The Vital Aspects of Bonding to Create Trust with "Startle-reflex Alert Training"
[Background: The concept of intellectual stimulation by handling puppies early and often - in experience was along the beneficial lines speculated about elsewhere on this site. The concept was well documented for human babies in the famous orphanage trials where some were cuddled and some “neglected”-as-usual. Experiences in kindergarten that showed pupils responded to their teachers’ expectations also seemed to validate the concept. Bovine experiences were likewise known to achieve trust-bonding with their adults and humans, and startle-alert integration.]
Internet reports, personal anecdotes, as well as documents and references on this site described deaf and blind dogs adapting their alternative senses for routine use to replace losses of ordinary inner-ear hearing and typical vision (seeing) abilities. The reports have three factors (a recipe?) in common:
1) Trust Bonding: Dog, pup or adult-rescues, received human attention and affection of such quality that the result for the dog was practically "total trust-bonding" with its human.
2) Startle-reflex training: Frequent touching and handling sensitization-training activated the dog-senses connected in the "Startle-reflex" alert suite, i.e. the sense abilities identified by S Coren[1] and possibly others he was unaware of.
3) Duration: items 1# and #2 were reportedly provided by their humans over a long time - such as perhaps one to two years, or longer.
Discussion:
Point 1) The published biological data indicated that the "auxiliary" senses used adaptively were simpler (possibly more primitive in evolutionary terms) and were probably evolutionary predecessors of the remarkably accurate pair [2] of eye-ball-retina mechanisms and the complex remarkably sensitive and versatile pair of inner-ear cochlea plus "turret" outer ear elements. Many less complex animals such as birds, snakes, snails, exist that survive with less accurate ways of sensing vibrations, than outer ears with inner-ear-cochlea, et al. Likewise many kinds of animals such as squid have simpler versions of sight-mechanisms and-or simple ways of detecting sound vibration in their environment.
Point 2) Because auxiliary vibration and thermal radiation detection processes described by Coren exist in ordinary puppies at birth, it is valuable to notice the dramatic growth events when their brains double or more in physical volume during the two or three days as their eyes begin to open, about nine days after they are born. Days later with gradual further growth in skull capacity their inner-ear hearing and their other ways of sensing vibrations (sound) become available. Many days later they learn to "fuse" signals from both eyes to get 3-D vision and fuse signals from their two ears to get stereo and directional detection ability.
Point 3) Based on numerous research reports of the recent decade: Deaf and blind dogs under certain conditions, both puppies and adult dogs receive stimuli (opportunity and necessity) that permit and encourage activation at higher than usual levels their ability to use auxiliary vibration detection by whiskers, touch, et al, and expanded sensitivity to signals from infra-red light sensors, etc. For new-borns, this probably occurred in the crucial period when neurons were being selected to live or die, according to whether they were proving useful in dealing with the neonate environment. Different neurons live / die-off in a born deaf or blind pup than in a hearing or seeing pup. That leaves brain-space for the neurons useful for the deaf or blind pup to form compensating neural networks. Research in the recent decade demonstrated that in birds, mice, etc new brain neuron-cells can be “born” during a lifetime, when needed. “Reorganizing” to change a brain’s use of sensory data has been conclusively reported; as Dr Strain indicated in 2004.
Point 4) In older adult dogs, "massive" adaptation in the brain of mental signals processing, shifting processing abilities from unused or unusable conventional inner-ear hearing and sight to other signal sources necessarily would require considerable time (perhaps approaching the time required for human babies to achieve full-fledged seeing and hearing capabilities?} Anyone who has originated complex computer code from principles of Physics probably would instantly agree about the need for considerable cut and try if a person must derive the "code" from personal experience and analysis of events.
Point 5) All of the auxiliary sense mechanisms mentioned by S. Coren existed provably with low sensitivity in many humans. Many were tested on me and on our deaf dog, successfully. Blind and deaf human friends also generally confirmed these observations.
Summary: All of the data points available were consistent with the observations reported in the US, Australia and the European Union of adaptive learning by deaf and blind dogs to use auxiliary mechanisms to partially compensate for total deafness and blindness, to monitor their environments, navigate, and survive.
Survival of any animal is served by activating non-stressing continuous operation of the startle-reflex-alert biology "software kit" which expedites the integration of signals from all or most available senses to facilitate survival. The process goes quicker in the neonate (puppy) than in the adult animal, but takes place in both all the same.
Please note: In mistreated dogs the integrative response probably can be derailed by massive immediate pain and other trauma and the needs of immediate survival. The most effective adaptation that we would then observe likely would be a self-protective (sometimes aggressive) one. This is not the same as when survival crucially depends on long-term adaptating as compared to an immediate urgent need of "fight and/flee" for survival to escape trauma – a fate all too many deaf or blind pups experience when people assume the pup is stubborn rather than understanding that s/he has a trait (seen as a handicap by many humans) that with our help and trust can be greatly modified for living with humans.
