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Green criminological perspectives on dog-fighting as organised masculinities -based animal harm

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• Published: 23 September 2021
• Volume 24 , pages 447–466, ( 2021 )

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• Angus Nurse   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2486-4973 1  

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Dog-fighting was historically a working-class pursuit within predominantly white, working-class subcultures, representing a distinct type of organised animal exploitation. However, contemporary dog-fighting has moved way from its organised pit-based origins to encompass varied forms of organised activity including street dog-fighting in the form of chain fighting or chain rolling, the use of dogs as status or weapon dogs. This paper examines dog-fighting from a green criminological perspective as a distinct form of organised and subcultural crime. Analysis of UK legislation identifies that the specific offence of ‘dog-fighting’ does not exist. Instead, dog-fighting is contained within the ‘animal fighting’ offence, prohibited by provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. However, beyond the actual fight activities (pitting dogs against each other or attacking humans), a range of other offences are associated with dog-fighting including: illegal gambling; attending dog-fighting events; animal welfare harms; and the breeding and selling of dogs for fighting. This paper’s analysis examines contemporary legal perspectives on such activities; also discussing how illegal fieldsports (e.g. dog-fighting and cock-fighting) are dominated by organised crime elements of gambling and distinctly masculine subcultures through which a hierarchy of offending is established and developed. Commensurate with previous research that identifies different offender behaviours and offending within animal crime, this paper concludes that variation exists in the nature of dog-fighting to the extent that a single approach to offenders and offending behaviour is unlikely to be successful.

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Introduction

Dog-fighting is a form of animal harm that over the years has been subject to criminalisation via laws protecting non-human animals from human exploitation (Nurse 2013 ). Footnote 1 Its situation within organised crime discourse also reflects its links with gambling, the group dynamics involved in its organisation and its association with gangs and youth culture. However, while discussion of dog-fighting often centres on one ‘traditional’ type of activity, contemporary dog-fighting has broadened from its organised pit-based origins to encompass varied forms of organised activity including street dog-fighting in the form of chain fighting or chain rolling and the use of dogs as status or weapon dogs (Harding and Nurse 2015 ). Thus, there are arguably not only different types of dog-fighting in existence but also varied types of organised crime involved in the activity and its associated illegal acts.

This article examines dog-fighting from a green criminological perspective as a distinct form of organised and subcultural crime. It considers the question ‘to what extent is dog-fighting characterised as organised crime and how does such classification influence the enforcement approach?’. It also considers the extent to which a green criminological perspective should be applied to such activity, considering the nature of animal harm within an ecological justice approach that applies concepts of justice beyond species boundaries (Benton 2007 ). UK dog-fighting is primarily caught within animal welfare legislation, which creates criminal offences in respect of harm caused to protected animals and any failure to provide appropriate standards of animal welfare (Nurse 2016 ; Nurse and Ryland 2014 ). However, beyond the actual fight activities (pitting dogs against each other or using dogs to attack other humans), a range of other offences are associated with dog-fighting including: illegal gambling; attending dog-fighting events; animal welfare harms; and the breeding and selling of dogs for fighting. This article’s analysis examines contemporary legal perspectives on such activities as part of the consideration of dog-fighting as a group activity that should be considered within a broader conception of criminal networks than might fit within normative conceptions of ‘organised’ crime (Nurse and Wyatt 2020 ). It identifies that various conceptions on organised crime exists and that dog-fighting activity exists within various structural conceptions. Thus, the paper’s analysis identifies how different types of organised activity are at work in dog-fighting. It also discusses how illegal fieldsports (e.g. dog-fighting and cock-fighting) are dominated by organised crime elements of gambling and distinctly masculine subcultures through which a hierarchy of offending is established and developed. This paper examines how the enforcement approach to dog-fighting arguably needs to consider the dynamics of group offending within dog-fighting activity.

This paper is largely theoretical and literature based in respect of advancing conceptions on organised crime and masculinities as a cause of dog-fighting activity. However, it also draws on the author’s prior research into wildlife and animal crime and makes use of both empirical research (including prior research) and documentary analysis. For this paper, a literature review was conducted in order to identify factors prevalent in dog-fighting and to examine; how dog-fighting is conceptualised in law; the different types of activity and behaviours that exist in dog-fighting and the enforcement response to dog-fighting. The literature selection considered the research question outlined earlier in the paper with a direct focus on examining how understanding of behaviours and motivations of those involved in dog-fighting are incorporated into enforcement and legislative approaches. Literature was considered that indicated the existence of masculinities within animal harm (Nurse 2013 ) or where evidence of a particularly male offending characteristic was present as a factor in animal harm or dog-fighting activity. The literature review examined prior research on animal fighting, animal abuse and dog-fighting and on enforcement approaches to dog-fighting and animal abuse. Studies in these areas have examined the extent to which violent male offenders are exposed to or are engaged in animal abuse alongside other activities such as illegal gambling. Studies have also considered the extent to which animal abuse can be characterised as a distinctly male activity where individuals’ criminal activity is linked to or reinforces their masculinity (Nurse 2013 ; Linzey 2009 ; Kimmel et al. 2005 ). Accordingly, this article examines what the available research reveals about the extent to which dog-fighting is primarily the preserve of male offenders. For example, an analysis of selected available prosecutions data was conducted in respect of animal abuse offending in the UK. The author’s research on dog-fighting in the UK, for example, identified that the majority of those prosecuted for dog-fighting offences (over 90%) are male (Harding & Nurse 2015 ).

During the period 2000 to 2008 the author also conducted research into wildlife crime, which has also informed this article's research. This prior research into wildlife crime conducted interviews with the majority of UK wildlife NGOs focused on the scale of wildlife crime, the nature of offending behaviour that contravened legislation, and the adequacy of UK law and enforcement approaches. The interviews provided considerable information on the nature of offenders involved in wildlife and animal crime, who are predominantly male. What emerged from the interviews and empirical research was a clearer picture of the nature of wildlife and animal crime in the UK as well as a picture of the types of offenders involved. One finding of the previous research was that whilst male offending dominated, offenders have different motivations and rationalisations for their offending (Nurse 2011 , 2013 ). Thus, rather than all animal offenders fitting into the perceived wisdom of the rationally driven, profit-motivated offender, a range of offender types exist, including that of the masculinities offender and different aspects of group offending.

In developing this article, information provided in the author’s earlier fieldwork and the evidence of previous studies into animal abuse and dog-fighting as well as the criminological literature on organised crime and legal and enforcement approaches to dog-fighting was considered. By combining this information this article seeks to evaluate the nature of dog-fighting, drawing on prior research, as well as the detail of dog-fighting law and the appropriate enforcement approach.

The Nature of Dog-Fighting

While it is beyond the scope of this article to provide an exhaustive description of dog-fighting’s rules and processes, some basic elements are accepted within definitions of dog-fighting. Evans et al ( 1998 : 827) define dog-fighting as ‘the act of baiting two dogs against each other for entertainment or gain. It involves placing two dogs in a pit until one either quits or dies.’ Integral to the conduct of a fight is that the two dogs are required to fight each other until there is a clear conclusion to the fight. As Lawson explains:

In its most extreme and organised form, dog fights will last until one dog fails to scratch (charge over their corner ‘’scratch line’, into the centre of the pit to engage with the other dog); jumps out of the pit, dies, or is declared the winner, which can take anything from just a few minutes up to a few hours. The losing dog, unless kept for breeding based on its bloodlines and past performances, may often be beaten, drowned, shot or strangled to death, sometimes on the night as entertainment for the other participants. ( 2017 : 343-344)

Notwithstanding this commonly accepted notion of dog-fighting as pit based activity, arguably there is variation in the different types of dog-fighting that can take place and thus variation in the behaviours of those involved and their motivations. Harding ( 2014 : 163) identified three levels of dog-fighting drawing on the work of Hardiman ( 2009 ) and Ortiz ( 2010 ) and as outlined in Table 1 below.

Thus, while pit-based dog-fighting takes place within what may be easily recognised as an organised and network-based structure, other kinds of activity take place including more informal types of dog-fighting. In addition, the differentiated nature of the activities and types of dog-fighting that take place also indicate that offenders have different motivations for engaging in dog-fighting. For example, at the more professional end, the nature of dog-fighting is such that adherents consider this to be a sport consisting of ‘highly organised events with their own subculture attached to them’ (Nurse 2013 : 43). This partially distinguishes the activity from that of the Hobbyists and ‘Off the Chain’ fights who operate within a ‘looser’ form of organisation including disorganised types of network (Wyatt et al.  2020 ). As with other forms of underground clandestine activity this complicates the accuracy of data on the amount of dog-fighting that takes place each year. Lawson’s analysis of dog fighting complaints and convictions recorded by the RSPCA for England and Wales from 2006 to 2015 identified a total of 4,855 complaints of organised fighting involving a dog. The total number of dogs involved in the complaints reported was 12,213. During the period of these complaints there were a total of 137 convictions (Lawson 2017 : 346). RSPCA figures for the following years show 15 convictions for Sect. 8 animal fighting in 2017, 17 in 2018 but none in 2019 (RSPCA 2020 : 16). Massagee ( 2015 ) suggests that dog-fighting in the US is a half a billion dollar industry, consistent with the view of a 2007 New York Times story that described it as a multi-million dollar industry. Following NFL star Michael Vick’s high profile conviction for dog-fighting (Coleman 2009 ) the BBC suggested the US industry to involve an estimated 40,000 people ‘using some 250,000 dogs’ (Smith-Spark 2007 ). The uncertain size of the industry notwithstanding, Smith ( 2011 ) argues that dog-fighting should be considered an illegal entrepreneurial crime because it is primarily committed for the purpose of financial gain. However, in the context of this paper’s overall research question, how dog-fighting is defined in law becomes important in considering whether it is or can be dealt with as animal crime or serious/organised crime.

Dog-Fighting Offences

Nurse and Harding ( 2016 : 2) identified that in the UK ‘dog-fighting laws exist within animal welfare and cruelty statutes to the extent that dog-fighting laws do not exist independently of general anti-cruelty statutes as is the case in the US’. Animal offences are frequently considered to be victimless crimes largely due to the reality that animals are generally considered to be property and not as victims according to legal classifications (Nurse 2016 ). However, US law (discussed later in this article) generally classes dog-fighting as a felony which carries much stiffer penalties than standard anti-cruelty laws. This felony status also influences law enforcement responses to dog-fighting, particularly that which is ‘organised’ in nature. While the seriousness of the activity is not in doubt, analysis of UK legislation identifies that the specific offence of ‘dog-fighting’ does not exist. Instead, the act of dog-fighting is contained within the more generalised ‘animal fighting’ offence, prohibited by provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. This Act considers both direct participation in dog-fighting as well as indirect activities such as betting on dog-fights, attendance at such engagements and publicity of dog fights. It should also be noted that UK law regulates the breeding and selling of dogs considered to be fighting dogs, primarily through the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Footnote 2

Actual participation in dog-fighting is primarily covered by Sect. 8 of the UK’s Animal Welfare Act 2006 which states as follows:

A person commits an offence if he

causes an animal fight to take place, or attempts to do so;

knowingly receives money for admission to an animal fight;

knowingly publicises a proposed animal fight;

provides information about an animal fight to another with the intention of enabling or encouraging attendance at the fight;

makes or accepts a bet on the outcome of an animal fight or on the likelihood of anything occurring or not occurring in the course of an animal fight;

takes part in an animal fight;

has in his possession anything designed or adapted for use in connection with an animal fight with the intention of its being so used;

keeps or trains an animal for use for in connection with an animal fight;

keeps any premises for use for an animal fight.

Section 8(2) of the Act also makes it an offence for a person to be present at an animal fight without lawful authority or reasonable excuse. The offences outlined above relate to direct engagement with animal fighting and illustrate its perceived nature as a group activity, in particular one that involves spectators willing to pay admission for attendance and one that involves illegal gambling. The Act’s definition of animal fighting specifies it as ‘an occasion on which a protected animal is placed with an animal, or with a human, for the purpose of fighting, wrestling or baiting’ (Sect. 8 (7) of the Act). The specific wording used ‘makes clear that animal fighting is a tightly defined activity which in part is dependent on proving the intent of those involved in order to prove the commission of an offence’ (Nurse and Harding 2016 : 3). Potentially the specific wording ‘placed with’ would disqualify ‘impromptu’ street fights and chain rolling from a strict interpretation of dog-fighting as being deliberate and organised activity. Thus, such activities may be discounted by one notion of ‘organised’ crime, that concerning the structured and organised nature of animal fighting intended to be caught by the Animal Welfare Act 2006. But they would be caught by other provisions of UK legislation and they are applicable to this article’s wider consideration of dog-fighting as being an organised crime activity.

Beyond specific animal-fighting offences, the UK’s Animal Welfare Act 2006 also makes it an offence to cause suffering to a protected animal (dogs, cats and other companion animals are covered within this definition). Section 4 of the Act identifies that a person commits an offence if: (a) an act of his, or a failure of his to act, causes an animal to suffer, (b) he knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that the act, or failure to act, would have that effect or be likely to do so” (s. 4 AWA, 2006). Importantly this part of the Act relates to both deliberate acts, such as causing injury to a dog when using harsh and painful methods of training intended to toughen the dog and increase its endurance, as well as applying to omissions or negligence, such as failing to protect a dog from injuries inflicted during a fight. A failure to seek and provide immediate veterinary attention after a fight would also be action that prolongs a dog’s suffering and would be caught by this part of the Act. Section 9 of the Act places a duty on a person responsible for an animal to ensure animal welfare and states that ‘a person commits an offence if he does not take such steps as are reasonable in all the circumstances to ensure that the needs of an animal for which he is responsible are met to the extent required by good practice’ (Sect. 9(1) of the Animal Welfare Act 2006).

The injuries caused to a dog during dog-fighting could give rise to separate charges under Sect. 4 of the Act and arguably an owner (or responsible person) could be charged even where they may not directly participate in the alleged dog-fighting. Crucially, this widens the scope of charging those responsible for the dogs for the injuries incurred even if participation in the staging of a fight cannot be proved. The interpretation of this part of the law was clarified in R (on the application of Gray and Another) v Aylesbury Crown Court [2013] EWHC 500 (Admin). Gray, a horse farm trader was convicted of causing unnecessary suffering when the police seized 115 equines from his premises. Gray appealed against his convictions and argued that Sect. 4(1)(bb) of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 required either proof of knowledge that the animal was in a condition causing it unnecessary suffering or proof that it was showing signs of suffering which could not be missed by a reasonable, caring owner. In essence, Gray argued that for him to be convicted of the offence required either actual knowledge or a form of constructive knowledge that the animal was showing signs of unnecessary suffering, and so he argued that negligence (his failure to care for the animals so that they did actually suffer) was not sufficient. Footnote 3 The Court disagreed with Gray’s arguments and identified that Sect. 4(1)(bb) of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 had as its purpose the imposition of criminal liability for unnecessary suffering caused to an animal whether by act or omission and which the person responsible for the animal either had known or should have known was likely to cause unnecessary suffering whether by negligent act or omission The Court concluded that Sect. 9(1) of the 2006 Act also sets an objective standard of care which a responsible person is required to provide for the animal. As a result, the issue is whether the animal has suffered unnecessarily, not the mental state (i.e. level of knowledge or intent) of the person concerned. For dog-fighting offences, this raises a clear prospect that those involved in placing a dog into a fight and being present at the event where the injuries occur would have difficulty in arguing that they are not responsible under Sects. 4 or 9 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

In the US, dog-fighting is prohibited at both federal and state level. Federal criminalization of dogfighting is considered to be important ‘because it provides a system that overlaps state programs, allowing federal charges to be brought in instances where state enforcement is inadequate or non-existent or where state penalties are low’ (Ortiz 2010 : 21). Similar provisions to those that exist in the UK are contained in federal laws notably the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act of 2007 which imposes a fine and/or prison term of up to three years for violations of the Animal Welfare Act relating to: (1) sponsoring or exhibiting an animal in an animal fighting venture; (2) buying, selling, transporting, delivering, or receiving for purposes of transportation, in interstate or foreign commerce, any dog or other animal for participation in an animal fighting venture; and (3) using the mails or other instrumentality of interstate commerce to promote or further an animal fighting venture (Congress 2007 ). The Animal Welfare Act was amended in 2014 when an additional prohibition against attending fighting events was added and provision was made to impose an additional penalty for bringing minors to fighting events. The “interstate or foreign commerce” requirement of the AWA gives the federal court jurisdiction over an activity otherwise regulated by the state.

Green Criminology, Dog-Fighting and Animal Exploitation

Green criminology has identified how non-human animals are often commodified through laws that, for example, allow the continued exploitation of wildlife as an exploitable resource. It has also explored the potential shortcomings of legal systems and enforcement practices that fail to adequately provide justice for non-human animals and that may consider animal crimes as somehow victimless (Sollund 2017 ; Nurse 2015 ). Green criminology’s ecological justice conception ‘refers to the relationship of human beings generally to the rest of the natural world’ (White 2008 : 18). This incorporates a focus on ensuring that non-human animals can live free from torture, abuse and the destruction of their habitats and that policy and justice systems consider and incorporate mechanisms for providing justice when human considerations and behaviour prove to be problematic in respect of animals. Green criminology further develops these concerns within its species justice concept which ‘includes the particular consideration that animal welfare and rights ought to be of relevance to eco-justice’ (White and Heckenberg 2014 : 49). However, non-human animals’ status as ‘property’ is integral to the perpetuation of anthropocentric views that generally limit legal protection to the extent to which non-human animal and human interests coincide (Wise 2000 ). The green criminological perspective considers this to be problematic and discussions of speciesism have identified it as ‘the practice of discriminating against non-human animals because they are perceived to be inferior to the human species in much the same way that sexism and racism involve prejudice and discrimination against women and people of different colour’ (White and Heckenberg  2014 : 49). Thus, green criminology identifies that many animal crimes fall outside of the mainstream criminological gaze and contends that this is a short-sighted approach that fails to align animal abuse with other violent crimes. While several social fieldsports (such as hunting, shooting and fishing) are lawful if carried out in accordance with regulations that may specify when non-human animals can be killed or taken and may restrict the methods that might be used in killing or taking non-human animals, illegal activities such as ‘hunting with dogs or animal baiting, have been criminalised by various jurisdictions yet continue as underground ‘sports’ despite the illegality of doing so (Nurse and Wyatt 2020 :52; Kalof and Taylor 2007 ; Smith 2011 ). Undoubtedly dog-fighting constitutes a form of animal harm which prior green criminological research has defined as:

Animal harm is any unauthorized act or omission that violates national or international animal law whether anti-cruelty, conservation, animal protection, wildlife or general law that contains animal protection provisions (including the protection of animals as property) and is subject to either criminal prosecution and criminal sanctions, including cautioning and disposal by means other than a criminal trial or which provides for civil sanctions to redress the harm caused to the animal whether directly or indirectly. Animal harm may involve injury to or killing of animals, removal from the wild, possession or reducing into captivity, or the sale or exploitation of animals or products derived from animals. Animal harm also includes the causing of either physical or psychological distress. (Nurse 2013 : 57).

