Addictive-like behavioural traits in pet dogs with extreme motivation for toys

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-18636-0

by wallflower • 9 months ago

173 138 9 months ago

If there's a frisbee or ball in sight, my female border collie won't even attend to basic bodily needs. And she'll chase the object while she's in pain and exhausted or shivering with cold and not notice. She has lupoid onychodystrophy which causes her nails to come in deformed and split and painful and she'll still obsess on some running play/task while she's got bleeding paws and can barely walk. An an owner we have to intervene to remove the object of obsession and force disengagement.

This is a product of centuries of breeding to focus on a task and enjoy the task above all else.

iancmceachern• 9 months ago

Exactly, we made them this way

captainclam• 9 months ago

The two dogs I know that share this behavior are border collies.

dwd2• 9 months ago

Have a non-working line border collie, and he has had zero interest in chasing a ball his whole life. All he ever wanted to do was run or chase birds. He failed all his training, didn't even get through puppy preschool as he's not that food motivated either.

Every cattle dog I have known has been ball-obsessed.

librasteve• 9 months ago

my sprollie is the same (half nap collie) … he is 100% ball obsessed

tsol• 9 months ago

I wonder if autism is a similar kind of selection process. They are people selected by nature to be obsessed about different things, but this could be incredibly fruitful if you end up focused on the right thing. Of course in this situation we have no control over the selection process, it's a product of living in a world that's difficult to

AbortedLaunch• 9 months ago

You may find the recently published article “A General Principle of Neuronal Evolution Reveals a Human-Accelerated Neuron Type Potentially Underlying the High Prevalence of Autism in Humans” interesting.

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/9/msaf189/8245036

namanyayg• 9 months ago

Avoiding spoilers, Peter Watts' works have parts which show what happens when this idea is taken to its logical extreme.

gigatree2• 9 months ago

It’s kind of funny how the idea of behavior being a result of breeding goes out the window when it comes to pitbulls. Retrievers naturally retrieve, collies naturally herd, but when a murder-canine eats a family it’s all “oh it could have been any breed”.

testdelacc1• 9 months ago

It’s just wokery innit. Can’t even train dogs to murder children nowadays because the woke brigade will cancel you.

micromacrofoot2• 9 months ago

it's more nuanced - "pitbull" isn't a single breed, it's a category

none of the dogs in the category were bred to kill indiscriminately - they were expected to obey handlers just like any other working breed

and there are a number of fighting breeds outside of the category as well

grayhatter• 9 months ago

Lol, murder canine huh? ok, I'll take the bait. Because I'm pretty sure you don't mean a malinois.

Because it could be any breed. There are more significant differences between individual dogs within a breed than between different breeds. Cattle dogs have a reputation for being asocial and "bittey", especially towards ankles, mine would "never" because they have been taught and socialized correctly. Would it be easier to teach him to bite ankles then the average dog? Yes, because hearding breeds have stronger prey drives than companions breeds. But I could teach a retriever to herd too. People with animals to heard buy hearding breeds because they want to herd, will every individual dog from a hearding breed be a good herding dog? No same with service animals, many wash out. Now here's the rub, and why everyone paying attention says it's not about the breed... Antisocial people buy a breed because they want it's reported antisocial characteristics. These people don't train their dog, and.... it's a dog! It's natural instincts are more violent, and it's stronger and better at inflicting injury, dogs hunt.

I suspect you're applying reason incorrectly here because you have some preexisting bias against some dogs in a shape you have an aversion to. Small dogs are much more likely to bite and cause injuries, but you don't care about them as much do you?

Lets try vehicles instead. someone gets drunk, and run over a kid on a motorcycle, They probably don't die right? Someone else gets drunk and runs over a kid in a range rover. They probably do die right? Is it the vehicle? Or is the real problem the person operating the vehicle? Range rovers are the problem here right? No?

Are some breeds stronger and more able to cause harm? Yes, but you don't blame the wood chipper when someone loses their arm in it. You equally don't blame the law mower even though in only takes a finger instead of an arm.

