NBA: Miami Heat opens doors to fans thanks to Covid-sniffing dogs

Miami Heat fans were able to watch a basketball game in person for the first time since the pandemic shut down the NBA last March -- in part thanks to dogs trained to detect Covid infections. 

With the canine help, real life spectators streamed once more into American Airlines Arena in Miami before the game against the LA Clippers Thursday -- though only 2,000 were allowed, or just 10 percent of the venue's capacity. 

A "canine team" guided two trained pups along the line of socially distanced fans waiting to enter the arena, and the dogs sniffed each person's hands. 

"Dogs (screen) for drugs, so why not for coronavirus?" 25-year-old fan Kayla Roeber said to AFP, having just been smelled. "I think that it would prevent a lot of viruses from spreading, a lot of people entering buildings who have it."

If the dogs detect the virus, they indicate it to their handler by sitting down next to the individual in question.

In that case, according to the team's website, the potentially contaminated person and their companions must leave the line and are not permitted to enter the game. Their tickets are refunded. 

"They can spot it (Covid-19) within seconds. Dogs are the most efficient mobile detection system," explained Michael Larkin, the vice president of the Global K9 Protection Group, which manages the dogs.

"They are a living, breathing animal that has this incredible olfactory senses that are used across the world in a variety of environments," he said. 

He explained how they are trained to find the virus. 

The "dog is not going 'Okay, tonight I'm finding Covid-19,'" he said. "They're playing a game... they've been imprinted to find this odor, and when they find it, they get rewarded." 

The dogs are just an extra level of protection against the spread of coronavirus at Heat games. Fans must still maintain social distancing and masks are required. 

The Miami Heat are the first NBA team to try this screening method, which has already been tested in airports in Santiago, Dubai and Helsinki. 

Its reliability, however, has not yet been totally proven. 

"I think it's so new and novel that we have yet to determine how effective it is and how reliable the canines are at detecting these type of things," Douglas Kratt, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, told CNN. 

Agence France-Presse

Biden 'First Dogs' arrive at White House

WASHINGTON - Joe Biden's dogs Champ and Major have moved into the White House, reviving a long-standing tradition of presidential pets that was broken under Donald Trump.

The pooches can be seen trotting on the White House grounds in pictures retweeted by First Lady Jill Biden's spokesman Michael LaRosa, with the pointed obelisk of the Washington Monument in the background.

"Champ is enjoying his new dog bed by the fireplace, and Major loved running around on the South Lawn," LaRosa told CNN in a statement Monday.

The Biden's dogs, both German shepherds, follow the pawprints of presidential pets that included Barack Obama's Bo, a black Portuguese water dog and George W. Bush's Scottish terrier, Barney. 

Trump, a famously finicky germaphobe, broke with that convention -- as he did with many presidential traditions -- and never had a pet in his White House.

"How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn," Trump asked, with a grimace, in a video included in a Biden campaign ad.

Agence France-Presse

Standard poodle crowned top dog in finale of Westminster Kennel Club show

NEW YORK -- A standard poodle named Siba was crowned "Best in Show" at the annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York on Tuesday, taking home the grand prize in the most prestigious competition for pure-bred canines in the United States.

Siba, the finalist representing all breeds classified as non-sporting dogs, emerged victorious from the 3-day event at Madison Square Garden after going head to head with the winners in 6 other groups -- hounds, toy dogs, herding dogs, working dogs, sporting dogs and terriers.

The triumph of Siba, a black-furred female nearly 4 years of age from Northampton, Pennsylvania, marked the fifth best-in-show title for a standard poodle in the 144-year history of the contest.

The Westminster dog show bills itself as the second-oldest US sporting event, behind only the Kentucky Derby thoroughbred horse race. This year's competition drew a field of contenders consisting of more than 2,600 dogs representing 205 breeds from 20 countries, including the United States.

Rounding out the roster of finalists in Tuesday's best-in-show contest were: Daniel, a male golden retriever; Bourbon, a female whippet; Bono, a male Havanese; Conrad, a male Shetland sheepdog; Wilma, a female boxer; and Vinny, a male wire fox terrier.