Kalof and Taylor ( 2007 : 330) identify that as green criminology ‘seeks to understand and confront the social problem of animal cruelty’ it is well placed to develop or contribute to a discourse of dog-fighting centred around the physical, psychological and emotional abuse of the non-human animals themselves. However, situating dog-fighting within mainstream law enforcement efforts also requires negating anthropocentric viewpoints towards non-human animals that limit the priority given to their harm. Accordingly, this article contends that the animal harm concerns are best allied to organised crime concerns which law enforcement is already predisposed to take seriously. This is particularly the case in respect of masculinities based group offending.

Dog-Fighting and Masculinity Subculture

Maher and Pierpoint ( 2011 ) identify a level of social anxiety in the UK centred around the perception of a status dogs’ problem where youth dog ownership of so called ‘dangerous dogs’ relates to extrinsically motivated dog ownership linked to criminal and anti-social purposes. In the UK context, the term ‘status dog’ generally refers to breeds historically considered to be fighting dogs such as the bull breeds (e.g. Staffordshire bull terrier American Pit Bull terrier, American Bully). Ownership of these dogs has been documented ‘to confer an image of toughness, an air of aggression, and their use as an extension of UK youth gang violence (for example as weapons in turf wars)’ (Maher et al 2017 : 132). Research has also identified that masculinities offences, particularly those linked to direct exploitation of non-human animals, are seldom committed by lone individuals (Nurse 2013 ). In some of these crimes (e.g. pit-based dog-fighting) ‘the main motivation is the exercise of power allied to sport or entertainment’ which often links with organised crime and gambling (Nurse 2020 :915).

Sykes and Matza’s neutralization theory ( 1957 ) can be applied to the justifications used by offenders that gives them the freedom to act (and a post-act rationalization for doing so) while other theories explain why animal harm offenders are motivated to commit specific crimes (Nurse 2013 ). Animal offenders often exist within distinct communities where the crimes take place, frequently outside of the gaze of the wider community by virtue of being an underground or hidden activity and there is a lack of disapproving neighbours or a distinct law enforcement presence to exert essential controls on offending (especially in respect of wildlife offences which often take place in remote areas). Offenders may also live within a community or subculture of their own which accepts their offences. Nurse ( 2013 ) identified that many animal harm offences carry only fines or lower level prison terms which reinforce the notion of animal harm as ‘minor’ offences unworthy of official activity within mainstream criminal justice. In addition, Sutherland’s ( 1973 ) differential association theory helps to explain the situation that occurs when potential animal abusers and wildlife offenders learn their activities from others in their community or social group (Sutherland 1973 ). Communities engulfed in subcultural acceptance of animal harm can encourage the main learning process for criminal behaviour within intimate groups and association with others and provide the organisational structure that facilities, encourages and supports deviant behaviour like illegal dog-fighting. Such offending also fits within the notion of crimes of masculinities involving cruelty to, or power over, animals, in some cases linked to sporting or ‘hobby’ pursuits, perceptions by the offender of their actions being part of their culture where toughness, masculinity and smartness (Wilson 1985 ) combine with a love of excitement. In the case of animal baiting sports (e.g. badger-baiting, badger-digging, hare coursing, dog-fighting and cock-fighting) for example, gambling and association with other like-minded males are factors and provide a strong incentive for new members to join already established networks of offenders.

American research on non-human animal and wildlife-oriented crimes of the masculine, including cockfighting and cock-fighting gangs, illustrate the existence of such masculine subcultures. Thus, “cock-fighting can be said to have a mythos centered on the purported behaviour and character of the gamecock itself. Cocks are seen as emblems of bravery and resistance in the face of insurmountable odds” (Hawley 1993 , 2). Gullone ( 2012 :13) noted dog-fighting as fitting into one of Kellert and Felthous’ ( 1985 ) nine motivations for animal cruelty, namely that of the expression of aggression through a non-human animal. Footnote 4 Maher et al ( 2017 ) identify the cyclical nature of status dog ownership and anti-social behaviour as arguably self-reinforcing such that dogs:

(1) Are labelled as aggressive, dangerous and linked to criminality (for example dog-fighting, (2) are established as valued amongst deviant youth; (3) become further associated with oppositional culture and are labelled as socially deviant and vilified by mainstream society, (4) have their status elevated amongst deviant youths and those pursuing anti-social or criminal activities (Ragatz et al. 2009 and Schenk et al. 2012 ), and (55) are abandoned, rejected and killed by mainstream society (including non-deviant bull-breed owners). Moreover ownership of these dog breeds then becomes a tool with which society can label antisocial youth and other owners.

Thus, societal condemnation of status dog-ownership risks enforcing notions of masculinity linked to the perceived outlaw status of the dogs themselves and their acceptance as an illicit commodity. Engagement in ‘animal fighting’ activity heightens this as the fighting involved is ‘an affirmation of masculine identity in an increasingly complex and diverse era’ (Hawley 1993 , 1), and the fighting spirit of the birds or dogs has great symbolic significance to participants as does the ability of fighting and hunting dogs to take punishment. Thus, such activities arguably speak to distinctly male characteristics and provide a means through which masculine stereotypes can be reinforced and developed through offending behaviour (Goodey 1997 ) and are important factors in addressing offending behaviour that may sometimes be overlooked (Groombridge 1998 ).

The male-bonding element of animal fighting identified by Hawley is significant to considerations of the organised nature of animal abuse, as is the banding together of men from the margins of society or from a shared cultural background for whom issues of belonging, male pride, and achievement are important. Such considerations can be powerful factors in the development of a subculture where offending activity is accepted by participants, spectators and support networks. In discussing cock-fighting in America, Hawley ( 1993 ) explains that ‘young men are taken under the wing of an older male relative or father, and taught all aspects of chicken care and lore pertaining to the sport. Females are generally not significant players in this macho milieu’ although special events for women ‘powder puff’ derbies are sometimes arranged (Hawley 1993 , 5). Forsyth and Evans ( 1998 ) reached similar findings in researching dog-fighting in the United States, illustrating how Sykes and Matza’s ( 1957 ) neutralization techniques might be deployed to defend and justify the animal abuse and illegal activity linked to such offending. Forsyth and Evans noted that in order to maintain rationalizations concerning their activities, ‘the dogmen use four recurring techniques: (a) denial of injury; (b) condemnation of the condemners; (c) appeal to higher loyalties; and (d) a defense that says dogmen are good people (their deviance-dogfighting expunged by their good character)’ (1998: 2013). Thus, preservation of and pride in their sport as a historical practice, an attachment to smaller groups and loyalty to dogfighting and dogmen took precedence over attachment to society for the dogmen, with dog-fighting having great cultural significance and wider social importance for the dogmen and other masculinities offenders. Harding and Nurse’s research into UK dog-fighting (2015, 2016) also identified the importance of a masculine group dynamic and, in an analysis of dog-fighting activity and prosecutions in the United Kingdom, also noted the extent to which dog-fighting had become a masculinities-based group activity on the part of different participants (e.g. organisers, participants and spectators).

Previous research (Nurse, 2013 ) indicates that as a causation of animal harm, the denial of injury is an important factor indicating not only that individuals do not see any harm in their activity but also confirming the view of animals as a commodity rather than as sentient beings suffering as a result of the individual’s actions. In addition, the perception that certain animals do not feel pain allows offenders to commit their offences without considering the impact of their actions or feeling any guilt over them. However, in dog-fighting, it is precisely the animal’s ability to endure pain and to inflict it on an opponent that is integral to the activity’s appeal. Those involved identify with these masculine traits in their dogs and work hard to ensure that they are brought out. At the more professional end of dog-fighting (see Table 1 ) organisational structures are in place to support such ideologies.

Dog-Fighting and Organised Crime

Kalof and Taylor ( 2007 ) estimated that more than 40,000 dog fighters were active in urban centres of the United States at the time of their analysis. They also identified that ‘some dog fighters are skilled professionals who operate in national and international clandestine networks, but others are mid-level dog fighters who remain in specific geographical regions’ (2007: 324). Smith ( 2011 ) identified that activities such as dog-fighting take place in a closed social milieu to which the authorities and the academic researcher cannot legitimately gain access. Harding and Nurse ( 2016 ) identified that while dog-fighting is classified primarily as animal welfare and animal abuse crime it is also a distinctly status crime. However, the illegal activities associated with dog-fighting can legitimately be regarded as being an entrepreneurial activity as they entail trading in a Kirznerian sense as well as financial implications associated with gambling (Smith, 2011 ).

Throughout the literature on dog-fighting a picture emerges of varied types of organised activity. In their analysis of organised crime in the illegal wildlife trade Wyatt et al. ( 2020 ) identified three types of organised crime groups, organised, corporate and disorganised groups. Two of these groups are clearly involved in illegal dog-fighting, organised and disorganised groups. Wyatt et al.’s definition of organised groups concluded that these are ‘highly-organized, disciplined, rational, and may use violence or corruption to control illegal goods and/or services for profit. In addition, the group has existed for a significant length of time’ ( 2020 : 353). Wyatt et al.  2020 : 353) note that in respect of some animal related crimes, the nature of the organisation and the crime need not define a crime as ‘serious’ according to the United Nations definition of seriousness as “conduct constituting an offence punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least four years or a more serious penalty” (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2004 : 5). Arguably there is also some corporate crime involvement allied to dog-fighting particularly in respect of its ancillary activities, the lucrative world of dog-fighting merchandise (such as recordings of fights, prohibited under the UK’s Animal Welfare Act 2008) and the commercialised nature of high-end dog-fighting which involves thousands of pounds in high end gambling and that sometimes involves interstate activity. Professional dog-fighting is often discussed in the context of a dog-fighting network or ‘ring’. Thus, it lends itself to consideration within normative considerations of hierarchical organised crime. Smith ( 2011 ) identified dog-fighting as being organised criminal activity that was engaged in by urban criminals and especially by organised thieves and drug dealers. As Heger ( 2011 :242) identified, dog fights ‘require networking, preparation, and coordination between at least two, and typically three or more, parties such as kennels, dog ―sponsors, referees, the fight promoter, and spectators’. Accordingly, ‘dogfights often mark the synchronization of criminal efforts from various players, all linked together through their common purpose of the fighting ring’’ (Heger 2011 : 242). The prevalence of gambling and the large sums of money to be made from organised dog-fighting means that the ‘sport’ attracts the involvement of organised crime wishing to take advantage of the sport’s profits. As Kalof and Taylor noted in assessing research on dog-fighting in Detroit ‘organised dog fights emerge as serious racketeering activities – business ventures that draw a cross section of spectators from the middle class, the working class, the wealthy and the street culture’ ( 2007 : 326).

At the ‘disorganised’ end, dog-fighting is inextricably linked to inner city gang culture where dogs are seen as status symbols and are also used for security and enforcement. As this article identifies, varied forms of dog-fighting exist and the more informal types of dog-fighting reflect Wyatt et al.’s ( 2020 ) notion of disorganisation and Reuter’s ( 1986 ) conception of disorganised crime, notwithstanding the fact that the violence visited on each other by the dogs is undoubtedly violence. But as Table 1 (earlier) indicates, the ‘impromptu’ street rolls and low-level dog-fighting are distinguished from the pit-based and more organised variant, reflecting a notion of being conducted by parties who are less organised or monopolistic in their organisation and purpose. Thus, urban street culture dog-fighting represented by ‘Off the Chain’ fights and the ‘Hobbyists’ are arguably closer to a conception of disorganised crime than the clearly organised crime fights of the professional rings. This variance in behaviour has implications for the enforcement approach to dog-fighting.

Prosecuting Dog-Fighting

Given the organised but underground nature of dog-fighting, standard animal welfare enforcement approaches are arguably inadequate to address the full range of offending incorporated within dog-fighting. Most animal welfare and many animal abuse offences are dealt with by a mixture of police and animal welfare charities. Thus, bodies such as the RSPCA, SSCPCA, RSPCA (Australia), the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) may routinely find themselves the first port of call for dealing with harm to or neglect of an animal. This may include injuries arising from dog-fighting and in some cases animal welfare charities with investigative departments will also liaise with policing agencies in anti-dog-fighting operations.

However, whereas much animal abuse or animal welfare offending might not be considered a policing priority, dog-fighting attracts the attention of police and prosecutors ‘because those engaged in animal fighting also tend to be involved in additional criminal conduct, such as gambling, guns and illegal drugs’ (Schaffner 2011 : 35). Nurse ( 2013 ) identified that the public policy response to masculinities crimes such as dog-fighting reflects acceptance of the propensity towards violence of offenders involved in such offences. However, by necessity, dog-fighting investigations may be complex and require techniques such as infiltration of gangs, surveillance activities, undercover operations and in-depth financial investigations. Investigations can also be lengthy and resource intensive. For example, Masagee ( 2015 :2) notes that the conviction of an Alabama dog-fight organiser to an eight-year prison term came only after a four-year investigation. Ortiz ( 2010 ) suggested that dog-fighting attracted a low level of prosecution in the US. The reasons for this were identified as ‘differences in the values people place on prosecution, the costs involved in investigating cases, and the difficulties of proving the criminal violations’ (Ortiz 2010 : 27). The valuation of animal crime as not being a mainstream enforcement priority has been commented on by several green criminologists and arguably reflects anthropocentric notions of animals as property. Ortiz suggested that ‘even between those states that agree that dogfighting should be a certain category (felony or misdemeanour), criminal sanctions for the activity differ which shows a different value for the crime’ ( 2010 : 28). Maximum penalties for dog-fighting offences were recently increased in the UK by virtue of the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 which increased maximum penalties from to five years for offences under any of Sects. 4, 5, 6(1) and (2), 7 and 8 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. This captures offences of causing unnecessary suffering to a dog (Sect. 4) and relating to animal fighting (Sect. 8).

The costs of conducting investigations become problematic when the possible conclusions of a ‘successful’ investigation are that seized dogs must be housed, often at considerable expense, or may need to be euthanised. Where dog-fighting is a mutli-jurisdictional problem (for example involving several different US states or even more than one country), investigative costs could increase and this may discourage authorisation for investigation. Heger notes ‘the largest fight-ring bust in the U.S. entailed acquiring remote farmland, purchasing forty fight dogs, keeping two officers undercover for eighteen months, and participating in fights’ ( 2011 :254). The case resulted in more than 500 dogs being rescued from twenty-nine sites from across eight states. While there were twenty-six arrests ‘the resulting convictions ranged from twenty-four months in federal prison down to only probation’ while the costs of caring for the seized animals were estimated at $350,000 (Heger 2011 :254). While this one large case is unlikely to be typical, it does represent a problem that green criminologists identify in other areas of non-human animal crime, namely that without recognition of the harm caused to animals by such offending or a clear link to more ‘mainstream’ offending that criminal justice agencies understand, such offences may remain under-prosecuted (Nurse 2015 ).

Dog-fighters also represent a particular type of masculinities offender (Nurse 2013 ) considered to be more dangerous than other animal offenders (with the possible exception of wildlife crime’s organised gangs) and evidence suggests that investigations also need to be tailored with this in mind and taking into account the likely benefits at the conclusion of an investigation. The challenges of proving animal fighting violations were noted by Nurse and Harding ( 2016 ) who concluded that ‘dog-fighting offences may not always be prosecuted or identified as such given the nature of harms caused to dogs during fighting activities and the availability of ‘lesser’ but more easily provable offences such as failure to provide animal welfare’. From an animal welfare perspective, the relative ease of proving that harm to an animal has occurred and thus, in the UK at least, the duty to provide animal welfare has not been met and thus an offence has occurred. However, the organised crime elements of dog-fighting offences require more extensive consideration particularly in respect of the linked illegal action. Thus, arguments have been made that prosecutorial approaches more explicitly routed in organised crime discourse should be employed.

In US dog-fighting discourse arguments have been made for use of the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which was included in the Organised Crime Control Act of 1970., RICO was arguably originally conceived as an anti-mafia tool, but has developed to engage with other forms of corruption and organised activity. The four key themes of RICO are that:

First, income acquired through racketeering or illegal debts may not be used to purchase interest in an enterprise. Second, the racketeering proceeds or illegal debts may not themselves be used to gain or maintain interest in an enterprise. Third, an enterprise may not conduct its affairs through a pattern of racketeering or the collection of illegal debts. Finally, any conspiracies to commit the above acts are prohibited. (Heger 2011 : 256).

RICO charges may be based either on a ‘pattern of racketeering’ or on the collection of unlawful debt notwithstanding some of the challenges of establishing that a pattern of racketeering exists (Massagee 2015 : 1). Racketeering as defined by the statute refers to committing any of the approximately one hundred offenses or ‘predicate offenses’ specifically listed within the RICO statute. However, while 187 predicate offenses include certain state charges involving, for example, murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter, or dealing in a controlled substance, as well as an expansive list of federal offenses, ‘neither dogfighting nor other Animal Welfare Act violations are listed as predicate offenses under the RICO statute’ (Heger 2011 : 257).

While it is beyond the scope of this article to explore RICO or its equivalents in depth, the application of legislation that gives options to enforcers and prosecutors options to consider the organised crime elements of racketeering as part of dog-fighting prosecutions provides some hope for addressing the animal abuse aspects of such offences alongside the organised elements. Heger ( 2011 : 270) argues that RICO is appropriate given the business-like nature of associated dog-fighting crimes as well as some of the evidential/proof issues in dog-fighting statutes. The Animal Legal Defense fund identified that most states have RICO statutes and that ‘as of January 2018, New Jersey and Texas have made dog fighting a predicate RICO offense; and Kansas has made both dog fighting and cockfighting predicate offenses’ (ALDF 2019 ). Notably, 6 US states have made all animal fighting predicate offences.

