New U of A study will investigate growth hormones and cognitive aging in dogs - University of Arizona News

Skyler: Hey there, dog lovers — welcome to Frosty the Dog, the show that celebrates everything wonderful, weird, and downright amazing about our best friends. I'm Skyler, your host, and I am so glad you're here. This show is named for Frosty — the best boy, the goodest of good dogs, the one who inspired all of this — and I think about him every single time we sit down to record. He's our heart, our mascot, and honestly, our north star. Before we dive in, a huge thank you to our sponsors: first and always, our primary sponsor and namesake, Frosty — the best boy in the whole world — and also Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows, Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — bringing silicon development consulting from A I all the way to SoC, and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with an incredible portfolio across the silicon industry. We are grateful for every single one of them. Now — buckle up, because today we've got brain science, we've got paws that lean left or right, we've got dogs who can literally smell your feelings, and we've got a story about service dogs on a flight that the whole internet had opinions about. Let's go. Skyler: Okay, dog science time — and friends, this one genuinely made me want to call up the University of Arizona and say thank you, because researchers there are about to dig into something I have wondered about for years. They're launching a new study to investigate growth hormones and cognitive aging in dogs. Cognitive aging. As in — what happens to a dog's brain as they get older, and whether hormones play a role in how that unfolds. Skyler: Now, if you've ever had a senior dog — and I think about Frosty here, I really do — you know that aging in dogs can look a lot of different ways. Some dogs stay sharp as a tack well into their golden years. Others start to show signs that something's shifting — maybe they seem a little confused, maybe they stare at walls, maybe they forget where the water bowl is even though it hasn't moved in eleven years. That last one is real, by the way. It's actually a recognized condition called Canine Cognitive Dysfunction, and it shares some similarities with dementia in humans. Skyler: So what the University of Arizona team wants to understand is whether growth hormone — and specifically how the body regulates it over a dog's lifetime — might be one of the keys to why some dogs age more gracefully than others, cognitively speaking. This matters enormously. Because if we can figure out the hormonal levers involved, we might eventually be able to support dogs better as they age — maybe even slow down some of that cognitive decline. Skyler: And here's the thing that I love about this kind of research: dogs aren't just benefiting from it. Dogs are actually teaching us things that could help humans too. The University of Arizona has been doing some genuinely groundbreaking work studying dog aging — they're involved in the Dog Aging Project, which is this massive citizen science effort looking at how and why dogs age the way they do. Tens of thousands of dogs enrolled. Real families, real pets, contributing real data. It's one of the most ambitious aging studies ever done, and dogs are right at the center of it. Skyler: Frosty would probably have a lot of opinions about being enrolled in a study. I imagine him being very cooperative during the questionnaire and then immediately demanding a treat. That tracks. But honestly — the fact that dogs are helping us understand aging, in themselves and in us, is just one more reason they are the most remarkable animals on the planet. University of Arizona, we are rooting for you. Go Wildcats. Go dogs. Skyler: Okay, now — I need to ask you something. Does your dog have a favorite paw? Like, do they always reach for something with the same foot? Do they bat at toys consistently with one side? Because it turns out — your dog might actually be right-pawed or left-pawed, just like people are right-handed or left-handed, and there's a new study that's giving us a real, practical way to figure it out. Skyler: Smithsonian Magazine covered this recently, and I was immediately obsessed. Researchers have been looking at something called paw preference in dogs — basically, which paw a dog spontaneously uses when they're doing something that requires a choice. And what they found is that this isn't random. Dogs do show consistent preferences, and those preferences are actually meaningful. Skyler: The way you test it at home is kind of delightful. You watch your dog — you look at which paw they use first when they step off a curb, or which paw they use to hold down a toy or a chew, or which foot they lead with when they start walking. You do this a bunch of times, you keep a little tally, and a pattern tends to emerge. It's not a perfect science at the kitchen table, but researchers have developed more structured versions of these tests and found that the results are pretty reliable. Skyler: Now here's where it gets genuinely fascinating — because paw preference isn't just a fun party trick. It's connected to how a dog's brain is organized. In lots of animals, including humans, the left and right sides of the brain tend to specialize in different things. And which paw or hand you favor is a window into that organization. Dogs who strongly favor one paw over the other — what