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Why dogs can’t help falling in love with you

TEMPE, Arizona — Xephos is not the author of “Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You,” one of the latest books to plumb the nature of dogs, but she helped inspire it. And as I scratched behind her ears, it was easy to see why.

First, she fixed on me with imploring doggy eyes, asking for my attention. Then, every time I stopped scratching she nudged her nose under my hand and flipped it up. I speak a little dog, but the message would have been clear even if I didn’t: Don’t stop.

We were in the home office of Clive Wynne, a psychologist at Arizona State University who specializes in dog behavior. He belongs to Xephos, a mixed breed that the Wynne family found in a shelter in 2012.

Wynne’s book is an extended argument about what makes dogs special — not how smart they are, but how friendly they are. Xephos’ shameless and undiscriminating affection affected both his heart and his thinking.

As Xephos nose-nudged me again, Wynne was describing genetic changes that occurred at some point in dog evolution that he says explain why dogs are so sociable with members of other species.

“Hey,” Wynne said to her as she tilted her head to get the maximum payoff from my efforts, “how long have you had these genes?”

No one disputes the sociability of dogs. But Wynne doesn’t agree with the scientific point of view that dogs have a unique ability to understand and communicate with humans. He thinks they have a unique capacity for interspecies love, a word that he has decided to use, throwing aside decades of immersion in scientific jargon.

“Dog Is Love” is one of several new books on dogs out this year, and one of a flood of such books over the last decade or so. Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist and researcher of dog behavior at Duke University, who founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center, recently wrote that there are 70,000 dog books listed on Amazon.

Since 2000, around the time dog research had a resurgence, a small but significant number of those books are written by scientists for a general audience. Like Hare’s “The Genius of Dogs,” published in 2013, the books address what is going on in a dog’s heart and mind. Most emphasize the mind.

Wynne’s book runs counter to Hare’s when it comes to the importance of dog’s thinking ability, which Hare sees as central to their bond with humans. By using the L word, Wynne may well appeal to the many besotted dog owners. But he may also disappoint. The reason dogs are such “an amazing success story” is because of their ability to bond with other species, he said. Not just humans.

Raise a dog with sheep and it will love sheep. Raise a dog with goats and it will love goats. Raise a dog with people ... you know the rest.

Some now extinct wolves attached themselves to humans 15,000 years ago or longer because we had good leftovers, or so the dominant theory goes, although what actually happened is lost to time. Apparently, humans liked the renegade wolves quite a bit and eventually started controlling their breeding and letting them sleep on down coverlets.

Now, as Wynne said in a talk at the International Canine Science conference in Phoenix in October, dogs are an astonishing evolutionary success. Wolves, not so much. “For every one surviving wolf on this planet, there are at least 3,000 dogs.” On the other hand, nobody puts a silly Halloween costume on a wolf.

In the early 2000s, when Wynne began research on dogs, one of his experiments was a follow-up on the work of Hare who had concluded that dogs were better than wolves or other animals at following human directions. In particular, dogs followed human pointing better than other animals. Wynne and Monique Udell, an animal behaviorist at Oregon State University, expected to confirm Hare’s findings.

The wolves they chose to work with were hand-raised and socialized at Wolf Park, in Lafayette, Indiana. Wynne said he found the wolves were as good at following human pointing as the best pet dogs.

Hare and his colleagues responded by questioning whether the experiments were really comparable, maintaining that dogs have an innate ability to follow human pointing without the special attention the wolves were given. The debate continues.

The second part of Wynne’s argument has to do with how social dogs are. There is no question that they bond with people in a way that other canines do not. Wynne recounted an experiment showing that as long as puppies spend 90 minutes a day, for one week, with a human any time before they are 14 weeks old, they will become socialized and comfortable with humans.

Interestingly, the experiment found no genetic absolutism about the connection between dogs and humans. Without contact with humans when they are young, dogs can become as wary of humans as wild animals. Wolves are not so easily socialized. They require 24-hour-a-day involvement with humans for many weeks when they are puppies to become more tolerant of human beings. They never turn into Xephos.

