E57: 제시카 헤크만(Dr. Jessica Hekman) - "훌륭한 퍼포먼스견의 생물학"

We did that intro to nose work class with Stacey last session, and we both really enjoyed it. So Dash is the first puppy, actually, that I've ever raised. I always got rescue or shelter dogs before, but I have wanted to get into studying socialization in dogs. So I wanted to actually go through it with a dog before doing the research. And then my older dog is Jenny. She's an eight-year-old mixed breed. And I know just from talking to the shelter that she came from that she definitely has some lab in her. And we also did an ancestry test, which suggested some Samoyed. And she looks a lot like a tiny little golden-colored border collie. And she sort of acts like a herding breed. She's also super smart. She did not get enough socialization at a young age. I got her when she was about a year old. And at the time, she was terrified of all people and all new places. And she peed every time I touched her. So for the first week, she spent the first week huddled on a dog bed in terror. And so when I needed to take her outside to pee, I would crawl backwards towards her without making eye contact. And then without looking at her, I would have this leash. And she had a little tab permanently on a harness that she wore 24-7 exactly so I wouldn't have to touch her by the collar. And so I would sort of reach backwards without looking at her and attach the leash to her tab sort of by feel. And then we would go downstairs and outside. And so after a week of this, one day, I started crawling backwards towards her. And she sort of stood up and was like, I understand the system. And I can do it myself. And so I took her downstairs off leash. And she went outside, safely fenced yards. That was OK. She went outside. She came back in. And so that's Jenny. She's really scared of everything. But she's also really game to work through it. And she finds her own out-of-the-box solutions to it. And so most of the time that she's been with me, we've just worked on her confidence levels. But they actually are really improving now. And since I got Dash, she has also let me know that she is really interested in doing sports stuff too. So she also enjoys doing parkour. And we are doing nose work together as well. I don't think she's ever going to be able to go to a nose work trial. But that is fine with me. So those are my two dogs. You mentioned that Dash is the first puppy that you've raised. But you knew you wanted to do agility kind of when you got him. How did you get into dog sports? What kind of got you started there? Well, I was looking for something to do with my first dog, who was Jack. He was a golden retriever.

And so I was looking around for stuff. And we started doing agility. And I loved it. Jack liked it. I think he would have preferred to have done dock diving. I never found a good place to do that competitively. But we'd go to a local pond. And he would do these really impressive belly flops. So that was a good time. So we did agility together for like two or three years. And we got to the point of going to trials. He cued a few times. I was very impressed with myself and with him. But then I started veterinary school. And that was sort of that for any extracurricular activities all through vet school. And as you said, I did this dual degree program. So it was extra long as well. And by the time I got out, Jack was kind of elderly to do sports. I had Jenny at that point. And there weren't online classes, online options. And she couldn't do in-person stuff. So I was out of sports then for quite a while through vet school and through my PhD. So that was about 10 years. And I missed it horribly. And I would watch agility on YouTube and stuff. Jack lived to the very impressive old age of 16, which is great for a golden retriever. And after I lost him, I got dash. And I immediately got back into doing sports then. What about the positive tilt of things? Have you always been a positive trainer? If not, what kind of got you started on that journey? Yeah. So I had never trained a dog before when I got Jack. So I got him in 2003. So we went to what I guess you would call a balanced class for basic manners. It was not a terrible class. They didn't have us really abusing the dogs or anything. But we did use some leash popping, try to get good leash manners, stuff like that. And at the time, I thought that was entirely appropriate. When I first learned about clicker training, I remember saying, oh, but there should be consequences if a dog doesn't obey you. So that was sort of where I was then. And so then when we started Agility Together, that was 100% positive, of course. And that was when I first learned to actually use clicker training myself. That was when I started shaping. At the time, though, I was still open to sort of mild positive punishment in basic training. And so I think I was sort of gradually converted. I was going to a lot of seminars with positive trainers. I was reading books by people like McConnell and Sadeo. And eventually, I just started to realize I can have a better relationship with my dogs than I do. And I've realized since then how great the approach is, not just for dogs, but for interacting with people, right?

