Imagine you are a dog. Your owner is trapped in a box and screaming for help. Are you aware of his despair? If so, can you free him? And what more could you want? That's what researchers Joshua Van Bourg and Clive Wynne wanted to know when they gave dogs the chance to save their owners.
Until recently, little research was done into dogs' interest in saving people, but that's what people have come to expect from their canine companions—a legend that dates back to Lassie. So, Van Bourg and Wynne, an ASU professor of psychology and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at ASU, set up an experiment to assess the propensity of 60 dogs to rescue their owners. None of the dogs had training in such an attempt.
The main test
In the main test, each owner was locked in a large box with a lightweight door that the dog could slide out of the way. The owners pretended to be upset by yelling 'help' or 'help me'.
The researchers coached the owners beforehand so that their cries for help sounded authentic. In addition, owners were not allowed to mention their dog's name, which would encourage the dog to act out of obedience and not concern for the welfare of its owner.
“About a third of the dogs rescued their ailing owner, which doesn't sound too impressive on its own, but is really impressive when you take a closer look,” said Van Bourg.
That's because two things are at stake here. One is the dogs' desire to help their owners, and the other is how well the dogs understood the nature of the help needed. Van Bourg and Wynne have investigated this factor in control tests – tests that were missing in previous studies.
The control tests
In one control test, when the dog watched a researcher drop food into the box, only 19 out of 60 dogs opened the box to get the food. More dogs save their owners than they fetch food.
“The key here is that without checking that every dog understands how to open the box, the proportion of dogs that rescued their owners vastly underestimates the proportion of dogs that wanted to rescue their owners,” said Van Bourg.
“The fact that two-thirds of the dogs didn't even open the box for food is a pretty strong indication that rescue requires more than motivation, there's something else involved, and that's the skill component,” said Van Bourg. “If you look at just those 19 dogs that showed us they could open the door during the food test, 84% of them saved their owners. So most dogs want to save you, but they need to know how.”
In another control test, Van Bourg and Wynne looked at what happened when the owner sat in the box and quietly read from a magazine. What they found was that 16 of the 60 dogs opened the box in the reading test than in the emergency test.
"Often it's not necessarily about rescue," said Van Bourg. “But that doesn't take away from how special dogs really are. Most dogs would enter a burning building because they can't resist being separated from their owners. How sweet is that? And if they know you're in trouble, well, that won't stop him.”
The fact that dogs opened the box more often in the emergency test than in the read-check test indicated that rescue could not be explained only by the dogs wanting to be near their owner.
What behavior did the dogs show?
The researchers also observed each dog's behavior during the three scenarios. They noted behaviors that may indicate stress, such as whining, walking, barking and yawning.
“During the emergency test, the dogs were much more stressed,” said Van Bourg. “When their owner was upset, they barked and howled more. In fact, there were eight dogs that howled, and they did during the emergency test. Only one other dog howled, and that was for food.”
In addition, the second and third attempts to open the box during the emergency test did not cause the dogs to be less stressed than during the first attempt. This was in contrast to the reading test, where dogs already exposed to the scenario experienced less stress on repeated tests.
“They have gotten used to it,” said Van Bourg. “Something about the owner's suffering counteracts this acclimation. There is something that calls out to the owner for help, which prevents the dogs from calming down with repeated exposure.”
Essentially, these individual behaviors are more evidence of "emotional contagion," the transmission of stress from the dog's owner, explains Van Bourg, or what people would call empathy.
“What's fascinating about this study,” Wynne said, “is that it shows that dogs really care about their people. Even without training, many dogs will try to rescue people who appear to be in distress — and if they fail, we can still see how upset they are. The results of the control tests indicate that dogs that don't rescue their people can't understand what to do – it's not that they don't care about their people.