Admittedly, Xephos is at the tail-wagging, face-licking, cozy-cuddling end of dog friendliness. Anyone who knows dogs can call to mind some that are not friendly at all, or are friendly to only one person. But in general there is no comparison in friendliness between dogs and wolves.

“OK, she’s not every dog, but she’s not radically atypical,” Wynne said of Xephos as she snuggled up to me. “Are you sweetie — you’re not completely untypical of your kind?”

The evidence of dog affection for humans goes beyond the observable actions of Xephos and those like her. Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, who himself was drawn into animal study by wanting to understand what his own dog, Callie, was thinking, used MRI machines to watch what was going on in their brains.

Among his findings is that the part of dogs’ brains that light up when they hear their owners’ voices is the same part of the human brain that lights up when we are fond of someone or something. His first book was “How Dogs Love Us.”

By looking at the lemon-sized dog brain, he has shown, for instance, that, based on how the reward center lights up, a dog likes praise as much as it likes hot dogs. In testing outside of the MRI, Berns has also found that, given a choice, some dogs prefer their owners to food.

He agreed that the hypersociality of dogs is what makes them special rather than particular cognitive abilities. “It’s hard to demonstrate any cognitive task that dogs are superior in,” he said. But he pointed out that “ultimately the difficulty is in saying what is a cognitive function and an emotional function.”

Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in New York, and a prolific writer on dogs, also addressed the question of love briefly in her new book, “Our Dogs, Ourselves.”

Without doubt, dogs have feelings, she wrote, but she cautioned that just as certainly, those feelings were not the same as human feelings. Nor, she argued, should we assume that dogs are in between robot and homo sapiens on an emotional spectrum. She wrote in her book, “For all we know, dogs’ emotional experience is far more elaborate than ours.”

Central to that experience, although unknown in its complexity, is the pleasure a dog experiences in the presence of humans. The intensity of that pleasure and the ease of triggering it, Wynne said, is built into the dog genome.

He found this in his research with Bridgett vonHoldt, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. She and a team of researchers identified genes in dogs that in humans are associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. One of the many symptoms of the syndrome is indiscriminate friendliness. Wynne and Udell worked with vonHoldt on a subsequent study of wolves and dogs that tied behavior and genetics together. They concluded that the genes associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans underlie the friendless of dogs compared to wolves.

Humans, they suggested, may have selected friendly dogs over thousands of years of domestication and the Williams-Beuren genes may be one of the results. Other scientists have been cautious about the results, seeing the work as presenting an intriguing hypothesis that requires more research.

Whether these are the genes involved, humans appear to have molded dogs to be friendly to other species beyond humans. Apparently, puppies introduced to any other species when they are young enough, form a strong bond with that species.

This hasn’t been tested with all species, of course. But consider the sheep and goats. Ray Coppinger of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, who died in 2017, had documented that puppies of certain breeds kept with sheep bond to the sheep. They stay with the flock and guard it. The same thing happens when puppies are kept with goats and other less likely creatures, like penguins.

Dogs have “an abnormal willingness to form strong emotional bonds with almost anything that crosses their path,” Wynne said. “And they maintain this throughout life. Above and beyond that they have a willingness and an interest to interact with strangers.”

How and when this free love, or hypersociality, evolved in dogs is up for debate. Wynne is betting that after some ancient wolves began to associate with humans 15,000 or more years ago and became dogs, and humans began to live in settlements and farming took off about 8,000 years ago, humans began to breed dogs for friendliness, causing the genetic differences that vonHoldt found. With luck, future research on modern and ancient dog DNA will show if he is right.

For now, we humans can at least enjoy the amiability of dogs. Looking at Xephos as we wrapped up our conversation, he said, “It’s not strange that she wants to interact with me. What’s strange is that she wants to be friends with you. Right?”

Well, I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty good ear scratcher. “Right, Xephos?”


2019 The New York Times Company

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Overweight people more likely to have overweight dogs: study

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Overweight people are more likely to have overweight dogs, partly because they are more likely to feed them treats, Danish researchers said Wednesday.

