Season 6 Episode 11: From Science to Supernatural and the Healing Power of Dogs

Have you ever wondered about the mysterious connections we share with our four-legged friends, even beyond their passing?   Maybe some of you have superhuman sweat!  You'll have to listen on!

Losing a pet can leave a void filled with sorrow and, sometimes, unexplainable occurrences that offer solace in the midst of grief. We'll navigate the delicate terrain of pet loss with a study by Dr. Jen Golbeck, delving into supernatural experiences that challenge the boundaries of our understanding.

 Discover how these encounters serve as therapeutic touchstones, providing comfort to many who have loved and lost their animal companions. Plus, prepare to be inspired by tales of quiet kindness in schools, revealing the often-overlooked acts that foster an environment of empathy and emotional intelligence.

Dr. Golbeck's Study
B.A,R,K.
Bark on Twitter (X)

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there.

Speaker 2: 0:39

This is episode 11 of season 6. Oh, my goodness, it has been blizzarding for the last three days. So if you're listening to, this is like nearing the end of April. We had a really warm couple weeks and then we just got slammed by snow and it is freezing, cold and super windy. Now, if you hear Chris talking about this at any time, she's pretty disappointed. Windy Now, if you hear Chris talking about this at any time, she's pretty disappointed. But there is a member of our family that cannot believe winter has come again, and that is Bunsen. Also, it's two weeks till Comic-Con, so our family's gearing up for that and we're getting very excited about the Calgary Expo. We have a Baldur's Gate 3 team I've been building. Doesn't really have anything to do with the podcast, but into our lives. It's fun, all right.

Speaker 2: 1:27

What's happening on the show this week? In science news, we're going to be looking at a protein that some people have in their sweat that protects them potentially from a deadly disease. In pet science, we're going to be looking at a really interesting study that was done by one of our favorite people in the world, dr Jen Golbeck. That's right, that's GR mom, the mom of the golden ratio. She's a seriously smart cookie and she did this really unique study which polled people about pet loss and supernatural experiences. We don't want the science podcast to devolve into ghosts and goblins and aliens and Sasquatch, but we are such a big fan of the doc and this is a really fun study, but also a really touching study. I think it fits in pet science.

Speaker 2: 2:20

Our guest in Ask an Expert is Dr John Tyler Benfett, who is the director of BARC. Now, this interview was so heartwarming. Barc stands for Building Academic Retention Through Canines and it's all about the human-animal bond at university between dogs and students. You can't miss this interview. Okay, on to the bad joke, with a little bit of a spooky flair. What did the egotistical ghost say? If you've got it, haunt it? Why did the police officer set the ghost free? He couldn't pin anything on him. Set the ghost free, you couldn't pin anything on him. I'll write on with the show because there's no time like science time.

Speaker 2: 3:12

This week in science news, let's talk a little bit about your sweat and how some of you may have super sweat that protects you potentially from a dangerous disease. All right, what disease are we talking about? The disease we're talking about is Lyme disease. This came up on the feed and I'm always like looking what story should I do this week? And it came from Pet Chat, where some of our listeners and people who were talking were talking about they found a tick on their body and they were super concerned. They got Lyme disease and to like me, that's so alien. We do have ticks in Alberta, but I don't think I can name a single person from Alberta that got a tick in Alberta. It happens but it's super rare. And just to hear somebody like, oh yeah, you got to check your body for ticks, you probably got ticks on there, it gives me the heebie-jeebies. A tick doesn't give you Lyme disease.

Speaker 2: 4:09

If you're just getting up to speed on this, like me, it's a bacterial infection. It's caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and it's transmitted to humans through the bite of those ticks Deer ticks, usually also western black-legged ticks. So as you get bit by the adult, the life cycle of a tick kind of involves different stages. There's the little squirmy larva, a nymph and an adult, but it's the nymph stage that's the most common stage to transmit Lyme disease to humans, as they're really small the size of a tiny seed and their bites are unnoticed. So they got to be on you for a bit and the longer that they're on you, the more, I guess, bacteria they can infect you with.

Speaker 2: 4:56

Where do ticks get this bacteria from? They're usually infected with this bacteria when they feed on infected animals like mice and deer. Mice and deer are the reservoir hosts for this bacteria and ticks can attach to any part of your body. In hard-to-see areas usually they stick around the longest, like your armpits, your scalp, your groin and your belly button. Good news if you catch a tick right away, chances are it won't transmit Lyme disease to you or the bacteria. They have to be attached for usually 36 to 48 hours.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Lyme disease is no joke. You get fevers, chills and headaches. And Lyme disease is no joke. You get fever, headaches, fatigue and, if untreated, it can spread to your joints and your heart, leading to very severe symptoms. Some people have chronic disease from Lyme disease and they never actually fully recover. So it's spooky.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Okay, back to the study. Researchers found that there is a protein in sweat not everybody's sweat, but some people's sweat some genes related to Lyme disease susceptibility so folks who got Lyme disease more often than not and a gene that codes for this protein. It's called SCGB 102. It's made in the sweat and in lab tests this protein prevented the B burgdorferi growth and it protected the mice from infection. Of those 620,000 people, 40% of the people in the study had a different version of this protein that was way less effective at curbing the bacteria growth. So some folks had this super protein and some people had a mutated version of it that made them really susceptible to bacteria growth. What that means is 60% of people walking around sweating and stuff have the protein that protects them from Lyme disease.

Speaker 2: 7:18

The idea is that in the future, pharmaceuticals could be created from the sweat. It just reminds me of uh, kids in the hall sketch. Okay, so, unless you're from canada or you understand, you've seen kids in the hall because the hall was like a saturday night live in canada. Man, it was so funny. And there was this sketch where this guy's sweat smelled so good and they like trapped this guy in a shed and made him ride a bike and they got all got addicted to the smell of this guy's sweat. Okay, anyways, the joke, the sketch is gross, but it just makes me think that you know it's gonna get some poor guy or girl who has this protein and they're gonna make them sweat and collect the sweat and just give it to people so they don't get Lyme disease. No, they're probably going to isolate the protein and use it as a treatment. Obviously, it's promising that it worked in the lab, but when things work in the lab, that doesn't necessarily translate to real life. So, moving forward, the big question remains how the protein interacts with bacteria when a tick bites, because the study used needle injections to expose mice to the bacteria. It didn't actually make the ticks bite the bacteria. Anyway, super cool study about how some of us 60% of us, based on this data may have a protein that protects us from Lyme disease and the other 40% of you check yourself for ticks.