The importance of applying RICO or other organised crime tools to dog-fighting is that while a focus on the dogs is core concern of animal welfare and animal protection law, use of organised crime tools also provides a mechanism for more serious penalties, such as seizure of assets and equipment. It also brings dog-fighting within the remit of mainstream law enforcement arguably better resourced to conduct such investigations whilst ensuring the associated animal abuse is brought clearly within the remit of public prosecutors.

Conclusions on Dog-Fighting and Organised Crime

The paper has considered the extent to which dog-fighting is characterised as organised crime and whether any such classification influences or assists enforcement approaches. Commensurate with previous research that identifies different offender behaviours and offending exist within animal crime (Nurse 2011 ; 2013 ), this paper’s examination concludes that variation exists in the nature of dog-fighting to the extent that a single approach to offenders and offending behaviour is unlikely to be successful. There are different types of dog-fighting as well as different motivations and engagement with associated illegal activity. But the underlying conclusion is that dog-fighting operates within organised and disorganised structures and is primarily a group activity.

At the more ‘professional’ end, dog-fighting engages with normative organised crime behaviour such as illegal gambling, racketeering and the engagement of criminal networks in lucrative, illegal activity. At the lower end of the scale, there is less organisation and arguably a level of disorganisation, that nevertheless engages with illegal gambling (in respect of the ‘Hobbyists) and is gang affiliated. The differences in types of offender and behaviour should be considered when developing enforcement and prosecution strategies and perhaps preventative ones. But underlying the different types of dog-fighting are key issues of masculinities and anthropocentric attitudes towards animals as property to be exploited and used for human entertainment.

Legislatively dog-fighting offences are primarily considered within animal welfare and animal protection law. But from a green criminological perspective, the harms caused to non-human animals are a primary concern, where dog-fighting and other animal harm activities need to be considered not just in the context of whether they are organised or serious crime that criminology and criminal justice would normally consider, but also because they represent crimes against animals that are of significance to how society deals with violence and deviance (Nurse 2016 ; Beirne 2007 ). Thus, justice approaches need to consider how to address anthropocentric attitudes towards non-human animals and the failure to afford appropriate priority to these even where legislation mechanisms exist. But as this article outlines, an effective response requires allying the animal harm aspects with the organised crime aspects in order to holistically address the realities of contemporary dog-fighting as both animal abuse crime and organised crime.

Heger ( 2011 ) suggested one approach to professional dog-fighting offences was to ‘follow the money’. At the more professional end where the illegal gambling aspects involve large sums of money in the hundreds of thousands and a higher level of sophistication exists in the breeding and handling of dogs and in financial arrangements, not only is dog-fighting highly organised, it is also big business. Thus, in addition to the investigative techniques of surveillance, infiltration and undercover work and assessment of harm caused to dogs already identified as appropriate law enforcement techniques for this kind of crime, other techniques such as forensic accounting and the investigation of assets (including the dogs themselves) that are linked to or a consequence of dog-fighting are also appropriate. Calculating how organised networks and individuals within those networks have profited from dog-fighting, provides a means to pursue seizure of any assets and the forfeiture of profits derived from dog-fighting, as a clear objective of the prosecutorial process. In principle this approach can also be applied to the gambling profits and assets of the disorganised dog-fighting networks.

For both the organised and disorganised end, addressing the animal abuse aspects is also necessary and a priority from a species justice perspective. Fighting dogs suffer abuse and a range of harms in training, during fights and frequently afterwards (especially those dogs that lose their fights). Animal welfare law often contains provisions that allow for individuals caught abusing animals to be banned from future animal ownership. These provisions should be routinely and stringently applied and those who fail to protect their dogs from the harms intrinsic to dog-fighting by virtue of their involvement in the activity should be prevented from having dogs by way of a lifetime ban. For the law to be effective in this area it needs to ensure not only that there is investigation and prosecution when dog-fighting is suspected, but once proved (and ideally convicted) preventative measures are also put in place to address the potential for reoffending.

The term non-human animal is used throughout this article although it should be noted that legislation usually uses the term ‘animal’, and this is used for accuracy in the names of legislation and when quoting directly from prior and legislative sources.

For criminological analysis of this legislation see, for example, Hallsworth ( 2011 ).

Gray also raised arguments that his convictions under Sect. 9 of the Act amounted to duplication because they were based on the same issues and findings of fact relating to his convictions under Sect. 4. These arguments were essentially dismissed, and the appeal judge concluded that there was not complete duplication as some of the animals that had been the subject of charges under Sect. 9 had not also been the subject of charges under Sect. 4.

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• Published: 03 May 2021

Aggressive behaviour is affected by demographic, environmental and behavioural factors in purebred dogs

• Salla Mikkola 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Milla Salonen 1 , 2 , 3 ,
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• Emma Hakanen 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Sini Sulkama 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• César Araujo 1 , 2 , 3 &
• Hannes Lohi 1 , 2 , 3  

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• Animal behaviour
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Aggressive behaviour is an unwanted and serious problem in pet dogs, negatively influencing canine welfare, management and public acceptance. We aimed to identify demographic and environmental factors associated with aggressive behaviour toward people in Finnish purebred pet dogs. We collected behavioural data from 13,715 dogs with an owner-completed online questionnaire. Here we used a dataset of 9270 dogs which included 1791 dogs with frequent aggressive behaviour toward people and 7479 dogs without aggressive behaviour toward people. We studied the effect of several explanatory variables on aggressive behaviour with multiple logistic regression. Several factors increased the probability of aggressive behaviour toward people: older age, being male, fearfulness, small body size, lack of conspecific company, and being the owner’s first dog. The probability of aggressive behaviour also differed between breeds. These results replicate previous studies and suggest that improvements in the owner education and breeding practices could alleviate aggressive behaviour toward people while genetic studies could reveal associated hereditary factors.

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Introduction.

Aggressive behaviour is a serious and common behaviour problem in domestic dogs 1 . Aggressively behaving dogs can cause public concern by biting people and other pets, with medical or even lethal consequences for the victim. In some countries, certain dog breeds are even banned or are under breed-specific restriction in order to minimize the potential risk of dog bites 2 , 3 . Additionally, aggressive behaviour often leads to surrender or even euthanasia of the dog 4 , disposing the aggressively behaving individuals to welfare problems. Aggressive behaviour can also arise from pain 5 , 6 , suggesting that some aggressively behaving dogs may have a disease, such as hip dysplasia 7 , or other painful condition which impair their welfare.

The severity of aggressive behaviour varies from biting and snapping attacks that can even lead to the death of a victim to less severe, but more common growling and barking 8 . When including these less severe signs of aggressive behaviour, the aggressive behaviour toward people are quite common in pet dogs even though the reported proportions differ depending on the study approaches and study populations. In Iran, 26% of dogs showed aggressive behaviour toward strangers in a pilot study 9 , and in an English dog population 3% of dogs showed aggressive behaviour toward family member, and 5–7% toward strangers 10 . In a Finnish dog population, in the study of Tiira et al. 11 , the proportion of aggressive behaviour toward the owner/family members and toward strangers/familiar people were 16% and 45%, respectively. However, in our more recent prevalence study from Finnish dogs, aggressive behaviour was less common: the prevalence of total aggressive behaviour in this study population was 14%, aggressive behaviour toward (human) family members 6.4%, and toward strange people 6% 12 . The different criteria to categorise a dog as aggressive or non-aggressive explains the differences in the reported percentages of dogs showing aggressive behaviour. For example, in our more recent study 12 , we only considered dogs that had growled at least often or had tried to bite or snap at least sometimes as aggressive, while Tiira et al. 11 , considered all dogs that had barked, growled, snapped, or bit at least once as aggressive. Thus, in our study aggressive behaviour toward people includes frequent growling, snapping and biting or trying to snap or bite.

Aggressive behaviour in dogs has been associated with several factors. Some of these identified factors are dog-related, for example, dog’s fearfulness 11 , 13 , older age 10 , 14 , 15 , and being male 1 , 14 . The association with sterilisation is inconsistent, as studies have showed a lower probability of overall aggressive behaviour in sterilised than intact dogs 1 , a higher probability (toward owner) of aggressive behaviour in sterilised dogs 14 , and no connection between sterilisation and aggressive behaviour 14 , 15 , 16 . Some previous studies have also identified size as an affecting factor, with small dogs behaving more likely aggressively than large dogs 17 , 18 . Differences in aggressive behaviour between breeds have also been studied before, and several studies have detected significant breed-wise differences 11 , 12 , 14 , 19 . In addition, various environmental factors have been associated with aggressive behaviour. For example, dogs living in a single-dog household have been found to more likely behave aggressively toward the owner than dogs living in multi-dog household 14 , 20 , and dogs living in larger families have been found to be more prone to aggressive behaviour 14 , 15 . Dogs living in rural areas have been found to more likely behave aggressively toward strangers than dogs living in cities 14 . Furthermore, time spent with the owner 14 , and owner’s dog experience 14 , 20 , 21 , 22 have been associated with aggressiveness, and early weaning has been suggested to increase the probability of aggressive behaviour 23 .

We studied the factors associated with canine aggressive behaviour toward people (strangers and family members) in over 9000 Finnish purebred pet dogs with multiple logistic regression and we also formed a priori hypotheses based on previous literature. The dataset we used in this study is part of our larger owner-completed online questionnaire data with over 13,700 dogs 12 . Reliability of questionnaires is usually good, reflecting the behaviour of a dog in behaviour tests 24 , 25 and over time 25 . An owner-questionnaire can even be a better method to study aggressive behaviour than behaviour tests, because all dogs that have behaved aggressively in daily life do not show aggressive behaviour in test situations 26 , 27 . Here, our aim was to study the association of known (living environment, family size, dogs in the family, owner’s dog experience, daily exercise) and novel (daily time spent alone, weaning age) factors with aggressive behaviour in a previously unstudied dog population.

Study cohort and demographics

We studied factors associated with aggressive behaviour in Finnish pet dogs with an owner-completed online questionnaire and collected a cross-sectional convenience sample of 9270 dogs, including 1791 dogs in the high and 7479 dogs in the low aggressive behaviour groups. The mean age of the dogs was 4.6 years (ranging from 2 months to 17 years) and 53% of them were female. The number of dogs in different breed, sex, and aggressive behaviour groups are shown in the Supplementary Table S1 . We have a manuscript about study participants in preparation.

Factors associated with aggressive behaviour

The final logistic regression model for aggressive behaviour included explanatory variables age, sex, fearfulness, breed, dogs in the family, body size, and owner’s dog experience (Table 1 ).

The probability of aggressive behaviour correlated positively with age, with older dogs having a higher odds of aggressive behaviour than young dogs (Fig.  1 a, Table 1 ). As hypothesised, male dogs had a higher odds of aggressive behaviour than female dogs (Fig.  1 b, Table 2 ). The dog’s body size was also associated with aggressive behaviour; small dogs had a higher odds of aggressive behaviour than medium-sized and large dogs, but there was no difference between medium-sized and large dogs (Fig.  1 c, Table 2 ). Highly fearful dogs had over five times higher odds of aggressive behaviour than non-fearful dogs and moderately fearful dogs also had a higher odds of aggressive behaviour than non-fearful dogs (Fig.  1 d, Table 2 ).

The effect of age, fearfulness, sex, and, body size on aggressive behaviour in the logistic regression analysis. ( a ) Older dogs had a higher probability of aggressive behaviour than young dogs. ( b ) Male dogs had a higher probability of aggressive behaviour than female dogs. ( c ) Small dogs had a higher probability of aggressive behaviour than medium-sized and large dogs. ( d ) Highly and moderately fearful dogs had a higher probability of aggressive behaviour than non-fearful dogs. Grey area ( a ) and error bars ( b – d ) indicate 95% confidence limits. N  = 9270.

The probability of aggressive behaviour differed between breeds (Fig.  2 ). When adjusting for other variables in the model, the breeds with the highest odds of aggressive behaviour were Rough Collie, Miniature Poodle (toy, miniature and medium-sized), and Miniature Schnauzer. The breeds with the lowest odds of aggressive behaviour were Labrador Retriever, Golden Retriever, and Lapponian Herder. As we hypothesised a priori, Lagotto Romagnolo, Chihuahua, German Shepherd Dog, and Miniature Schnauzer had a significantly higher odds for aggressive behaviour than Golden Retriever and Labrador Retriever (Table 2 ). The largest pairwise differences were found between Rough Collie and Labrador Retriever (OR = 5.44, P  = 0.0011), Miniature Poodle and Labrador Retriever (OR = 5.13, P  = 0.0011), and Miniature Schnauzer and Labrador Retriever (OR = 5.08, P  = 0.0011). Rest of the significant pairwise comparisons between breeds can be seen in the Supplementary Table S2 , and all pairwise breed differences are presented in the “ Supplementary Dataset ”.

Probability of aggressive behaviour in 23 dog breeds or breed groups. Several breeds differed significantly from each other (Supplementary Table S2 ). Error bars indicate 95% confidence limits. N  = 9270.

In addition to demographic factors, environmental factors also influenced aggressive behaviour. Dogs living without other dogs in the household had a higher odds for aggressive behaviour than dogs living with other dogs (Table 2 , Supplementary Fig. S1 ). In addition, dogs of first-time dog owners had a higher odds of aggressive behaviour (Table 2 , Supplementary Fig. S1 ) than dogs belonging to owners who have had at least one dog previously.

This large-scale survey study of over 9000 pet dogs suggests that aggressive behaviour toward people is affected by behaviour, demography, and environment. The studied factors daily time spent alone, and weaning age were novel, and factors living environment, family size, dogs in the family, dog experience, daily exercise, have previously been studied only in few articles 14 , 15 , 20 , 21 , 22 . Dogs showing aggressive behaviour were more often fearful, small-sized, males, owner’s first dogs and the only dogs in the family. In addition, probability of aggressive behaviour increased with age, and we found that the probability of aggressive behaviour differed between dog breeds. These findings suggest that improvements in the owner education and breeding practices of pet dogs could alleviate aggressive behaviour toward people. The identified factors should also be considered when planning studies that aim for the discovery of the associated hereditary factors.

Fearfulness had the strongest association with aggressive behaviour. Fearful and noise-sensitive dogs have been found to behave more aggressively toward unfamiliar people than dogs with no anxieties 11 . In the study of Dinwoodie et al. 28 , the dogs with fear/anxiety problem had more biting incidences than other dogs, and they also found remarkable comorbidity between fear/anxiety and overall aggressive behaviour. Similarly, in the study of Salonen et al. 12 , comorbidity between fearfulness and aggressive behaviour was strong: aggressive dogs were over three times more often fearful than non-aggressive dogs. Aggressive behaviour commonly stems from fearfulness, as fear-related aggressive behaviour is a type of undesired aggressive behaviour 13 , 29 . Here, we could not separate fear-related aggressive behaviour from other types of aggressive behaviour. Therefore, it is possible that majority of the dogs in this study show fear-related aggressive behaviour.

We found a significant association between sex and aggressive behaviour. Male dogs had a higher probability of aggressive behaviour than females. This association has been found before in some studies 1 , 28 , 29 , but Hsu et al. 14 found this association only with aggressive behaviour toward the owner and Bennett and Rolf 15 did not find association with unfriendliness/aggressiveness. In addition, in the study population of Guy et al. 30 , female dogs were more likely to have bitten than male dogs. Thus, more studies are needed to reveal the association of sex and aggressive behaviour.

The probability of aggressive behaviour increased with age, and thus, older dogs were more likely aggressive than young dogs. A similar association between age and aggressiveness/unfriendliness has been found earlier 10 , 15 . However, in the study of Hsu and Sun 14 , age influenced only aggressive behaviour toward the owner, and the difference was significant only when comparing dogs over 10 years of age to dogs under 5 years of age. In contrast, in the study Casey et al. 10 , only the probability of aggressive behaviour toward strangers increased. Study of Col et al. 1 found no association between age and aggressive behaviour, and it is possible that old dogs have had more opportunities to show aggressive behaviour, reflecting to our finding. As aggressive behaviour can be a sign of pain 5 , it is possible that older dogs have painful conditions or disorders which make them more aggressive. For example, hip dysplasia is a common disease which can cause pain-related aggressive behaviour in dogs 7 . In addition, some disorders, such as the blinding eye disease cataract which is common in older dogs 31 , can decrease the ability to perceive approaching people. This can make the dog feel insecure and increase the chance of an aggressive response. Thus, yearly health checks might reduce pain- or other disease-related aggressive behaviour.

We found differences between dog breeds in the probabilities of aggressive behaviour toward people. From all the studied breeds, Rough Collie had the highest probability of aggressive behaviour. Rough Collies also commonly suffer from another behavioural problem, fearfulness 32 and thus, it seems that Rough Collies would likely benefit from more behaviour-focused breeding. Besides Rough Collies, other breeds with high probability of aggressive behaviour included the Miniature Poodle, Miniature Schnauzer, German Shepherd Dog, Spanish Water Dog, and Lagotto Romagnolo. In previous studies (Miniature) Poodle 19 and Miniature Schnauzer 14 have scored above the average in aggressive behaviour toward strangers, and Lagotto Romagnolo in aggressive behaviour toward family members 11 . The two breeds having the lowest probabilities of aggressive behaviour in our study were Labrador and Golden Retrievers. These breeds have also scored low in previous studies 14 , 19 . However, some of our breed-wise results differ from previous studies. For example, in the study of Duffy et al. 19 , Chihuahua and Jack Russell Terrier exhibited the most severe signs of aggressive behaviour, such as biting, but in our study, when taking the other factors account (e.g. body size), these breeds were among the least aggressive breeds. Duffy et al. 19 did not take other factors into account which probably explains the difference between these results. To be noted, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, which is one of the restricted breeds, for example, in Ireland 2 , was not among the most aggressive breeds in this study. In the future, we will also consider breeding lines among the breeds, for example, separate German Shepherd Dog to working and show line types, since the purpose that dogs were bred for can also affect behaviour 33 . Furthermore, some breeds are more prone to, for example, skeletal disorders, which can cause pain-related aggression 34 and influence these observed breed differences.