The study by the University of Copenhagen lends credence to the saying "like owner, like dog", the scientists wrote in the journal Preventive Veterinary Medicine.

"The prevalence of heavy or obese dogs is more than twice as large among overweight or obese owners (35 percent) than among owners who are slim or of a normal weight (14 percent)," the researchers said.

Of the 268 dogs studied, 20 percent were overweight.

Average-weight owners tend to use treats for training purposes while overweight owners prefer to provide treats in convivial situations, "for example, when a person is relaxing on the couch and shares the last bites of a sandwich or a cookie with their dog," the study's main author, Charlotte Bjornvad, said.

In developed countries, 34 to 59 percent of dogs are overweight or obese, which can reduce their life expectancy and mobility or cause diabetes and cardiac disease just like in humans, another international team of researchers found in 2016.

On average, overweight dogs live 1.3 years less than dogs on restrictive diets.

The University of Copenhagen study also showed that castration tripled the risk of being heavy or obese.

"Castration seems to decrease the ability to regulate the appetite in male dogs and at the same time, it might also decrease the incentive to exercise which results in an increased risk of becoming overweight," Bjornvad said.

cbw/po/nla

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‘I am your paw-ther’

Dogs dressed as Darth Vader and Yoda wait outside the San Diego Convention Center during the 2019 Comic-Con International in San Diego, California. This year is the convention’s 50th edition and will see some 135,000 cosplayers, bloggers, and fans come to see upcoming films, TV shows, and comic books. 

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Who's a Good Boy? Wolves, not dogs, apparently

WASHINGTON, United States - If you're looking for a word to describe your adorable pet pup, "selfish" might not top the list.

But a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE suggests Fido's reputation for being caring is all a ruse -- at least if you're a fellow dog.

A series of touchscreen experiments carried out by the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria found that wolves make for more selfless pack mates than dogs who were also raised in groups.

The study's authors say the findings suggest domestic dogs inherited their cooperative tendencies from their fierce wolf ancestors, rather than through their contact with human beings, a competing hypothesis.

Researchers trained the animals to use their snouts to press a "giving" symbol on a screen that delivered food to an adjacent enclosure, where a fellow animal may or may not be present.

Over multiple trials, wolves opted to deliver food to members of their own pack, knowing they would not get anything in return -- but lost interest if they were shown an unfamiliar wolf.

Dogs, on the other hand, showed no particular inclination to feed other dogs when no personal payoff was involved, regardless of whether they knew them or not.

"This study shows that domestication did not necessarily make dogs more prosocial," said lead author Rachel Dale.

"Rather, it seems that tolerance and generosity towards group members help to produce high levels of cooperation, as seen in wolves."

But don't write off your pooch just yet. The authors cautioned against applying the results of an experiment carried out on pack dogs to pet dogs, who have been found to have prosocial tendencies in past studies. 

The researchers believe those behaviors could be the result of training or encouragement, and say more research is needed to determine what accounts for the differences.

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Wire fox terrier wins top prize at Westminster dog show in New York

NEW YORK -- A wire fox terrier won "Best in Show" at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York on Tuesday, emerging as the top dog among nearly 3,000 barking, tail-wagging competitors.

The animal, named King, captured the most coveted prize at the two-day event at Madison Square Garden, besting challengers from all 50 U.S. states and 14 countries. The competition drew 2,800 dogs from 203 breeds and varieties.

"Tonight is ... I can't even describe it," said an emotional Gabriel Rangel, King's handler, on the floor of Madison Square Garden.

"After you win this magnificent show there's really nothing else to win. He should be running around in a field of grass," Rangel said moments after King won the terrier group and claimed the top trophy over finalists from five other groups.

King became the 15th wire fox terrier to win the prestigious title with his handler, Gabriel Rangel of California, scoring his third win for Best in Show.

There were six finalist pedigree dogs competing instead of the usual seven because the winner of the non-sporting canine group, a schipperke, was ruled ineligible before the "Best in Show" competition began.

Colton, a six-year-old member of the Belgian breed, was "excused" because of ownership eligibility requirements set by the American Kennel Club, competition officials said.

