August lives up to its definition: respected and impressive

The things we noticed in and around canine science over the past two weeks, Storified in one neat location for your convenience:

Further reading:

Feuerbacher E.N. (2014). Shut up and pet me! Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) prefer petting to vocal praise in concurrent and single-alternative choice procedures, Behavioural Processes, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.08.019

Gygax L. (2014). The A to Z of statistics for testing cognitive judgement bias, Animal Behaviour, 95 59-69. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.06.013

Arnott E.R., Claire M. Wade & Paul D. McGreevy (2014). Environmental Factors Associated with Success Rates of Australian Stock Herding Dogs, PLoS ONE, 9 (8) e104457. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104457



© Do You Believe in Dog? 2014

Do You Believe in Dog? A New Ball Game

Hello Do You Believe in Dog(ers)!

(source)

After two years of mostly pen-pal style blogging, we're excited to share our new direction!

When we first decided to create Do You Believe in Dog?, we committed to blogging back and forth about canine science for two years. We were able to celebrate achieving that goal at the recent 4th Canine Science Forum in Lincoln, UK and also reflect on the future of Do You Believe in Dog?

The DYBID blog, Facebook and Twitter feeds have become vibrant places to access canine science studies and thoughtful commentary. We are pleased and proud of the space we have created and the community who enjoy it. We're as committed as ever to helping people access the canine science conversation, and moving forward, we've decided to open up DYBID as a space where other canine science practitioners can share their findings and thoughts. 

What you can expect

Guest contributors 

Following the format you've enjoyed in earlier guest posts (like Dog training: do you get the timing right?, Take a walk on the wild side: dingo science  and Black dog syndrome, a bad rap?) researchers and students of canine science are welcome to submit short posts to DYBID based on peer-reviewed research. We're hoping posts will focus on research either presented at academic conferences or published in scientific journals. If you have an idea for a post, check out the Contributors page for more details, and be in touch! 

Canine science highlights 

We'll continue our usual presence on Facebook and Twitter, and here on the DYBID blog we'll post fortnightly updates highlighting the canine science that we've been following in the previous two weeks (blog posts, scientific studies, websites, etc.). 

This slideshow is our first attempt at sharing Canine science highlights. We have used Storify so you can quickly flip through and click on anything you want more info about.

Where in the world are Mia and Julie?

To simplify our Twitter presence:

• Mia will primarily manage the @DoUBelieveInDog feed
  
• Julie will continue being active on @DogSpies, as well as at her Scientific American Blog, Dog Spies, and her dog research group @Dog_Cognition
  
• You can also stay in touch with Mia at @AnthroZooRG (her research group), @HumanAnimalSci (a podcast featuring the latest from Anthrozoology) and @WorkDogAlliance (an organization to improve the welfare of Australia's working and sporting dogs)

Maybe you don't think we've simplified our Twitter presence?!
For us, this is 'simplified' ;)

We'll both be posting things on the DYBID Facebook feed and welcome your continued contributions and conversations there.

We hope you'll enjoy this new direction! We look forward to your feedback as we share canine science highlights and add more voices to the DYBID space.

Thanks again for your support over the past two years -- Now, let's play ball!
(Go Yankees! That was Julie)

Mia & Julie

Further reading:

Dijk E.M.V. (2011). Portraying real science in science communication, Science Education, 95 (6) 1086-1100. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sce.20458

Nosek B.A. (2012). Scientific Communication Is Changing and Scientists Should Lead the Way, Psychological Inquiry, 23 (3) 308-314. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047840x.2012.717907

Fischhoff B. & Scheufele D. (2013). The science of science communication, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (Supplement 3) 14033-14039. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1213273110

(source)

Canine Science Forum 2014 - we come full circle!

Aw - it's Us @ CSF2014! Thanks Tamás Faragó :)

Dear Julie,

while you've been off enjoying the fjords of Norway and I've been recovering from six legs of long haul flying with a three year old as hand luggage, I thought I'd put up a quick post to recap the wonderful week in Lincoln, UK that was the (Feline and) Canine Science Forum 2014.

Such a fun, stimulating, inspiring week comprising the Feline Science day (Monday), public lecture by James Serpell (rhymes with purple) on Monday evening, Canine Science Forum (Tue-Wed-Thu), including the wonderful gala dinner at Lincoln Castle on Wednesday night and finally, the Companion Animals: Human Health & Disease day (Friday).

If anyone out there happened to miss it, we live tweeted nearly all of the presentations so you can easily catch up on all the great thoughts via the magic of Storify here.

Feline Science Day:

Public lecture by James Serpell:

Canine Science Forum Day 1:

Canine Science Forum Day 2:

Which, of course, included us being real life #scientists (we don't make this stuff up!):

You talked about Project: Play with Your Dog and the role that citizen science can play in canine science.

Nancy Dreschel (now on Twitter at @ndreschel) presented the key findings from our collaborative meta-analysis looking at canine salivary cortisol.

And I explored if using group averages is really the best way to determine and analyse the stress and welfare experience of working dogs (and my points were relevant to all animals!).

Then we drank wine in at a castle. Which was a mighty fine way to end that day.


Canine Science Forum Day 3:

Companion  Animals: Human Health & Disease 2014

We heard the exciting news that the next Canine Science Forum is to be held in Padova, Italy in 2016.

We continued on in England after CSF, down to visit the Animal Welfare and Behaviour Group at Bristol University - it was lovely to share some of our experiences and ideas with this team and we look forward to keeping up with their great work in the future.

And while we took a nap to recover, Do You Believe in Dog? went and turned two years old on us! So here we are - at the end of the original two years that we agreed to do this for, back in that first email exchange not even week after we met. 

120 blog posts with over 170,000 views, 8,900 tweets and over 8,400 followers on Facebook. 

Julie - I don't know how I can ever thank you enough for agreeing to join me on this adventure. I am so proud of how Do You Believe in Dog? has helped bring canine science to everyone. I am equally humbled and thrilled by the community that has grown around our pen pal exchanges - along with the popular guest posts by Clare, Brad, Heather, Christy, Claudia and Lindsay - and feel excited for the future of canine science and its ongoing transfer to the general public. 

Above all Julie, I am so grateful for your beautiful friendship which was perhaps the most fun surprise of this two year journey we have shared. Behind the posts of DYBID? are many email exchanges, Skype calls and messages. Through this media we have developed an incredibly open and honest friendship that I will always cherish. I respect you, your scientific and science communication work enormously. I have learned much from you and look forward to what comes next - for both of us.

"What's that?" you ask?  You'll see!

Mia

Further reading:

Do You Believe in Dog? - all the posts from the last two years!

Hecht, J. and Cooper, C. B. (2014) Tribute to Tinbergen: Public Engagement in Ethology, Ethology, 120 (3) 207-214. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eth.12199

Hecht, J. (2014) Canine Science: a trend you can easily get behind. Dog Spies, Scientific American Blog Network.

Cobb, M. and Hecht, J. (2014) Do You Believe in Dog? An experiment in scientific communication. Canine Science 1 (1) 10-12 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/09.0011/cs.082014