Small dogs were more prone to aggressive behaviour than large or medium-sized dogs. Association of small size and aggressive behaviour is in line with some previous studies: taller and heavier dogs were found to be less aggressive toward the owner and strangers than small dogs 17 , and Ley et al. 35 reported that heavier dogs have higher amicability than lighter dogs. In contrast, Khoshnegah et al. 9 found that large breeds displayed more aggressive behaviour toward strangers, and Bennett and Rohlf 15 did not find any association between the dog’s body size and unfriendliness/aggressiveness. To be noted, however, both in our study and in the study of McGreevy et al. 17 , the body size estimates were based on the breed standards, not the actual height of the individuals, which can affect the results. Even though we found no multicollinearity between the breed and body size, we also ran the model without body size and obtained the same results. Thus, we think that the association of body size with aggression mainly comes from the “other breeds” group, which included 6360 individuals from breeds with different body sizes.

Nevertheless, previous studies have also associated small size with fearfulness 9 , 17 , 36 and thus, it seems that small dogs are more vulnerable to behavioural problems in general. Interestingly, owners handle small dogs differently than larger dogs, which can partly explain the higher proportion of behaviour problems in smaller dogs. Owners of small dogs play with and obedience train their dogs less frequently than owners of large dogs 37 , 38 , and small dogs are also less often house-trained 39 . We speculate that small size can make a dog easier to control even when they act aggressively, and people do not necessary feel threatened by small dogs. Therefore, the owners may not try to treat nor seek professional help for aggressive behaviour so willingly than owners of larger dogs. Professional help, however, have shown to decrease incidence of undesirable behaviours, such as aggression towards strangers, in young dogs 40 . In addition, we speculate that, as people may not feel threatened by small dogs, they might not consider behaviour important when making breeding decisions. Further, a recently published study associated several problematic behaviours with genetic variants known to cause small body size 41 .

The dogs whose owners have had at least one dog before had a lower probability of aggressive behaviour than owners’ first dogs. This finding replicates previously found associations of owner’s dog experience and dominance-type aggressive behaviour 21 as well as general aggressive behaviour 20 . It is possible that experienced owners are more aware of the importance of socialisation. Previous experience can also help owners to identify a problem at early stage, when the problem can be treated more efficiently. Furthermore, if the owners had problems with their first dogs, they may be more careful when choosing a new dog.

Company of other dogs was associated with a lower probability of aggressive behaviour; dogs living with other dogs were less likely aggressive than dogs living without other dogs. Number of household dogs also decreased aggressive behaviour toward the owner in a study of Hsu and Sun 14 . They suggested that dogs in multi-dog families compete with each other for owners’ attention, with the best behaving dog acquiring more attention and thus, dogs are striving to be obedient. Similarly, dogs living in multi-dog households showed less aggressive behaviour toward the owner and other dogs in a more recent study of Serpell and Duffy 20 . Canine companions may offer something that owners cannot, such as the daily opportunity of intraspecific communication. For example, playing with other dogs could decrease aggressive behaviour emerging from frustration. On the other hand, owners of aggressive dogs may choose not to acquire another dog to avoid possible conflicts between the dogs and ease the handling of the aggressive dog.

This study has some limitations. One of the limitations is that we could not examine aggressive behaviour towards family members and strangers separately due to a small number of dogs showing aggressive behaviour in many breeds. This may affect the reliability of the results, as the study of Salonen et al. 12 showed distinct breed differences in the aggressive behaviour sub-traits. This also made comparisons between this study and previous ones challenging, because in many other studies aggressive behaviour was divided to sub-traits. In addition, as we did not have any health information from the dogs, we could not identify the individuals having health problems. Owners’ participation to the study was voluntary and thus, the data can be somewhat biased; owners of highly aggressive dog may have not wanted to participate to the study, or, on the other hand, they may have wanted to participate more willingly than owners of non-aggressively behaving dogs. It is also possible that owners did not report all information precisely, for example the breed of the dog. Moreover, as the questionnaire was available only online, participation required basic computer skills and access to the Internet. Finally, this study is cross-sectional and therefore, the causality of the associations discovered cannot be inferred. In the future, it is important to collect even larger datasets, to include health information and to design longitudinal studies, enabling the study of aggressive behaviour sub-traits, associations with health issues and the causal effects.

Our results replicate findings of previous studies in an independent study population and suggest that aggressive behaviour is a complex trait associated with several demographic, environmental, and behavioural factors. The prevalence of aggressive behaviour could be decreased by preferring less aggressive individuals in breeding, since aggressive behaviour has been suggested to be heritable 42 , 43 . Furthermore, prevalence of aggressive behaviour could also be decreased by using only non-fearful dogs in breeding, as these traits were highly associated and may share a genetic component. Dog owners may decrease the chances of aggressive behaviour by carefully selecting the right breed for their lifestyle and by having multiple dogs. Since aggressive behaviour can be a consequence of pain, yearly health checks could also decrease aggressive behaviour especially in older dogs.

Questionnaire

We used an owner-answered online questionnaire to study aggressive behaviour and collected a cross-sectional convenience sample of Finnish pet dogs. Our survey targeted seven unwanted behaviours in dogs, including fear, aggression, noise sensitivity, fear of surfaces and heights, inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity, separation anxiety, and compulsive behaviour. The questionnaire also included a comprehensive background section, consisting of questions dealing with the early and current life of the dog and basic demographic information. We advertised the questionnaire to Finnish dog owners in social media, on our website and with the help of breed clubs. We collected the data during 2015–2018. For this study, we used the data from aggressive behaviour, fear, and background sections of the questionnaire. The questionnaire is available as “Supplementary material” in the paper of Salonen et al. 12 ( https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-020-59837-z/MediaObjects/41598_2020_59837_MOESM1_ESM.pdf ).

The aggressive behaviour section included two sub-traits, aggressive behaviour toward strangers and aggressive behaviour toward family members. We asked how often the dog growls when a stranger tries to touch or pet it in its home or outside, and how often the dog tries to snap or bite when a stranger tries to touch or pet it in its home or outside. We also asked how often the dog growls when a family member handles the dog or tries to take away a resource (e.g. bone, food or toy) from it, and how often the dog tries to snap or bite when a family member handles the dog or tries to take away a resource from it. The answer was given using a Likert-type scale: 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, 5 = always or almost always. Based on the questionnaire answers, we categorised the dogs to low (non-event) and high (event) groups in both sub-traits (aggressive behaviour toward stranger and aggressive behaviour toward family members). We concluded that as biting/snapping is more serious than growling it should have more weight and formed groups based on that. If the dog had tried to bite or snap at least sometimes or growled at least often, it was categorised to the high group. Dogs that bit rarely or growled sometimes were categorised to the moderate group. Dogs that had never shown any of these signs of aggressive behaviour were categorised to the low group. Finally, the dogs were categorised to their final aggressive behaviour group based on their groups in the sub-traits. Dogs that were in the high group in either one of the sub-traits were categorised to the high group. Dogs were categorised to the low group only if they were in the low group in both sub-traits. Dogs that were categorised to the moderate group were excluded, as we used logistic regression in the analysis.

The fear section included three sub-traits, fear of strangers, fear of dogs, and fear of novel situations. We asked how often the dog shows fear in these situations, ranging from never to always using a 5-point Likert-type scale. The sub-sections fear of strangers and fear of novel situations have previously been validated with behavioural tests 25 .

Statistical analyses

We used logistic regression to examine demographic and environmental factors associated with aggressive behaviour and thus, aggressive behaviour was treated as a binary response variable (event/non-event). For the analyses, we combined sub-traits due to a small number of aggressive dogs in many breeds.

We included several explanatory variables in the analyses, mostly based on previous literature. Explanatory variables included age, sex, sterilisation, breed, body size, weaning age, urban environment score, family size, owner’s dog experience, dogs in the family, daily exercise, daily time spent alone, and fearfulness (Table 3 ). To study the effect of fearfulness, we divided the dogs into three fearfulness groups (high, moderate, and low) based on the questionnaire. Dogs were categorised to the high group if they had shown fear of strangers, strange dogs or novel situations at least often (40–60% of the times). The moderate group included dogs which have shown fear rarely or sometimes (0–40% of the times), and dogs which have growled or barked when meeting strangers or strange dogs. Dogs were categorised to the low group if the owner had answered that the dog has never shown fear of strangers, strange dogs, or novel situations.

To study the effect of dog’s body size on aggressive behaviour, we formed size groups using FCI and AKC breed standards, when available. If female and male dogs had a different height standard within the breed, we calculated the mean height. According to the heights, we divided the dog breeds into three size groups: small (≤ 35 cm), medium (36–49 cm), and large (≥ 50 cm). As heights could not be determined for mixed breed dogs (N = 114), we excluded them from the analysis. We selected 22 breeds with adequate sample sizes for the analysis (Table 3 ) in addition to “other” breed group which included individuals from breeds with less than ten individuals per aggressive behaviour group. Based on the weaning age (age when the dog was separated from its mother), we divided the dogs into four groups; early weaned (< 7 weeks), normally weaned (7 weeks and 8 weeks), and late weaned (> 8 weeks) group. We excluded dogs still living with their dam.

We calculated the urban environment score for the dog’s daily living environment based on the geographical coordinates of owner’s home addresses. To do this, we first determined the land-use within a three-kilometre radius around the dog’s home in three land-use types: artificial surfaces, agricultural areas, and forests and semi-natural areas, using the land-use database CORINE2012 with a 25 m resolution. Land use describes the utilisation of land, including the management of natural environment and modification of it into built environment such as settlements. Next, we transformed the land-use information into one continuous variable with principal component analysis (PCA). This simplified the land-use to a rural–urban gradient (labelled urban environment score), with higher values indicating a more urban environment. For example, the dog who had the highest urbanization score lived in the city centre of the capital of Finland, and the dog who had the lowest score lived in the countryside, surrounded by forests and fields.

Initially, the questionnaire data included 13,715 dogs. Dogs with high (event) or low (non-event) aggressive behaviour and no missing responses in the studied explanatory variables were included, leading to a dataset of 5511 dogs. Our starter model for logistic regression included the dog’s age and sex as explanatory variables. In addition, we included several other explanatory variables (Table 3 ), mostly based on the previous literature. We chose the model with the best fit using a forward stepwise Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) selection approach. The explanatory variables fearfulness, breed, dogs in the family, body size, and owner’s dog experience improved model fit and were included in the final model. In contrast, the explanatory variables weaning age, sterilisation, daily exercise, time spend alone, family size, and urban environment score did not improve model fit and were discarded. The model selection is shown in the Supplementary Table S3 . After the model selection, we maximised the use of data by including all dogs that had missing responses only in the explanatory variables that did not end up to the final model. For example, dogs who had missing responses in weaning age were included in the final model. We compared the ANOVA tables of smaller and larger data sets to ensure the model did not essentially change from the inclusion of additional dogs, and the tables were extremely similar. Thus, the final data consisted of 9270 dogs. R 3.5.2 was used in all analyses 44 .

After the model selection, we inspected the linearity assumption of numerical variables by fitting a generalised additive model with the package ‘gam’ 45 . The explanatory variable age did not meet the assumption, and thus we included age as a linear and a quadratic (age^2) variable in the final model. Next, we inspected possible outliners with packages ‘broom’ 46 and ‘dplyr’ 47 . We plotted standardised residuals using package ‘ggplot2’ 48 , and tested the multicollinearity with package ‘car’ 49 with generalised variance inflation factor (gVIF). There was no multicollinearity, but we identified three outliers. Removing these outliers did not affect the results and as they were actual responses, we kept them in the final data. Finally, we calculated the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUC) using package ‘pROC’ 50 to estimate how well the model predicts the event (high aggressive behaviour group) and non-event (low aggressive behaviour group). The AUC of the final model was 0.74.

Based on previous literature, we had several hypotheses and we formed multiple a priori contrasts between the categories of the explanatory variables. Our approach was exploratory, and we formed hypotheses after the data collection, but before the data analysis. We hypothesised that older dogs are more aggressive than younger dogs 10 , 14 , 15 , that male dogs are more aggressive than female dogs 1 , 14 , and that small sized dogs are more aggressive than larger dogs 17 . We also hypothesised that highly fearful dogs are more aggressive than non-fearful individuals 11 , 13 , that dogs living in households without other dogs are more aggressive than dogs living with other dogs 20 , that dogs living in rural areas are more aggressive than ones living in cities 14 , that early weaned dogs are more aggressive than late weaned dogs 23 , and that dogs living with unexperienced owners have a higher probability of aggressive behaviour 20 , 21 , 22 . We also hypothesised that Lagotto Romagnolo, Chihuahua, German Shepherd Dog, and Miniature Schnauzer are more aggressive breeds than Golden Retriever and Labrador Retriever 11 , 14 , 19 , 20 .

To calculate the estimated marginal means for categorical and ordinal explanatory variables, we used the package ‘emmeans’ 51 . To obtain the means and confidence limits of numerical explanatory variables, we used the package ‘effects’ 52 , and to see the overall effect of all explanatory factors, we conducted analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the package ‘car’ 49 . For other than the hypothesised contrast chosen a priori, we corrected the obtained P -values for false discovery rate (FDR). The significance cut-off was set at P -value < 0.05. All methods were carried out in accordance with local guidelines and regulations.

Ethics statement

The data was collected before the onset of the GDPR regulation according to the Finnish legislation: https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/1999/19990523 . This survey study focused on dogs and not human participants or the dog owners, and therefore a specific ethical approval was not needed at that time for academic research studies. As for the study participants (dog owners), we collected only names and addresses for contacting the owners in subsequent studies and for calculating the urban-environment score.

Owners were informed that the participation is voluntary, confidential, and that the data is used only for scientific purposes. In addition, an information sheet was provided to all participants. We received informed consent from all participants.

Data availability

The anonymised data is available as a “Supplementary file” in the paper of Salonen et al. 12 .

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Acknowledgements

We thank all dog owners who participated in the study. We would also like to thank Katriina Tiira for being part of development of the dog behaviour questionnaire. Joona Lehtomäki is acknowledged for his contribution to provide code for rural-urban categorisation. This study was partially funded by the Academy of Finland (308887), the ERCStG (260997), ERA-NET NEURON, the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, and Doctoral Program on Veterinary Medicine. M.S., S.M., E.H. & H.L. are members of the Helsinki One Health.

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Salla Mikkola, Milla Salonen, Jenni Puurunen, Emma Hakanen, Sini Sulkama, César Araujo & Hannes Lohi

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Study design: M.S., S.S., H.L., J.P., E.H., S.M.; data collection: M.S., S.S., J.P., C.A.; data analysis: S.M. with help from M.S.; figure preparation: M.S.; manuscript writing: S.M., M.S., J.P., E.H., H.L. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Mikkola, S., Salonen, M., Puurunen, J. et al. Aggressive behaviour is affected by demographic, environmental and behavioural factors in purebred dogs. Sci Rep 11 , 9433 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88793-5

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Perspective article, the new era of canine science: reshaping our relationships with dogs.

• 1 School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
• 2 College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
• 3 Cognitive Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
• 4 California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, United States
• 5 Department of Psychology, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, United States
• 6 Center for Urban Resilience, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, United States
• 7 Animal Welfare Science Centre, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Canine science is rapidly maturing into an interdisciplinary and highly impactful field with great potential for both basic and translational research. The articles in this Frontiers Research Topic, Our Canine Connection: The History, Benefits and Future of Human-Dog Interactions , arise from two meetings sponsored by the Wallis Annenberg PetSpace Leadership Institute, which convened experts from diverse areas of canine science to assess the state of the field and challenges and opportunities for its future. In this final Perspective paper, we identify a set of overarching themes that will be critical for a productive and sustainable future in canine science. We explore the roles of dog welfare, science communication, and research funding, with an emphasis on developing approaches that benefit people and dogs, alike.

Dogs have played important roles in the lives of humans for millennia ( 1 , 2 ). However, throughout much of scientific history they have been dismissed as an artificial species with little to contribute to our understanding of the natural world, or our place within it. During the last two decades, this sentiment has changed dramatically; canine science is rapidly maturing into an established, impactful, and highly interdisciplinary field ( Figure 1 ). Canine scientists, who previously occupied relatively marginalized roles in academic research, are increasingly being hired at major research universities, and centers devoted to the study of dogs and their interactions with humans are proliferating around the world. The factors underlying dogs' newfound popularity in science are diverse and include (1) increased interest in understanding dog origins, behavior, and cognition; (2) diversification in our approaches to research with non-human animals; (3) recognition of dogs' value as a unique biological model with relevance for humans; and (4) growth in research on the nature and consequences of dog-human interactions, in their myriad forms, from working dog performance to displaced canines living in shelters.

Figure 1 . Canine science is an interdisciplinary field with connections to other traditional and emerging areas of research. The specific fields shown overlap in ways not depicted here and are not an exhaustive list of disciplines contributing to canine science. Rather, they are included as examples of the diversity of scholarship in canine science.

This Perspective represents the final article in a collection of manuscripts arising from two workshops sponsored by the Wallis Annenberg PetSpace Leadership Institute. Leadership Fellows from around the world gathered in 2017 and 2020 to discuss the state of research and future directions in canine science. The individual articles in this collection provide a detailed treatment of key topics discussed at these events. In this final article, we identify a set of overarching challenges that emerge from this work and identify priorities and opportunities for the future of canine science.

The rise of canine science has benefited substantially from public interest and participation in the research process. Unlike many research studies, which unfold quietly in the ivory towers of research universities, the new era of canine science is intentionally public facing. The dogs being studied are not laboratory animals, bred and housed for research purposes, but rather are companions living in private homes, or assisting humans in capacities ranging from assistance for people with disabilities, to medical and explosives detection. Campus-based research laboratories have opened their doors to members of the public who bring their dogs to participate in problem-solving tasks, social interactions, and sometimes even non-invasive neuroimaging studies. Increasingly, dog owners themselves play a significant role in the scientific process, serving as community scientists who contribute to the systematic gathering of data from the convenience of their homes.

This new research model in conjunction with emerging technologies, makes canine science a highly visible field that engages public stakeholders in unprecedented ways. From a scientific perspective, society has become the new laboratory, and in doing so, has facilitated research with dogs of a scope and scale that was heretofore unthinkable. As tens of thousands of dogs contribute to research on topics ranging from cognition and genetics ( 3 , 4 ) to aging and human loneliness ( 5 ), canine science is entering the realm of “big data” and eclipsing many traditional research approaches. Importantly, these advances are occurring simultaneously across diverse fields of science, creating powerful new opportunities for consilience that will make canine science even more valuable in the years ahead. However, maturing this model toward a sustainable future that serves its diverse stakeholders—who include scientists, research funders, members of the public, and dogs themselves—will require careful navigation of key challenges related to dog welfare, science communication, and financial support ( Figure 2 ).

