Dogs Ability to Follow Humans' Gazes - Page 1

Interesting article about human-dog communication:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/dogs-follow-humans-gazes-infants-study/story?id=15291889#.TwyQBm8S34u

Go out to your kennel sometime and sing a song for them and watch their faces, eyes, and expressions. I do it once in a whole just for kicks.

They do watch where you look! 
Don't know if anyone else has read this book but it was eye opening for me.  "Inside of a Dog" By: Alexandra Horowitz.
It explains in detail in the book about how the dog is always watching you!
 

Good article. Definately true. Funny thing to watch in school is a 240# and up man trying to "talk" in that high pitched, little kid's voice while training his dog.

I would have to guess @ 40% of my communicating with my dogs is with gazes. I think also it depends on how in tune we are with them, (we've talked of this in other threads).

JRANSOM, I might have to grab that book. On the internet or B&N? 

In our training classes we always have all the dogs line up to watch a demo dog. Some are very interested, some couldn't care less. The ones who don't seem to care are generally the dogs that are less enthusiastic about working and the ones that take longer to learn an exercise.  Everyone knows to not look a dog in the eyes on a long sit or down, look instead between his ears and smile very widely so he can see your teeth. For some reason it keeps their attention focused on the handler and not the dog next to them.

Dogs love music and to be sung to. One of my dogs loved Tom Petty songs, American Girl was his favorite LOL.

Alboe2009, you can find it online or at B&N.  I happened to find it at a Kmart.

Jen

I have read about human/canine interaction research before, & I find it extremely interesting. Dogs will try to mimic human expression, can follow our gaze to find an object, & so much more. The thing I think is the very coolest about this, is that it means another species is reaching out to US to establish communications, instead of we, the big brained species, trying to reach out to them. Of course, this sort of symbiotic relationship has developed over many thousands of years of interaction, to aid in the survival of domesticated dogs, because no other canid species demonstrates it. But it makes me wonder how much more of our dogs behaviours we could misread, & are there things other species do to accomodate us that we don't yet understand? Maybe we're dumber than we think, & the critters are smarter than we give them credit for?
Just sayin'! jackie harris

Stanley Coren wrote about this years ago. I did receive "Inside of a Dog" for Christmas and look forward to reading it. You discover these things on your own when you work with dogs all day long. A year or two ago there was an article ona university study on dogs' intelligence being higher than orignally thought and behavior toward their owner and how they can "fool" their owner into thinking something, particularly by looking "sorry". The line in the article that stood out most to me was, "Dog may be the biggest charlatans in the animal kingdom". My first thought was, "DUH!"

my dogs watch where iam "focused"....if they come up and I ignore them and stare at something they follow..if its a person in a distance their fur goes up and barking starts... tried that with a cat one day...the little bastard fell asleep while i was looking away..LOL