Speaker 2: 8:46

That's science news for this week. This week in pet science. We're going to be looking at a supernatural article. I mentioned in the lead that of course, we don't want the science podcast to devolve into ghost stories and Sasquatch sightings and Ogopogo nonsense, but this is a really heartwarming analysis of how people experience pet loss in a really different way, and it's. The publisher is actually somebody that we really respect. That's Dr Jen Goldbeck, who is the GR mom, or the golden ratio mom, and Dr Goldbeck has published this in Anthrozoes and I've got actually Chris with me. Chris, you're going to be breaking down the story with me today.

Speaker 3: 9:33

Yes, I sure am. I'm so glad that you have me here.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Okay, all right. So first off a little bit of background about maybe why Dr G did this study is that when people are asked about their pets, 85% of people consider their dogs to be family or their best friends, and definitely we consider Bunsen and Beaker to be family. Would you agree, chris?

Speaker 3: 9:56

100%.

Speaker 3: 9:58

And part of being a pet owner is recognizing that there is a cycle of life and unfortunately, our dogs don't last as long as we do as humans. So there is definitely an experience of grief and loss that is similar to losing other close friends or family members when a pet dies. Typically the grieving period lasts from six months to a year, averaging out at about 10 months, and some of these symptoms that people might experience are crying, guilt and anger. But those experiences and symptoms tend to decline after around six months, but sometimes about 22% of people still experience grief symptoms after one year.

Speaker 2: 10:50

And I know I suffered grief when we lost Callan big time there were tears. Oh, I felt so guilty. So all of those things that you just mentioned are definitely things that I experienced after we lost our golden cowlin.

Speaker 3: 11:07

Yes, me too. Like just, it was so unfortunate. We tried so hard. We took her to the vet. We noticed something was wrong and if we had seen it sooner maybe her outlook or her outcome could have been different. But unfortunately I have a lot of guilt about that.

Speaker 2: 11:26

But we did everything right. That's what the vet said. Like you're going to feel that, but it's not your fault. But that doesn't stop you from feeling it right. Yeah, and society doesn't often validate grief when people lose a pet, and that's called disenfranchised grief. I don't know if you, I don't know if you experienced this with your coworkers, chris, but like I, I had. We had to teach the next day. Helen died on the Sunday and we were teaching the Monday and I had to put that all in a box and get through each and every day with this enormous amount of like sadness, and I was very hesitant to tell my coworkers about anything because I didn't know if they would understand it, because at that time I was the only staff member in my department that had a dog.

Speaker 3: 12:17

I don't necessarily think back to my experience of if I told people at work because there was the idea that okay, yeah, you got to go back to work and go through the motions of normalcy and routine. But I did have other staff members who took time off work after their pet died.

Speaker 2: 12:38

Yeah, so let's get to the heart of this study. People with humans have claimed supernatural experience after the loss of a loved one. These are you feel them around you, you see your loved lost one, you sense a ghost. So all of these are considered supernatural, and the reason why is science has not. Science has definitely not shown that there's any evidence for ghosts. Part of this I think you're going to mention, chris, that's called continuing bonds.

Speaker 3: 13:19

Yeah, so I can speak to continuing bonds for sure. So continuing bonds are ongoing relationships the living have with the dead, including perceptions, beliefs, hallucinations and experiences. Continuing bonds are not restricted to human loss, but they're also documented between people and their companion animals.

Speaker 2: 14:07

No, while supernatural experiences have been studied in grief, there is limited research on things after their pet died, and there were there's lots of data on this. I remember she got a huge response on Twitter and the golden ratio Instagram account is enormous. So nearly 550 social media comments were put into the study from dog guardians about their supernatural experiences and they ran the gambit. There were actual physical experiences people hearing, seeing and touching the ghost of a dog and interpreted experiences things in nature. You receive visits in your dreams. Experiences things in nature. You receive visits in your dreams. You attribute things in your world to your lost dog and we're going to break down the study, but I think it would be interesting for you and I to have a conversation, because I don't think we ever did about what we, if we, experienced any of this after Kellen's death. So maybe, chris, just run quickly through the conclusion of the study.

Speaker 3: 15:07

Yes for sure. The conclusion found that nearly 75% of emotional responses to supernatural encounters were positive, and so positive feelings mixed to sad feelings and messages were identified as major significance themes Bereaved dog guardians experience a wide range of supernatural encounters with their dogs and that these experiences are considered positive by the vast majority because they offered comfort and a way to engage with accepted cultural grieving experiences engage with accepted cultural grieving experiences.

Speaker 2: 15:50

Yeah, and the study has like so many comments about people's experience. Here's just one. I heard my late pup bark from his chair in my office clear as day. I knew it was him In the morning. There's another comment in the morning after our rose, a 15 and a half year old golden past, I walked out to our living room and I saw her curled up on the floor next to the couch and where she would sleep near the end, and then after about five to seven seconds she faded away.

Speaker 2: 16:15

So these are those physical experiences, like physically hearing or seeing something that's unexplained. And then there are interpreted interactions which I mentioned are like things from nature or dreams. My dog Randy this is a comment my dog Randy came to visit me a few times in my dreams and I don't know how to explain the difference between me dreaming about someone and then visiting me in my dreams. I just know here's a really good one. When we lost our Ellie a week to the day after she passed, at the exact time of her passing, the smoke detector in her spare bedroom her favorite place to relax started beeping. So that's an interpreted sign that the dog is letting you know the end.