Figure 2 . Visual summary of the key issues identified in this Perspective . A sustainable future in canine science will require (1) research approaches that prioritize and monitor the welfare of dogs, (2) improved science communication to avoid incorrect reporting of study results, and to translate research findings to meaningful change in practices relating to dogs, and (3) availability of research funding that is not tied exclusively to studying the possible benefits of dogs for humans.

Dog Welfare

Globally, animal welfare has been linked to the public acceptability that underpins sustainable animal interactions and partnerships ( 6 ). Where human-animal interactions have failed to meet community expectations, practices and in some case entire industries, have been disrupted or ceased. Recent examples include whaling for profit and greyhound racing ( 6 , 7 ). Science is not exempt from this necessity to meet with public expectations and the new era of canine science must place canine welfare at the forefront. Considering dogs as individuals and co-workers, rather than tools for work or subjects, reflects a community moral and ethical paradigm shift that is currently underway. Reimagining our relationship with domestic dogs in research will also help inform our treatment of other animals. In this way, studies of dogs and our interactions with them can serve as a pioneering new model for many areas of science.

As scientists advocate for the revision of community and industry practices with dogs in light of new evidence, we must apply the same criteria to the conduct of our research. This includes adjusting canine research and training methods to acknowledge the sentience of dogs, and the importance of the affective experience for dogs in both research and community settings ( 8 – 11 ). The discipline of animal welfare science has progressed rapidly over the last two decades, and we have many animal-based, welfare-outcome measures available to us ( 6 , 11 ). Ensuring the well-being of the dogs we study will be as critical to ongoing social license to operate (i.e., community approval) for canine science as it is for working dog interests ( 12 ). Being transparent about the issues of animal consent and vulnerability, as well as offering animals agency with regard to their participation in science are valuable suggestions offered within this special issue. We encourage our colleagues to not just consider this paradigm shift, but to effect it through prioritizing and representing the dog's perspective and welfare in their research.

Although increasingly, researchers may include a single or limited set of canine stress measures in studies exploring dogs' potential benefits to humans, this approach alone does not fill the need for studies that prioritize an understanding of canine welfare as their central focus. Canine welfare should be considered not just as an emergent population-level measure ( 13 ) but rather with respect to the way in which it is experienced: from the perspectives of individual dogs. Commonly used statistical methods from human research, such as group-based trajectory analysis ( 14 ) may offer proven techniques that allow meaningful reporting on populations while reflecting the nuance of shared, sub-group patterns. Such approaches will better reflect individual differences, for example variations in canine personality, social support and relationship styles, as well as other significant factors. One impediment to robust measurement of animal welfare in canine science has been limited funding.

We believe that all granting bodies who fund exploration of the possible benefits to people from dogs should also fund and require the canine perspective to be robustly monitored and reported. Impediments to this work arise not from lack of researcher interest or access to dogs, but rather from challenges to securing funding that is independent from a focus on human health outcomes, or other tangible outcomes of work that dogs perform. To be able to optimize canine welfare, there is an urgent need for increased funding specifically to study the welfare of dogs, in all their diversity. The new era of canine science will identify what dogs need to thrive, propelling us toward a mutually sustainable partnership between people and dogs.

Communication

One area that has not received much attention in relation to canine science is the way in which research findings are communicated outside the empirical literature. Fueled by media reports, interest in canine science and the impact of dogs on human health and well-being has grown substantially in the last 10 years. A survey by the Human-Animal Bond Research Institute found that 71% of pet owners were aware of studies demonstrating that pets improve mental and physical health. Some of these claims are justified. For example, many studies have found that interacting with therapy dogs reduces stress and anxiety and increases positive emotional states in a variety of settings including hospitals, schools and nursing homes ( 15 , 16 ). In other cases, high public expectations about the healing power of pets are not matched by the results of empirical studies. For instance, while the Human-Animal Bond Research Institute survey found that 86% of pet owners believe pets relieve depression, the majority of studies on pet-ownership and depression do not support these conclusions ( 17 ).

Because so many people have extensive personal experiences with dogs, investigators face unique challenges in sharing research results with the public. In their hearts, dog owners believe that their canine companions make them feel less depressed, or that dogs feel guilty when they've eliminated indoors or explored the kitchen garbage—even though research might suggest otherwise. In addition, when it comes to animal companions, people much prefer to read a news article in which visits with a therapy dog improved the well-being of a child undergoing chemotherapy than an article about a randomized clinical trial which found no differences between the well-being of children in a therapy dog group and a control group ( 18 ). Nor is there likely to be much press coverage devoted to methodological issues such as small effect sizes and inappropriate attributions of causality to the results of correlational studies.

Canine scientists and scholars of human-animal interactions (anthrozoologists) are fortunate that the public is intrinsically interested in our research. We feel that it is critical for investigators to make efforts to communicate the findings of important studies to the public. We caution however, that researchers should not overstate the implications of their findings in press releases and conversations with journalists, despite frequent pressure to do so. These distortions could have a negative impact on misleading the public and misrepresenting the actual findings, a problem that is particularly acute in canine science where well-intentioned pet owners may eagerly adopt practices based on media coverage of scientific studies. The now-established discipline of science communication offers guidance for how best to engage with community and research stakeholders in meaningful ways.

Traditionally, science communication has relied on the knowledge deficit model of communication ( 19 ). Directionally one-way, the deficit model operates on the assumption that ignorance is the reason for a lack of community support and application of scientific evidence. Examples where practices have not been updated in response to research findings include dog training methodology ( 9 ) and breeding selection for extreme body types, such as brachycephaly in pugs and bulldogs, even though the health and welfare impacts are scientifically well understood ( 20 ). Scientists who share their research results thinking that knowledge disseminated—to “educate” the public—is enough to result in different dog care decisions, industry practices or legislation, will generally find this to be ineffective ( 21 ). This is because the deficit model overlooks the underlying beliefs, existing attitudes and motivations for current practices. We now recognize that the deficit model is not the most effective way to communicate, engage stakeholders and effect change ( 22 , 23 ).

Further exploration of the effect of targeted and intentional science communication, informed by human behavior change research, will improve the translation of canine science to meaningful outcomes for dogs and people alike ( 12 ). This is important, as many studies in canine science have applied aims designed to inform global policies and the creation of best practices ( 24 , 25 ). Applied research from the livestock and farming sector suggests that coordinating human behavior change strategies from social and psychological sciences can influence beliefs and attitudes to motivate changes in the ways people behave toward animals, resulting in improved animal welfare ( 26 – 28 ). In the era of attention economics, where scientists are competing for public attention alongside other diverse media, it is vital that the communication of our work is honest, relevant, and effective, to ensure that our field stays on the radar of key stakeholders, funding bodies and change agents.

A third key challenge in the future of canine science concerns research funding and a careful balancing of the priorities of scientists and funding agencies. In the last decade, canine science has received considerable support from the pet care sector, as well as human health and defense agencies [e.g., ( 29 )]. Fine and Andersen ( 30 ) stress that although funding is still a challenge in human-animal interaction research, there are now more options to be found. In 2008, the Waltham Petcare Science Institute initiated a public-private partnership with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Over the past decade, this partnership has provided funding for research aimed at measuring the impact of specific Animal-assisted interventions. Since 2014, the Human Animal Bond Research Institute has funded a total of 35 academic research grants investigating the health outcomes of pet ownership and/or human-animal interaction, both for the people and non-human animals involved. Despite clear benefits for enabling research, there remains a limited group of agencies responsible for funding this work. This has potential to constrain the range of topics being studied. In addition, scientists may feel compelled to support the agendas of industry groups, such as those in the pet sector, who often encourage research that will demonstrate the benefits of pets and human-animal interactions.

These constraints were recognized by Wallis Annenberg PetSpace in 2017 when they envisioned their Leadership Institute Program with a mission to promote interdisciplinary scholarship and convene meetings to accelerate research and policy development ( https://www.annenbergpetspace.org/about/leadership ). This model for engagement inspired the organization to offer two invited retreats (2017, 2020) for a total of 33 experts in the field that provided opportunities for open ended and frank discussion about the nature of human-animal interaction research, and the maturing field of canine science. By providing the space and financial support, plus the opportunity to work together and publish, Annenberg PetSpace provided a way to both illuminate current limitations, and to identify priorities for the future, free of constraints from outside interest groups. These intellectual salons have no specific agenda other than to consider the future of the field and what kinds of questions need to be asked based on what we already know. The results of these two retreats include 14 published refereed papers, plus a suite of collaborations that might otherwise not have happened. We hope that these fellowships and retreats continue and inspire others to support similar initiatives so that scholars across multiple disciplines have the opportunity to experience the transformational exchanges that occur during these programs. The new era of canine science will require diverse funding that is not limited to how dogs can benefit humans, from health, safety and economic perspectives. This change will enable researchers the freedom to further our understanding of dogs and their needs for optimized welfare. In turn, this will allow us to identify how dogs and people can thrive together.

Looking Ahead

We hope that the publications emerging from these retreats will reach a diverse community of stakeholders, including students, early career researchers, animal welfare and advocacy groups, legislators and policy makers, philanthropies, and traditional agency funders. The goal of these papers is to spark imagination for projects not yet engaged and to help set the agenda for future research that can enhance our understanding of human-dog interactions and identify paths to ensure a future of symbiotic relationships between these species.

The vision of this collective group of scholars includes the goal of establishing studies with dogs as a sustainable and broad-reaching research focus. Although dogs provide many advantages as a “model species” —including their phenotypic diversity, and shared environments and evolutionary history with humans—a research model centered around dogs has many additional benefits. Dogs provide a rich, interactive and sentient model with deep implications for the way scientists approach animal research, and animal welfare. Dogs also increase the accessibility of research, both literally, due to their ubiquity and opportunities for large-scale public participation in research ( 31 , 32 ), and figuratively, through a body of work with appeal to the broader public.

The field of canine science has much in common with a similar emerging science, that of urban ecology. Humans are historically at the core of the subject material, but non-human elements are often the focus of the study. As such, the work is always culturally embedded, relevant to a variety of stakeholders, and ultimately expected to improve quality of life. The urban ecologists coined a term Use-Inspired Research ( 33 ) from modifying the existing idea of Pasteur's Quadrant which organizes research questions across the axes of fundamental understanding and considerations of use ( 34 ). Both canine research and urban ecology seek fundamental understanding, but also expect to directly apply the knowledge gained to improve outcomes for their subjects and stakeholders.

By including the public in canine science we not only increase the quantity of the data that we can gather, we serve as ambassadors for a new model of responsible animal research. The result increases the value of human-animal interaction research and creates opportunities for the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists. The goal of this collection has been both to highlight specific recent advances in canine science as well as to identify emerging and overarching issues that will shape the future of this field. The multidisciplinary nature of our work with dogs allows scientists to contribute to a robust research agenda, enhancing our understanding of canines and their impact on society. Ultimately, the nexus of our discoveries should have profound effects on reshaping and enriching our relationships with dogs.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

We thank Wallis Annenberg PetSpace for supporting the open-access publishing fees associated with this manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: canine science, dog, animal welfare, human-animal interaction, science communication, funding, sustainability

Citation: MacLean EL, Fine A, Herzog H, Strauss E and Cobb ML (2021) The New Era of Canine Science: Reshaping Our Relationships With Dogs. Front. Vet. Sci. 8:675782. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2021.675782

Received: 03 March 2021; Accepted: 11 June 2021; Published: 15 July 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 MacLean, Fine, Herzog, Strauss and Cobb. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Evan L. MacLean, evanmaclean@arizona.edu

This article is part of the Research Topic

Our Canine Connection: The History, Benefits and Future of Human-Dog Interactions

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In a matchup of human versus machine, the decisive winner was Heron Systems’ artificial intelligence against an experienced human F-16 fighter pilot in a simulated aerial battle that capped the AlphaDogfight Trials (ADT) on Aug. 20 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

Viewers watched on YouTube as Heron Systems, a Maryland-based defense contractor that builds autonomous agents and AI-powered multi-agent systems, went 5–0 against F-16 pilot “Banger” in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) virtual competition. ADT, part of DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, was intended to forge greater trust in autonomous systems for air combat.

Reminiscent of an esports tournament, participants watched via ZoomGov webinars and eventually a YouTube livestream as eight teams battled for three days to earn the showdown with Banger in the event finale. Heron Systems was joined by Aurora Flight Sciences, EpiSys Science, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Lockheed Martin, Perspecta Labs, PhysicsAI and SoarTech.

DARPA’s Lt. Col. Justin “Glock” Mock (left) and APL’s Chris “Disco” DeMay, program manager for the DARPA ACE program at the Lab, served as cohosts throughout the three-day event.

Credit: DARPA/Johns Hopkins APL/Craig Weiman

APL’s AI agents gave teams a run on the first day with all eight teams virtually flying their algorithms against five APL-developed computer adversaries. APL’s algorithms were developed to perform at different skill levels, allowing the industry agents to train similarly to actual pilots, explained Kerry Neace, a former fighter pilot and APL’s program area manager for Air Dominance.

“From the control of the environment to the displays that allowed us humans to view what was happening virtually, the APL team delivered continuous and comprehensive simulations to the industry team,” Neace explained. “This allowed the industry teams to progressively develop and train their AI agents against constantly updated adversaries, drastically reducing the time to develop such complex AI capability.”

Teams flew against one another in a round-robin tournament on the second day, complete with live play-by-play and analysis from the “Control Zone” commentary desk at APL’s Intelligent Systems Center. Christopher “Disco” DeMay, program manager for the DARPA ACE program at APL, and DARPA cohosts, including Col. Dan “Animal” Javorsek, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, and Lt. Col. Justin “Glock” Mock, recapped and analyzed each dogfight.

Col. Dan “Animal” Javorsek (left), program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, joined DeMay on the final day of the tournament.

The top four teams advanced to a single-elimination tournament on day three, with Heron emerging to square off against Banger. Overwhelming demand prompted organizers to move the final event to a public YouTube livestream , which ultimately garnered over 300,000 views.

DARPA employed APL’s expertise to develop the simulation environment and adversary agents for the trials. The Lab, which also hosted the first two ADT events , leveraged its capabilities in AI and software development, modeling and simulation, and aircraft dynamics and controls to create the “arena” for all three ADT competitions.

APL started on the fundamental technology used for many of the more successful agents in the DARPA ACE program under an internally funded research project called “Athena Inspired.”

“Athena Inspired leveraged the promise that reinforcement learning has to revolutionize the design of future warfare systems and discover new and novel combat tactics,” said Tom Urban, the lead of APL’s technical group responsible for advancing AI capabilities to revolutionize air, strike and electronic warfare.

Viewers watched on YouTube as Heron Systems, a Maryland-based defense contractor that builds autonomous agents and AI-powered multi-agent systems, went 5–0 against F-16 pilot “Banger” (above) on the​ final day of the competition.

As AI and advanced autonomy systems reach the field, the future of warfare will move to machine speeds and, as a result, “we must also enable warfighters to fight these future battles with machine precision,” Urban said. “Thus, we need to also research and develop intelligent virtual assistants to work with warfighters to think, reason, react, respond and plan at machine speeds with machine precision.

“APL is investing in the fundamental research that will drive the AI technology of the future and empower both the intelligent autonomous systems and intelligent virtual assistants,” he added.

ADT was a significant achievement that offered fascinating glimpses into the future of warfare, noted commentators DeMay, Javorsek and Mock.

“The objectives of the program are really about bringing together the fighter pilot and AI communities,” DeMay said. “While we’re proud that, in the span of a year, we were able to take eight separate companies, give them a challenge problem that’s very relevant for DoD, get them involved with the fighter pilot community and reach an outcome where we’re seeing credible maneuvers, credible behaviors and, actually, very good performance, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“That’s why ADT is really a risk-reduction effort for ACE,” he continued. “We’re looking to take this from simulation to getting it out on subscale, and ultimately into live aircraft.”

APL will continue to serve as a core part of the government team on the ACE program. As the experimentation integration team, the Lab brings together various technical performers to demonstrate trusted, scalable, human-level autonomy for air combat. APL will continue to provide the modeling and simulation environment, subscale aircraft as well as adversary AI capability at both the tactical and battle-management level to mature performer algorithms while minimizing risk — with the ultimate goal of flying on full-scale combat representative aircraft.

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Title: harfang3d dog-fight sandbox: a reinforcement learning research platform for the customized control tasks of fighter aircrafts.

Abstract: The advent of deep learning (DL) gave rise to significant breakthroughs in Reinforcement Learning (RL) research. Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms have reached super-human level skills when applied to vision-based control problems as such in Atari 2600 games where environment states were extracted from pixel information. Unfortunately, these environments are far from being applicable to highly dynamic and complex real-world tasks as in autonomous control of a fighter aircraft since these environments only involve 2D representation of a visual world. Here, we present a semi-realistic flight simulation environment Harfang3D Dog-Fight Sandbox for fighter aircrafts. It is aimed to be a flexible toolbox for the investigation of main challenges in aviation studies using Reinforcement Learning. The program provides easy access to flight dynamics model, environment states, and aerodynamics of the plane enabling user to customize any specific task in order to build intelligent decision making (control) systems via RL. The software also allows deployment of bot aircrafts and development of multi-agent tasks. This way, multiple groups of aircrafts can be configured to be competitive or cooperative agents to perform complicated tasks including Dog Fight. During the experiments, we carried out training for two different scenarios: navigating to a designated location and within visual range (WVR) combat, shortly Dog Fight. Using Deep Reinforcement Learning techniques for both scenarios, we were able to train competent agents that exhibit human-like behaviours. Based on this results, it is confirmed that Harfang3D Dog-Fight Sandbox can be utilized as a 3D realistic RL research platform.

