Stories by Julie Hecht

Welcome to Day 1 of the “Poo Power! Global Challenge.” This is your citizen science mission, should you choose to accept it (and for the sake of the bottom of your shoes, the spread of disease and embracing new energy, I hope you will put on your Mission Impossible hat).

Halloween is a peculiar holiday, especially for dogs. We two-legged beings all look different, and what’s with the constant doorbell-ringing?

As my Twitter bio says, I’m interested in your dog’s urine. I’m not kidding around here. For a recent Animal Behavior class, I buddied up with a doggie daycare and followed dogs on their afternoon walks.

Compared to many other species, dogs as a whole are relatively privileged. Most of us don’t eat them, nor do we specifically breed them to be eaten.

Between the government shutdown and the public uproar over the National Zoo Giant Panda Cam going dark (“PANDA!  PANDA!” screamed the general public), you might not have noticed a few more elephants in the news.

I recently saw a clip of Neil Patrick Harris hosting the 2013 Emmys. He was doing a bit about Google Glass and said he was watching an episode of American Horror Story on his contacts while hosting the show.

Wow! You study animal behavior. So cool! People must have a field day with you at parties. When they first meet you, they probably think you just look at animals all day and travel to exotic locations.

Unfortunately, this is true. I’ll explain. Dogs are trained to sniff out a lot of things, and some of those “things” are human remains. Human remains, except those in a cemetery, are usually not out in the open; someone doesn’t want them found or there has been an accident.

As we enter the final weekend of summer, maybe you and your dog are going to spend the weekend gallivanting in nature. That’s what I’ll be doing at Camp Unleashed in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, where I’m giving a talk on Saturday night.

I judge dogs when I meet them, but not in the way you might expect. You see, every dog and owner I meet gets filtered through a lens called “Potential Canine Science Study Participants.” The growing field of canine behavior and cognition research is not built on the backs of lab beagles.

IF YOU LIVE WITH A DOG, then you are familiar with this sound. Unlike barks, growls and howls — dog sounds that easily take center stage — a dog lapping up water is background, white noise.

AS YOU PROBABLY KNOW, your dog’s voice is not like a Bret Michaels concert, pumping out a shower of meaningless noise. Although your dog’s vocalizations might be unwelcome at times, those sounds carry way more information and meaning than any of the former frontman’s power ballads can ever hope to do.

AFTER A LONG DAY of being a dog, no dog in existence has ever curled up on a comfy couch to settle in with a good book. Dogs just don’t roll like that.

Boulder, CO better count its chickens and get its ducks in a row because the Animal Behavior Society is on its way! That’s right. This weekend, I’m off to the 50th Annual Conference of the Animal Behavior Society in Boulder, CO (Twitter/Facebook).