Survey on something or other

[PennyT]

A link to a "herding" survey was posted on Sheepdog. The link is

 

http://intercom.virginia.edu/SurveySuite/Surveys/herding

 

This is astounding reading. The thesis candidate wants to know how many qualifying runs a respondent has, where the dog sleeps, and has an alphabet long list of personality questions about both dog and handler.

 

She obviously made no effort to contact actual herders in North America or shepherds Great Britain. In addition, she seems to have made a conscious effort to eliminate people with good dogs running in tough trials.

 

The person doing the survey is in school in California.

 

Penny

[nancy]

Gees, I'm s tempted to make up the answers. Some of the questions are so strange.

[Pippin's person]

She obviously made no effort to contact actual herders in North America or shepherds Great Britain. In addition, she seems to have made a conscious effort to eliminate people with good dogs running in tough trials.

 

Penny

 

What makes you think that?

[Smokjbc]

I was a bit perplexed by it also- I was hoping for some actual questions regarding working method, abilities, quirks, etc but answered almost as many questions about myself (am I shy, extroverted, calm, stressed? etc) than my dog and her questions were basic (friendly? scared? good with strangers? ). There were a few working questions but couldn't get a good feel for what the survey was actually trying to evaluate.

[stockdogranch]

I, too, thought it was odd...and, (sigh), yes, it just reinforces that those in California (even if just temporarily to go to school) are weird.

Anna

[Alaska]

Link to the graduate student's website

 

From the site:

 

Sheep herding, a triadic interaction between sheep, dog and human herder, is a particularly interesting and accessible model system for posing questions of interspecific communication in a cooperative context. I am utilizing this system to:

* document folkloric traditions of vastly different herding systems and explore how these traditions reflect variation in herding demands and influence interspecific communication.

* explore the ontogeny of communication between individuals of different species.

* study changes in the production of linguistic signals as training of a dog progresses.

* examine variation in production of vocal and visual signals during competitive herding trials.

Hopefully, these studies will add to the general knowledge in the growing field of mutualistic interspecific communication. Specifically, I intend to expand information on the role of developmental and environmental conditions on interspecific communication.

 

If you take the survey, one of the questions you will be asked is the degree to which you agree with this statement:

 

we work well together when moving sheep through a shoot

Seems like a pretty tough assignment, moving sheep through a "shoot". I keep trying to form a mental image, but I just can't. (Yeah, yeah, I know it's just a typo. I'm easily amused, okay?)

 

Back on the main subject, it seems that there is a fairly new field of scientific inquiry called "anthrozoology", defined as "the study of the interactions between human and non-human animals." The International Society for Anthrozoology appears to be associated with UC Davis, where the student is located:

 

International Society for Anthrozoology

 

I don't qualify to take the survey myself, but if this student is like most graduate students, she'd probably be really interested in what people are saying here. That's why she's in school, to learn. I'd encourage anyone who's curious about her research to contact her.

[PennyT]

It's not just a type-o. It's incomplete research. A shoot would be guys with with guns. Very challenging.Kind of like Ten Sleep, Wyoming in the early 1900s.

 

Also sheepherders work for fairly large to large outfits. Some hire on for summer range. As was the situation 150 years ago, herds have horse, dogs, and wagon although today camp tender is more often owner. Herders without wagon work for the ranch owner and move sheep as needed.

 

Do you get the impression the survey writer intended to talk to herders?

 

I don't.

 

I think the survey person is geared solely to hobbyists on the lowest level.

 

What on eath is the survey for? Marketing to AKC types down the line is my guess.

 

Penny

[Pippin's person]

Sheep herding, a triadic interaction between sheep, dog and human herder, is a particularly interesting and accessible model system for posing questions of interspecific communication in a cooperative context. I am utilizing this system to:

* document folkloric traditions of vastly different herding systems and explore how these traditions reflect variation in herding demands and influence interspecific communication.

* explore the ontogeny of communication between individuals of different species.

* study changes in the production of linguistic signals as training of a dog progresses.

* examine variation in production of vocal and visual signals during competitive herding trials.

Hopefully, these studies will add to the general knowledge in the growing field of mutualistic interspecific communication. Specifically, I intend to expand information on the role of developmental and environmental conditions on interspecific communication.

 

Hmmm--I don't think that the survey is particularly well-designed to address these specific questions at all. There was virtually nothing that was actually about communication or changes in linguistic signals or a dog's progression, for instance. She might be using the survey to gain a better sense of the general context of herding and then will go deeper into these issues with more targeted research.