"These types of things happen at dog shows and the rules are such to maintain the integrity of the sport," they said in a statement.

That left six winners of the hounds, toys, herding, working, sporting and terrier categories to compete for "Best in Show."

Besides Colton, the four selected on Monday were a longhaired dachshund named Burns who won the hound group; a Havanese named Bono who topped the toy group and a bouvier des Flandres named Baby Lars who led the herding group.

Judges picked the remaining three finalists on Tuesday before the main event. A Sussex spaniel named Bean won the sporting group, a boxer called Wilma clinched the working group and a wire named King won the terrier group.

The Westminster Kennel Club's show, in its 143rd year, is the second oldest U.S. sporting event, behind only the Kentucky Derby horse race.

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Sony to release AI-infused robotic puppies in the US

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sony on Thursday announced that its Aibo robotic dogs infused with artificial intelligence will be unleashed on the US market by the year-end holiday season, with a price tag of $2,899.

The sixth-generation mechanical pup combines robotics with image sensors and artificial intelligence, enabling it to learn behaviors and recognize faces, according to the Japanese consumer electronics giant.

Aibo robot personalities develop based on interactions with people, giving each a unique character depending on its human companions, Sony said.

"This is truly a one-of-a-kind product designed to connect with its owners on an emotional level," Sony Electronics North America president Mike Fasulo said in a release.

Similar to real-life dogs, Aibo can learn tricks and will seek out owners, reacting to words of praise or scratches on the head, according to Sony. Aibo will also play with toys, which Sony will sell you.

Unlike real-life dogs, Aibo has an application owners can use to adjust system settings or add new tricks, and can connect to the internet cloud to store memories.

Aibo owners will also be able to check on internet-linked canine companions while away from home, glimpsing life through their robotic eyes, according to Sony.

Sony will begin taking US orders for "First Litter Edition" Aibo next month, with deliveries promised by the holiday season.

Aibo became available in Japan early this year, more than a decade after it culled earlier models from its product line.

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Dogs help children read in Lithuania library

Mona, a black flat-coated retriever, listens intently to eight-year-old Urte as she reads aloud from a children's book while they sit on a red pillow in Lithuania's grand national library in Vilnius.

Mona and her side-kick, a golden retriever named Gongas, are therapy dogs trained to give struggling young readers the positive attention and confidence boost that teachers sometimes fail to provide.

"While reading to a dog a kid isn't stressed; he's relaxed because nobody will point out his mistakes or tell him to re-read a passage," programme coordinator Viktorija Pukenaite told AFP.

Unlike traditional lessons in schools where teachers are in charge, children are in full control of the 15-minute reading therapy sessions with the dogs, which are carefully selected using special tests.

Several dozen children aged four to 12 attend dog reading therapy courses each week in Lithuania.

The eurozone state of 2.8 million people launched the courses last year as a novel way of maintaining its 100-percent literacy rate for citizens over 15 years of age.

"For kids, the most important thing is that they get encouragement rather than evaluation," said Rasa Kardaite Velyviene, a psychologist who is in charge of Mona.

"Kids develop a relationship with a dog -- they can greet a dog, pat or cuddle him if they begin to struggle while reading," she added.

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Gerald Anderson's foundation to train therapy dogs

MANILA -- Actor Gerald Anderson on Wednesday shared that his own foundation, which aims to save lives by training dogs for search and rescue operations, has branched out to training therapy dogs as well.

In an interview on "Umagang Kay Ganda," the actor announced that the Gerald Anderson Foundation Inc., which was launched last March, has a new The Angel Dog Program.

"Lumaki na po yung foundation," he said. "We are training dogs ng basic obedience, tricks, tapos dadalhin namin sa hospital para bisitahin ang mga bata, mga cancer patient."

Anderson created the foundation after his experience during typhoon Ondoy in 2009, when he braved the floods to save people in need.

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Australia's surfing dogs chase waves, not cats

SYDNEY - An Australian dog trainer and former surfing champion is using the discipline of surfing as a way of teaching owners to build healthy relationships with man's best friend.