Speaker 2: 16:57

That was a really good conclusion that you made. Most of these responses were positive, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them. Now, of course, as a scientist myself, I don't know if I can lend credence to ghosts, but you have to let people share their experience, and I thought, chris, it would be interesting because I don't know if we've ever talked about this before. Did you experience anything after the loss of Callan Just?

Speaker 3: 17:21

a huge hole in my heart.

Speaker 3: 17:24

Oh the loss of kellen just a huge hole in my heart, oh, and I'm getting sad thinking about it because I really connected with her in the last part of her life. I made a friend at my school and she had two dogs and she said, hey, I take, I take my dogs to the dog park, why don't you come? And I said no, I'm just, I'm too terrified. I said I don't think Callan listens to me when I call her, because when she was a puppy she ran away from me and she wouldn't come. And I was just mortified and terrified and it was. I just was like I can't lose this dog. I can't lose this dog. And I think she definitely looked at Jason as the alpha of the family. If you, if you as, and not so much me and Jason always said that she probably saw me more on her level or even below her because she was a queen.

Speaker 3: 18:30

But yeah, in Megan, that's my friend. She said, yeah, let's go, let's she'll listen. And I said, okay, I'll do it. And I did, I took her and I wanted to take her on leash and Megan's like no, megan unclicked her and I'm like, oh, she's going to run away, but she didn't. And we had a really great bonding experience because we would go every week regularly for a walk with her dogs and then with Callan and that was just really awesome. But you don't know when their time is close and I just wish I had more time with her, for sure, but definitely feeling her presence on the bed, because she used to sleep on the one side of the bed and just where she would go. Sometimes I look at where she sat on the stairs. She used to lay down in a specific spot on the stairs.

Speaker 1: 19:20

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:22

Yeah, she wore out and she rubbed the paint off.

Speaker 3: 19:24

She rubbed the paint off the wall and so sometimes when you look at that, you're like, oh, she's not there and it's devastating but she's still there, yeah yeah, it's hard.

Speaker 2: 19:34

It's not as hard to talk about it, and this is a long time ago. She died. Like what is it? Almost seven years, more than seven, getting close to seven. But like I didn't see a ghost of her, I didn't see any of that. I didn't see or hear her. But man, did I dream about her after her death, like I'm not one to dream or remember my dreams very often, but I had vivid dreams of her every single night for weeks and I'd be hard pressed to explain what the dreams were. Probably if I had wrote them down at the time, there would be specific things I was doing. I can't even tell you right now. Were we walking? Was I petting her? Was she sitting with me on the couch? I don't remember, but I definitely had dreams of her and, yes, I distinctly remember waking up, like thinking I felt her on my legs Right, cause she did sleep on. I think she slept mostly on my side of the bed and Beaker sleeps on your side of the bed.

Speaker 3: 20:42

You were the boss.

Speaker 2: 20:44

I was the boss.

Speaker 3: 20:44

Favorite.

Speaker 2: 20:45

Yeah, so I would wake. I would wake up in the night thinking I felt her and then, oh, she's not there, which is awful, I don't are. Were those dreams positive? Maybe I would say that they were positive. I they weren't nightmares and they didn't expect them to come out a different way. And so, for you, perhaps your outlet was through your dreams, where your, where your brain was free to be able to your kids and whatever is going on in your life is superseded by their needs, always, almost always. So, yeah, that was a tough time of having to listen to a kid deal with some fight with their friend that monday and you're like giving them life advice and you're just like crumbling inside. But that's, that's part of the, that's part of the job of being a teacher. Okay, that wraps up this little article. I'm sure some of you follow the golden ratio and you've put your comment in and maybe your comment is in the study. But we would love to hear if you had any supernatural encounters or experiences after the loss of a pet. So if you're on GoodPods, you can actually interact with us on the podcast, or when you see us post on social media, let us know. And that's Pet Science for this week.

Speaker 2: 22:23

Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen Stuffy, the Beaker Stuffy and now the Ginger Stuffy. That's right, ginger the Science Cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too.

Speaker 2: 23:12

Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr John Tyler Benfett with me today. Doc, how are you doing? I'm doing well, happy to be here. Yay, where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 4: 23:30

I'm in the Okanagan Valley, outside Vancouver, british Columbia, in a city called Kelowna.

Speaker 2: 23:38

Vancouver, british Columbia, in a city called Kelowna. Oh my goodness, I love that area. I'm out from Alberta and that's like where a lot of Albertans go to vacation. It's a gorgeous area of Canada. Lots of red plates here, lots of red plates, lots of red plates and a little bit of a red skin. If you're a Caucasian like me and you head out to that sun, sunlight there. Yeah, I introduced you as a doctor. What's going on with your training in science? Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 4: 24:02

Yep, I am one of those geeky kids who did four degrees straight and I did an undergrad in psych, I did a bachelor of education, I did a master's degree in measurement and then I did a PhD in child and adolescent development at the University of British Columbia, and my training in science really is around intervention programs in schools and I work largely under the umbrella of mental health and promote well-being in two distinct sort of streams. I work in the area of kindness and then I work in the area of can and then I work in the area of canine-assisted interventions to reduce stress.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Oh man, it just hits me right in the heart. I'm an educator, I'm a teacher myself, I'm a scientist and a teacher, and my wife is a teacher as well. So just hearing you talk about kindness and kids and intervention, we're all about that. Just hearing you talk about kindness and kids and intervention, we're all about that.

Speaker 4: 24:56

And Jason, I'll tell your listeners too. I purposely seek joy in my work, and so I'm at the University of British Columbia. It's a tier one school, but I put joy at the forefront of what I do. So I really seek, as a scientist, the positive dimensions of human development. I don't study bullying. I study the pro-social dimensions of human development. I don't study bullying, I study the pro-social dimensions of child development, and I do that purposely because I want to surround myself with goodness. And then I spend time in the lab, and we have 64 therapy dogs who work on campus, and so I'm usually covered in dog hair. I share that. In saying that I really I'm not shy about it. I put joy at the forefront of my work. I'm excited about the studies that we run and about the kids I get to interview and work with, and so that's important to me mix right when you were young.