researchers call being strongly lateralized — may actually process emotions and stress differently than dogs who don't show a strong preference. Skyler: Some research has suggested that dogs with a strong right-paw preference tend to be calmer and more relaxed in certain situations, while left-pawed dogs or ambidextrous dogs may respond more intensely to stressful stimuli. This has real implications — for training, for matching dogs to jobs, for understanding why some dogs get anxious and others just sort of roll with everything. Skyler: I spent approximately ten minutes after reading this study thinking about which paw Frosty would have preferred. Based on sheer personality — and I knew this dog — I feel like Frosty was a left-paw guy. Confident, a little unpredictable, full of opinions. That's left-paw energy right there. But honestly, go try this with your own dog today. It's fun, it's science, and your dog will enjoy the attention. Skyler: Alright, I have to take a little breath here because this next one — this is a story about dogs and emotions, and it completely knocked my socks off. A study just published in Scientific Reports — that's a Nature journal, which is about as prestigious as it gets — found that dogs can distinguish between emotional chemosignals from other dogs. Let me say that again in plain English: dogs can smell whether another dog is feeling fear or happiness — just from their scent. Skyler: Chemical signals. Chemosignals. Dogs release different chemical compounds depending on what emotional state they're in — stressed, relaxed, excited, afraid — and other dogs can detect those compounds and respond to them differently. This study looked specifically at whether dogs could tell apart the emotional scent of other dogs — what scientists call conspecific emotional chemosignals, conspecific just meaning "same species" — and the answer was yes. They absolutely can. Skyler: Think about what that means. When your dog walks into a dog park and immediately seems cautious around one dog and totally relaxed around another — before a single growl or tail wag has happened — they may already know something about how those dogs are feeling. They're reading an emotional broadcast that's completely invisible to us. The air is full of information that we just cannot access, and dogs are swimming in it constantly. Skyler: This is part of why Frosty always knew. That's the only way I can put it — he just always knew. When someone was sad, when someone was nervous, when someone needed a warm, heavy dog to press against their leg. He wasn't guessing. He was reading signals we didn't even know we were sending. And now science is telling us — yes, that's real, that's documented, that's chemistry. Skyler: The researchers found that dogs didn't just detect the difference — they actually behaved differently in response. When exposed to fear chemosignals, dogs showed more stress-related behaviors. When exposed to positive emotional signals, they were more relaxed and social. This is emotional contagion happening at the molecular level. Dogs are empathetic in their very biology. Skyler: What I love about this study is that it connects so deeply to why dogs have been our companions for thousands of years. They didn't just tolerate us — they evolved to understand us, and each other, in ways that are still astonishing scientists today. The nose knows, as they say. Frosty's nose in particular was legendary. I'm just saying. Skyler: Time for our Dogs and Humans thread — and today's story comes with a side of viral internet drama, which honestly makes it even better. A video started circulating on social media recently — picked up by Newsweek — showing service dogs boarding a flight. And the video sparked this whole conversation online, with people speculating about which dogs were "real" service dogs and which ones were — quote — faking it. Skyler: Now, I want to talk about this carefully, because there's a lot packed into it. First — the dogs. Because real, trained service dogs are extraordinary. We are talking about animals that go through years of rigorous preparation to do jobs that change and save human lives. Guide dogs navigating busy streets. Medical alert dogs detecting seizures before they happen. Psychiatric service dogs interrupting anxiety spirals and grounding their handlers in moments of crisis. Mobility assistance dogs — opening doors, retrieving dropped items, providing physical support. These animals are working professionals, and they deserve every seat on every flight. Skyler: And a study just published in Frontiers — a major peer-reviewed journal — actually digs into exactly this: what behaviors and traits predict whether a dog will succeed in an assistance dog career. Because not every dog makes it. Training programs have pretty significant washout rates. And understanding why has huge implications for how we select and train these animals. Skyler: What the researchers found was that behavior — not just breed or genetics — is a really powerful predictor of career outcome. Things like how a dog responds to novelty, how they handle stress, how they interact with unfamiliar people, how they bounce back after something surprising happens. Dogs who were calmer, more adaptable, and more focused tended to succeed. Dogs who were more reactive or easily overwhelmed were more likely to be released from the program — not because they're bad dogs, but because the job demands an incredibly specific temperament. Skyler: This matters for the service dog conversation in a big way — because it highlights how much goes into creating a working service dog. We're not talking about a vest you buy online. We're talking about careful selection, extensive behavioral assessment, and years of specialized training. Real service dogs are the result of enormous investment — by trainers, by programs, and by the dogs themselves. Skyler: So when that video went viral and people started playing "spot the fake" — I get the frustration. There are real problems with people misrepresenting pets as service animals, and that genuinely harms the people who depend on legitimate service dogs, because it erodes trust. But I also think we should be humble about what we can tell from a video. A psychiatric service dog lying quietly under a seat doesn't look dramatic. That's the job. Skyler: What I know for certain is that the real ones — the dogs who went through everything researchers are studying in that Frontiers paper — they are in a category all their own. Frosty wasn't a service dog, but he had that same quality — that steady, attentive, unshakeable-ness that made you feel safe just by being near him. Some dogs just have it. And the ones who do — well, they can board any flight they want as far as I'm concerned. Skyler: Now let's talk about understanding dogs — which is maybe my favorite thread of all, because it's about us getting better at listening. And today I want to connect a few of the things we've talked about and think about where all of this is going. Skyler: We've covered a study on dogs smelling emotions. We've talked about paw preference and brain lateralization. We've got researchers at the University of Arizona mapping cognitive aging. We've got scientists at Frontiers tracking behavioral predictors of assistance dog success. All of these are threads in the same big tapestry — the project of really, truly understanding dogs. Skyler: And technology is accelerating that project in remarkable ways. A I in particular is becoming a powerful tool in animal behavior research. Researchers are using machine learning to analyze dog vocalizations — building models that can classify barks, whines, and growls by context and emotional content with increasing accuracy. What used to take a trained human expert hours to analyze from audio recordings, A I systems can now process quickly and at scale. Skyler: There are also A I systems being developed that use video analysis to track dog body language — reading ear position, tail carriage, weight distribution, facial muscle tension — and flag signs of stress or discomfort that a busy human caretaker might miss. In shelters, this kind of technology could be transformative. Imagine being able to continuously monitor dozens of dogs and get real-time alerts when one of them is showing signs of anxiety. That's not science fiction — that's where the research is heading. Skyler: And on the cognitive side — the kind of work the University of Arizona is doing benefits hugely from data tools and A I analysis. When you're tracking thousands of dogs over years, looking at hormone levels and cognitive test scores and health outcomes, you need computational power to find the patterns. A I helps researchers ask better questions of their data, and that means faster answers, and that means better lives for dogs sooner. Skyler: What strikes me about all of this is that the more we understand dogs, the more extraordinary they become. Every study that comes out — whether it's about their noses, their brains, their paws, their feelings — it adds another layer to this picture of an animal that is just breathtakingly sophisticated. Dogs didn't just happen to end up living with us. They evolved alongside us, and we evolved alongside them, and somewhere in that long partnership something remarkable happened. Skyler: Frosty understood things I'll never be able to explain. He communicated things I didn't have words for. And now science is slowly catching up to what every dog person has always known in their bones — that dogs are not simple. They are not just pets. They are full, feeling, thinking, sensing creatures who have chosen to be in relationship with us, and that is worth every study, every data point, every moment of wonder. Skyler: That's our show today, dog lovers. What a day it has been — growth hormones and aging brains, right-pawed and left-pawed pups, dogs who can smell your feelings, service dogs doing the most important work in the world, and the incredible science helping us understand it all better every single day. I am so grateful we get to talk about this stuff together. And I am, as always, grateful for Frosty — the best boy, the reason this show exists, the dog who taught me that the more you pay attention to dogs, the more there is to love. This one's for you, buddy. Skyler: Frosty the Dog is brought to you by Frosty — the best boy — along with Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows, Ago Consulting, silicon development consulting from A I to SoC, and Zen Semiconductor, with their incredible portfolio across the silicon industry. We are so thankful for all of them. If you loved today's episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who loves a dog — or is loved by one. Links to all of today's stories are in the show notes, so check the link in show notes and go down the rabbit hole. We'll see you next time. Give your dog a scratch behind the ears — from me and from Frosty.