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Diabeteshunden Tiffany

My name is Carola Fischer-Tenhagen and I work at the Freie Universität
Berlin in the veterinary clinic for animal reproduction. A year ago I had the idea, when dogs are able to smell cancer, diabetes, drugs or explosives, they must be able to smell, when a cow is in heat as well.

This is a big challenge in commercial dairy farming, because fertility of cows is closely linked with the right moment of insemination. And cows only produce a lot of milk, if they have a new calf every year.

As a first step I collected vaginal fluid, milk and urine of cows in heat and not in heat. I heard from a Norwegian colleque of HundCampus, that here you can train any kind of special search. And so Maxi, my 5 year old Labrador bitch, and I travelled in March 2010 to HundCampus for the first time. It seemed to be very easy for the dogs to identify and differentiate samples from cows in oestrus and dioestrus. First we tested on vaginal fluid and then on milk and urine. After only 50 contact with the target sample (oestrus) the dogs could identify new samples with an accuracy of 80 %.Home again, I realized that it would be much better, if the dog could smell oestrus from the front of the cow, so the danger of being kicked or shit on is not so high. I read about an Indian science group, which proved that rats were able to smell oestrus in the saliva of cows. I thought, if rats can, dogs can as well.So I collected saliva samples of cows in heat and not in heat and came back to hundcamppus.  This time I took Steffi along, a doctoral student in our institute. My hope was, that dogs could equally fast be trained to identify oestrus in saliva, than in vaginal fluid. So we standardized training time to 50 positive reinforced contacts to saliva of various cows in oestrus. We had five dogs in the training; all of them were trained on vaginal fluid as well. After this we did a blinded test, if the dogs could really identify oestrus. Results were not satisfying. Most dogs had only one correct out of four possible, this is the same as pointing by chance.But we learned a lot out of this. All dog handlers were very nervous on the test day, and they behaved totally different for their dogs. In addition to this, dogs were rewarded for indicating the wrong sample, this confused them very much. We stopped this experiment, and retrained the dogs on the testplattform, where dogs are always confronted with a new sample, and they do not have the chance of learning the individual smell of a cow.We also trained the situation that the dog handler do not know the position of the target sample, so he can not give hidden clues to his dog. Before rewarding he was told the correct position, so the dog was not rewarded wrongly.Tomorrow is the next test day, and we are all very excited for the new results. Only the dogs, they seem to be very tired of all this intensive training. 

Som dere ser, så gjør vi mye forskjellig hundetrening her på Hundcampus. Vi synes det er viktig å ha kul sammen, uansett hvilken disiplin. Dessuten anser vi at alle detaljer gjør en bedre hundetrener. Her får dere et par videoer med slike eksempler!

Her!

og her!

Maria från Team 105 har filmat tre hundar ur deras team, som har tre helt olika stilar på plattformsarbete.

Lite kul att se! LÄNK

Nu sker det massa uppdateringar på hemsidan, så kika er runt och maila gärna ifall ni hittar något fel eller undrar över något!

kim@hundcampus.se

Förra veckan hade vi två ekipage här som tränade diabeteshund. Ett av ekipagen bestod av en 7årig flicka och hennes golden retriever, och det andra bestod av en vuxnare kvinna med sin aussie.

Förrutom dom hundarna så var det även en malinois med, och så en dvärgget: Tummis.

Träningen tog stora steg framåt och vi hoppas på mycket uppdatering framöver om hur det går vid fortsatt träning på hemmaplan. Nina från Team 09 är deras privattränare när dom inte är här.

Det var en trevlig och intressant vecka, även för hundbeteendeanalytikerna som gick sin friskvårdsvecka. Dom fick dessutom chans att miljöträna sina hundar på geten Tummis, som även var social inne i köket och i mässen.

Nedan kommer ett par bilder på ekpipagen, och geten Tummis.

Foto: Jessica Mann

Det pratas mycket om kroppskontroll och framförallt bakdelskontroll.

HÄR kan ni se en liten video på lite olika former av just det.

Det är alltid fantastiskt kul med inlärning, och denna video visar på ett litet steg längre än vad många tror är möjligt.

Agility med kackerlacka

Sheep har varit 6 veckor i Oslo och Lillehammer för att spela in film. Den kommer inte på bio förrän om ett år, men lite smakprov kan ni få se på Aftenpostens sida.

LÄNK