All dogs are pack animals, (just like humans). If a golden retriever owned by a violent person is more dangerous than rottweiler owned by kind loving person, why are you still blaming the breed of the dog instead of the pack it was raised by?

superkuh3• 9 months ago

Behavioural addictions, characterised by compulsive engagement in rewarding activities despite adverse consequences in the long term, are more heterogeneous and less well-understood than substance addictions

Indeed. Mostly because every study on "behavioral addictions" is published in third tier journals or is a negative result in real journals. It's something that doesn't actually exist in mammals and it's current popularity is mostly from profit seeking scams for rehabilitation "clinics" preying on the 'screens are addictive' meme burning through current parent populations.

And despite the headlines suggesting otherwise, and the press likely running with those false headlines, *the actual study itself does not find any addictive behavior*. A null result.

Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and humans affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from conclusively characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting addictive behaviour, given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria. It is important to be cautious when pathologising behaviour, especially given that even in humans, addictive behaviours are still difficult to define and measure.

stirfish• 9 months ago

It's something that doesn't actually exist in mammals and it's current popularity is mostly from profit seeking scams for rehabilitation "clinics" preying on the 'screens are addictive' meme burning through current parent populations.

What about gambling, eating, or shopping?

superkuh3• 9 months ago

Gambling is not an addiction. It is "gambling disorder" and it was grandfathered into the DSM. It is explicitly not an addiction medically. Eating and shopping are two great examples not erronously grandfathered in, which committees repeated find are not addiction, but which those scammers love to profit off of.

croemer• 9 months ago

I'm shocked to see an informal survey based study (which will just confirm the owners pre-existing biases and opinions) being published in Nature of all things.

It's not "Nature", it's "Scientific Reports" with impact factor of only 3.8 vs 48 of "Nature".

Sure the publisher is "Springer Nature", and the domain is "nature.com" but that doesn't make the journal "Nature".

quotemstr3• 9 months ago

You're right. That's it. I'm going to make a browser extension that'll examine any paper I'm reading and color the address bar according to the impact factor of the journal in which it appears and the h-indexes of the authors.

kjkjadksj2• 9 months ago

A lot of good work is published in scientific reports.

unkulunkulu• 9 months ago

can you provide more context for this claim? my intuition and experience tells me the opposite.

what is the definition here? are impulsive avoidance copings like playing a video game instead of doing the hard work of addressing the worries/planned hard activities not a “video game addiction”?

and if we are talking physical withdrawal, then how should we call the same aspect of nicotine/alcohol addiction mechanics?

qnleigh• 9 months ago

given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria

The quote you cite doesn't support your claim. If there is no established criteria, then no amount of evidence will establish the link. But absent a rigorous definition, they are still giving evidence for a qualitative similarity between human addiction and the observed animal behavior. That's not a null result.

dvfjsdhgfv• 9 months ago

Well, my fellow CBT practitioners would disagree.

There are things you don't do but you understand not doing them is hurting you, so you decide to follow CBT (for example - there are other ways, but CBT has decent efficiency although it's expensive). They don't really need to be classified disorders or fobias.

Similarly, there are things you do and you realize not doing them would be beneficial to you. So you try to stop them and you realize it's hard. Again, you can use CBT or another method (or even medication in some cases). Whether you classify these things as "behavioral addictions" or use another term is secondary, the phenomenon itself is very real and I find it baffling anyone would dispute that.

vintermann2• 9 months ago

Rational choice theory has problems explaining "weak will", why we do things we don't want, or don't do things we want.

What's self-evident to you (and me) to some people gets in the way of a neat description of society.

delichon• 9 months ago

  Perhaps not surprising, working breeds – many of which are known to have been artificially selected for high toy or predatory motivation – were overrepresented in the sample.

This is the vibe I get from my golden retriever. Chasing the tennis ball is more than play, it's a justification for life, her contribution to the pack. Actually eating food has a higher priority than chasing the ball, but not much else does. When I got her I thought that the "retriever" part was optional but it turns out to be obligate. As in I'm obligated to throw the damn ball.

hippo222• 9 months ago

Watching a dog that likes playing fetch is cathartic. I truly wish I had that level of purpose and fulfillment in my life.