 

I don't think this is about marketing and I think you're right, Alaska, that she'd probably be interested in hearing what people are saying about it. From the way the survey is designed, I'd guess she probably doesn't know a whole lot about herding but thought it'd be an interesting area to research (maybe her advisor told her that). However, her results are probably going to be pretty skewed since many herders clearly think the survey is wacky and so won't be filling it out.....The problem of not really knowing your sample population or being able to compute a response rate.

[Alaska]

A shoot would be guys with with guns. Very challenging.Kind of like Ten Sleep, Wyoming in the early 1900s.

Yeah, that's what I pictured at first (to the extent one can picture maneuvering sheep through such a setting). But then I thought maybe she meant a Hollywood shoot. You know, like shooting a movie, with all kinds of camera dollies and wires running everywhere. This too would challenge the most talented of herding teams, don't you think?

[AK dog doc]

Seems like a pretty tough assignment, moving sheep through a "shoot".

 

LMAO! That's hilarious.

 

I wonder if there'd be a way to direct this student to a message board that has a lot of actual dyed-in-the-wool working-dog owners on it... ?

[SoloRiver]

I, too, thought it was odd...and, (sigh), yes, it just reinforces that those in California (even if just temporarily to go to school) are weird.

 

Hey!

 

Anyway, her website notes that she is looking at herding across cultures/traditions, so the questions are perhaps a bit generic because of this. At any rate, I completed the survey because frankly, I know what it's like to be at the mercy of dog people when collecting data for research! Obviously it helps to be part of the community, and I really appreciate the response I've gotten so far, but that doesn't change the fact that it takes a lot of legwork and that there's a learning curve involved.

 

I'd give her a break.

[PennyT]

The survey's questions are not general at all. They are quite specifically targeting people who like to get AKC, AHBA, and ASCA titles. That's as folkloric as going shopping at Walmart on Sunday afternoon and twice as annoying.

 

The fact the research is about people who own dogs is no reason to give her a break. It's a great reason to hold her to a high standard. She is doing research on something she couldn't be bothered to learn about. That's disrespectful and slipshod.

 

What's more, the respondents by and large won't know enough to evaluate their dogs well or will misevaluate their utility. An insightful essay on gundog and stockdog working called "Riddle Me This" is available on JSTOR. The difference between the level of communication that article addresses and the level addressed in the survey is startling. "Riddle Me This" is my favorite piece on the threeway communication among sheep, dog, and handler.

 

I love the idea of a Hollywood shoot. For publication purposes, the results would need to be couched in ponderous, academic, metaphysical terms marrying triadic approaches to sociology, biology, and philosophy...or something of the sort, the semiotics of sheep management during film production.

 

I wonder if handler changes in vocalizations during competition cover people who yell. Red-faced, stick-thumping bozos *are* a bit like siamang apes screeching.

 

Newcomers often buy into just-so stories about dog breed uses. For example, some continental herding breed owners believe that only their dogs "tend" or "tended" sheep and ignore all modern and historical evidence to the contrary. I have a sinking feeling that any cross-cultural analyses will drag out old saws on that subject. Understanding cultural differences in handling includes understanding cultural differences in training. With a hobby sample composed mostly of people interested in having fun with their dogs and getting legs and with some exposure to all breed teachers catering to same, how is it possible to do a cross-cultural study not hopelessly biased by those ideas? The study will be like reading early anthropologists unaware of cultural relativity.

[Pippin's person]

Thanks for the reference to Riddle me This, Penny.

 

An interesting study to ponder--looking at the yellers vs. the whisperers

[Kathy H.]

An insightful essay on gundog and stockdog working called "Riddle Me This" is available on JSTOR. The difference between the level of communication that article addresses and the level addressed in the survey is startling. "Riddle Me This" is my favorite piece on the threeway communication among sheep, dog, and handler.

 

 

Penny, could you tell me which journal or the author? I have access to JSTOR but a search on Riddle me this eliminated "me" and "this" and gave me 438 pages of hits!

 

Thanks,

 

Kathy/Iowa

[PennyT]

Go to advanced search. Change the first field to title. Put in the following using the quotation marks: "Riddle Me This"

 

Gets the article for me.

 

The full title is "Riddle Me This: the Craft and Concept of Alien MInd." Cox and Ashford are the authors. The article is far from widely quoted. It sank like a stone. A shame, too.

 

Penny

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Yikes. I apparently reside in North Calolina. Possibly a mishmash of my native state and current home . . .

 

I intend to send her an e-mail with my concerns immediately upon completing the survey.

[Kathy H.]