Speaker 2: 26:00

let me just rephrase that Before we get to some of your research. I always ask this to guests Were you leaning towards science when you were young? Were you a studious kid or were you a pet kid? Were you a dog kid?

Speaker 4: 26:10

Yeah, I was definitely a pet kid, but I knew as a freshman in college that I was going to be a professor. But I knew as a freshman in college that I was going to be a professor. I just really like the scientific method as geeky as that sounds. I like the rigor of adhering to standards of rigorous research and whether that's randomization of participants or selection of measures for dependent variables. I just love all that kind of geeky stuff and I teach a class at UBC on research methods and I just really enjoy that looking at different ways of collecting data. But I was a pet kid. Coming back to your original question, I was definitely and I continue to be that person who has a house full of rescues, yeah, but I combine my sort of passion for animals with my work and I think that's been very rewarding.

Speaker 2: 27:02

Oh, man, we're my wife and I are presenting, actually at Teachers Convention, using some of your research about dogs and pets in the classroom and the positive impacts that they have, and I think that's a great lead, Like you've done. You've done a lot of research in this area with kids dogs intervention. Instead of me trying to figure out which one you'd like to talk about, Do you have, do you have a couple you'd like to share with us some of your research?

Speaker 4: 27:28

Yeah, the one that a couple studies I'll tell you about. One is published in the journal of mental health. I want to say where, and if your listeners have been to therapy, they know there's this therapeutic hour and at the top of the hour that therapist would say we're approaching the hour and here's your homework for next session. And instead of administering a dosage of interacting with the therapy dogs, we let the participants decide how long they needed to be with the dog to experience significant reductions in stress. And this was flipping the script, and so I always try to be a bit creative, not too wonky. I don't want to stray from what's been done previously too much, but I want to push the boundaries of science and our understanding. So we did this with 1,963 participants, so a really robust sample size.

Speaker 4: 28:17

That's awesome. We collected data on pre-visit stress, duration of visit and post-visit stress and found that, on average, students stayed 35 minutes with the therapy dog to reduce their stress. And this was really informative because people were guessing how long or people had tried, you know, 45 minutes, half an hour, 20 minutes, and then some people were doing abbreviated sessions, five minutes with the dog with that elicit significant changes in outcome variables, and so we really I'm proud of that study because we really honored the experience of the participant and didn't go in with assumptions as to how long they needed. So a lot of people will cite that study and say around 30 minutes is a good dosage for intervention work. That's one study and then another study, a recent one, is. We're always answering these questions Does spending time with therapy dogs work? And now we're asking how does it work? And anecdotally, we noticed there was just so much touch between the client and the dog and they were physically touching each other.

Speaker 4: 29:23

Yeah, touching petting the dog, doing the spanning of the ears or scratching under the chin, these kinds of things and it was always Jason connected to positive affect, huge smiles or even tears positive affect, huge smiles or even tears. And so we thought empirically what is the role of touch and why hasn't it been more fully investigated? And so we did a randomized controlled trial and we assigned participants to 20 minutes hands-on with the dog, 20 minutes, what we call ambient proximity to a dog, but no touching and then no dog condition as a control condition.

Speaker 4: 30:00

Oh what a terrible place to be. Oh, believe me, if you sign up for a dog study and then you don't get the dog. I understand that. So yeah. So then we found the optimal conditions were the hands-on contact with the dog, so the interacting through touch, but still the ambient or proximal condition still elicited benefits, but just not as robust. So that is the nature of the work that we do we're trying to advance our understanding of the effects of spending time with therapy dogs. So those are two studies Journal on Mental Health, and the second one was published recently in Anthrozoas.

Speaker 2: 30:35

So would you say, there's so much evidence that they do help that it's time to start looking somewhere else, like maybe what you said, like why does it work or how we can use it best. Are we there with the information?

Speaker 4: 30:49

I think we're asking more nuanced questions now. We know it works and this is collectively from studies around the world. People are attesting to the benefits of spending time and but we can change the dependent variables we look at in our lab stress, homesickness and interpersonal connectedness. Do they build social capital through the dogs? And we know the dogs are what we call social lubricants. They glue people together and your listeners who have dogs. They have met so many people through their dogs right or had conversations because of their dogs. So we now are asking different questions like how does it work? How long should the intervention be, things like that. And we're always searching for the next question because that will then fuel the methodology and the study and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 31:35

I like that. It's not saying dogs are a drug, but they have drug-like effects, so you found out that they work. Now it's what's the dosage?

Speaker 4: 31:44

Yeah, you're under the weather. Here's your prescription Spend time with the dog, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:52

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 31:53

So, oh, and it's really I think we do group intervention. So we'll have 15 dogs working at in at a in a session at a time and then we have three to four students per dog. So there is very much a social element that's at play in the handlers, our handlers. In the bark program that I run, building academic retention through canines at UBC, which is in its 12th year now, we have just very skilled handlers who are able to really bring the students in, engage them with the dog, engage them with each other. So that's a big part of the intervention.

Speaker 2: 32:27

And that's a perfect lead in, because that was going to be my next question BARC. I love the acronym, and could you talk a little bit more about that. What does it stand for? One more time, barc.

Speaker 4: 32:38

Yeah, building Academic Retention Through Canines. And folks can just Google BARC, ubc and it comes up Right. The website itself is a pretty rich repository of all the work that we've done on campus and in the community, but I'll tell your listeners a story because I always get asked how did it start? I'll tell your listeners a story because I always get asked how did it start? And I moved from Southern California to Kelowna to UBC Okanagan and brought a therapy dog with me and this dog and I would work in Southern California just on Saturday afternoons and work with adolescents with traumatic and acquired brain injury. That was our community service. And when I moved up to Canada, I would go from my building across campus to get coffee every day and take this dog with me. Frances and she was just a mutt off the freeway and students would. It was always the same choreography, jason. They would ignore me and they would just lose themselves in interacting with this dog.