Natsu• 9 months ago

No take, only throw.

shpx• 9 months ago

Dog breeds are not real animals, they're some sort of half-artificial thing created by imperfectly writing some people's desire into another species's genetic code.

If you make an artificial thing that really wants to do some specific thing, like a computer endlessly printing "hello world" millions of times a second, it's not surprising to see it do the thing it was created to do. I wouldn't say the computer "wants" to print hello world, so I don't see the dog as doing what it truly wants to do if it's a genetic predisposition human breeders forced into it. I see the expression of a society of dog breeders and people's idea of a game called "fetch" which was relatively easy to transition a species towards step-by-step using artificial selection.

gwbas1c• 9 months ago

As in I'm obligated to throw the damn ball.

As opposed to my Newfoundland that will tease me with the ball and then I'm obligated to chase her until she wears out, I catch her, or I bribe her with a treat.

turkey99• 9 months ago

I’m hoping this is a puppy trait. Thats what my one year old golden-doodle does

HankB99• 9 months ago

Our kids have a Rottweiler that loves to chase a ball, Bring it back and then dare us to try to take it away from her. She can drop if convinced. Or I have a second ball that is more interesting, causing her to drop the other ball. She can hold two balls in her mouth so I have to wait for her to drop the first ball before I throw.

She also has a large (about 1 food diameter) ball that can't possibly fit in her mouth and I can kick that at which point she'll drop the little ball and try to get the big one in her mouth.

ivape2• 9 months ago

The dog is not reflecting on its true nature. If that is true, then it's possible there are many beings, including us, who are not reflecting on their true nature. It shows the meditative power a human actually has. For example, if a parent actually sits down and realizes they'd die for their child no matter what, it would sort of be like the dog realizing how far it would go for a tennis ball. Only a human being can reflect and change, the dog cannot (it's one of the reasons humans fall in love with dogs, they realize the thing is utterly innocent).

qbit42• 9 months ago

Is this falsifiable? I would be hesitant to claim that this is unique to humans. I'd probably agree with dogs, but the line is much blurrier with primates, for example.

1oooqooq• 9 months ago

like serfs being susceptible to doom scrolling

analog8374• 9 months ago

Or progression fantasy fiction.

Mmmmmmmmmm! Sweet sweet progress!!!

hinkley3• 9 months ago

There’s some documentation out there suggesting the original Labrador retrievers had food obsession as a trait in common with bidability, which is why more than half of them end up chonky. Not all have the gene but odds are high.

There’s a guy who trawls dog rescues looking for retrievers who are toy obsessed and then trains them to hunt truffles. He reasons you can’t reward them with food for finding even tastier food, so you have to train them with ball time as a reward/distraction when they find a trove.

bell-cot• 9 months ago

From a dog's PoV, are truffles actually tastier than high quality dog treats?

sqircles• 9 months ago

Labs in general are notorious for having insane food drive to the point where when you run into one that does not, they're certainly an exception. All dogs in general have food drive, as it is a necessity to live, but they're given basically unlimited access to it which diminishes it's value in their psyche.

Once you pull that prey drive out of a working dog and associate it with something such as a ball, there's no greater satisfaction this planet than doing the thing for that animal. It usually works better as a reward for what we're doing, is more instant, but also it can be deadly for a dog to eat food when they're at working-level activity.

echelon_musk2• 9 months ago

bidability

Huh?

brandall10• 9 months ago

I grew up with a cocker spaniel obsessed with tennis balls to the point of covering his food with them and letting it rot. Looking into his eyes conveyed no emotion and he didn't seem to care much for affection. He was a tennis ball tracking machine.

There was nothing you could do to satiate his desire. If you gave in to a catch session, you could throw it 100 times, he would start coughing/convulsing from exhaustion, yet still drop a ball at your feet begging you to throw it. You could probably have killed him with it.

If no one was playing catch with him he would spend hours scouring the neighborhood for balls hidden in bushes. At one point I believe he had over 20 balls piling up in various places in our backyard. We would regularly take his balls away so he only had a couple, but more would magically appear.