Go to advanced search. Change the first field to title. Put in the following using the quotation marks: "Riddle Me This"

 

Gets the article for me.

 

The full title is "Riddle Me This: the Craft and Concept of Alien MInd." Cox and Ashford are the authors. The article is far from widely quoted. It sank like a stone. A shame, too.

 

Penny

 

 

Thank you Penny. Found it (after hitting myself alongside the head for not thinking of the advanced search thing myself!)

 

I've just skimmed it and want to read it much more closely. I really liked the description of the sheepdog as studying sheep at every opportunity....

 

Thank you for the cite.

 

Kathy/Iowa

[Pippin's person]

Go to advanced search. Change the first field to title. Put in the following using the quotation marks: "Riddle Me This"

 

Gets the article for me.

 

The full title is "Riddle Me This: the Craft and Concept of Alien MInd." Cox and Ashford are the authors. The article is far from widely quoted. It sank like a stone. A shame, too.

 

Penny

 

It's a very interesting article. Why do you think it sank like a stone? Do you think that it was just a little before it's academic time? Neither author seems to have done much more on the topic from what I could find in a admittedly quick search

[Pippin's person]

Yikes. I apparently reside in North Calolina. Possibly a mishmash of my native state and current home . . .

 

I intend to send her an e-mail with my concerns immediately upon completing the survey.

 

I'd be interested to know how she responds to your message, if you find it worth sharing (and feel like sharing of course )

[Alaska]

It's a very interesting article. Why do you think it sank like a stone? Do you think that it was just a little before it's academic time? Neither author seems to have done much more on the topic from what I could find in a admittedly quick search

 

My admittedly quick search (for articles that cited this one) turned up this:

 

Putting the Dog Back in the Park: Anmal and Human Mind-in-Action, recently (2006) published in the journal Mind, Culture and Activity. I'm not sure what to make of it, nor of the book it cites frequently and in-depth:

 

Playing with My Dog Katie. If you do a google search on "playing with katie" you will find quite a few bloggers with an opinion on the value of this research (I could put "research" in quotes, but not having read the book myself, I'll reserve judgement for now).

 

Neither are sheepdog-related, but good for a bedtime read if you need something new to think about (or rip to shreds, if you're so inclined).

[PennyT]

Thanks. I haven't seen those two. "Riddle Me This" is cited some place else as well but I can't remember where off the top of my head. I stopped looking a while ago. I'll go take a look.

 

Truth to tell, had I seen anything called "Playing with my Dog, Katie," I would have been slow to track it down.

 

Graham Cox writes on gundogs and as a rural sociologist. He has a lot work around.

 

Penny

[Black Watch Debatable]

Playing With My Dog Katie: An Ethnomethodological Study of Dog-human Interaction, by David Goode

 

Table Of Contents

 

Acknowledgments xi

Foreword by Michael Lynch xiii

Foreword by Robert W. Mitchell xvii

 

1 An Introduction in Three Parts 1

Part I. Introduction for Students of Animal-Human Interaction 1

Part II. Introduction for Students of Ethnomethodology 9

Part III. Why I Studied Playing with Katie 18

 

2 Playing with Katie 23

Personal History 23

The Welsh Pembroke Corgi 24

Locating the Phenomena of Play: Structures, Orders, and Motifs 28

Locating Playing Ball with Katie 28

The Routines of Play 30

Vocalizations as Part of the Orderliness of Play 46

Vocalizations in Play—March 23, 1997 46

My Vocalizations During Play 48

Initiating Play 49

April 25, 1997—Chance Observation: "Tennis Anyone?" 50

The Field Surfaces and Boundaries of Play 51

Contingencies of Play 52

The Subjective Meanings Experienced by Players on a Field of Play 55

Temporality of Play 58

The Inner States of Play 58

General Notes: What Is Playing Ball with Katie 60

The Social Situation of Play: Showing Off 62

Reactivity to the Videotaping of Play 62

Field Notes on Katie's Stopping Play 63

Katie's Hiatus Continued 64

Summary and Discussion of Autoethnographic and Videographic Data 65

 

3 Mitchell and Colleagues' Videographic Research about Dog-Human Play 67

Mitchell's Definition of Play Reflects This Intentional Approach 68

Relationship of Playing with Katie to Mitchell and Colleagues' Research 73

 

4 On the Use of Natural Language to Describe Dog-Human Interaction 83

"Piteous, Hopeless Dejection": The Re-emergence of Darwin's Anthropomorphism 83

Language and Behavioral Operationalism 88

A General Phenomenological Model of Intersubjectivity 89

Vicki Hearne on Intersubjectivity between Humans and Dogs 90

Latour's Automatic Door Groom 93

Mitchell and Colleagues' Treatment of Anthropomorphism 95

Anecdotes 100

Concluding Remarks 102

 