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13 Oct 2022  ·  Muhammed Murat Özbek , Süleyman Yıldırım , Muhammet Aksoy , Eric Kernin , Emre Koyuncu · Edit social preview

The advent of deep learning (DL) gave rise to significant breakthroughs in Reinforcement Learning (RL) research. Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms have reached super-human level skills when applied to vision-based control problems as such in Atari 2600 games where environment states were extracted from pixel information. Unfortunately, these environments are far from being applicable to highly dynamic and complex real-world tasks as in autonomous control of a fighter aircraft since these environments only involve 2D representation of a visual world. Here, we present a semi-realistic flight simulation environment Harfang3D Dog-Fight Sandbox for fighter aircrafts. It is aimed to be a flexible toolbox for the investigation of main challenges in aviation studies using Reinforcement Learning. The program provides easy access to flight dynamics model, environment states, and aerodynamics of the plane enabling user to customize any specific task in order to build intelligent decision making (control) systems via RL. The software also allows deployment of bot aircrafts and development of multi-agent tasks. This way, multiple groups of aircrafts can be configured to be competitive or cooperative agents to perform complicated tasks including Dog Fight. During the experiments, we carried out training for two different scenarios: navigating to a designated location and within visual range (WVR) combat, shortly Dog Fight. Using Deep Reinforcement Learning techniques for both scenarios, we were able to train competent agents that exhibit human-like behaviours. Based on this results, it is confirmed that Harfang3D Dog-Fight Sandbox can be utilized as a 3D realistic RL research platform.

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Using ideas from game theory to improve the reliability of language models

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Imagine you and a friend are playing a game where your goal is to communicate secret messages to each other using only cryptic sentences. Your friend's job is to guess the secret message behind your sentences. Sometimes, you give clues directly, and other times, your friend has to guess the message by asking yes-or-no questions about the clues you've given. The challenge is that both of you want to make sure you're understanding each other correctly and agreeing on the secret message.

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers have created a similar "game" to help improve how AI understands and generates text. It is known as a “consensus game” and it involves two parts of an AI system — one part tries to generate sentences (like giving clues), and the other part tries to understand and evaluate those sentences (like guessing the secret message).

The researchers discovered that by treating this interaction as a game, where both parts of the AI work together under specific rules to agree on the right message, they could significantly improve the AI's ability to give correct and coherent answers to questions. They tested this new game-like approach on a variety of tasks, such as reading comprehension, solving math problems, and carrying on conversations, and found that it helped the AI perform better across the board.

Traditionally, large language models answer one of two ways: generating answers directly from the model (generative querying) or using the model to score a set of predefined answers (discriminative querying), which can lead to differing and sometimes incompatible results. With the generative approach, "Who is the president of the United States?" might yield a straightforward answer like "Joe Biden." However, a discriminative query could incorrectly dispute this fact when evaluating the same answer, such as "Barack Obama."

So, how do we reconcile mutually incompatible scoring procedures to achieve coherent, efficient predictions? 

"Imagine a new way to help language models understand and generate text, like a game. We've developed a training-free, game-theoretic method that treats the whole process as a complex game of clues and signals, where a generator tries to send the right message to a discriminator using natural language. Instead of chess pieces, they're using words and sentences," says Athul Jacob, an MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science and CSAIL affiliate. "Our way to navigate this game is finding the 'approximate equilibria,' leading to a new decoding algorithm called 'equilibrium ranking.' It's a pretty exciting demonstration of how bringing game-theoretic strategies into the mix can tackle some big challenges in making language models more reliable and consistent."

When tested across many tasks, like reading comprehension, commonsense reasoning, math problem-solving, and dialogue, the team's algorithm consistently improved how well these models performed. Using the ER algorithm with the LLaMA-7B model even outshone the results from much larger models. "Given that they are already competitive, that people have been working on it for a while, but the level of improvements we saw being able to outperform a model that's 10 times the size was a pleasant surprise," says Jacob. 

"Diplomacy," a strategic board game set in pre-World War I Europe, where players negotiate alliances, betray friends, and conquer territories without the use of dice — relying purely on skill, strategy, and interpersonal manipulation — recently had a second coming. In November 2022, computer scientists, including Jacob, developed “Cicero,” an AI agent that achieves human-level capabilities in the mixed-motive seven-player game, which requires the same aforementioned skills, but with natural language. The math behind this partially inspired the Consensus Game. 

While the history of AI agents long predates when OpenAI's software entered the chat in November 2022, it's well documented that they can still cosplay as your well-meaning, yet pathological friend. 

The consensus game system reaches equilibrium as an agreement, ensuring accuracy and fidelity to the model's original insights. To achieve this, the method iteratively adjusts the interactions between the generative and discriminative components until they reach a consensus on an answer that accurately reflects reality and aligns with their initial beliefs. This approach effectively bridges the gap between the two querying methods. 

In practice, implementing the consensus game approach to language model querying, especially for question-answering tasks, does involve significant computational challenges. For example, when using datasets like MMLU, which have thousands of questions and multiple-choice answers, the model must apply the mechanism to each query. Then, it must reach a consensus between the generative and discriminative components for every question and its possible answers. 

The system did struggle with a grade school right of passage: math word problems. It couldn't generate wrong answers, which is a critical component of understanding the process of coming up with the right one. 

“The last few years have seen really impressive progress in both strategic decision-making and language generation from AI systems, but we’re just starting to figure out how to put the two together. Equilibrium ranking is a first step in this direction, but I think there’s a lot we’ll be able to do to scale this up to more complex problems,” says Jacob.   

An avenue of future work involves enhancing the base model by integrating the outputs of the current method. This is particularly promising since it can yield more factual and consistent answers across various tasks, including factuality and open-ended generation. The potential for such a method to significantly improve the base model's performance is high, which could result in more reliable and factual outputs from ChatGPT and similar language models that people use daily. 

"Even though modern language models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, have led to solving various tasks through chat interfaces, the statistical decoding process that generates a response from such models has remained unchanged for decades," says Google Research Scientist Ahmad Beirami, who was not involved in the work. "The proposal by the MIT researchers is an innovative game-theoretic framework for decoding from language models through solving the equilibrium of a consensus game. The significant performance gains reported in the research paper are promising, opening the door to a potential paradigm shift in language model decoding that may fuel a flurry of new applications."

Jacob wrote the paper with MIT-IBM Watson Lab researcher Yikang Shen and MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science assistant professors Gabriele Farina and Jacob Andreas, who is also a CSAIL member. They presented their work at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) earlier this month, where it was highlighted as a "spotlight paper." The research also received a “best paper award” at the NeurIPS R0-FoMo Workshop in December 2023.

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MIT researchers have developed a new procedure that uses game theory to improve the accuracy and consistency of large language models (LLMs), reports Steve Nadis for Quanta Magazine . “The new work, which uses games to improve AI, stands in contrast to past approaches, which measured an AI program’s success via its mastery of games,” explains Nadis. 

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The Psychological Aftermath of World War I: Understanding Shell Shock

This essay about the psychological aftermath of World War I, specifically focusing on the phenomenon of shell shock. It explores the origins, manifestations, and lasting impact of shell shock on individuals and society. Highlighting the pioneering work of psychologists like Sigmund Freud and William Rivers, it elucidates the complex nature of this condition and its enduring legacy in contemporary discussions on PTSD and veterans’ mental health. By acknowledging the human cost of war and advocating for greater awareness and support for those affected by trauma, the essay underscores the importance of compassion and understanding in addressing the psychological scars of conflict.

How it works

World War I, often regarded as one of the most devastating conflicts in human history, left an indelible mark not only on the geopolitical landscape but also on the psyche of millions of individuals who were thrust into its chaos. Among the myriad of physical injuries sustained during the war, there emerged a phenomenon that baffled medical professionals and challenged societal perceptions of mental health: shell shock. This essay delves into the intricate nuances of shell shock, exploring its origins, manifestations, and lasting impact on both individuals and society.

Shell shock, initially labeled as “war neurosis” or “combat fatigue,” manifested in a variety of symptoms ranging from tremors and paralysis to amnesia and hallucinations. Soldiers exposed to the relentless barrage of artillery fire and the horrors of trench warfare often found themselves overwhelmed by the constant threat to life and limb. The psychological toll of witnessing comrades fall in battle, coupled with the omnipresent fear of death, created a perfect storm for the onset of shell shock. Despite its prevalence, shell shock defied conventional medical explanations, leading to widespread skepticism and even accusations of malingering among military authorities.

One of the pivotal contributions to our understanding of shell shock came from the work of pioneering psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and William Rivers. Freud’s conceptualization of the unconscious mind and the role of trauma in shaping psychological symptoms laid the groundwork for understanding the psychodynamic underpinnings of shell shock. Meanwhile, Rivers’ compassionate approach to treating shell-shocked soldiers at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland emphasized the importance of empathy and therapeutic rapport in facilitating recovery. Through innovative techniques such as talking therapy and occupational rehabilitation, Rivers and his colleagues helped countless individuals reclaim agency over their shattered sense of self.

The legacy of shell shock extends far beyond the confines of World War I, permeating contemporary discourses surrounding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and veterans’ mental health. While the terminology and diagnostic criteria may have evolved over time, the core essence of shell shock as a profound psychological response to trauma remains unchanged. Moreover, the stigma and misconceptions surrounding mental illness persist, underscoring the ongoing need for compassion, awareness, and accessible mental health services for those affected by war-related trauma.

In conclusion, shell shock serves as a poignant reminder of the human cost of war and the enduring resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity. By shedding light on this complex phenomenon, we honor the experiences of those who endured the horrors of World War I and reaffirm our commitment to fostering a society that values mental health and well-being. As we continue to navigate the complexities of conflict and trauma in the modern world, the lessons gleaned from the study of shell shock remain as relevant and poignant as ever.

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Improving dog training methods: Efficacy and efficiency of reward and mixed training methods

Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro

1 Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

2 i3S –Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

Ângelo Araújo

3 Polícia de Segurança Pública, Lisbon, Portugal

André Fonseca

4 CINAMIL, The Military Academy Research Center of the Portuguese Army, Lisbon, Portugal

I. Anna S. Olsson

Associated data.

All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.

Dogs play an important role in our society as companions and work partners, and proper training of these dogs is pivotal. For companion dogs, training helps preventing or managing dog behavioral problems—the most frequently cited reason for relinquishing and euthanasia, and it promotes successful dog-human relationships and thus maximizes benefits humans derive from bonding with dogs. For working dogs, training is crucial for them to successfully accomplish their jobs. Dog training methods range widely from those using predominantly aversive stimuli (aversive methods), to those combining aversive and rewarding stimuli (mixed methods) and those focusing on the use of rewards (reward methods). The use of aversive stimuli in training is highly controversial and several veterinary and animal protection organizations have recommended a ban on pinch collars, e-collars and other techniques that induce fear or pain in dogs, on the grounds that such methods compromise dog welfare. At the same time, training methods based on the use of rewards are claimed to be more humane and equally or more effective than aversive or mixed methods. This important discussion, however, has not always been based in solid scientific evidence. Although there is growing scientific evidence that training with aversive stimuli has a negative impact on dog welfare, the scientific literature on the efficacy and efficiency of the different methodologies is scarce and inconsistent. Hence, the goal of the current study is to investigate the efficacy and efficiency of different dog training methods. To that end, we will apply different dog training methods in a population of working dogs and evaluate the outcome after a period of training. The use of working dogs will allow for a rigorous experimental design and control, with randomization of treatments. Military (n = 10) and police (n = 20) dogs will be pseudo-randomly allocated to two groups. One group will be trained to perform a set of tasks (food refusal, interrupted recall, dumbbell retrieval and placing items in a basket) using reward methods and the other group will be trained for the same tasks using mixed methods. Later, the dogs will perform a standardized test where they will be required to perform the trained behaviors. The reliability of the behaviors and the time taken to learn them will be assessed in order to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency, respectively, of the different training methods. This study will be performed in collaboration with the Portuguese Army and with the Portuguese Public Security Police (PSP) and integrated with their dog training programs.

1. Introduction

The methods used to train dogs range broadly with some using rewards and other non-invasive techniques (reward methods), others using mainly aversive stimuli (aversive methods) and still others using a combination of both (mixed methods). Strong claims have been made for the negative effect of the use of aversive stimuli in training on dog welfare and dog-owner bond. However, the scientific evidence for this has been limited as most studies lack objective welfare measures, investigation of the entire range of aversive techniques and companion dog-focused research [ 1 ]. Recently, in the first large-scale quasi-experimental study of companion dog training (n = 92), Vieira de Castro et al (2020) [ 2 ] found that dogs trained with aversive stimuli displayed more stress behaviors during training, showed higher elevations in cortisol levels after training and, if trained exclusively with aversive methods, were more ‘pessimistic’ in a cognitive bias task than dogs trained with either reward and mixed methods. These findings strongly suggest that using aversive stimuli in training compromises companion dog welfare both within and outside the training context. In parallel, in a study aimed at assessing the relationship between training methods and dog-owner bond, Vieira de Castro el al (2019) [ 3 ] found that a secure attachment tended to be more consistent in dogs trained with reward methods, as revealed by behaviors displayed during a Strange Situation Procedure. These results suggest that the choice of training methods may also affect dog attachment to owner.

In addition to the effects on welfare, efficacy and efficiency are also relevant aspects to consider for the choice of training methods. Although claims have been made that reward and aversive/mixed methods are, at least, equally effective, the existing scientific literature is inconsistent. Some studies examined the efficacy (reliability of trained behaviors) of specific training methods but without directly comparing reward and aversive/mixed methods. Dale et al (2017) [ 4 ] found that dogs learned to avoid native birds after training using e-collars, an aversive technique, and that learning was retained for most dogs following one year. On the other hand, Yin et al (2008) [ 5 ] demonstrated that dogs could be trained with a remote-controlled food reward dispenser not to bark excessively, jump and crowd around the door when people arrived. Also, three proof-of-concept studies have shown that clicker training (a reward technique) is effective for training dogs for scent detection tasks [ 6 , 7 ] and service dog tasks [ 8 ]. Other studies have directly compared the efficacy of aversive and reward methods in both dogs and horses and these have produced conflicting results. Among these, five studies suggest a higher efficacy of reward methods [ 9 – 13 ], whereas one points in the opposite direction [ 14 ] and three show no differences between methods [ 15 – 17 ]. To our knowledge, only one study addressed the efficiency (speed of learning) of different methods and suggests a higher efficiency of reward over aversive methods [ 18 ].

Therefore, the aim of the current study is to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of different dog training methods. This will be investigated in the context of working dogs, as working dogs allow a rigorous experimental design and control, with randomization of treatments. Namely, military and police dogs will be trained using either reward (Group Reward) or mixed methods (Group Mixed, dogs pseudo-randomly allocated to groups) to perform a set of behaviors. The efficiency of training methods will be evaluated by measuring the number of sessions required for the dogs to learn the tasks, and efficacy will be assessed using a standardized test in which dogs will be required to perform the trained behaviors.

Dogs play an important role in our society both as companion and working animals. Owning a dog for companionship has been shown to bring several physical and psychological benefits to humans [ 19 , 20 ], and working dogs are of invaluable help when, for example, they fulfil tasks for disabled people or help in the detection of drugs or explosives. Dog training plays a pivotal role here. First, by preventing or managing dog behavioral problems—the most frequently cited reason for relinquishing and euthanasia [ 21 ], it helps to promote successful dog-human relationships and thus maximize the benefits humans derive from bonding with dogs [ 22 ]. Secondly, because it is required for working dogs to successfully accomplish their jobs.

2. Material and methods

2.1. ethics statement.

The planned study includes an experimental training protocol in which working dogs are trained with either reward or mixed methods. The mixed methods will be based on the training method presently used for training these dogs outside the experimental protocol, thus no dog will be subjected to pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm as a result of being recruited for the study. Shock collars and pinch collars, which can cause physical harm, will not be used.

Dogs and handlers will be video recorded for further analysis of behavior. Individual handlers will be identifiable from the video footage. Material in which individuals can be identified will only be used by the research team for research purposes (i.e., to control for the training techniques and for data analysis).

All handlers will be briefed that the purpose of the study is “to investigate different training methods and measure the behavior of the dog-handler dyad”, and sign an informed consent form that they agree to participate in the study and to be video recorded for research purposes. Each handler will be instructed about which tools and techniques are included in the treatment assigned to them, but will not be informed about the overall experimental design.

Applications for approval are submitted to the Committee for Ethics and Responsible Conduct in Research (human subjects research) and from the Animal Welfare and Ethics Body (animal research) of i3S, University of Porto. The study will only start after approval has been obtained.

2.2. Subjects

Military (n = 10) and police dogs (n = 20), housed at the facilities of the Military Working Dog Platoon in the Portuguese Paratroopers Regiment (RPara) and Portuguese Public Security Police (PSP) K9 unit, respectively will be allocated to Group Reward (trained with reward methods) and Group Mixed (trained with mixed methods). All dogs have previous mixed methods training experience, a stratified randomization method [ 23 ] will be used to assign animals to the two groups. This method allows for balancing in terms of subjects’ baseline characteristics (covariates) that may potentially affect the dependent variables under study. In the present study the following covariates will be taken into account: dog sex, age, breed and previous training experience (obedience, odor detection, protection work). This will be done for each institution, meaning that five dogs from RPara and 10 dogs from the PSP K9 unit will be allocated to each group.

As part of their certification process as working dogs, all the animals had to perform and pass the obedience component of a BH test [ 24 ]. Despite all dogs being naïve to the specific exercises included in the present study (food refusal, interrupted recall, dumbbell retrieval and placing items in basket–the detailed description of the exercises is presented below), two similar behaviors are trained as part of the training programs of PSP and RPara. Namely, dogs are trained to retrieve a motivator (e.g., a tug or bite pad), although not to the formality and precision that is going to be required in the ‘dumbbell retrieve’ exercise, and they are also usually trained to interrupt a send away (i.e., they are trained to run forward to a motivator and interrupt the running when instructed). The ‘food refusal’ and ‘place items in the basket’ exercises are not part of the training programs and are thus new or near to completely new for all the animals. Because previous training on similar behaviors may have carryover effects on the training planned for the study, at the time of the beginning of the study, each participating dog’s training history will be thoroughly evaluated and, if needed, this will also be included as a covariate in the randomization process.

2.3. Training methods

All dogs will be trained through associative learning (classical and operant conditioning) [ 25 , 26 ], however, the principles used for each group will differ. Whereas all four quadrants of operant conditioning will be allowed for Group Mixed (positive punishment, negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement and negative punishment), only the quadrants of positive reinforcement and negative punishment will be permitted for Group Reward. Regarding classical conditioning, the use of both conditioned reinforcers and punishers will be allowed for Group Mixed, but only conditioned reinforcers will be allowed for Group Reward. Table 1 displays the detailed definitions for all the conditioning procedures and includes some practical examples.