We did have a little fun with this. My dad would use him as a tennis practice 'partner'. And we built a tennis ball cannon powered by M80s (note: this was mid-80s in the SFV when/where things like bottle rockets and blow guns were legal).

I've had to put down quite a few animals, and he was the only one were there was no sadness, only relief when his time came, esp. after 15 long years of having to pander to this obsessive behavior.

My belief is animals experience something similar to autism, and he was as far along the spectrum as possible, to the point where the only thing that defined him was his working instinct. That million years of mind-meld evolution w/ humans? Simply not there.

shermantanktop• 9 months ago

A friend had a dog a bit like this. She really liked the dog…but I did not understand how what the human side was getting out of the relationship. The dog would probably have been equally happy living with a ball throwing machine.

arethuza3• 9 months ago

Our samoyed is obsessed, if that is the right word, with being sociable - with people but also other dogs (and the occasional cat or cow). He likes balls but they are a means to an end - getting interaction from me or from other dogs.

Edit: He gets plenty time with other people and dogs - not its not like he is starved for attention.

big_paps• 9 months ago

This is such a funny write .. thank you!

bitwize• 9 months ago

No take. Only throw.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw

jancsika• 9 months ago

As in I'm obligated to throw the damn ball.

Just imagining your retriever feeling obligated to sit patiently by your side as you contribute to the pack by deconstructing your life while staring lifelessly at a flashing screen.

squishy47• 9 months ago

i have a Lab/Staffie mix and he has insane retriever drive when we get the tennis ball launcher out. pupils dilate and nothing else matters, to the point that we had to ban launcher because he kept loosing his thumb claws from sliding on the grass when the ground is too hard. Before we banned it his muscles were massive, rippling shoulders etc. When we had his (non-tennis) balls removed he developed insane food drive, the vet said this was common, to the point he'll raid the kitchen at night if we don't lock it down. The boy is build to do 1 of 2 things, eat or fetch!

moritzwarhier• 9 months ago

I once stopped at a bar near a large train station in my hometown, next to a music club, alternative vibe etc.

Originally, I went there to pee after arriving from a long train commute.

Then I had a drink outside, it was a summer evening. And there was a group of people in the outside area of the bar with a dog, a tame Labrador/Golden-Retriever-like dog.

It was a good friendly dog, but it had a toy.

I got to know the dog because I threw the toy after the dog came to my table and the owners were bored.

10 minutes later, I felt increasingly stressed by the dog "forcing" me to throw the toy again and again :D

And that outside area was near, while not directly next to, a large road, which also was my final straw to get rid of my new companion before I left – the dog was running after a rolling, misthrown toy and almost ran into a cyclist on a smaller, non-car pathway next to the seatings.

I was completely overwhelmed at first by that dog's firm insistence on me throwing that toy over and over, after I had done it one time.

tstrimple• 9 months ago

I don't think I want another dog again after our Akita died. She was such a good pup. Big dog which does well living in smaller areas. Is defensive of family, but isn't necessarily over aggressive with human strangers. She was so quiet. The only time she barked you knew it was time to pay attention. I haven't owned many dogs so I don't know the degree to which personality is determined by individual or breed. But everything about our Kira was what I loved in dogs. And everything I loved about her is what stops me from getting another one. I just don't think they could live up to her example. And I cannot abide a noisy dog.

uslic001• 9 months ago

Same thing with our two Boykin Spaniels.

cs7022• 9 months ago

This research only confirms what many dog owners already know, but it still deserves an Ig Noble Prize.[a]

---

[a] https://improbable.com/ig/about-the-ig-nobel-prizes/

superkuh3• 9 months ago

It doesn't though. Only the headline implies that. If you read the discussion you find the authors of this study do not claim any addictive behaviors were found.

cs7022• 9 months ago

I disagree. The OP states in the first sentence of its "Conclusion" section:

To conclude, there appear to be parallels between excessive toy motivation in dogs and behavioural addictions in humans.

Understandably, however, the must authors qualify and frame their conclusion, so later on they add:

Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and humans affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from conclusively characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting addictive behaviour, given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria.

herghost• 9 months ago

We've recently come to this conclusion with our Cockapoo. His mother was a working Cocker Spaniel.

