Survey on something or other

[Pippin's person]

I think one of the issues with a lot of research on dogs (anthropological, ethological, psychological, etc)--and esp. on the"dog-human relationship"-- is that the folks doing the research and the dogs they do it with are basically pet owners and pet dogs.

 

There is very little serious research into any areas where folks do something intensively with their dogs--and so, what the research tells us about dogs and human-dog relationships is limited by that fact. Anything about communication is particularly compromised because the level of communication is much more basic relative to what you see in stock work, agility, SAR work, mushing/sledding, formal obedience etc.

 

Maybe it's important to first establish some kind of baseline, I don't know, but I've been reading this research all summer as part of a new research project and it is pretty striking how little has been done with dogs other than pets. (nothing against pets and it's certainly hard to set up research projects--one of the things that struck me about the survey that's the focus of this thread is that there was no indication that the survey had been approved by a human subjects review board--and that review board is one of the things that makes doing the research very tricky).