Speaker 2: 33:32

Oh, I've been there.

Speaker 4: 33:33

I've been there, yes, people animal people do that and then invariably with tear-filled eyes, they'd look up and they'd say, as much as I miss my parents, I miss my dog more, and as a researcher it was a real gift. It was a light bulb moment where I said, okay, you need to create a program to allow these students to interact with dogs. And so that was the sort of origins or genesis of this Bark program at UBC and 12 years later we're very much woven into the fabric of life on campus. We have a Friday drop-in program which we tout as low cost, low barrier. It's easy access, it doesn't cost anything. Students don't need an appointment. It's very much a drop-in format. They come for as long as they like and we've had over 10,000 student visits to that program. And then we have a mark to go program. On Wednesdays we're in the library in his buildings across campus where students can get a quick fix.

Speaker 2: 34:30

I love it's like a drive by licking yeah yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2: 34:36

Have you first off. That's amazing. I should start there, like that program that you've built with I'm sure you've got a team as well, but like just the impetus to start. It is amazing. Like I'm hoping as I do have this podcast and I do nothing but research dogs and cats all day for this podcast I'm kind of hoping it catches on everywhere because the data is there. And that's my question is about the data from this program. Do you have just so many anecdotal stories of it helping? Do you have hard data of bark helping? I would be curious.

Speaker 4: 35:10

We have multiple randomized control trials that we've done attesting to significant effect sizes in terms of reducing stress and homesickness and bolstering connections on campus. We definitely have the robust data there. And then we have. And then that data for excuse me, for scientists in the audience has been included in review papers, including meta-analyses. So it's past muster, if you will, for its rigor. And then you asked about anecdotal. It's really rewarding as a researcher because the kids who make the students at UBC who make use of the program will really thank me. I'm the guy in their lab with a broom helping get things organized and all that kind of stuff, so I'm very much on the floor present and they'll just, with tear-filled eyes, tell you thank you. And we typically hear two things. We hear one is they'll say Dr B, I didn't drop out of school because of this program.

Speaker 4: 36:07

Or the flip side we'll hear. I got into U of T McGill University of Alberta wherever and I chose here just because of the dog program. So, anecdotally, we hear a lot of evidence of that and my job with BARC building academic retention through canines is to keep kids on campus. I'm funded by the university to keep this program running and to play a part in changing the experience of kids on campus.

Speaker 2: 36:32

Wow, how do you guard your heart against kids telling you that?

Speaker 4: 36:36

Wow, how do you guard your heart against kids telling you that?

Speaker 2: 36:39

I'm a contagious crier.

Speaker 4: 36:40

I see somebody cry across the room and I'm like I'll join you. Yeah, we have a lot of this. That's a really good question, jason, because we actually have a lot of tears in bark and the dogs are this quick conduit to emotion and I think in North American culture we often and you as a teacher maybe you've experienced this where we whisk kids away and we often say, hey, can you take so-and-so to the restroom so they can yeah, they're having a rough go.

Speaker 2: 37:04

It's time to leave.

Speaker 4: 37:05

Yeah, and in Bark we actually sit in the emotion. And so the people in Bark my team would say things like I can see you're really moved by this experience. Let's just take a breath, like we just stay in the emotion.

Speaker 4: 37:19

We don't whisk them away to have their tears elsewhere, they're in the room where they get the most support and that's where they need to be, yeah, but we have a lot of heightened emotion and the dogs are really good at that in both in joviality, happiness, but also in just a quick pathway to the heart.

Speaker 2: 37:36

Yeah, I actually broke down a study not too long ago. It was with elementary school kids with dogs and the connection to the school became the school is not a place I go to school, the school is the place with the dog. Like a bunch of kids said that, like you, that's the number one thing in education is knowing somebody cares about you, where you're going to school and if it's a dog and the handlers and the people around that like that's pretty powerful.

Speaker 4: 38:09

Yeah, yeah, and it's really, when you think of it, it is a low cost intervention. It is not tons of equipment is a low cost intervention. It is not tons of equipment. It is bridging the school to community members who are volunteers. It's the dogs do the heavy lifting. I have to say we're very mindful in BART because we have 64 dogs working on campus and we're very mindful of canine welfare and so listeners need to really hear that we are not not exploiting dogs. The dogs really consider their perspective as they're participating. We have a protocol if the dog is not settling, we do a toileting and then re-entry back into the room. If the dog is having an off day, the team goes home. So we really are very mindful of distributed responsibility of everybody in the room to watch out for canine welfare and do they have a set?

Speaker 2: 39:00

oh, I gotta. Can I ask a couple more questions? This is, of course, okay. So, um, okay, the first one is the therapy dogs. Are they, like, certified through the provincial government, like how therapy dogs are through alberta government?

Speaker 4: 39:13

yeah, you're thinking service dogs and service therapy dogs. Yeah, we certify. We're a bit unique in that many schools will outsource their therapy dogs through an agency and we do all of our own assessment and training. We're pretty rigorous around how we do that. The curious thing is we don't do any advertising for our and we always have a wait list every fall and we start in August and we go through a whole semester of assessments and about. I think this last year, as an illustration, we had 44 dogs apply or be assessed and 13 got in. So it's quite a rigorous program and the dogs that are in. We're not seeking robots. I think we've all been around dogs who have been overtrained and they have what we call flat affect and we want dogs who light up when they see people and that they still get the wiggles and they just engage the client and we want that as to be part of the experience. We're not looking for robotic dogs by any means.

Speaker 2: 40:17

Oh, my goodness, okay, so that I did get that, that I did get that wrong and I apologize to everybody listening, I sometimes confuse therapy with service. There do very different.

Speaker 4: 40:27

yeah, and the service dogs are just next level trained and they're really supporting one client with a disability to live more optimally, whereas the therapy dogs have no public access rights. They are a variety of different clients, often in a variety of different settings. For example, the Bark Dogs work at the local RCMP detachment, we have a program launching at the local blood clinic to reduce anxiety among blood plasma donors, and then we've done Boys and Girls Club programs and seniors programs. So a lot is asked of these therapy dogs to adapt and support a variety of clients, whereas service dogs have really deep training toward supporting one individual in living optimally.