As for training equipment, no pinch nor e-collars will be allowed in the study and choke chains will only be allowed for Group Mixed. Apart from this, the handlers will be free to decide which other equipment to use among leashes, flat collars and harnesses. The use of a clicker will also be optional, as it has been reported not to affect efficiency and efficacy as compared to the use of a verbal marker or food alone [ 27 – 29 ]. In order to ensure that the instructions regarding the training procedures and tools permitted for each group are being followed, checkpoints will be done at the fifth and tenth days of training for each dyad, when the research team will review the video recordings of the training sessions.

Some flexibility for choosing training equipment and procedures will thus be allowed (as opposed to have the handlers following previously defined and detailed training protocols). The reason for this decision is that this study aims to reflect a real-life situation of dog training, where different handlers use different approaches (within the same training method–reward or mixed) and, especially, where the individual dog and its natural tendencies and behaviors usually dictate the training pathway.

2.4. Data collection

2.4.1. training.

Dogs will be trained by their handlers to perform four exercises: ‘food refusal, ‘interrupted recall’, ‘dumbbell retrieval’ and ‘placing items in basket’. The exercises were chosen in order to resemble real working dog tasks, while not interfering with the dogs’ daily working duties. Prior to training commencement, the handlers will be instructed on the exercises that they will train the dogs to perform and on the tools and techniques they are allowed to use during training (as explained in detail in the previous section). The handlers will be free to decide whether to train the exercises in parallel or in a sequence, as well as the order in which to train the different exercises. Training sessions will be conducted two days per week, with a gap between training days no longer than three days. Each training session will have a maximum duration of 10 minutes and up to six training sessions can be conducted per day. Within each training day, a break of at least 30 minutes between training sessions will be required.

Training for each exercise will end when the dog reaches the learning criterion (i.e., adequately performs the behavior as determined by the handler) or after a maximum of 45 sessions. Information regarding the number of training sessions, their duration and the behaviors being trained will be annotated by each handler in a notebook (specifically designed for the study) for each training day. In addition, all training sessions will be video recorded.

2.4.2. Evaluating performance

The efficiency of the different training methods will be evaluated through the number of training sessions necessary to reach the learning criterion (as determined by the handlers), and the efficacy will be assessed through a standardized test where the dogs will be asked to perform the trained behaviors. The test will be conducted in a fenced enclosure and will include the following exercises:

1. Food refusal: The handler asks the dog to ‘stay’ (the position in which the dog is left can be either a sit, a down or a stand, according to the handler’s choice), walks 10 meters away to a pre-defined/marked location within the field of vision of the dog, and stops with his/her back facing the dog. Afterwards, a helper comes near the dog and throws two pieces of food next to the dog’s front legs, one to right side and one to the left side. The handler can use the verbal cue for the dog not to eat before starting the exercise or while the helper is coming within the field.

Cues: ‘Sit’/’Down’/‘Stand’, ‘Stay’, ‘Don’t eat’

2. Interrupted recall: The handler asks the dog to ‘stay’ (the position in which the dog is left can be either a sit, a down or a stand, according to the handler’s choice), walks 30 meters away to a pre-defined/marked location, turns to face the dog and recalls the dog, instructing it to stop after roughly half the distance is covered (the position is which the dog stops can be either a sit, a down or a stand, according to the handler’s choice).

Cues: ‘Sit’/’Down’/‘Stand’, ‘Stay’, ‘Come’, ‘Stop’

3. Dumbbell retrieval: With the dog sitting at his/her side, the handler throws the dumbbell to a distance of roughly 10 meters (marked in the floor in order to help) and then instructs the dog to retrieve it. The dog should move towards the dumbbell, pick it up and bring it to the handler, sit in front of him and only release on cue.

Cues: ‘Sit’, ‘Get it’, ‘Out’

4. Placing items in basket: A basket will be placed in the field and three items will be placed in pre-defined positions in the floor, around the basket, by a helper. The handler will then instruct the dog to place the items in the basket.

Cues: ‘Place’ (only one cue is allowed for the entire exercise, the handler is not allowed to give additional cues after each item is retrieved)

5. Surprise exercise: The dog will have to perform a dumbbell retrieval with two pieces of food being thrown to the floor next to the dog by a helper before the exercise starts. This exercise will be included in order to test for training generalization.

Cues: ‘Sit’, ‘Don’t eat’, ‘Get it’, ‘Out’

The starting points for the exercises will be the same for all dogs and will be marked in the floor with a spray. Only verbal cues will be allowed during the test. The aforementioned words/expressions are, however, purely indicative—each handler will be free to choose his or her own cues. During the test, the dogs will not wear any collar or leash and no treats, toys or punishments will be allowed. Handlers will only be allowed to use social reinforcement (praise) between exercises. Additionally, in order to ensure that all dogs perform the test with similar motivation levels, dogs will be fed 12 hours previously to the conduction of the tests and no play or physical exercise will be allowed during this period.

The designs of Exercises 1, 2 and 3 were inspired on the Federation Cynologique International (FCI) dog sports of IGP, Obedience and Mondioring [ 24 , 30 , 31 ]. Exercise 4 is not part of any recognized dog sport, but its core behavior is (retrieve).

The test will be performed twice, the day after the learning criterion is achieved for all behaviors and 6 months later, to assess short- and long-term efficacy. No formal training will be performed between the two evaluations for ‘Food refusal’ and ‘Placing items in basket’. ‘Interrupted Recall’ and ‘Retrieve dumbbell’ will be trained once a month for maintenance. This will be done in order to evaluate the impact of maintenance training on long-term efficacy. The tests will be recorded using two video cameras, set in order to cover the entire field.

A pilot study using two dog-handler dyads that will not participate in the main study will be performed in order to test and, if needed, refine the methodology.

2.5. Data analysis

Two different approaches will be used to analyze the performance of the dogs in the test. Three international experts on working dog training will be invited to assess dog performance in situ on the test days. The experts, who will be blind to the experimental groups and to the goals of the study, will be instructed to use a qualitative scoring system, according to which the dog performance for each exercise should be classified as ‘insufficient’, ‘sufficient’ or ‘outstanding’ (see S1 Annex for full details). Moreover, two researchers blind to the experimental groups and to the goals of the study will analyze the videos of the tests using a quantitative scoring system, following which the dog performance for each exercise will receive a score ranging from 0 to 10 (see S2 Annex for full details). Inter-observer reliability will be calculated for each exercise. The quantitative scoring system was developed based on FCI rules and guidelines for Obedience, Mondioring and IGP trials [ 24 , 30 , 31 ].

The video recordings of the training sessions and the tests will also be used to assess dog welfare through the analysis of stress behaviors as in Vieira de Castro et al (2020). These will also allow for the analysis of handler behavior and other aspects of training such as the frequency, type and timing of the stimuli applied. This will be used to generate a list of all the conditioning procedures actually used by each handler during training.

2.5.1. Statistical analysis

Data will be analyzed using a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM), to account for repeated measures and to investigate the effects of multiple subject variables. Subject ID will be included as the repeated measure. Age (years), sex (M/F), breed and training experience will be included as covariates and Training Method (Mixed vs Reward) and Training Unit (PSP, RPara) as factors. One model will be run for each response variable: 1) number of training sessions necessary to reach the learning criterion, 2) qualitative score obtained in the test and 3) quantitative score obtained in the test.

Supporting information

Funding statement.

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Data Availability

• PLoS One. 2021; 16(2): e0247321.

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PONE-D-20-23944

Dear Dr. Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro,

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1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #2: Partly

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

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Reviewer #1: Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting your protocol to PLOS ONE. Studies of high level of evidence comparing reward-based training methods with aversive-training methods are missing in the literature, your research will hopefully fill an important gap in the field. Overall, your manuscript is well presented, there is a strong rationale for the proposed study and the methodology is feasible and clear. I am looking forward to reading your findings in the future. Please see some of the suggestions I have written below:

Ethics statement: ethical approval of the study protocol is desirable.

Data availability: where will the data of the study be made available? https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability (there are some recommendations on this page)

Abstract: you might prefer "randomized" instead of "pseudorandomized" to avoid confusion by readers without a scientific background?

Line 57: what do you mean by "other non-invasive techniques (reward methods)"? It sounds a bit redundant as compared to line 56 ('exclusively rewards') but I may have missed something.

Line 63: in light of the potential importance of this large study, you could write its sample size, e.g. "of companion dog training (n=XXX)"

Line 75: just remove a space here "aversive/mixed methods"

Line 114: in which context are they going to be video recorded? During the whole training process? Analysis of behaviour of both dog and handler?

Line 116: will this material remain confidential or be shared (e.g. supplementary material) upon study publication? To clarify, you could write "will only be used by the research team for research purposes (i.e. data analysis, XXX)".

Lines 123-125: same comment from above about ethical approval

Lines 128-132; 204-210: besides randomization of individuals and control of the variables 'years of training', age and gender, are you going to use any practical measure to reduce group bias? If dogs are likely to differ in performance (e.g. due to age difference, genetics, training experience), a test of baseline performance (e.g. time required to learn a simple new task) could be added.

Lines 159-160: are all dogs naive to these tasks?

Lines 161-162: who will control the number of sessions and duration of sessions? Self-report, diary, video records? How long is each session expected to last? Are you going to standardize the duration of the sessions?

Lines 165-166: at this task, wouldn't be important to tell the handlers to cover "all" the zones of this field as opposed to just letting them walk "randomly"? Is the food going to be spilt on the same areas for all dogs?

Lines 167-168: are they going to use only verbal commands or visual cues are also allowed? Standardization is important.

Lines 169-174: same as above regarding visual and verbal cues.

Line 174: is the food going to be placed on the same area for all the dogs? Any target to help the handlers throw the dumbbell on a similar location?

Line 183: the techniques allowed for each group should be included in the protocol. It lacks details on how exactly the group reward differs from the group mixed - this is a very important piece of information.

Lines 188-190: who is going to score the dogs? Ideally, more than one person should rate the performances and inter-rater reliability should be calculated (especially for the 'general impression' score, as it is more subjective).

Reviewer #2: This protocol covers an interesting and important applied topic: the efficiency and effectiveness of different dog training approaches. However, many methodological details are missing, making it impossible to assess the soundness of the proposed methods.

There are several different reward-based training methods and aversive training methods and, among a given category, they differ in their effectiveness. For example, research has shown that, among reward training methods, diverse methods differ in their efficiency (Fugazza and Miklósi 2014) and effectiveness (Fugazza and Miklósi 2015). I am not aware of studies comparing different aversive methods, but it is logical to assume that, for example, diverse aversive stimuli may differ in the intensity of their effects, at least, and potentially in other aspects.

It is therefore crucial that the authors carefully describe the methods that will be used for training, rather than only classifying them as reward-based or aversive.

A detailed description of the protocol applied in the training sessions with the two methods would help enormously in this sense.

The authors propose that the efficiency of the training methods will be assessed by measuring the number of sessions needed to reach a criterion that is determined by the trainers. However, it is fundamental to know what would be the length (N. of trials? Time?) of a training session. Training sessions of different durations have been shown to produce different outcomes (Demant et al. 2011).

The duration or number of trials of the sessions should be somehow standardized.

It is likely that both the dogs and the handlers of this study will have extensive experience with mixed methods, but little or no experience with reward methods. I think that this may affect the results. How do the authors plan to take it into account?

Since the evaluation of the dogs’ performance in the test is somewhat subjective, I warmly recommend the observer that will score the dogs’ performance to be blind with regard to the treatment received by the dog, to avoid a biased judgment.

References:

Demant H., Ladewig J., Balsby T.J.S., Dabelsteen J. (2011) The effect of frequency and duration of training sessions on acquisition and long-term memory in dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 133, 228-234.

Fugazza C. and Miklósi A. (2015) Social learning in dog training: the effectiveness of the Do as I do method compared to shaping/clicker training. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 171, 146-151.

Fugazza, C. and Miklósi Á. (2014) Should old dog trainers learn new tricks? The efficiency of the Do as I do method and shaping / clicker training method to train dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 153, 53-61.

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Author response to Decision Letter 0

RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS

We appreciate all the constructive criticism provided by the two anonymous reviewers. In our opinion, the manuscript as it currently stands has improved substantially. In what follows, we present detailed responses to all the comments.

Some changes were made and we believe the new version of the manuscript fully complies with PLOS ONE’s requirements.

a. Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution.

b. State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

c. If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.

d. If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.”

Please refer to Cover Letter. We have currently no funding approved for the study and hence the statement for financial disclosure at this time should be “The authors received no specific funding for this work.”

We plan on submitting data as supporting information.

Done. Thank you for pointing that out!

Reviewer #1:

1. Ethics statement: ethical approval of the study protocol is desirable.

We have now submitted our protocol to both the Committee for Ethics and Responsible Conduct in Research (human subjects research) and from the Animal Welfare and Ethics Body (animal research) of i3S, University of Porto.

2. Data availability: where will the data of the study be made available? https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability (there are some recommendations on this page)

3. Abstract: you might prefer "randomized" instead of "pseudorandomized" to avoid confusion by readers without a scientific background?

We have now realized that in the first version of the manuscript we did not explain what we meant by pseudo-randomization and, of course, that could be confusing for the readers (especially for those with no scientific background). In the current version of the manuscript, in the section “Subjects”, the following information can be found:

“A stratified randomization method [23] will be used to assign animals to the two groups. This method allows for balancing in terms of subjects’ baseline characteristics (covariates) that may potentially affect the dependent variables under study. In the present study the following covariates will be taken into account: dog sex, age, breed and previous training experience (obedience, odor detection, protection work).”

In the meantime, we will stick to the use of the word “pseudo-randomly” in the Abstract. In our opinion, using “randomly” can be deceptive, leading the readers to think that we will perform a true random allocation of dogs to the two groups.

4. Line 57: what do you mean by "other non-invasive techniques (reward methods)"? It sounds a bit redundant as compared to line 56 ('exclusively rewards') but I may have missed something.

With "other non-invasive techniques we meant extinction and negative punishment, other operant conditioning techniques (besides positive reinforcement) that are used within the scope of reward-based methods in dog training. However, we recognize that the way it was phrased could be confusing and we have removed the word “exclusively”. Now it reads:

“The methods used to train dogs range broadly with some using rewards and other non invasive techniques (reward methods), others using mainly aversive stimuli (aversive methods) and still other using a combination of both (mixed methods).”

5. Line 63: in light of the potential importance of this large study, you could write its sample size, e.g. "of companion dog training (n=XXX)"

We followed the reviewer’s suggestion and changed the text to:

“Recently, in the first large-scale quasi-experimental study of companion dog training (n=92), Vieira de Castro et al (accepted for publication) [2] found that dogs trained with aversive stimuli displayed more stress behaviors during training…”

6. Line 75: just remove a space here "aversive/mixed methods"

Done. Thank you!

7. Line 114: in which context are they going to be video recorded? During the whole training process? Analysis of behaviour of both dog and handler?

We now acknowledge that, in the first version of the protocol, this information was not made clear. The information can now be found in the following places throughout the protocol:

Line 113 Dogs and handlers will be video recorded for further analysis of behavior. Individual handlers will be identifiable from the video footage. Material in which individuals can be identified will only be used by the research team for research purposes (i.e., to control for the training techniques and for data analysis).

Line 197 all training sessions will be video recorded.

Line 247 The tests will be recorded

Line 258 two researchers blind to the experimental groups and to the goals of the study will analyze the videos of the tests using a quantitative scoring system

Line 263 The video recordings of the training sessions and the tests will also be used to assess dog welfare through the analysis of stress behaviors as in Vieira de Castro et al (accepted for publication). These will also allow for the analysis of handler behavior and other aspects of training such as the frequency, type and timing of the stimuli applied.

8. Line 116: will this material remain confidential or be shared (e.g. supplementary material) upon study publication? To clarify, you could write "will only be used by the research team for research purposes (i.e. data analysis, XXX)".

We will share untreated quantitative data but not the videos. In order to make this information clear, the text now reads: “Material in which individuals can be identified will only be used by the research team for research purposes (i.e., to control for the training techniques and for data analysis”.

8. Lines 123-125: same comment from above about ethical approval

See comment above.

9. Lines 128-132; 204-210: besides randomization of individuals and control of the variables 'years of training', age and gender, are you going to use any practical measure to reduce group bias? If dogs are likely to differ in performance (e.g. due to age difference, genetics, training experience), a test of baseline performance (e.g. time required to learn a simple new task) could be added.

Because, to our knowledge, there is no validated test for evaluating baseline performance, we will not use a test of this sort in order to allocate dogs to groups. However, as can now read in line 150 “as part of their certification process as working dogs, all the animals had to perform and pass the obedience component of a BH test [24]”. This, is our view, already ensures that all the animals have some equivalence in their baseline performance.

10. Lines 159-160: are all dogs naive to these tasks?

This is crucial information and it was missing in the previous version of the manuscript. We have added the following paragraph: “Despite all dogs being naïve to the specific exercises included in the present study (food refusal, interrupted recall, dumbbell retrieval and placing items in basket – the detailed description of the exercises is presented below), two similar behaviors are trained as part of the training programs of PSP and RPara. Namely, dogs are trained to retrieve a motivator (e.g., a tug or bite pad), although not to the formality and precision that is going to be required in the ‘dumbbell retrieve’ exercise, and they are also usually trained to interrupt a send away (i.e., they are trained to run forward to a motivator and interrupt the running when instructed). The ‘food refusal’ and ‘place items in the basket’ exercises are not part of the training programs and are thus new or near to completely new for all the animals. Because previous training on similar behaviors may have carryover effects on the training planned for the study, at the time of the beginning of the study, each participating dog’s training history will be thoroughly evaluated and, if needed, this will also be included as a covariate in the randomization process.”

11. Lines 161-162: who will control the number of sessions and duration of sessions? Self-report, diary, video records? How long is each session expected to last? Are you going to standardize the duration of the sessions?

We have added the following information to the text:

Line 190: “Training sessions will be conducted two days per week, with a gap between training days no longer than three days. Each training session will have a maximum duration of 10 minutes and up to six training sessions can be conducted per day. Within each training day, a break of at least 30 minutes between training sessions will be required.”

