Changes in emotional competences of drug offenders during dog-assisted group training (MTI)

Abstract

learn how to manipulate an apparatus to get food reward efficiently. The owners of 1 group of dogs (n 5 13) were asked to reinforce the looking behavior of their dogs by encouraging them verbally whereas owners of the other experimental group (n 5 12) did not encourage their dogs throughout the training session. After the training session, 2 tests were carried out. In Test 1 the apparatus was empty, whereas in Test 2 the apparatus stopped working after the dogs had obtained the first pieces of food reward. To investigate the gazing behavior of the dogs we measured the duration and direction of gazes. Although the latency to look at the owner was the same for both groups (ANOVA, F 5 2.72, P 5 0.106), we found that in both Test 1 (apparatus empty) and Test 2 (apparatus blocked) dogs that were encouraged during the training session tended to look for longer periods at their owners compared to dogs that were not encouraged (ANOVA, F 5 14.13, P 5 0.001). In Test 1 (apparatus empty), dogs of both experimental groups increased their looking time toward the door through which the experimenter had usually entered to refill the apparatus during the training session compared to Test 2 (apparatus blocked) (ANOVA, F 5 7.99, P 5 0.007). The results indicate that the former encouragement increases human-directed gazing behavior in dogs. However, even dogs that did not receive encouragement increased their looking time toward the owner to some extent when faced with a problem. Further, the results of Test 1 (apparatus empty) indicated that dogs associated the experimenter (i.e., the door where she usually entered) with the refilling of the empty apparatus.