I use a lot less punishment in my relationships with friends and family than I used to. Although I find humans can be hard to reward. Because you can't pop M&Ms into everyone's mouth, right? And you can't just stop a conversation to have a friendly wrestle. So that's challenging. I'm still trying to figure that one out. We should just, as a community, decide it's perfectly appropriate to just hand out M&Ms left and right. I think that'd make them a better place. That would make my life so much easier. So obviously, kind of your day job now is heavily research-based. You started off in veterinary school. You started off in dog sports. So how did you end up in research specifically? Yeah, that was the long way around, for sure. I majored in medieval studies in college. And then by the end of college, I was already starting to feel like, you know, I really liked reading the stuff I was reading. I was reading Arthurian romances. It was great. But I was feeling like I was just following paths that other people had taken before. I had this one moment where I had some insight that I thought was fantastic, right? Age 20. I thought I was brilliant. I took this to my advisor. And he was like, oh, that's, you know, that was a great insight. It was exactly the same as this other person said, you know, 20 years ago. And so basically, he was saying like, oh, it was so good because it was exactly the same as something someone else did. And I was like, oh, man, I have to get out of this. And I have to do something new. I have to have some effect on the world. I didn't go into biology then. I got into computer programming. It was the mid-90s. We were in the middle of the dot-com boom. They were hiring warm bodies off the streets to do computer programming. And that was actually a fantastic career. I was an online publishing programmer for 10 years. I got to the point where I was working four days a week, three of them from home. I was making a lot more money than I'm making now. And that was great. It was great for having a dog, right? I was at home with my dog just all the time. But then I got bored. I started feeling, again, that I was having no real effect on the world. The dot-com crash happened. There was a lot less money in the industry. And that meant there was a lot less interesting work going on. And right around that time, I had gotten Jack, my first dog. And as a result, I had also gotten into retriever rescue. I was working with a local retriever rescue. And because of that, I started getting really interested in dog behavior. And I started reading everything I could get my hands on about it.

I started going on the seminar circuit. And so when I read The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell, I was like, oh, this is it. This is what I want to do. I want to learn all about this stuff. So I started looking into being a behaviorist. And just a quick spoiler alert, I did not actually end up being a behaviorist. But you can become a behaviorist either with a PhD or with a DVM. At the time, I knew research was really the interesting thing to me. So I tried that route. So it was 2005 at this point. And there were, at that time, no labs studying dog behavior. I talked to one professor trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And he said to me, well, you can study wolf behavior. But PhDs don't study dogs because they're domesticated. So they're not natural animals. Yeah, vets study dogs. But they just study them medically. They don't study their behavior. No one studies dog behavior. So I was like, well, what do I do? I guess I could go to vet school. And I wanted to be able to prescribe meds in my theoretical behavior practice. So I went to vet school to become a veterinary behaviorist. And at that point, I had to do all my basic sciences before I could even apply. As a medievalist turned computer programmer, I had zero sciences under my belt. So I had to do all of that. But yeah, it changed the way I saw the world, right? I had been this sort of, you know, arty medievalist turned computer nerd. And I was like, oh, now I'm starting to understand what goes on in bodies and brains. And so that was really interesting. So I got into vet school. I went to Tufts. And they had this combined DVM master's program, as you said. So I decided to do that because I thought it would give me some exposure to research. And so the way it worked is the first two years you do the vet program, you take a year off in the middle to do the master's. And then you go back and finish the vet program for two years. So my second year doing the veterinary program, I shadowed the veterinary behaviorist at Tufts. And so that was the first time that I got to sort of week after week see a behaviorist in action. And that was when I realized I totally did not want to do that with my life. I did not want to try to fix broken dogs. I thought it was much more effective to try to figure out why dogs break in the first place and try to stop that from happening. So and I still remember. So shortly after that, that was the end of my second year. And then after that, I did my research year. So I spent a whole year doing just doing research.