Line 196: “Information regarding the number of training sessions, their duration and the behaviors being trained will be annotated by each handler in a notebook (specifically designed for the study) for each training day. In addition, all training sessions will be video recorded.”

12. Lines 165-166: at this task, wouldn't be important to tell the handlers to cover "all" the zones of this field as opposed to just letting them walk "randomly"?

Is the food going to be spilt on the same areas for all dogs?

We decided to change this exercise to the food refusal exercise of the dog sport of Mondioring. This way, we have both a more standardized exercise and a stronger basis for the scoring.

13. Lines 167-168: are they going to use only verbal commands or visual cues are also allowed? Standardization is important.

Only verbal cues will be allowed. This is now clearly stated in line 234: “Only verbal cues will be allowed during the test.”

14. Lines 169-174: same as above regarding visual and verbal cues.

See response to previous comment.

15. Line 174: is the food going to be placed on the same area for all the dogs?

See response to comment 12 above.

16. Any target to help the handlers throw the dumbbell on a similar location?

Now line 219 reads: “With the dog sitting at his/her side, the handler throws the dumbbell to a distance of roughly 10 meters (marked in the floor in order to help) and then instructs the dog to retrieve it”.

18. Line 183: the techniques allowed for each group should be included in the protocol. It lacks details on how exactly the group reward differs from the group mixed - this is a very important piece of information.

We added a section entitled “Training methods” where this information is now presented. Thank you for pointing this out, this is definitely crucial information.

19. Lines 188-190: who is going to score the dogs? Ideally, more than one person should rate the performances and inter-rater reliability should be calculated (especially for the 'general impression' score, as it is more subjective).

This information can now be found in section “Data analysis”:

“Two different approaches will be used to analyze the performance of the dogs in the test. Three international experts on working dog training will be invited to assess dog performance in situ on the test days. The experts, who will be blind to the experimental groups and to the goals of the study, will be instructed to use a qualitative scoring system, according to which the dog performance for each exercise should be classified as ‘insufficient’, ‘sufficient’ or ‘outstanding’ (see Annex 1 for full details). Moreover, two researchers blind to the experimental groups and to the goals of the study will analyze the videos of the tests using a quantitative scoring system, following which the dog performance for each exercise will receive a score ranging from 0 to 10 (see Annex 2 for full details). Inter-observer reliability will be calculated for each exercise. The quantitative scoring system was developed based on FCI rules and guidelines for Obedience, Mondioring and IGP trials [24, 30, 31].”

Reviewer #2:

This protocol covers an interesting and important applied topic: the efficiency and effectiveness of different dog training approaches. However, many methodological details are missing, making it impossible to assess the soundness of the proposed methods.

1. There are several different reward-based training methods and aversive training methods and, among a given category, they differ in their effectiveness. For example, research has shown that, among reward training methods, diverse methods differ in their efficiency (Fugazza and Miklósi 2014) and effectiveness (Fugazza and Miklósi 2015). I am not aware of studies comparing different aversive methods, but it is logical to assume that, for example, diverse aversive stimuli may differ in the intensity of their effects, at least, and potentially in other aspects. It is therefore crucial that the authors carefully describe the methods that will be used for training, rather than only classifying them as reward-based or aversive. A detailed description of the protocol applied in the training sessions with the two methods would help enormously in this sense.

Please refer to response to comment #18 of Reviewer #1. We acknowledge that information on training methods was actually missing in the previous version of the manuscript and we have now added a section entitled “Training methods”, where we detail which procedures and tools can be used for each group. We will not use standardized protocols for training and the reasons for this choice are now underpinned in lines 175-180: “Some flexibility for choosing training equipment and procedures will thus be allowed (as opposed to have the handlers following previously defined and detailed training protocols). The reason for this decision is that this study aims to reflect a real-life situation of dog training, where different handlers use different approaches (within the same training method – reward or mixed) and, especially, where the individual dog and its natural tendencies and behaviors usually dictate the training pathway”. However, we believe that the information we have included in the “Training methods” section addresses your concerns.

2. The authors propose that the efficiency of the training methods will be assessed by measuring the number of sessions needed to reach a criterion that is determined by the trainers. However, it is fundamental to know what would be the length (N. of trials? Time?) of a training session. Training sessions of different durations have been shown to produce different outcomes (Demant et al. 2011). The duration or number of trials of the sessions should be somehow standardized.

Please refer to response to comment #11 of Reviewer #1.

3. It is likely that both the dogs and the handlers of this study will have extensive experience with mixed methods, but little or no experience with reward methods. I think that this may affect the results. How do the authors plan to take it into account?

Reward methods have been used consistently in both institutions (PSP and RPara) for more or less 10 years. We do not foresee any issue regarding the experience of handlers with both methods.

4. Since the evaluation of the dogs’ performance in the test is somewhat subjective, I warmly recommend the observer that will score the dogs’ performance to be blind with regard to the treatment received by the dog, to avoid a biased judgment.

Please refer to response to comment #19 of Reviewer #1.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx

Decision Letter 1

PONE-D-20-23944R1

==============================

Many thanks for submitting your manuscript to PLOS One

Your manuscript was reviewed by two experts in the field, and they have recommended some minor modifications be made prior to acceptance

I therefore invite you to make these changes and resubmit. If you could write a response to reviewers, that will greatly aid revision upon re-submission

I wish you the best of luck with your revisions

Hope you are keeping safe and well in these difficult times

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 17 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at gro.solp@enosolp . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Thank you for considering my suggestions and making several changes to the manuscript. The quality of your work improved substantially, particularly the methodology, which is much clearer and detailed. I am happy to recommend your report protocol for publication and I wish you all the best conducting the study.

Best wishes.

Reviewer #2: The authors have now provided an improved version of the manuscript and I believe that this is now publishable, after minor revision.

Since flexibility is allowed for the trainers to choose which actual rewards and punishments to use, I strongly recommend that in the data collection the authors include a list of the rewards and punishments actually used by the trainers, because these may play an important role in determining the outcome of the training.

Apart from this, which I believe is very important, I only have a few minor suggestions:

Line 62: a parenthesis is missing from the reference.

Lines 151-152: This sentence describing the subjects' previous experience may better fit above (e.g. in line 138). Then you can continue with the more detailed description of similar behaviours previously learnt by the dogs.

Lines 256-257: What will be the criterions for scoring the performance? E.g., speed of execution? Latency to execute? Detailed criterions may help reducing the subjectivity level of this judgment.

Author response to Decision Letter 1

Once again, we would like to thank the reviewers for the constructive criticism. The current version of the manuscript addresses the last round of comments by Reviewer #2. We detail them in what follows.

“Since flexibility is allowed for the trainers to choose which actual rewards and punishments to use, I strongly recommend that in the data collection the authors include a list of the rewards and punishments actually used by the trainers, because these may play an important role in determining the outcome of the training.”

We agree with the reviewer. We thought this was made clear in the previous version of the manuscript when we wrote, in lines 265-268, “The video recordings of the training sessions (…) will also allow for the analysis of handler behavior and other aspects of training such as the frequency, type and timing of the stimuli applied”. However, in order to leave no doubt about this idea, we added the current sentence in line 297: “This will be used to generate a list of all the conditioning procedures actually used by each handler during training”.

“Line 62: a parenthesis is missing from the reference.”

Thank you for noticing that! It is now corrected.

“Lines 151-152: This sentence describing the subjects' previous experience may better fit above (e.g. in line 138). Then you can continue with the more detailed description of similar behaviours previously learnt by the dogs.”

We followed the reviewer’s suggestion and moved this sentence to the beginning of the paragraph (Line 139).

“Lines 256-257: What will be the criterions for scoring the performance? E.g., speed of execution? Latency to execute? Detailed criterions may help reducing the subjectivity level of this judgment.”

We understand the reviewer’s concern here. In a first draft of our qualitative scoring system, we actually had more criteria detailed for each exercise. However, after carefully and thoroughly discussing it with the members of the author team who work very closely and in practice with this type of scoring systems (Ângelo Aráujo and André Fonseca), the end result was the system we proposed in the previous version of the manuscript (Annex S1). Given that the international experts on working dog training that will evaluate dog performance for our study are also familiar with (and actually implement in practice) this type of system, we feel this is actually the best approach for our research.

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Decision Letter 2

PONE-D-20-23944R2

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Additional Editor Comments:

Many thanks for resubmitting your manuscript to PLOS One

As you have addressed all the comments and the manuscript reads well, I have recommended it for publication

You should hear from the Editorial Office shortly.

It was a pleasure working with you and I wish you the best of luck for your future research

Acceptance letter

10 Feb 2021

Dear Dr. Vieira de Castro:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

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Putin’s China Visit Highlights Military Ties That Worry the West

The Russian leader visited an institute in Harbin known for defense research. President Xi Jinping saw him off with a rare and seemingly deliberate embrace for the cameras.

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By David Pierson

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia attended a trade fair on Friday in a northeastern Chinese city and toured a state-backed university famous for its cutting-edge defense research, highlighting how economic and military ties between the countries have grown despite, or perhaps because of, Western pressure.

Mr. Putin’s visit to Harbin, a Chinese city with a Russian past, is part of a trip aimed at demonstrating that he has powerful friends even as his war against Ukraine — a campaign that he is escalating — has isolated him from the West. The visit followed a day of talks between him and President Xi Jinping of China that seemed orchestrated to convey not only the strategic alignment of the two powerful, autocratic leaders against the West, but a personal connection.

State media showed Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, neckties off after formal talks on Thursday, strolling under willow trees and sipping tea at a traditional pavilion on the sprawling grounds of Zhongnanhai, the walled leadership compound in Beijing, with only their interpreters. As Mr. Xi saw Mr. Putin off in the evening, he even initiated a hug — a rare expression of affection for the Chinese leader.

“Xi’s very deliberate embrace of Putin for the cameras wasn’t just to emphasize the closeness of the political relationship between the two countries and their leaders,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. “There was also a touch of disdain directed at Washington, which has been pressuring Beijing to withdraw support from Moscow. That clearly isn’t going to happen in any substantive fashion.”

The show of camaraderie was the final touch in talks that culminated in a joint statement that took aim at the United States, which Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi have accused of seeking to suppress their countries. The statement pledged that Russia and China would work more closely in critical sectors like energy, space and the military.

The large size of Russia’s delegation, which included Mr. Putin’s top security and energy officials, as well the length of the bilateral meetings, implied the seriousness with which both sides have approached the negotiations, said Alexander Gabuev, a China expert at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

“It’s like an iceberg,” he said. “The public documents are symbolic and largely meaningless. But there’s an underwater part, which is likely to be much more significant.”

Still, Mr. Putin’s visit also showed the limits of the countries alliance. In China, Mr. Xi rolled out the red carpet for Mr. Putin, but the visit did not produce any public commitments to concrete new projects or investments between the two countries.

Specifically, Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi have not publicly reported any progress on a planned new gas pipeline from China into Russia, known as Power of Siberia 2. Russia urgently needs the pipeline to redirect the flow of its gas exports from the rapidly declining market in Europe.

Mr. Putin had no news to share about the pipeline’s progress when he was asked about it in a brief news conference at the end of his trip on Friday.

“I am not prepared to discuss any technical details, but the interest of both sides in realizing these projects has been confirmed,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Power of Siberia 2.

He also deflected a question about reports that Chinese banks are reducing transactions with Russian clients out of fear of Western sanctions, turning the conversation from China to the shortcomings of the U.S. financial system.

The growing security ties between the two nuclear-armed powers was a focal point of Mr. Putin’s visit to Harbin, and the Harbin Institute of Technology.

While China and Russia are not formal allies committed to defend each other with military support, their armed forces have worked together more closely in recent years. Their air forces and navies have held joint military exercises, including near Alaska and Taiwan, the de facto independent island claimed by Beijing. On Thursday, the two leaders issued words of support for their separate claims to Taiwan and Ukraine.

And while China has vowed not to provide Russia with lethal weapons, it has been the top supplier of components like semiconductors and machine tools that have both civilian and military uses.

While that is helpful, Mr. Putin still seeks access to more sophisticated tools. The Harbin institute is best known for its research of rockets, missiles and space technology — expertise that Russia would greatly benefit from as the war in Ukraine has revived its need for a more robust military-industrial complex. The institute also trained North Korean scientists who worked on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, according to The Wall Street Journal and South Korean media.

Mr. Putin’s tour of the institute was steeped in symbolism. The 103-year-old institution recently opened a joint campus with St. Petersburg State University, Mr. Putin’s alma mater. And in something of a snub to Washington, the school belongs on the United States’ so-called entity list, barring it from accessing American technology and taking part in educational exchanges because of its links to the People’s Liberation Army.

“We should be less concerned about what particular technologies China might be sharing with Russia from Harbin or elsewhere, than the larger pattern and signal that this visit represents,” said Markus Garlauskas, a security expert at the Atlantic Council.

“China did not need to host Putin at Harbin in order to transfer technologies from there to Russia,” he added. “That this visit took place so openly is a visible and symbolic sign of Beijing being willing to provide directly military-applicable technology to support Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

Song Zhongping, a commentator in Beijing who is a former military officer, defended Mr. Putin’s visit to the institute, pointing to the school’s cooperation with Russia in education.

“Communication at the university level between China and Russia is consistent with the academic exchange and national interests of both countries,” Mr. Song said.

Mr. Garlauskas said the tour of the institute had echoes of when Mr. Putin hosted Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, at a Russian spaceport last year before Pyongyang began supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles and other munitions to use in Ukraine.

“What China shares with Russia, Russia could easily then turn around and share with North Korea,” Mr. Garlauskas said.

Not long ago, it was China that drew greater benefits from access to Russian military technology. Starting in the 1990s, and peaking in the early 2000s, Beijing was a major buyer of Russian arms. Sales then began to slow after Moscow grew concerned about China reverse-engineering Russian weapons, said Elizabeth Wishnick, a senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses in Virginia.

It wasn’t until about a decade ago that cooperation between the two sides returned, leading to China’s acquisition of more Russian jet engine technology and surface-to-air missile systems. Still, in a sign that there are limits to its cooperation with China, Russia is holding out sharing its silent submarine technology, a feature that makes the vessels especially hard to detect, Ms. Wishnick said.

Mr. Putin is also using his visit to Harbin, where he attended a trade fair, to promote the flow of goods between the countries.

China has given Russia an economic lifeline by buying huge amounts of Russian oil to circumvent the effects of its financial isolation from the West. Not only that, with many foreign consumer brands also leaving Russia, Chinese companies have stepped in to fill a vacuum for the likes of automobiles , smartphones and televisions. That contributed to a record $240 billion in two-way trade between the China and Russia in 2023, up from $190 billion in 2022, according to Chinese customs data.

Maintaining that growth in trade is a major focus in both countries, analysts said, now that Western pressure on Chinese banks to scale back transactions with Russian firms is believed to have led to the first year-on-year decline in trade in more than two years in March.

One solution would be to increase the amount of transactions settled in local currencies rather than dollars to avoid the risk of sanctions. Mr. Putin said on Thursday that more than 90 percent of commercial transactions conducted between Russia and China were now being cleared in rubles or renminbi.

“Protecting the financial assets of big banks in China is the top crucial interest of China,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing. He said China was trying to reduce its exposure to the dollar beyond just in Russia, but that the room to do so was “limited.”

Olivia Wang and Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed reporting.

David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about David Pierson

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

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Ukraine asked the Biden administration to provide more intelligence  on the position of Russian forces and military targets inside Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law a bill allowing some Ukrainian convicts to serve  in the country’s military in exchange for the possibility of parole at the end of their service, a move that highlights Kyiv’s desperate attempts to replenish its forces.

NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces . The move would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war.

World’s Nuclear Inspector: Rafael Grossi took over the International Atomic Energy Agency five years ago at what now seems like a far less fraught moment. With atomic fears everywhere, the inspector is edging toward mediator .

Frozen Russian Assets: As much as $300 billion in frozen Russian assets is piling up profits and interest income by the day. Now, Ukraine’s allies are considering how to use those gains to aid Kyiv .

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Jamshidi earns recognition for most influential paper

When someone in academia publishes a research paper, one of the goals is to have the paper cited by other professors and researchers. A paper published 10 years ago by Computer Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Pooyan Jamshidi was recently recognized for its significant impact.

Jamshidi received the Most Influential Paper Award in April at the 19th International Conference on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems (SEAMS) in Lisbon, Portugal. Jamshidi’s paper, “ Autonomic Resource Provision for Cloud-based Software ,” was submitted, accepted and published just prior to earning his Ph.D. from Dublin City University in Ireland in 2014. It was presented at the 2014 SEAMS Conference in India.

For the most influential paper award, a select committee considers conference publications published approximately 10 years previously and selects those that have made the most impact according to several criteria, including the number of citations, practical applications and industry adoption, and influence on subsequent research. The most influential award is selected from this short list.

“I wanted to publish the most important part of my Ph.D. research at SEAMS because it was a special community, and their work was close to mine,” Jamshidi says. “Receiving this award is important because this was my first paper with the community. I kept publishing with SEAMS and remained engaged.” 

The paper’s title referred to a groundbreaking approach to fundamentally transform how resources are managed and allocated in cloud environments. The key innovation was to enable multiple tenants to describe their adaptation rules for cloud and multi-cloud resource provisioning using a specific language that enables the incorporation of reasoning, inference and resolution of conflicting adaptation rules.

Since the paper was published, it has received 188 citations according to Google Scholar . In addition, the autonomic resource provision technique has been integrated with Microsoft Azure and OpenStack . The concepts and methods introduced in the paper have also led to follow-up research in cloud autoscaling, Edge-and-Internet of Things resource scaling, and networking and autonomous driving.

The paper has impacted the field of software engineering, especially in the context of adaptive and self-managing systems in the cloud, research, industry practices and the broader technological landscape.

While Jamshidi admits that autonomous autoscaling system for cloud-based software is not as a hot topic as it was when his paper was published, it is still a relevant research area that is leading to new ideas, methods, and approaches.

“The most exciting direction in cloud auto-scaling and resource provisioning overall is sustainability-aware approaches to enable sustainable computer usage for modern applications, such as AI systems,” Jamshidi says. “We plan to continue this line of research. For example, thanks to funds provided by the National Science Foundation and collaborators from Carnegie Mellon University and Rochester Institute of Technology, we are investigating software-driven sustainability.” 

Challenge the conventional. Create the exceptional. No Limits.