By Jeff Stevens
2026-01-31
Welcome to the inaugural issue of our From the Dog Lab newsletter for UNL’s Canine Cognition and Human Interaction Lab (CCHIL)! We hope to update you on our activities a couple of times a year.
2025 in review
Last year was a big one for us! Find out more from our CCHIL Wrapped 2025. But here are a couple of quick stats:
- 965 dogs are enrolled in our database
- Bella is the most common name followed by Charlie and Murphy
- Labrador retrievers are our most common breed following by golden retrievers and Australian shepherds
- We tested 701 dogs for the ‘color study’ at dog parks, dog bars, dog daycares, and dog shows
- We gave 5 poster presentations and talks
Researcher spotlight
We are highlighting undergraduate assistant Yasmin Worth. Yasmin has spent four years helping us out in the lab! She joined as a freshman and stayed all the way through her graduation in December 2025 with a degree in biochemistry and a minor in animal science. Yasmin has worked on five different projects while in the lab, including two in which she is a co-author. Now that she has wrapped up her time in the lab, Yasmin works at Kenl Inn as she prepares to apply for vet school. If we’re lucky, we can keep her around for one more project!
Research update
This year, we published our study on how dogs understand number. Check out our blog post for more details. We gave dogs choices between various numbers of treats to see if they could distinguish between the two numbers. If they can tell the difference between two numbers, they should choose the larger number of treats to eat. Though one treat versus two treats was pretty difficult, the dogs preferred six over two treats over 90% of the time. Surprisingly, dogs didn’t solve this the same way that other animals do. For dog owners, this means that cutting up treats into smaller pieces may actually trick your dog into thinking they’re getting more!
Coming up
Many of you helped us this year by participating in the odor study and/or the color study. We’re still analyzing the data and writing these up. But we hope to have an update in the next newsletter. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, we have two more studies starting up in February. One study looks at how dogs imitate actions that we humans do. The other one studies how they respond to pleasant and not-so-pleasant odors. We’ll be recruiting from our database for these studies soon, so if you want to participate, make sure we have up-to-date info on your dog, including their rabies vaccination records!
Presenting our work
We were fortunate to present our work at the Nebraska Psychological Society Undergraduate Research Conference at Hastings College this year. Dr. Stevens gave the keynote address on “Is psychology going to the dogs? What canine science can tell us about reliable research”. Undergraduate assistants Susannah Couture and Ashley Llewellyn presented our work on the color study and a study using machine learning to detect characteristics that facilitate adoptions in shelter dogs.
In the community
For the sixth straight year, we’ve participated in the Edgerton Explorit Dog Science Camp. Graduate student Anywn Gatesy-Davis joined Dr. Stevens in Aurora, Nebraska to talk about dog behavior and cognition with these eager young dog lovers. We talked about what we know about dog behavior and psychology before doing a demonstration where the campers tried out the number study with their own dogs!
Book corner
Did you know that dogs are helping track down invasive species? Dr. Alison Pearce Stevens' middle grade book Detective Dogs: How Working Dogs Sniff Out Invasive Species tells three stories of how conservation dogs use their amazing sense of smell to find plants and animals that are disrupting ecosystems in North America. Meet the dogs on the front lines of this battle with invasive species. CCHIL Director Jeff Stevens helped research one of the stories with his wife Alison and even took the cover photo!
This award winning book is available at bookstores everywhere. Buy your book from Francie & Finch Bookshop in Lincoln to get a copy signed by the author and her dog, along with some swag!
From the wire
Have you ever thought your dog might be eavesdropping on your conversations? Our colleagues at the Family Dog Project in Budapest, Hungary studied how some dogs may listen to people's conversations and learn new things. They tested Gifted Word Learners, or dogs that have learned dozens/hundreds of words for different toys. The researchers had two people talk about and name a new toy while in the presence of their dogs but without addressing their dog. They found that the dogs grabbed the correct toy when the researchers used the new toy's name later on. So careful, our pups are listening!
Community partners
Thank you to the community partners who have helped facilitate our research this year!
- Capital Humane Society
- City of Lincoln Parks and Recreation
- Kenl Inn
- Sandhills Global Event Center
- Urban Hound Dog Park & Bar
Support our work
We are so grateful for the interest and time you devote to our research. If you have the means, we would greatly appreciate your financial support to continue this work. We need funds for
- treats
- research materials and equipment
- undergraduate assistant support
- graduate assistant support
- travel to conferences
- outreach events
We are open to both corporate and personal donations to our Canine Cognition and Human Interaction Lab Development Fund at the NU Foundation. Though we’re not officially a part of UNL’s Glow Big Red program, feel free to contribute to our fund on February 11-12.
Update your information
We can only invite pups to our studies who have up-to-date rabies vaccination records. So if you haven’t updated your vaccination info in the last two years, make sure to do that soon to be eligible for our studies this year.
If you have a new pup, make sure to enroll them. If you’ve lost a pup who was enrolled, we are sorry for your loss. You can email us to have them removed from the database.
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