#sparkchamber 091321 — Dr. Ellen Furlong
Is there anyone who doesn’t wonder what dogs are thinking about? Yet, what do most of us ever do about it? Today’s #sparkchamber guest, dog scientist Dr. Ellen Furlong, has made it her life’s work! Director of the Illinois Wesleyan University Dog Scientists research group, she and her team explore questions related to how dogs think, how they make decisions, and what they think of human social partners.
“I have always loved dogs. My first word was my dog’s name [a crude approximation of Bridget]. Dogs brought me out of my very shy shell as a kid, and as a teen, I sat by the pool writing a list of questions that I had about how dogs think and why they behave the way they do. When I went to college, most psychologists studying animal behavior and cognition worked with primates — chimps and monkeys and such. And so I switched to primates. They were fascinating and I became so enchanted with that work that I continued working with primates for about a decade. However, when it came time to open my own research lab, I went back to the species that started it all for me. After all, I still had my list of questions, dogs will work for treats, and they very rarely bite your fingers off — unlike chimps!“
Ellen created and narrates a magnificent audiobook called Decoding Dogs: Inside the Canine Mind. She covers a wide range of subject matters in the most engaging and accessible ways. Like, on the topic of how smart dogs are, or which dog breed is the smartest, she refines the question … smartest at what? It’s all relative to context, and she refers to a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
For more, check out her interview on the podcast Dog Save the People, and follow along on Facebook.
1.] Where do ideas come from?
Ideas come from everywhere. As a scientist most of my ideas come from the scientific literature: the repository of scientific information that fellow scholars and I use to share our findings. However, that’s just the beginning, the spark of an idea. The best ideas I’ve had have come from conversations with others who are interested in the same general topic, but who come at the question from a different perspective. For example, I am a comparative psychologist, and my dad is a bioethicist. We had an idea for a class in which we take our two specialties — what animals know [me] and what that means about what we owe them when we keep them in captivity [him]. In that class we traveled with students and developed species appropriate toys / interactive activities for animals in captivity. It was the best class, because we were able to take the same problem of animal thought and bring different perspectives to it. Our students loved the course and we were able to do some real good for animals. In my lab, many of my best ideas come from reading articles with my students and then discussing them. In these discussions we often find 10 or 15 ideas for new studies and the problem then becomes how to choose between them!
2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
I am so curious about the mental lives of our best friends. I spend more hours a day with my dog than I do with other people [well, at least during the pandemic!]. I think I know what she’s thinking, feeling, wanting... but do I? How can I know that I’m providing her the best life possible? How can I know, truly, if she is happy? What if she is SO bored? How can I help her? Who am I to think that I know what's best for her? Understanding the great mystery of other minds — dog, chimpanzee, or even sometimes that of another human — is an itch I will never truly be able to scratch!
3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?
My day-to-day life is pretty much the same: I get up, do dog care, and hit the pavement for a run with some friends. My early morning runs help get me in a headspace for the day to come. Once I’ve had my post-run breakfast, I buckle down to work. Most of the day I spend reading, writing, or teaching. Though I admit an uncomfortably huge part of my day is spent on things like emails! On good days, I also meet with my students about research, whether we are in the planning, data collection, or data analysis phases. I love my research time: it helps answer those burning questions about other minds. The ones that keep me up at night! When I need a break, I will often head out for a dog walk; it’s not only good for my pup, but is amazingly great at clearing my head and helping me focus on the task at hand. I am a person who puts her nose to the grindstone and works hard, full speed ahead, most of the day. By the end of the day, I’m ready to kick back and a dog walk is also the perfect way to help me wind down.
4.] How do you know when you are done?
I’m never done! There’s always another question to answer, another quirky thing a dog does that makes we go: “WTF?,” another question a student asks that leaves me stumped. I finish projects when they are published, but the work itself, the endeavor of understanding other minds, is never going to be done.