Veterinarian Robert K. Anderson had witnessed hundreds of dogs straining and coughing against choke collars when he had a simple, brilliant idea.
"I had a background in cattle and horses, and we didn't use choke chains on horses and cattle, but we did use halters. So I said, 'Why can't we use halters on dogs?'" Anderson said in an interview years later. "I was jeered and laughed at as I was ... when I used food to motivate dogs."
In the mid-1980s, he and dog trainer Ruth Foster used his insight to invent the Gentle Leader head collar for dogs, now enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution as one of the world's 100 best inventions, according to a biography provided by the University of Minnesota's College of Veterinary Medicine, which called Anderson "a gentle giant in the world of veterinary medicine." He also co-invented the Easy Walk harness for dogs.
Anderson, a professor emeritus in veterinary public health at the U whose innovations and inventions in the field of animal behavior went well beyond those items, died Oct. 18 at his Falcon Heights home. He was 90, and had been healthy and active until recently, friends and colleagues said.
"He was the founder of animal behavior medicine, and his work touched on so many areas of the veterinary world," said Bill Venne, chief development officer for the College of Veterinary Medicine. "He helped us to understand animal emotions."
Anderson was born in Boulder, Colo., and spent much of his childhood on a dairy farm near Fort Collins in that state. In 1944, he graduated from the Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine. He had planned to work with dairy cattle, but wartime service in the Navy trained him in epidemiology and public health work. After the war, he became director of the veterinary public health program at Denver's Department of Health and Hospitals. In 1950, he received a master's degree in public health from the University of Michigan, then returned to Denver to direct its animal control effort during a rabies outbreak.
In 1954, he came to the University of Minnesota, whose College of Veterinary Medicine and School of Public Health jointly developed a program in veterinary public health. He became its first director, a position he held until 1986.
In that role, he did research and taught veterinary and public health students about food safety, epidemiology and zoonotic diseases (those that can be transmitted from animals to humans). He also did work to help distinguish between antibodies formed as a result of exposure to vaccines and infection antibodies, which allowed vets to tell the difference between vaccinated and infected animals.