Speaker 2: 41:12

Awesome. You did a better job of explaining that than I ever could, so thanks for I think, your readers because they're geeky dog people like me.

Speaker 4: 41:18

Listen to this one. There's a test out there where the service dogs are. They take a sack of potato chips and they crumple them up and dump them on the floor and I've seen this in action. And if it's a military veteran or whoever has the dog for PTSD, for example, the dog for ptsd, for example the dog comes, the veteran walks up and the dog lays down on top of the chips and the veteran goes oh I wonder where my next boarding gate is and then figures that out and moves forward and no verbal commands to the dog whatsoever, they just laid down at his feet and then move forward and did not live on one chip. And think of your own pet dogs.

Speaker 2: 41:54

How many of our dogs would be all over those chips? Yeah, they're not. They're good dogs. They're not that kind of dogs. Yeah, yeah, that's wild. And my last question is is there a time limit that the dogs can be on for, or is bark time at the university set up not to overstimulate the dogs?

Speaker 4: 42:16

yeah, we follow the sort of it's called I ohio white paper guidelines of 90 minutes maximum. They work and if dogs are newly onboarded. So we have a new team that's just starting. They would start with 15 to 20 minute sessions and then build capacity from there yeah, yeah, we've munson and beaker.

Speaker 2: 42:35

Come with us to meet and greets like they've dressed up for comic-con. They've gone to the space science center and they come with us to our presentations and like the one hour is a lot for yeah dog.

Speaker 4: 42:47

Yeah, our handlers report the.

Speaker 2: 42:49

The dogs will just sleep right after a session oh yeah that bunsen and beaker are out like a light after the meet and greets with the public. It's a lot of it's a lot on their shoulders to deal with everybody's big emotions.

Speaker 4: 43:00

Yeah, they're the recipients of all of that, so it's a lot yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:04

Yeah, wow, okay, if people are interested about Bark, we'll make sure there's a link to your the website in the show notes. I do have to ask you another question, that kind of like switching gears a bit. You've written a few books and there's one that caught my eye I was wondering if we could just have a quick chat about. It's called Cultivating Kindness and Educator's Guide. I saw that one and it's our tagline for everything Bunsen and Beaker on all of our social medias and including this podcast, is science and empathy, and that's a home run. So I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that.

Speaker 4: 43:39

Yeah, for the last 12 years I've been asking so I have what's called a bifurcated research stream at UBC I have I work with the dogs and looking at the pre to post-test effects of spending time with therapy dogs, and then a second research stream. As a former teacher and school counselor I wanted to really celebrate the good things that students do. So I've asked almost 4,000 students now over the last 10, 12 years how they conceptualize or understand kindness in school, and with the little guys from kindergarten to third grade, I will have them draw illustrations of kindness and then with the older students they'll respond to open-ended prompts. And then I've coded all of that data and then wrote this book called you described Cultivating Kindness in Educators Guide from the University of Toronto Press, and that is a science-informed guide to all things kindness in schools and I'm the author, lead author, of the School Kindness Scale, the first psychometric measure of kindness in schools.

Speaker 4: 44:36

That's in the book it has. It's replete with scenarios that teachers can use to discuss kindness. There's kindness resources at the end in an appendix. It illustrates all the different ways that students are kind, and so the book really is. If anyone's listening and is keen on kindness or knows a teacher. It's definitely a book that will celebrate kindness in the classroom.

Speaker 2: 44:59

I love it. It's really for anybody, right, Especially if you were thinking about having kids. You have kids, you've got grandkids. I think it would be helpful for a whole schwack of reasons.

Speaker 4: 45:07

Yeah, it originally. It's interesting you bring that up. I originally pitched it to the publisher as a parent and educator's guide and they whittled it down to just an educator's guide. But I really did have parents in mind and when I do parent workshops I say just as parents say to kids, did you do your chores this week? I want them saying, did you do your three kind acts this week? And so really weave it into the fabric of family life is important, is important.

Speaker 2: 45:36

Yeah, man, I think, as someone who is on social media a lot with the dogs.

Speaker 4: 45:50

I think there's a definite deficiency in kindness sometimes. Yeah, I think sometimes. We've done some research asking students are you kinder online or in person? And we see it across all participants in studies. We see students are kinder in person than they are online. Online behavior devolves a bit, and we see that certainly in the animal world.

Speaker 2: 46:04

Oh yeah, there's no way a troll who would say something horrible would say the same thing to your face if you're standing next to them. There's no way.

Speaker 4: 46:12

Yeah, but this cultivating kindness really is just a guide for educators or parents to really cultivate and instill kind habits in students or young people, and so the book is full of examples from students of how they're kind and how teachers might foster kindness in the classroom.

Speaker 2: 46:31

Gotcha, and I don't want you to give away the whole book, but is there one or two nuggets you could share? What are some things you found that are just like….

Speaker 4: 46:41

Right in the pocket there. Yeah, there's a chapter, jason, called Quiet Kindness, and in asking and analyzing thousands of examples of kindness, there's a subsample of kind acts that students do that are on the down low and they're socially and emotionally sophisticated but they don't have a big audience and we call it kindness without an audience. And I'll give you a couple examples. A middle school kid says I leave money in the vending machine for the next person. These just lovely acts.

Speaker 4: 47:11

And I do a lot of work with middle school and high school kids and I tried as a scientist to debunk the myth that they're all ego invested and mired in conflict, and you can argue against that as a teacher. But I asked a middle school boy and as part of the study I said what is an example of kindness you've done? And he says I don't talk about my mom in front of Cole because his died of cancer last year. Oh man, and this idea of self-regulation and no one would know about that kind act, self-regulation, and no one would know about that kind act. And so it's a really to me. There's a whole chapter on these quiet kindness and it's this really quietly celebrated acts of kindness that just the initiator knows. So that's in the book, but that's the one that stands out for me.

