A Simple Game Improves Your Dog’s Mood | Science

Animals continue to have physiological needs such as drinking, eating, sleeping or defecating. We know that all these needs must be covered if our pet is not to die. On the other hand, sometimes we are not aware that animals have behavioral needs that are important for mental health.

It is common to see gorillas in captivity Throwing away food Then eat it again. about freedom, Spend most of the day eating, because their diet consists mainly of leaves, which have little nutritional value. In some zoos, because they eat a high-energy diet, they can meet their nutritional needs in the short term, but not their behavior. The nature of gorillas is to spend hours eating and when they cannot do so, they develop this ridiculous behavior.

Another example is big cats They spin in their cages, because in freedom they will walk for kilometers. There are also many people who are making Zoom calls with their friends to meet the need to socialize during quarantine. Anyone who has lived through a lockdown knows how dangerous it can be to mental health to not be able to carry out our normal behaviors.

In recent years, concern has been growing Welfare of captive animals. The aim is to enrich their environment as much as possible, encouraging them to behave as they would in freedom. Thus, in many zoos or sanctuaries, food is hidden from the animals so that they spend more time searching. We also put a wheel in the rat cages to allow them to exercise.

No natural behaviors

Interestingly, there is one species that is rarely taken into account when analyzing the welfare of captive animals: domestic dogs. When they live under the guardianship of a human being, we cannot consider them animals in the wild because they do not choose where to live, when to go outside or with whom to associate. They are often confined to a confined space, which does not allow them to perform natural behaviors essential to their well-being.

According to studies, Free-living dogs They mainly feed on remains of human food or carrion. Therefore, they spend 10 to 22% of their active time searching for food using scent. However, companion dogs have limited opportunities to explore their environment, which can compromise their well-being.

Two researchers, Charlotte Duranton and Alexandra Horowitz, have shown A simple scent game can improve the mood of dogs. All it takes is a little advance training, five minutes a day, a few boxes with no lids, and a dog’s favorite treat.

They conducted their study with twenty dogs of different breeds, which were divided into two equal groups. In the first group, dogs and their owners were trained to play a scent game at home. During the first class, the researcher showed the dog a box containing a treat and placed it one meter away from the dog. Then the owner had to encourage his pet to take the treat with a sign like “go get it”. This is level 1 of training.

After doing this three times, the researcher moved on to the second stage. The procedure is the same except that two empty boxes are added and the position of the box containing the candy is changed in each exercise. Each time the dogs found a treat, they received praise and more treats. Owners should practice this exercise at home with their dogs for a week.

At the end of this first training, the second class was held. The investigator started from level two, allowing the dog to find the treat in three boxes. After two iterations, he moved on to level three, which involved placing the boxes on top of chairs or far apart from each other in complicated locations. This way, the dog had to search more intensively to find the hiding place. When he gets it three times, the class is over.

A five-minute game

For two consecutive weeks, owners performed a five-minute daily session of this scent game with their dogs. They were asked to videotape the entire exercise so that the researcher could ensure that it was done correctly.

The other half of the dogs were the control group. In this case, owners do not have to play this game with their dogs, but do not need to use the scent. This way, these dogs made sure to do the same physical activities, get treats and spend time with their owners.

The researchers asked the following question: Are there differences in mood improvement between the two groups of dogs? Humans can communicate how we feel through language. When we return from a holiday in the mountains, we tell our friends how good they have been to us. Dogs, on the other hand, cannot verbalize how scent games make them feel. For this reason, science had to find other ways to know their state of mind.

known as emotions Affects cognitive processes Like attention, memory or the way we judge a stimulus. Individuals with a positive emotional state are more confident and pay more attention to positive stimuli. Conversely, those experiencing negative emotions pay more attention to threatening stimuli and make more pessimistic judgments about future events.

In 2009, scientists realized that these cognitive biases could be used to assess animal welfare. designed an experiment. Typically, this involves training animals to discriminate between two stimuli: one associated with a positive event, such as a food bowl, and the other associated with a negative event, such as a rotten food bowl. Animals learn to approach positive stimuli and ignore negative ones. Next, an ambiguous stimulus is presented and the animal’s behavior is observed. The speed of approaching an ambiguous stimulus assesses whether the animal is in a positive or negative mood.

Various studies This test has been validated as a useful tool for determining the emotional states of captive animals. In the aforementioned dog study, all subjects were tested for cognitive bias before and after weeks of play. Dogs who played the olfactory game improved their mood significantly more than the control group. The conclusion is clear: just as vacations with friends are good for us, dogs also need a little sniffing each day.

You can follow Meaning Inside Facebook, Twitter e InstagramClick here to get Our weekly newsletter.