Test „Exchange“

Diary entry, 04.12.2011, guest

Pictures of the day (3 images)   

Students at the WSC are always helping wherever they are needed, but testing cognition is always the best and most interesting one. I want to describe an experiment which really fascinated me.
Our trainer Marleen asked me to join her in the testing room and record the test “exchange” on video. I didn’t have a clue what would happen next, but it was really strange when Marleen sat down in a corner behind a fence with lots of dry food, pieces of meat and sausage. The dog Meru was standing in front of her looking through the fence.
At the beginning, there was a short pre-test, in which the food preferences of the animal was testetd. This was very easy for Meru, because he could decide if he preferes this day meat or sausage, which Marleen presented him on 2 different plates.
After this, the really interesting part began. Marleen put a plate with two rails at the floor, and showed Meru a piece of dry food and a piece of meat on which he could sniffed. Then Marleen put the dryfood on one rail and pushed it under the grill to Meru, while she was still holding the meat in front of his nose. Meru just took a look at the dry food. After 2 seconds she put the meat on the other rail, but left it on her side of the fence. But Meru knew already what to do and pushed the rail with the dry food back to Marleen. Because of that she did the exchange and pushed the meat over to his side, so Meru could eat the piece of meat greedily. This was repeated many times, also with sausage instead of meat. Meru had, probably because of the tasty rewards, a lot of fun and I was incredibly fascinated of what our dogs can learn so easily.
Carina Hampl