When the weather is poor we have often tried to get shorter walks in dry spells but augment it with as much ball time as possible to make sure he's getting enough exercise (since he generally dislikes bad weather).

It's become apparent that there's no possibility of satiety through chasing the ball though. He will simply go forever, however tired he looks.

I joked that as a Labrador will seemingly eat itself sick, a Spaniel will run itself lame.

JimBlackwood• 9 months ago

For a breed that is partly bred to flush out game, throwing a ball is incredibly adrenaline inducing and will not tire them out - they’ll just keep going till they fall down. Working cockers are one of the breeds susceptible to exercise induced collapse, albeit rare it shows how insanely motivated they are.

To get them tired, you need to chill them out and have them use their brain and/or nose.

Maybe try some sniffing games, sit down during the walk and have them just take in the environment, do some obedience that makes them think, or throw their food in the grass and have them figure it out.

callamdelaney2• 9 months ago

We have a springer, cocker and a sprocker. We knew that addiction to these things were a problem and so we didn’t allow it to develop. I do think that people who are constantly throwing balls, especially with a wanger, are idiots.

squidsoup• 9 months ago

Where are you that you refer to a ball thrower as a “wanger”? I suspect anyone from the common wealth or the UK would find this quite amusing.

_joel• 9 months ago

I must be a bad person as my dog loves his balls being thrown in a wanger

mrlatinos• 9 months ago

You know your dogs' breeds were susceptible to enjoying fetch so you never played fetch with them. Ah yes those poor idiots who actually work their dogs for their bred purpose.

callamdelaney2• 9 months ago

They get to retrieve things but not constantly like I often see people doing. Eg throw ball with wanger [0], dog gets ball, person throws ball again ad infinitum. The constant thing is the key, we don’t let an unhealthy obsession develop is the point I'm making which looking back on my comment is pretty obvious.

Spaniels are all rounders in terms of their working - they’re as happy to flush, work ground or retrieve. 2/3 (and have done some light work) of ours are reasonably well trained but as mentioned they’re normally happier having a good sniff than picking up a tennis ball.

Probably living in the countryside that’s more interesting than chasing a plastic ball about all day.

On the topic of ad-infinitum ball throwing there are literally people automating this task [1] which I think is pretty terrible.

[0] https://amzn.eu/d/bOzRoXt [1] https://amzn.eu/d/b2dq3tC

WD-42• 9 months ago

Why do you keep getting them then?

hshdhdhehd4• 9 months ago

I think a springer just needs lots of exercise not necessary a ball?

hshdhdhehd4• 9 months ago

My dog like it but is not addicted. It's just part of play.

user____name• 9 months ago

One of my best friends has a toller (canadian duck retriever) that's a total ball junkie, it's all he seems to live for. I too often played fetch with him as a pup and now he goes completely loco any time I show up at their house. So I accidentally conditioned him to see me as mr playtime, oops. Nowadays I try to just play frisbee and tugging games whenever I'm over for some time. When a ball is in sight, the world just disappears.

jncfhnb3• 9 months ago

If you ever get a chance to see sled dogs in Alaska or wherever, holy shit do those dogs ever want to pull a sled. I’ve never seen an animal so fixated.

brap2• 9 months ago

What if you never trained them to pull, and they never observed that behavior? Would they still want to do it?

rini172• 9 months ago

It's pretty hard to avoid any situations where pulling is possible. Such as on leash. You usually have to intensely train working dogs not to pull on leash.

They would still fixate on other behaviors they are trained on. And if not trained and neglected, often have destructive behaviors.

jncfhnb3• 9 months ago

Just a guess but I would imagine the behavior is deeply instinctive by this point.

testing22321• 9 months ago

We got a purebred Aussie sheepdog (kelpie) that failed its tests at a year old. They were going to shoot her, so she became our family pet.

She was obsessed with rounding things up - cats, ducks, kids, you name it.

Part of her dna for sure.

