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There's a glorious story of the first computationally designed personal mRNA cancer vaccine for a dog. A civilian with no cancer or biology training—but with AI experience—used LLMs to plan and help design a cancer vaccine for his dog. Come on! This is wonderful. It's doubly wonderful because of his persistence and the...

Reading: Dogs might have evolved to read your emotions, Nature news, 19 July 2024. Of interest to me to learn how on earth you measure “emotional contagion”. Contagion is when human distress is mirrored in dog stress, for example. It’s collected like this: The team recruited dog or pig owners around the world and had...

In why we speak and chimpanzees don’t, the argument goes that pointing and human language are related. In both cases, “a human is trying to communicate with another on the basis that the sign can be understood because of their common knowledge.” If you don’t have the mental machinery to get the intention behind...

Reading: Approach to canine paroxysmal dyskinesias by Posporis, Wyatt & Wessmann (2018), Companion Animal, 23, 276–281. Our dog, Breezy, has an observational diagnosis of PD. It’s a curious condition where very occasionally her hind legs stop working for a few minutes. And then she’s back to normal as if nothing...

After 14 years of adventures, we said goodbye to Skitters on the morning of Wed 11 Jan 2023. I set out to write about our dog, but it’s turned out as a post about her impact on me. Some I expected: getting outside, routine, exploring, dazzled by her instincts for things we can’t sense — which were mainly woodland...

Sharing our home with a noise phobic dog makes for a troubling bonfire night (or fortnight). Things have been improving for us, and this is a record of what we’ve tried. In order of importance: Build a cosy den as a safe hiding place. We draped blankets over a side table, put some cushions around and under, and let...

It’s now been a few years of using the Findster Duo pet tracker, and it’s time to share a couple of tips for making the most of it. They are: permanently attach the Findster to a collar; and start the app early in your walk. Recap There have been no huge changes since I first posted about Findster: It’s still two units:...

I’ve been using the Findster Duo GPS pet tracker for a couple of months. I thought I’d share my experience with it so far… What is it? The Duo consists of: a GPS unit that attaches to your dog’s collar (officially called the “Pet Module”, but I call it “The Yellow Thing”); a wireless unit you carry (“Guardian Module”,...

Cathy pointed out an episode of Horizon that was on the BBC recently, discussing the science behind the human/dog relationship: We have an extraordinary relationship with dogs—closer than with any other animal on the planet. But what makes the bond between us so special? Research into dogs is gaining momentum, and...