And I still remember this one day walking through the parking lot at Tufts on the way to my car and just thinking, wow, I love this stuff so much. I am not looking forward to going back to vet school. And it was like the skies opened. And I thought, I don't have to be a behaviorist. I can go get a PhD after all. And it sort of all came together. That was when I was sort of like, oh, I can go do research. And that will help with the prevention of behavior problems. And so the research world was really changing while I was in vet school. I said that there weren't any labs doing dog stuff when I started. But while I was in vet school, people started to realize that, in fact, dogs are totally fascinating models for research, right? They are natural animals. And the fact that they've evolved to live inside of civilization along with humans, that makes them more interesting, not less interesting. So after I finished vet school, I did do an internship. But then I did a PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working with Kukhekova Lab. And that lab was actually founded just the year before I came there. I was one of her first two grad students. So it's very much been a process of sort of like, when I'm ready to take my next step, things have appeared just barely in time for me to get there. So in that lab, we studied tame foxes, not dogs. But the tame foxes are a fantastic model for dogs and for domestication. It was a really great opportunity for me. I learned a lot. But I really wanted to get into studying the genetics of pet dogs. And again, while I was in that program, a few people were starting to do that. No one had quite figured out how to do it at a large scale. So when you're working not with lab animals, but with pets, and there's so much variety in their genetics and how they're raised, you need really, really large numbers of them. And that was really hard for anyone to figure out how to do. But just a couple years before I was ready to graduate, again, this new lab sprang up. We're doing exactly that. So that's where I am now, Carlson Lab at the Broad Institute. And it is spelled broad, but it's pronounced Broad just to be super tricky for people. So I like to say of Carlson Lab that it's like, thank God they're doing exactly what I thought I would have to do. So I don't have to organize this massive citizen science approach to studying pet dogs. So my new boss, Eleanor, has already done that. And I can just focus on the fun parts. So that's my crazy journey. It's probably a longer answer than you were looking for. No, it's interesting.

You've had a lot of interesting experiences and steps along the way. I'd love to dig a little more into what you're doing now. Do you mind sharing kind of a general overview? Yeah, sure. So Carlson Lab, where I am now, takes what we call a citizen science approach to studying pet dogs. So what we do is we collect a lot of dog behavior information and DNA directly from dog owners. And then we use that to try to find connections between differences in the dog's DNA and their different behavioral traits. The main project that has started out collecting that is called Darwin's Dogs. And you can go to darwinsdogs.org and participate. And I'm sure that all of you will do that. And you definitely should do that. So right now, we're very much in the data collection phase. So at the moment, I'm doing a lot of what turns out to be basically project management, making sure that all the stuff is coming together, that we're storing the data in a reasonable way, things like that. But I am already getting to do some data analysis. I actually, really excitingly, just last week, I got my hands on a bunch of about 15 years worth of pedigree and behavioral data from a school that breeds guide dogs. And I get them getting to analyze that in order to write a paper about it. And as the data is coming in from other projects, the plan is that I'll be one of the ones to analyze that as well. That's awesome. I know we've chatted a bit about having your boss on the podcast, too, to talk more about some of this stuff. But I'd love if you want to share just a couple of the projects you guys are working on. You mentioned darwinsdogs.org. I'll make sure that there's a link to that in the show notes for folks. Do you want to share any other stuff that listeners might be interested in? Yeah, for sure. We actually have a brand new project that's about to launch that FDSA folks can participate in. And it's actually even if you don't have a dog, although I know that pretty much everyone listening to this will have a dog. In my nosework class that I did with FDSA, I was bronze in the introductory nosework. And one person was at gold with a cat, which was fantastic. That's very cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was really neat. Anyway, so this new project is called MuttMix. And so that's at MuttMix.org. And the idea is that we will show you photos of a whole bunch of mixed breed dogs and you get to guess what is in their breed mix. And then we will collect guesses from a whole bunch of people.

And then we will email you back afterwards and tell you actually what was in their dogs, in those dogs, based on their genetic analyses that we did. So it should be a lot of fun for you. And then the data that we collect will be used to help us analyze sort of how good people are at looking at a dog and telling exactly what breed is in there, which just spoiler alert, it's really hard to do that just by looking. It turns out that Mutt's are really, really interesting. And very few people, if any, have really studied them. Most of the papers out there on dogs, particularly genetic papers, are about purebred dogs. So MuttMix.org. And it's starting in a few weeks. But if you go right now, you can give your email address and then we can let you know when it goes live. So that's MuttMix. And then the main project that I personally am working on is called the Working Dog Project. And that is we collect behavioral and genetic information from working dogs to find out the genetic influences that make dogs more or less good at their job or more or less able to succeed in training programs. So, for example, a guide dog school typically only has about half of the puppies that they train succeed at becoming guide dogs. And so, you know, why is that? Is there anything we can do to help them do better? And by the way, if it occurs to you that sports dogs are a lot like working dogs, that has also occurred to me. And I'm totally planning to expand this project to include sports dogs. So stay tuned about that. And if and when that happens, I will definitely be letting FDSA folks know. Awesome. I look forward to that. And I can't wait to see what some of the outcomes are of the research you guys are working on. It all sounds so interesting. Yeah, us too. It's sad that research is so slow because we would really like the answers yesterday. Fair enough. So I know that talking about kind of research, you did include a bunch of that in the webinar you just did, kind of the other end of things, on the biology of socialization. And then you've got another one coming up on April 12th on epigenetics. So do you want to explain what epigenetics is and then share a little bit about kind of what the webinar will focus on? Epigenetics is a way that organisms, including dogs, record the experiences that they've had actually in their DNA. So we used to think that the DNA sequence was something that never changes for a particular individual. And it turns out, though, that epigenetics is this mechanism that the cell has. It's like marks that you put on the DNA.