AngryData• 9 months ago

I had a dog when I was younger that was from a dog sled line but was many generations removed from pulling sleds. She seemed to love to pull on stuff, ropes, leashes, toys, people holding her, or whatever else, so we bought a dog harness and attached a garden wagon to her a few years in. And she was absolutely obsessed with pulling it around and seemed like she would have happily run herself to death pulling it around if we let her. The harder you tried to hold the wagon, the harder she would pull and the more fun she seemed to be having.

It is just anecdotal, but I 100% believe there was nothing she found more entertaining and fun than to pull that wagon because of her genetics. There was no training involved, within seconds of hooking her up with a harness she just knew what she had to do.

froh• 9 months ago

there is a lovely book about them "born to pull"

Arech2• 9 months ago

My dog (Briard) isn't just addicted to play fetch with balls.. Since he knows that when another dog enters the dog park, the ball will be removed/hidden from him (to prevent the dogs clashing trying to get the ball), he becomes hostile to the dog entering the park, actively trying to prevent them from doing so! This happens only if we started to play with balls. If not, he'll be totally friendly... What an ass!

ajkjk2• 9 months ago

I read somewhere that domesticated dogs are to some degree bred to stay in their "childlike" state, so in a way they act like wolf puppies that never get older. Probably different breeds have different degrees of this. But anyway, I wonder if there is supposed to be some counterbalancing "maturity" or "responsibility" impulse that would cause them to decide not to do the thing, but since that has been bred out / disabled, they just run on impulse forever.

Incidentally I feel this way also: like I never fully grew up, and I easily regress to being trapped in a childlike state where I'll e.g. play video games all day. To snap out of it I have to "remember" to be an adult, like it's easily forgotten especially if my daily life doesn't ask me to have any serious responsibilities. maybe dogs don't have any responsibilities so they have no reason to stop playing.

croisillon• 9 months ago

you might be thinking of neoteny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#In_domestic_animals

ajkjk2• 9 months ago

aha, didn't know the name for it, thanks

Sharlin• 9 months ago

Indeed most domestic animals exhibit some degree of neoteny, or juvenile characteristics as adults, including humans ourselves. We’ve sort of domesticated ourselves.

spike021• 9 months ago

my shiba inu rarely plays with any of his toys these days. he's 4.5 years old. of course that breed is typically known as being more primitive, so i wonder if that can be attributed to it.

wewewedxfgdf• 9 months ago

This is a really fun 16 minute listen to how this precise dog behaviour is exploited to eradicate rats on Lord Howe Island.

They search specifically for dogs obsessed with ball chasing and turn them into rat hunting dogs.

There's funny bit where they talk about finding a dog that had learned how to use the tennis ball firing machine and spent all day chasing a tennis ball and putting it back in the machine which fires the tennis ball in a never ending loop.

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/dogs-help...

heikkilevanto• 9 months ago

Slightly off topic, but I once had a Siamese cat. I could not teach her to fetch a ball, but she could very well teach me to throw again. And it had to be a yellow foam ball - none of the other colors were of any interest.

arethuza3• 9 months ago

We used to have Burmese cats and they loved to play fetch.

tguvot2• 9 months ago

I have 2 standard poodles that come from working (hunting) lineage. After few throws of tennis ball they realize that game is rigged, and just go away, making me to go and retrieve the ball

emerongi• 9 months ago

My grandparents had a hunting dog. She did not care about "play-time" at all. On the other hand, she got excited when she heard "forest" or "rabbit". Had to be careful with those words.

I think when she wasn't in the forest, she was just waiting to go there again. Instead of ball, it was forest.

tguvot2• 9 months ago

well, mine are not hunting dogs. But when we go for a daily walks, they immediately start tracking "whatever" walked there before (living at the city border, surrounded by fields, we have a lot of animals strolling through streets)

kayo_20211030• 9 months ago

ffs. What does this study tell anyone about anything?

Behavioural addictions, characterised by compulsive engagement in rewarding activities despite adverse consequences in the long term, are more heterogeneous and less well-understood than substance addictions, and there is a relative lack of translational research.

Does that make sense to anyone?