5 At Play and Work: Some Reflections on Companion Dogs and Working Dogs 105

The Social Invention of Companion ("Pet") Dogs 105

Working Dogs 109

The Dog-Guide 110

The Trainer's Dog—Vicki Hearne 114

Conclusion: All Dogs Are Socially Constructed Animals 118

 

6 Continuities and Discontinuities with Other Observers of Dog-Human Relationships 121

Do Dogs Have Minds? 121

Understanding Dogs 124

The Symbolic Character of Dog-Human Interaction 128

Dogs as Persons 130

Dogs Are Disabled, Symbolic-Interactionally Speaking 131

Shapiro's Empathic and Bodily Understanding of One's Dog 137

Sabaka's Sense of Space and Place 141

Conclusion 142

 

7 What We Learned 147

Postscript 157

Second Postscript 158

Appendices 161

Notes 195

References 221

Index 225

 

Link.

 

The thing that seems to irk Woode's critics is that while studying other people playing with their dogs might produce interesting and useful research, writing a sociological tome about playing with one's own dog is [according to the critics] over the top.

[PennyT]

Okay, I had seen the person, dog and park article. It was so dull I forgot it instantly, never read it closely then and couldn't make myself do so now. I doubt I'll be able to stomach "Playing With My Dog, Katie" either.

 

I suppose I was being paranoid earlier about the survey as a marketing tool. There are, however, studies of dog breeds done from a marketing and philosophical standpoint which beggar the imagination for academic weirdness.

 

Penny

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

I got a nice (and remarkably prompt) reply from Ms. Kostan about my concerns. I won't reproduce her note - I've just got a thing about even asking for that sort of thing in this kind of situation. Basically, it was a simple case of having geared the instrument for accessibility to one level of participant, assuming that inclusion by all the rest would necessarily follow. In other words, questions about livestock and dog training and the general stuff would include us, no problem, but would tell her next to nothing about people whose exposure is 100% defined by title trial training and hobby herding. She hadn't realized though that she was leaving out big chunks of the working dog experience, unfortunately.

 

She asked for some ideas to either revamp it or do a new one that was more working-oriented. Here's part of my response:

 

Thanks so much for your response! I wouldn't mind at all offering a couple of ideas for a followup survey that is more working oriented. I think that is an excellent idea. It would be difficult to write a survey that is both brief and also would obtain the information you'd need from both groups.

 

Here are some topics that you might find glean interesting data from those who are more working oriented:

 

Percent of income dependent on livestock

 

Percent of income dependent on dogs

 

Perception of dependency on dogs in daily work/total work (I could do all my daily work without a dog, some, none; There are some regularly occurring tasks that can be done without my dog, none, all)

 

Lifestyle choice or necessity: I would prefer to set up my farm so I didn't need a dog/I wouldn't raise livestock if I couldn't do it with dogs/I've always done it this way and don't want to change/I think this is the best way to manage livestock/I enjoy working with dogs and it's just frosting that they also are an asset (lol)

 

What I value most about my dog: You'd have to glean some ideas from the community at large for this one, but it seems an important one to shed light on the relationship some of these folks have with their canine partners.

 

My most cherished memory associated with my dog is: A competitive accomplishment/A training accomplishment/A working achievement/A moment "off the job"

 

Level of training, dog: Simple tasks/Basic commands/Advanced commands and/or long distance work/Top level trial training

 

Level of handler training: No training/Trained dog(s) to basic chores only/Trained dog(s) to simple commands/Trained dog(s) completely to work full time/Trained dog(s) to top competitive level

 

Dog management when "off the job" - follows farmer or trainer around loose/kenneled or tied/crated on truck or ATV

 

Any other ideas?

 

This really is a potentially valuable direction of research, honestly. A little over a year ago a member of these boards, KillerH, wrote a terrific article for the USBCC newsletter that described the type of personality that should not try to work with dogs on livestock - not suited to a working dog handler in other words. I thought it was the coolest thing - and it was so true. Not everyone should work with dogs, no matter how great an idea it is in general.

 

And of course I've lost that issue - I've been tearing apart my study looking for it. Uh, anybody? I think it would be Spring 2006.

[PennyT]

Rebecca, ask yourself how the research can be useful when the person writing it doesn't know anything about the subject and is going to make the usual cultural anthropologist mistakes about the level of information which informants have. What will such research be good for? Tell me.

 

Penny