On sunny morning on the outskirts of Sydney, Chris de Aboitiz heads out on the surf on his stand-up paddle board, joined by Rama and Millie, two rescue dogs who perform tricks, jumping on their owners shoulders and back as he rides the waves.

The Sunshine Coast dog trainer, who is a former world tandem surfing champion, has been hitting the waves with his dogs for around ten years and has since taken to using it as a way to teach people to understand their dogs.

"Surfing is not just about training dogs, it is about understanding them and their behavior," said Aboitiz.

"When you are surfing with the dogs they are allowed to look around but they have to sit on the board and not move, or we fall off and get wet," he said. "Training dogs for everyday life is the same."

Aboitiz travels up and down the Australian east coast with his four dogs, all rescued from shelters, using this unique method to teach owners and encourage them to take a more disciplined approach with their pets.

"So many dogs are given away because people don't have control, their dog turns from an asset to a liability. The ultimate result is to have less dogs euthanised," said Aboitiz.

Aboitiz said he has had a positive response from dog owners, some of whom had taken to the waves with him, while others have embraced his training but stuck to land.

"People make a lot of mistakes in training their dogs, who end up being dominant over them. Training the dog is the easy part, you also need to train the owner," he added.

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Pet owners dress up dogs for Halloween

MANILA -- From the spooky to the adorable, pet owners and their furry companions dressed up for an annual Halloween pet show on Saturday.

Some participants donned matching costumes with their pets, from bridal gowns to vampires and goblins. Others took a unique approach and dressed their pets as their favorite dish or accessory.

Christina Jose, one of the pet show's participants, said it took weeks to prepare their matching angel warrior costumes, but the effort was worth it.

"This is important for both of us because this is the perfect time to bond with each other and with other dogs, as well as with our friends who liked attending these events," she said.

Michael Villegas, who made his dog's costume out of recycled materials, said the show can be about more than just Halloween.

"This can be a campaign for the environment because we can promote saving nature or the earth by showing that these costumes are made from recycled materials that you can find anywhere," he said.

Megaworld Lifestyle Malls senior vice president and show organizer, Tefel Pesigan-Valentino, said the annual Halloween pet show aimed to strengthen bonds between owners and their pets as well as increasing awareness of animal rights.

The Philippine Animal Welfare Society said it has documented at least 60 cases of animal cruelty in early 2015.

The Philippines has laws against torturing animals, which are punishable by imprisonment or a fine.

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Dogs bred for meat start new life in US

WASHINGTON - A dozen dogs originally destined for dinner tables in South Korea arrived in the Washington area Monday to be adopted as pets.

They were the first of a total of 23 dogs being imported into the United States this week as part of a campaign to combat the eating of dog meat in East Asia.

Washington-based Humane Society International (HSI) located the dogs at a farm in Ilsan, northwest of Seoul, where they were being bred specifically for human consumption.

The farmer -- who acknowledged a personal fondness for dogs -- agreed to give up the animals, accept an offer of compensation and grow blueberries instead, HSI director of companion animals Kelly O'Meara told AFP, as the mongrels settled into kennels at the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria, Virginia after a long flight from Seoul.

HSI has been working with local groups in China, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam to raise public awareness of the dog meat trade.

"But South Korea is unusual because it actually farms dogs to supply demand," O'Meara said, while other countries target feral dogs as food.

Every year, between 1.2 million and two million dogs are consumed in South Korea, she said, supplied by farms that number "at least in the hundreds."

O'Meara said it was the first time that dogs from South Korea intended for human consumption had been rescued and brought into the United States, where a brisk demand for adopted dogs and cats is met by a thriving network of animal rescue groups and shelters.

All 23 South Korean dogs -- the second batch is due to arrive Tuesday -- will undergo veterinarian checks in Alexandria, before being distributed among five other shelters in the Mid-Atlantic states for adoption.

"By helping these 23 dogs, we'll be helping a lot of other dogs in South Korea" by raising public awareness of the dog meat trade, said Megan Webb, executive director of the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria, which finds homes for about 1,000 dogs a year.

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