are out for food, the rest is just talk..
- swatcoder 2y agoWhat do you mean by that? Of course sharing food is a way to build social bonding and positively motivate social conformance. It is with people too, which is why it's so natural for us to carry it over to our relationship with dogs. How or why is that depressing? It's good that we crave what helps us thrive and that we can recognize who makes it easy for us to have more, and there's a beautiful elegance to that fact that so many creatures share the trait, across such diverse lineages as birds, reptiles, fish, arthropods, mammals, etc Isn't that inspiring, rather than depressing?
- quectophoton 2y agoIf you search "magic pie bush" you can find other similar stories :)
- Waterluvian 2y agoThat felt like a dangerous Web query but I did it anyways and that little story and the others people shared in comments sections are great. Dogs are so wonderfully complexly simple.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoThat has NSFW written all over it.
- quectophoton 2y agoI didn't realize how it sounded without context until it was too late. It's just people talking about (a screenshot of) a Twitter post, quote: > "A month ago Dusty found half a pie in this bush, so every day until the end of time we must closely inspect the Magic Pie Bush." Mostly Reddit and one or two blog posts.
- wiether 2y agoI read "had" instead of "has" and spent too much time trying to find another explanation to the completely SFW I found.
- k4j8 2y agoThis one break area at work had some cookies sitting out one time for people to grab. That was 6 months ago, but I still check every time I pass it...
- bionsystem 2y agoMy grandfather's dog (some bastardized belgium shepherd) was annoyed at some electric cable hanging too low in some place where he would go for a walk ; after a storm the pylon fell a bit and he would jump up and bite the cable (which was isolated of course), and bark a lot at it. Years later after everything was fixed, going to walk in this area the dog would always look up at this exact spot and bark a few times. Like "heck don't you dare coming low again I'm watching you".
- grujicd 2y agoWhile this is all cute, dogs should be discouraged from eating food they find in the street! It could be poisoned. You never know whether there's someone who really hates dogs in the neighborhood, or if someone tries to solve problems with rats. Unfortunately, my friend lost a dog that way.
- kennyadam 2y agoNo doubt this happens, it must be so rare for someone to put out poisoned half-eaten sausage rolls with the aim of killing a random dog that finds it, I think this is perhaps a teensy bit paranoid.
- throwaway48540 2y agoIt's so rare, but it actually does happen, and the people doing it actually try to conceal it like a half eaten sausage that "just fell". But this isn't even about this particular half eaten sausage. A dog doesn't know the difference between a pristine sausage and a half eaten one, to them it's just meat. And the point is that dogs should be taught to never eat any meat on the street - because they can't think "uh, looks half eaten, probably fine".
- Snild 2y agoWe've had this problem in Malmö, Sweden recently: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/nya-hundbullar-hittade-i-malmo-pvwc69 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/nya-hundbullar-hitta... Bread rolls with bits of glass or metal in them, found in parks or along other pedestrian paths. They caught one woman doing it, but it is believed the news might have inspired other nutjobs.
- stevesimmons 2y agoIt does happen. My sister lost two dogs from poisoned meat someone put in their local park. They ran into the bushes, must have eaten something, started frothing at the mouth, and 15 minutes later both were dead. Apparently a number of other dogs died near that location the same way.
- petepete 2y ago
- authorfly 2y agoThat's cool but dogs remembering names is more insightful in an exciting way, let me elucidate on why it's pretty fascinating! We know how place memories work quite well, Place and Grid cells specifically. There is a natural and almost physical level of 1:1 mapping at various scales[1] from location (based on different tracking systems - point integration, landmarks, your own steps) to activating cells in your brain. Simple co-activation alongside reward, like a literal map, sets down "good stuff here" signs in your brain. Once attenuated and activated by Dopamine, the place cells to triangulate (at different "distances") that position have basically fewer mechanims and binding opportunities for neurotransmitters to change upon other interaction(they have little input beside place + pleasure + pain), so they do not result in loss of their attenuation or association (part of why place stays longest in Alhzeimers patients association). Memory of sounds however, isn't so clearly mappable, there is no obvious grid/comparable formulation of sound memories in any kind of "order" like there is with location and places in Place Cells. And clearly we humans forget many of the sounds we have heard (e.g. songs, lyrics). That's why it's quite interesting that dogs remember toys names for a long time. It makes you ask questions like "If we had less sounds/named things to remember, could we remember the ones we do remember for much longer, with less forgetting?". "What is the difference between permanent, event and temporal memories?", "Could we resolve neurodegenerative diseases by modifying neurons to be longer lasting or impervious to future modification in strategic areas of the brain? Could be retain some learning?" [1] http://www.rsb.org.uk/images/biologist/Features/Grid_mouse_diagram_large.jpg http://www.rsb.org.uk/images/biologist/Features/Grid_mouse_d...
- csallen 2y agoThis is all fascinating stuff. I love the idea behind memory palaces, and this stuff about place/grid cells sounds like the explanatory science behind it. Any reading you'd recommend? > And clearly we humans forget many of the sounds we have heard (e.g. songs, lyrics).> It's true we forget many sounds, but songs and lyrics is a curious example. I'd guess those were high on the list of things humans are good at remembering… maybe #4 behind places, faces, and language in general? I've had pop lyrics and commercial jingles and theme songs rattling around in my head for decades, and I can easily sing them word for word. Something about a sequence of words put to a beat and a melody just seems to stick.