"more heterogeneous" (trans: different)

"less well-understood: (trans: I have no idea, but I need to finish this paper)

"adverse consequences" (trans: Who knows? But, I surveyed pet-owners for their opinion, and cited some other source)

"relative lack of translational research" (trans: sounds good, whatever it means)

card_zero• 9 months ago

"Relating to the transfer of scientific knowledge into practical applications", apparently.

Dogs can mess themselves up for these rewards in various ways, and nobody much has worked out any useful facts about it yet.

... including us.

electroglyph• 9 months ago

i haven't seen any mention of lasers here, so i'll add my laser anecdote. I have a very active German shepherd rescue. I made the mistake of introducing him to the laser pointer which I used to exercise my previous dog, a doberman. Now he lives and breathes for laser. He nags me all day long. He sometimes sees laser dots where there aren't any. His appetite for laser can never be satiated, heh

dwd2• 9 months ago

Squeaky toys are our GSD's main play toys, even just seems to like carrying them around. Games of chase, tug-of-war or just as a way to annoyingly get your attention with squeaking.

The other weird obsession seems to be hunting related. I once attached a toiletry holder in the shower that uses a pump to create the suction. It made a popping sound when I removed it and the GSD came running over to find what made the noise. Even a year later she still gets in the shower to see if there's anything there, especially if I'm crawling around cleaning. Maybe thinking I'm looking for it as well.

guffins• 9 months ago

Sometimes known as “laser pointer syndrome.” It can drive dogs particularly crazy, and may also affect cats in the long term.

Xss33• 9 months ago

Studies show laser play actually makes dogs n cats stressed. They need to win to feel fulfilled. They cannot actually catch the laser, so they dont get fulfillment. It can cause a form of PTSD.

Xss33• 9 months ago

Just as an addendum, i looked into this after a few hours of laser play left my pup wandering around searching for it like she was paranoid, her mouth was agape, it was obvious she was worried, not looking to play.

When i found evidence supporting this view, that flew in the face of all i thought i knew about lasers n dogs, i realized how foolish i had been to think pup enjoyed it rather than it being unfulfilled prey drive and protection of the home drive.

xg15• 9 months ago

with dogs as the only non-human species so far that appears to develop addictive-like behaviours spontaneously without artificial induction

How did they reach the conclusion that dogs are the only species affected by this if they only investigated dogs?

This feels like confusing "absence of evidence" with "evidence of absence" - especially as they write it right after stating that there is a lack of research in the field.

fluoridation• 9 months ago

Did you miss the "so far"?

labrador2• 9 months ago

As a recovering addict/alcoholic, I completely "get" these dogs and think maybe if this idea spreads it could help non-addicts understand our obsessive/compulsive behavior without as much judgement.

throw-10-13• 9 months ago

Not sure if comparing human addicts to a dog is the win you think it is.

labrador2• 9 months ago

It's funny to me that you would say that because it tells me you've never been a desperate addict. You've never felt lower than a dog.

cristaloleg• 9 months ago

I like your username (especially in this thread)

(PS: I have black & yellow labs)

caturopath• 9 months ago

I'm struggling to understand what the result really is: it seems that some dogs at some point would rather play with a toy than eat or come play with their owner. That seems pretty normal. Is this really "addictive-like"? Why isn't it "really enjoy"?

yieldcrv• 9 months ago

play has remained somewhat of a mystery, being associated with no immediate adaptive function

because it releases dopamine and is not related to whether the animal or someone will crack or be cracked with viable offspring

evolution via natural selection doesn’t require every trait to have a meaning or purpose, why do intellectuals get it backwards with retroactive explanation

if the trait persists or is present after sexual maturity, then it doesn’t get weeded out by sex and has no purpose or adaptive explanation whatsoever

in this case, play releases dopamine. dopamine production is a guiding force for being with dopamine.

mammals get addicted. rats and humans react the same to the same reward experiments. dogs exhibit the same traits while being exempt from the experiments

ChaoPrayaWave• 9 months ago

Sometimes when I watch my border collie chase a ball, it really makes me reflect on humans too. We’re constantly scrolling through our phones, watching short videos, playing mobile games. In a way, it feels like we’re just throwing a ball for ourselves to chase again and again.

Addictive-like behavioural traits in pet dogs with extreme motivation for toys

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