So the sequence itself doesn't change, but there's these marks that are added on it, sort of like a bookmark in a book so that the content of the book doesn't change. But you can put a bookmark in it to save a really important page that you want to come back to again and again. And animals can do this with their DNA to say, this is a bit that is really useful for the environment that I live in and I want to use this bit a whole lot. So this is a new way that we look at what makes up an animal's personality, not just their genetics, but also this way that animals have of recording their experiences actually in their DNA. And so in this webinar, I'll talk about what we know about epigenetics and I will specifically relate it to dogs. A lot of the epigenetics resources that are out there for people to read are obviously very human oriented. And so I will I'll focus very much on like, you know, what does this mean for your sports dog? So kind of to take that and ask what is probably a way too broad question. You know, what does go into a perfect performance dog from kind of that standpoint? Yeah, lots of things. So there's there's very complex effects, a lot of different genes interacting with each other in ways that are really hard to predict. But that's what my job is, is to try to find ways of predicting how that's going to work. And then equally complex, there's the effects of the dog's environment, of course. But the environment, we don't always think of it as it actually starts at conception in the uterus with the hormones that the mom passes on to the puppies and nutrition. And then the environment also includes the time in the nest with their litter mates, how the puppy is socialized, how the dog is trained. And so we can really only control a tiny portion of all of this. Right. Like the the sum of the socialization and the training. And I knew that theoretically when I got Dash as a puppy. But I have to admit, I still figured I'd be able to control a bit more than I could in the end. But yeah, so perfect performance dog. Are there common misconceptions that dog sports people tend to have about some of the science stuff? And if so, kind of what can you do to set the record straight? I think that a lot of people have this hope that science and particularly genetics will be able to give us really black and white answers to questions that we have. That maybe a dog who has behavioral issues or issues in the ring has some underlying genetic problem that just that can't be changed and that perhaps could be identified in a test.

That will maybe discover one gene for aggression and be able to breed it out. And of course, in real life, biology is incredibly complex and there are no there's no black and white. There's really just shades of gray. But of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot to learn and understand about how the body and brain work. That can be really enlightening when we're thinking about how to interact with our dogs. So I hope I hope that answers that question. No, that's actually an interesting way of thinking about it. And I think it's important to kind of note that even science doesn't have all the answers. Right. Like it's a complex topic. And to a certain extent, you do kind of need to wait in, you know, waist deep to really get a good understanding of all the bits and pieces. What do you think about for the future? Where do you think the future of some of this stuff will will lead us? And what subjects are there out there that you hope that maybe science can kind of find the answers to? Personally, I'm really hoping we're going to find ways of improving how we breed dogs. So there are genomic technologies that could be useful to help the process of selecting dogs to breed in order to produce puppies with the traits that we want. And in fact, this is done as a matter of course in the cattle industry. There's the technology is there. It's made a massive difference in the ability of the cattle industry to select for traits like milk production. And what we need to make it happen for dogs is just for the community to get together and to pool genetic and behavioral data. And actually, the data that Carlson Lab, where I work now, is collecting could be used for exactly this kind of thing. But the hard part, I think, it will be not so much the science, but we'll be agreeing on what everybody's breeding for. So that's the intersection of science and society where stuff gets really interesting, right? How do you work together to breed for things like health and solid personalities instead of things like fancier coat colors and flatter faces? So that's really going to be the big struggle. But that's where I hope to see the dog community going. I guess part of me peripherally knew that the cattle industry had been breeding for things like increased milk production, right? But you don't really think about it as a concerted effort as like, OK, the industry sat down and looked at it from a scientific perspective. You kind of think, oh, they do it the same way we do it in dogs, where there's just two that have a line or have a history. And let's just keep going down that thread.