Speaker 2: 48:00

Yeah, I stand up for the younger generations. I want to say and there's probably data to support that that the last, the generation like in the next, the last five to six years, I think they're way more tolerant for sure, Way more open-minded than generations before them, for sure, and there's a type of kindness that goes with that too, accepting differences instead of ostracizing them.

Speaker 4: 48:26

Right.

Speaker 2: 48:27

Right, cool, all right. Well, thanks for chatting a little bit about that book. It just caught my eye and it's a really sweet topic. So, doc, we have a couple standard questions that our fans love and we've been asking them for now six seasons to every guest. The first one is a super fact. It's something that you know that when you tell people, it blows their mind a bit. I was wondering if you had a super fact for us.

Speaker 4: 48:53

The one that sort of stands out for me is this notion of emotional contagion and this idea that we're not always in control of our emotions, because we're being flooded with the emotions of others, and so I always tell my students to be really mindful of the emotional climate they're in and I want them to be this is looping back to the kindness, but I want them to be a happiness or joy contagion and I want them thinking about them, especially empathic. People absorbing the emotions of others but this idea of emotional contagion is really fascinating to me. And people absorbing the emotions of others but this idea of emotional contagion is really fascinating to me and I'm very mindful of it in my day-to-day maneuvering about campus.

Speaker 2: 49:33

That's one thing that we don't need a vaccine for. There you go, there you go. Yeah, if only kindness was as contagious as some other diseases. If only kindness was as contagious as some other diseases.

Speaker 1: 49:44

Yes.

Speaker 2: 49:46

I love it. And the second question is a pet story and we talked like before we started you've got a bunch of dogs scurrying around there. We challenge our guests to share a pet story from their life that's impactful to them, and I was wondering if you could do that.

Speaker 4: 50:01

Jason, I rescue three-legged dogs who have had trauma and either get them before they've had surgery or after, and so I've got two of them here at my feet right now and have four dogs total. One dog that passed last spring, called Craig, was a front leg amputee and he would come to me to campus all the time, and so on this particular day I work in the engineering building and I'm in the elevator. I have a bunch of dogs with me and I'm counting dogs as I'm in the elevator to go up to my office and I'm missing Craig, missing this little guy, a beagle cross Mexican street dog, and I look out the elevator and I never use a leash with him because it gets caught on his stump, so I wouldn't use a leash, he just was very well trained and would stay with me. And so I look out the elevator and here I see Craig and this big, tall, lanky engineering student is bent over top of him and tears are just spilling onto Craig.

Speaker 4: 51:03

And I find it to this day. I don't know how, as a scientist, I could ever investigate or measure this, but it was the intuition of the dog that said, instead of falling the pack into the elevator, this guy needs me more. And so he went to this student who, just again, the dog is a catalyst for emotions and he was just fell apart. But the dog knew that he was needed there more than he was needed in the elevator, and so that's a story that I'll never forget, this idea of the agency of the dog to say I have good work to do and it needs to be done over there, not with you.

Speaker 2: 51:44

So, I love that your vocs don't scream alert, you're okay, but this other person really needs my help yes, yeah, just I love that.

Speaker 4: 51:55

Uh, just, it just reminds me of the tender sort of nature of these dogs and the good work that they do when they need to do it.

Speaker 2: 52:04

That's not to belabor the your amazing story. I don't know if that's the right lead in what I'm. What I meant to say is I've broken down stories before or, like science, stories of do dogs have a sense of self? Right, yeah, cause we have a sense of herself. It's very easy for us to talk about it. We have a language that we can communicate with each other, so they easy for us to talk about it. We have a language that we can communicate with each other, so they always are testing dogs to see if they have a a sense of self like that. That there to me is like the dog made a conscious decision. That was a sense of, that was a choice and it was a very complicated, higher level choice, when you think of it especially.

Speaker 4: 52:42

Especially when the pack and dogs are such pack creatures. Yeah, three other dogs and the owner, the human, is moving into this space and typically that dog would be right there or the first one in the elevator, and yeah, so there is some kind of agency autonomy there happening. And so is it like this smelling of hormones, is it like what is the dog reading that? I walked by the kid and didn't pick up anything. So there's something there that they're attuned to, that we're not necessarily.

Speaker 2: 53:14

Yeah, their sense of smell is wild. I've said this story before, but just similar. We take our dogs. We live on a farm and there's a path in the winter that we take. We don't go down into the creek because the snow's too deep and one winter, about three winters ago, bunsen went down into the creek. He's our bernice mountain dog and very atypical. Like why would he go down there unless there's like some dead animal or something? Right, yeah, and there was another dog, an elderly dog, had gotten lost and trapped down in the creek wow yeah.

Speaker 2: 53:45

So like he knew it was down there, it wasn't making any sound, he went down there and he stayed by it until we made our way down like the, through the deep snow, until we found out there was this like elderly, lost, hurt, exhausted dog and like that dog would have died down there. But no, there's something.

Speaker 4: 54:01

Nope, we're not leaving and I think there's a takeaway for listeners too, jason is is this idea of the over-managed dog, and I live in a city where everybody's got to be on leashes and all that kind of stuff, but the over-managed dog doesn't have a lot of room for that autonomy. It's tough for them to have that agency. That's just a curiosity or point of reflection. You give the dogs a little bit of room and they will show you lost dogs in the creek and all kinds of stuff they also come back with moose legs, so that's another problem and horse turds and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 4: 54:37

I'm a hard kid that's right.

Speaker 2: 54:40

Yeah, I was like, oh, man bunsen's found another moose. Oh no, it actually wasn't. Am I? Do I have permission to ask you a question, jason? No, go, anything you'd like go for it.

Speaker 4: 54:44

I was like, oh, man Bunsen's found another moose? No, it actually wasn't. Do I have permission to ask you a question, jason?

Speaker 2: 54:49

No, go anything you'd like, Go for it.

Speaker 4: 54:51

I'm curious across all these different people that you interview, is there a common thread that unites everybody?

