Canine ergonomics: the science of working dogs

I was intrigued when I saw the title of this book and was quite looking forward to the prospect of reading about something new. The book stated that it presented the cutting edge of research in the field of canine ergonomics. I assumed before opening it that the book would discuss the Ergonomics implications of humans working and interacting with dogs. I assumed it might involve a consideration of manual handling issues relating to the physical handling of the dogs and/or their related paraphernalia such as travel cages. Alternatively, I thought it might cover areas such as the ‘fit’ of a dog’s harness/lead to the human hand or the methods available to assist a person to identify and observe their dog working in the dark, and so on. But no, this book was only concerned with the dog. One of the authors stated ‘it is a mistaken perspective to exclude non-human workers (i.e. dogs) from the definition of Ergonomics/Human Factors’. On the basis of that statement I was prepared to shift the focus of my attention to the dog and the Ergonomics factors associated with/ affecting the dogs. For instance, I expected a review of topics such as the ‘fit’ of a working harness to the dog, or the ‘fit’ of the dog within its transportation cage, or the range of load weights a dog might carry if fitted with a camera, survival kit or other objects. That didn’t happen. To give this book a chance as an ‘Ergonomics’ book I went back to review the basic definition of Ergonomics as found in widely available, well respected ‘Ergonomics’ textbooks. In simple terms I was reminded that Ergonomics is the science of fitting the job to the worker and the product to the user. I then started the book again. It spent a lot of time detailing what great achievements dogs had made in the past. It talked about the bond between humans and animals. It also reviewed a dog’s temperament and personality and made statements at intervals such as ‘well trained dogs are professional enough to not let boredom get in the way of their work’. There was a whole chapter on odours and odour detection. There was another on ‘conservation dogs’ which was also about odour detection but in this chapter the focus was on faeces, birds and animals rather than explosives. I was not persuaded by the attempts of a number of authors in the book to draw parallels between humans and dogs nor the efforts made to explain dog behaviour/actions/reactions in the same context as human responses. For instance, the book touches on the issue of ‘coping’ in the context of human performance and it describes three fundamental dimensions of coping: problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping and avoidance coping. The authors conclude that performance efficiency and personal well-being may depend on the coping strategy adopted by (human) operators. The authors feel that this coping perspective may help in diagnosing the underlying causes of performance failures in dogs. For instance, they suggest that performance problems in a dog that are related to its boredom may actually be due to the dog’s emotion-focused coping – the authors previously defined emotionfocused coping as being an attempt to deal with a stressor by changing one’s feelings or thoughts about it, for example by positive thinking or self-criticism. Having reached the end of the book I felt that the dogs should have been discussed independently of humans and without the repeated reference to humans which I felt was an attempt to give the dogs, and the book, credibility in the ‘Ergonomics’ world. I felt that the dogs were worthy of standalone discussion. However, in what context? The main thread running through the book relates to conditioning and behaviour modification – the subject matter of animal behaviour or animal psychology. A clue to the driving force behind the contents of the book was the heavy reliance in the reference sections on psychological and animal behaviour literature. In summary, the book considered and discussed the range of environments in which working dogs are employed and it is clear that the intention is to investigate the development of canine ‘expertise’. Although the authors consider that some dogs have a genetic predisposition to developing certain skills, they believe that most animals have refined these skills through training and reinforcement techniques. The authors identify that dominance status influences how a dog learns – dominant dogs will learn from an unfamiliar human demonstrator but fail to learn anything from an unfamiliar dog, subordinate dogs learn equally well from unfamiliar dogs and demonstrators. The authors examine temperament in dogs and conclude that personality differences in dogs are a good predictor of Ergonomics Vol. 55, No. 3, March 2012, 371–372