[1] S. Coren, “How Dogs Think”, 2004, Free Press
Internet reports, personal anecdotes, as well as documents and references on this site described deaf and blind dogs adapting their alternative senses for routine use to replace losses of ordinary inner-ear hearing and typical vision (seeing) abilities. The reports have three factors (a recipe?) in common:
1) Trust Bonding: Dog, pup or adult-rescues, received human attention and affection of such quality that the result for the dog was practically "total trust-bonding" with its human.
2) Startle-reflex training: Frequent touching and handling sensitization-training activated the dog-senses connected in the "Startle-reflex" alert suite, i.e. the sense abilities identified by S Coren[1] and possibly others he was unaware of.
3) Duration: items 1# and #2 were reportedly provided by their humans over a long time - such as perhaps one to two years, or longer.
Discussion:
Point 1) The published biological data indicated that the "auxiliary" senses used adaptively were simpler (possibly more primitive in evolutionary terms) and were probably evolutionary predecessors of the remarkably accurate pair [2] of eye-ball-retina mechanisms and the complex remarkably sensitive and versatile pair of inner-ear cochlea plus "turret" outer ear elements. Many less complex animals such as birds, snakes, snails, exist that survive with less accurate ways of sensing vibrations, than outer ears with inner-ear-cochlea, et al. Likewise many kinds of animals such as squid have simpler versions of sight-mechanisms and-or simple ways of detecting sound vibration in their environment.
Point 2) Because auxiliary vibration and thermal radiation detection processes described by Coren exist in ordinary puppies at birth, it is valuable to notice the dramatic growth events when their brains double or more in physical volume during the two or three days as their eyes begin to open, about nine days after they are born. Days later with gradual further growth in skull capacity their inner-ear hearing and their other ways of sensing vibrations (sound) become available. Many days later they learn to "fuse" signals from both eyes to get 3-D vision and fuse signals from their two ears to get stereo and directional detection ability.
Point 3) Based on numerous research reports of the recent decade: Deaf and blind dogs under certain conditions, both puppies and adult dogs receive stimuli (opportunity and necessity) that permit and encourage activation at higher than usual levels their ability to use auxiliary vibration detection by whiskers, touch, et al, and expanded sensitivity to signals from infra-red light sensors, etc. For new-borns, this probably occurred in the crucial period when neurons were being selected to live or die, according to whether they were proving useful in dealing with the neonate environment. Different neurons live / die-off in a born deaf or blind pup than in a hearing or seeing pup. That leaves brain-space for the neurons useful for the deaf or blind pup to form compensating neural networks. Research in the recent decade demonstrated that in birds, mice, etc new brain neuron-cells can be “born” during a lifetime, when needed. “Reorganizing” to change a brain’s use of sensory data has been conclusively reported; as Dr Strain indicated in 2004.
Point 4) In older adult dogs, "massive" adaptation in the brain of mental signals processing, shifting processing abilities from unused or unusable conventional inner-ear hearing and sight to other signal sources necessarily would require considerable time (perhaps approaching the time required for human babies to achieve full-fledged seeing and hearing capabilities?} Anyone who has originated complex computer code from principles of Physics probably would instantly agree about the need for considerable cut and try if a person must derive the "code" from personal experience and analysis of events.
Point 5) All of the auxiliary sense mechanisms mentioned by S. Coren existed provably with low sensitivity in many humans. Many were tested on me and on our deaf dog, successfully. Blind and deaf human friends also generally confirmed these observations.
Summary: All of the data points available were consistent with the observations reported in the US, Australia and the European Union of adaptive learning by deaf and blind dogs to use auxiliary mechanisms to partially compensate for total deafness and blindness, to monitor their environments, navigate, and survive.
Survival of any animal is served by activating non-stressing continuous operation of the startle-reflex-alert biology "software kit" which expedites the integration of signals from all or most available senses to facilitate survival. The process goes quicker in the neonate (puppy) than in the adult animal, but takes place in both all the same.
Please note: In mistreated dogs the integrative response probably can be derailed by massive immediate pain and other trauma and the needs of immediate survival. The most effective adaptation that we would then observe likely would be a self-protective (sometimes aggressive) one. This is not the same as when survival crucially depends on long-term adaptating as compared to an immediate urgent need of "fight and/flee" for survival to escape trauma – a fate all too many deaf or blind pups experience when people assume the pup is stubborn rather than understanding that s/he has a trait (seen as a handicap by many humans) that with our help and trust can be greatly modified for living with humans.
[1] S. Coren, “How Dogs Think”, 2004, Free Press