Speaker 2: 54:57

All these scientists? There's probably three. I was actually talking to my class about this the other day. Like what, why do people go into science? Resil actually talking to my class about this the other day like what, why do people go into science? Resiliency and stubbornness. Like things go wrong in science all the time, yeah, and like things don't work. Or to set up an experiment, you can't do it willy-nilly, you have to be extremely methodical about it. So that's not a very exciting thing that unites scientists, but it's definitely something that unites scientists like people who go beyond undergrad, like me. I got a chemistry degree but I didn't go beyond that. Curiosity, right, not content with just because they're why? Curiosity? And the last one is wonder, the childlike wonder that we all have. Scientists just continue to have that for the thing that they study. And those three things together is the difference between you with your PhD and me.

Speaker 4: 55:55

I think your evidence of a really rigorous scientific mind without the advanced formal training and PhDs are really aware of that, of the rich resources in the communities and I so appreciate, applaud the work you do to promote good science. So thank you for that Thanks.

Speaker 2: 56:14

And surprisingly, like nearly 100% of the scientists I interview, they have pets. Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1: 56:24

That's wonderful. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 4: 56:25

Jason, really appreciate the thoughtful questions and dialogue. Yes, bark is all over social media, so it's bark UBC as the hashtag, and so it's on Instagram, facebook, everywhere.

Speaker 2: 56:38

So we'll make sure there's a link to that. Yeah, doc, as you said, like this was my pleasure as well. Thank you so much for saying yes, and the work that you do is right at the heart of good science and being a good person. So thank you.

Speaker 4: 56:50

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 56:51

Okay, it is time for a story time with me, adam. If you don't know what story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Uh, dad, do you?

Speaker 2: 57:00

have a story. Chris may not like this story but I don't know if anybody really likes the weather that we've had, but it was quite a shock waking up to a full on blizzard a couple of days ago this would have been Tuesday, or maybe it was even yesterday, I don't know there was a blizzard and it was snowing sideways. It was snowing super hard and made drifts everywhere like actual drifts. And of course it happened in the morning and we're like getting ready to go to work and Bunsen just couldn't get enough of outside, cause we I usually take them out to go to the bathroom he's got his face into the blizzard just soaking it up. So got to work, got to school to teach the roads were an absolute nightmare. They were skating rink the whole way there.

Speaker 2: 57:49

Luckily these spring blizzards, they blow through and create a mess and then they melt. But for Bunsen on the walk yesterday and today there's still massive snow drifts in places, like from all of that blowing snow and it's still been really cold. So there's like giant pockets of snow that he's found, that he's frolicking through. And Chris has mentioned before that Bunsen gets a cold weather boost. He definitely has his cold weather boost. He was full of shenanigans. Today on the walk he was dancing around Beaker like egging her on, making her crazy. Anyways, it's a joy to see, even though the weather is pretty crummy. It's a joy to see even though the weather is pretty crummy, and that's my story I have a bit of a story.

Speaker 1: 58:40

I am done school. I'm on exam break right now, like it's the exam period, so people are writing their finals right now, but I don't have a final until two days from now. So on Saturday I have my math finals, but I don't have classes right now. So I've been at home. I've been at home with the dogs and the cat and it's been a big change for them because they're spending a lot of time with me. Ginger was just laying on the couch with me, beaker and Ginger was just laying on the couch with me. Beaker and Bunsen have been laying on the couch with me all day. Today. I've been playing my game and studying, so that's really nice.

Speaker 1: 59:13

I don't usually get to spend a lot of time with the dogs and I think they're happy, and I'm for sure happy. So I can speak for myself when I say that I'm happy that the dogs are spending time with me, and I think both of the dogs are happy Like they wear it on their face, but I'm not too sure about the cat. The cat seems fairly happy, but she's mysterious and can deceive you quite easily for food. Anyway, that's my story. I've been home a lot more and the animals are happy. I think Maybe they're happy because when I cook I drop food for them, so that might be it.

Speaker 3: 59:46

But mom, do you have a story? I sure do so. Jason talked about the weather and he was teasing me. He said guess what? It's going to be minus 20 degrees Celsius this week. And I said, no, thank you.

Speaker 3: 59:58

But I decided to take Ginger out because she wanted to come outside on the walk and so she loves it. She actually was at the door and grabbing the door jam and I was like she was hugging it, like please take me out, and I put her in the backpack and away we went and it was so windy and I thought, oh no, ginger is regretting her decision to come on outside. But the dogs loved it, bunsen especially. Like Jason said, he goes and he does a snow plow, the burner in his. He's in his glory.

Speaker 3: 1:00:35

I can tell you that right now. But other than that, we've just been chilling with the dogs and chilling with the cat and I can attest to that Ginger definitely loves Adam in with a cat and I can attest that Ginger definitely loves Adam. In fact tonight he was laying on the couch and he had Ginger jump up on him, which is a rarity and you're very special when she chooses to do that. So Adam is definitely loved and he actually had Bunsen and Beaker at the same time, so he was the Snow White of the forest bringing all the animals to him, and that's my story.

Speaker 1: 1:01:10

Thank you so much for sticking around to my section of the podcast and I hope to see you on the next episode of the podcast. But yeah, bye, bye.

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen. That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen. Thanks to Dr Ben Fett from Bark. What an amazing interview. And hey, if you liked Chris joining us for the pet section, let us know if you want to have her on as a regular co-host with me. Hey, we'd also like to give a shout out to the top tier of the Paw Pack. They help keep the science podcast free. And a perk one of the many perks of joining our community at that level as you get your name shouted out by Chris in the science podcast, Take it away.

Speaker 3: 1:02:13

Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingue, susan Wagner, andrew Lin, helen Chin, Tracy Halberg. Thank you. Julie Smith, diane Allen, brianne Haas, linda Sherry, Carol MacDonald, catherine Jordan, courtney Proven, donna Craig, wendy, diane Mason and Luke, liz Button, kathy Zerker and Ben Rathart.

Speaker 2: 1:02:39

For science, empathy and cuteness.