So it's kind of interesting. They're massively well organized, actually. And it's kind of scary if you look at the statistics. So the output of milk from an individual cow since 1950, it has more than tripled from an individual cow since 1950 to today. And one of the things that the cattle industry has going for them is USDA. They have this federal agency that is paid to organize them. And we don't have anything like that. And trying to imagine organizing dog breeders to work together is kind of crazy, right? Fair enough. Yep. You know, like imagine talking to one person who has their lovingly curated and selected line of dogs and saying, OK, well, for the good of the whole breed, we think you shouldn't breed this particular dog anymore. Not going to happen. So it's a really interesting difference between the two groups. Fascinating. That's such an interesting concept to kind of think through and think about to, I guess, shift gears a little bit. But in addition to your webinar, you're doing a class on some of this stuff in June. So I wanted to ask you to share a little about the class and maybe help folks decide whether or not the class will be a good fit for them. Yeah, sure. I'm really looking forward to it. So it's going to be BH 510. It's called The Biology of Building a Great Performance Dog. And it's going to be basically about the biology underlying dog development, like what makes each dog her own individual self. So a lot of what I'll talk about has to do with genetics and very early socialization. So the class will be particularly useful, I think, for people who want to think through how to find their next dog, what to look for in choosing a breed and a breeder or in choosing a shelter dog or a rescue dog. But we'll also talk about decisions on things like spay-neuter, whether to do it, when to do it. So that could be useful for people with puppies or even people with young adult dogs. And then I also think it should really appeal to anyone who really wants to get their science geek on about dogs, like what makes up a dog's personality. So even if you're not thinking about getting another dog, just if you want to learn some genetics and some biology from a dog perspective and to think through what's going on in their brains, what's going on in their bodies that makes them act the way they do, it would be a great class for you. Since it's your first time on, I do have three questions I always try to ask each time somebody comes on for the first time. So I want to kind of round things out with those.

To start us off, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Oh, Jenny, for sure, Jenny. When I got her, as I said, she peed whenever I touched her. And now I can actually bring a stranger into the house. She still gets nervous and shakes, but as soon as the stranger tosses her a treat, she flips over into like, oh, treat game. And she stopped shaking, her ears come up. She starts making cute faces at the stranger to get more treats. Very occasionally, if someone really is good with dogs, Jenny will even let them just pet her, even though she's just met them that day, which I never would have believed a few years back would ever have happened. She can go out in public. She can go walking on leash around the neighborhood. She can go off leash in a safe park. So we've made some really amazing progress together. Sometimes I can't believe she's come so far. And I guess you asked for my proudest accomplishment, and I feel like she's really been working hard on that, too. But the two of us together, I think, have made some fantastic progress. I absolutely think that counts. I don't think she could have done it without you. Thank you. And then what's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? It's only in the last couple of years I heard this, I think, from Jean Donaldson. And she said, most people don't use enough treats, which I love. It's simple. It's concise. It's totally useful. Use more treats. It's easy. And it's so helpful in getting us out of the mindset of thinking the dog should do this because I asked her to and into the mindset of how can I make this more fun for the dog? Right. Right. That's fantastic. And I think we hear it in kind of similar things in a lot of different places. But I do like it kind of in that concise, easy to digest. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then for our last question, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? So can I have more than one? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, so the obvious answer, I guess, would be Denise, because in addition to her stellar dog handling skills, she also has really stellar human handling skills. She's so great at helping people learn while making them feel good about themselves. That's really hard to do. Not just be good at dogs, but be good at people. I already mentioned Patricia McConnell, whose books are the reason I chose my new career. She had insights into the fact that dog minds are actually really fascinating in their own right. And I will always be indebted to her for that. And then finally, he's not exactly in the dog world, but my science hero is Dr. Robert Sapolsky.

He learned some amazing things about how the stress response works. He's a fantastic lecturer. And a lot of his talks are on YouTube. And I actually highly recommend checking him out if you're interested in how the brain functions and how stress affects behavior. He does not talk about dogs specifically, but his material is totally relevant to them and to training. So Sapolsky, highly recommended. Do you know how to spell that last name? I do know how to spell it. It's S-A-P, sap, like it comes out of a tree, O-L, and then sky. So sap, O-L, sky. Excellent. I will try to find a YouTube video or two that we can link to in the show notes for everybody. Oh, let me know. I can find you one. Oh, absolutely. That'd be great. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Jessica. I'm thrilled that we got to chat. This is a lot of fun. Oh, thanks. I had a fantastic time. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. I will be back next week with Laura Wadby to talk about training for a happy dog in the competition ring. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fensi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Bud. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Thank you.