Tag Archive: dogs


A Sad Coincidence

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May 17, 2016

(Submitted by Skepticality listener Erik Harris)

When I got home from work this evening and logged onto Facebook, I found out that a friend’s dog, Liam, died today. I had the pleasure of meeting Liam a handful of times, and he was a great dog. He really enriched the lives of many people, not just his own family.

Later in the evening, I found out that the father of another friend of mine died. His name? Liam. I never met this Liam, but his son has been a friend of mine for many years, and he’s someone that I have tremendous respect for, so I’m sure Liam was a great guy and a wonderful father.

I found out about both on Facebook, but both are people that I consider real friends, who I interact with in real life, and not Facebook acquaintances who I’ve only met a few times (or not at all). It’s not often that any of my friends lose a family member or a pet, and even more rare that two of my friends lose a loved one on the same day. I can’t say I recall that happening before, even including on-line only friends, though I’m sure it has. But for two friends to lose loved ones with the same name on the same day? As sad as a coincidence as this is, it’s also kind of amazing.

Below are the extended notes provided by cognitive psychologist and statistician Barbara Drescher for use in Skepticality Episode 271.  Take a look and leave your comments below. Also, please be sure to listen to the podcast for our own hilarious commentary. Also, visit Barbara’s blog ICBS Everywhere, and Insight at Skeptics Society, and watch her on Virtual Skeptics.

At first glance this sounds like something for which we could calculate odds, and perhaps we could if we knew a few more things, such as the age for the gentleman who died. However, there are a lot of questions to consider. For example, although Liam is not a terribly common name, it can be short for more common names such as William. We also have no way to know how popular the name is for a pet, since there are no birth certificates for the vast majority of pets.

But there is an interesting aspect to this story in that the author found out about these events through Facebook, which has greatly increased the average user’s circle of friends as well as the probability that we will learn about such events in our friends’ lives. So, while it may seem as though tragedy is all around us at times, I think that such coincidences have probably always been common, but we are much more aware of them today as we are much more connected to others.

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The Dog Walking Coincidence

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April 12, 2016

(Submitted by Skepticality listener Brian Utterback)

My wife and I walk our dog every afternoon at nearby trails and parks. My dog loves snow so we often go places that have little traffic in the winter and may not see anyone else during the walk.

Recently we went on a trail and as we were coming back we saw another dog coming down toward us. My dog is small and does not get along well with other dogs so when that happens it is memorable because I usually have to grab him and pick him up until we can assess the situation with the other dog.

In this case the other dog was friendly and was soon followed by her owner who likewise was friendly, so I put my dog down and we all chatted for a few minutes before continuing on our way.

While we had been walking we noticed a trail that we had never been on before, so the next day we went back to the same reservation and went on this other trail, which turned out to be much longer than we anticipated. It met up with the previous trail near the end. So as we came to the exact same spot where we met the dog the day before, bounding down the trail was the same dog again! Since I couldn’t be sure at a distance I had to scoop up my dog again and we reenacted the same scene, in the same place. We chatted with the owner again and went on our way back to the car. What are the odds?

Below are the extended notes provided by cognitive psychologist and statistician Barbara Drescher for use in Skepticality Episode 270.  Take a look and leave your comments below. Also, please be sure to listen to the podcast for our own hilarious commentary. Also, visit Barbara’s blog ICBS Everywhere, and Insight at Skeptics Society, and watch her on Virtual Skeptics.

The odds of meeting the same dog (with its owner) on the same trail are excellent.

People are creatures of habit, and returning to the same location to walk a dog is not surprising at all. While the second trail was new to the author, he notes that it connected to the trail they had been on the previous day, so it is likely that the other dog owner would choose it, either for the change of view or perhaps because she walks up via one trail and back via the other. The author does not mention the time of day, but I would bet that these events occurred around the same time of day.

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A Canine Coincidence

Filed Under: Skepticality, Stories by Reader submission — 2 Comments
December 15, 2015

(Submitted by Skepticality listener James Garrison)

A few years ago, I began working for OKC Animal Welfare. The day I was released to work in the kennels, I was helping a citizen look for her dog, and was trying to explain the process.

The shelter has 5 rooms for dogs, divided by age, size, if they’re adoptable or not, and if they’re involved in a case. I took her into the first room, which was normally reserved for dogs under 6 months, and I pulled the first cage card we came to and explained what she needed to do if she found her dog.

As I put the card back, she looked into the kennel, looked at me and said “That’s my dog!”, which turned out to be an older border collie looking dog, so it shouldn’t have been in that room in the first place, and it’s stray time was up. (Luckily, they were going to try and place it in the adoption program, otherwise she would never have found it.)

At the time, in 2007, the shelter took in around 35 to 38,000 animals a year (roughly half of them dogs), the shelter probably held around 200-300 dogs that day (that’s the general average) and the human population of Oklahoma City was 546,000.

As well, a large percent of the dogs in the shelter never made it to adoption due to various factors, including temperament, health, and space. Another consideration is that probably only 10% of loose dogs are reported or come into the shelter.

Given that roughly 100-300 people came into the shelter a day, and they get nearly as many animals a day, what are the odds of finding a specific person’s dog in the first kennel on my first day in the shelter?

Below are the extended notes provided by cognitive psychologist and statistician Barbara Drescher for use in Skepticality Episode 265.  Take a look and leave your comments below. Also, please be sure to listen to the podcast for our own hilarious commentary. Also, visit Barbara’s blog ICBS Everywhere, and Insight at Skeptics Society, and watch her on Virtual Skeptics.

Only a few pieces of information are needed to estimate the odds the way the author framed the question, but the author does not provide the most important: the odds that a specific dog would end up in the shelter. However, let’s pretend that the 10% mentioned answers that question. If there is a 1 in 10 chance that a dog would end up in the shelter, then there is a 1 in 10 chance that any given visitor’s dog will be found there. We must assume that if the dog is at the shelter, the owner will find it. It’s just a matter of when. Since there are 5 kennels, then we can multiply that probability by 1/5th to find the probability that a person’s dog will be found in the first kennel. That makes it .02 or 1 in 50 that the owner will find their dog and find it in the first kennel. In other words, as the question is framed, the odds are not crazy at all.

The number of people visiting the shelter and the number of dogs housed in it are irrelevant. No owner would just sample the dogs; they would want to do an exhaustive search of the shelter to find their dog. Likewise, the population of the town is irrelevant.

 

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Doggone Perfect

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December 10, 2011

(Submitted by friend of the blog, Kathleen Scott)

We’ve been talking about rescuing a small dog for about a year. Problem is, neither of us have dealt with a dog in an apartment or ever owned a small dog.  Would we be able to deal with daily walking, greater need for attention, and all the other not-cat traits that come with dog ownership?

One day we were running errands, talking it over in the car.  We decided that what we really needed was a test-dog but it had to be perfect – small, liked cats, house-trained, didn’t chew up the house, etc.

Got home that day to find a Facebook message from a friend. She’s going out of town and needed someone to watch her Pomeranian – who is small, sweet,  likes cats, is house trained and doesn’t chew on things.   We decide what we need, it happens!

(Although it must be said that we had been talking about rescuing a dog for a long time.  We really want a dog in our house and the subject is raised weekly.  It took an entire year before an ideal situation presented itself.)

[EDITOR: Personally I’m shocked at the odds of a small dog who’s house trained and doesn’t chew on things. I have enough gnaw marks around my house to be impressed by that one.]

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