New Research Into Canine Learning and Behavior. - Page 1

Really good article.. Suggest that everyone reads it, especially dog trainers. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i32/32a01201.htm

Very interesting. Thank you for posting.

Interesting article. I personally believe this researcher is right on the money. Domestic canines have been living with humans and so very closely for thousands of years and due to the evolutionary byproduct of their domestication, have learned to "read" us and subsequently we have learned to "read" them. I know the differences in the sound of my dogs barks, not necessarily what they are saying, but I get the hint of their meaning. I can tell if someone is in the front yard, or if the dogs are barking at each other during their playing, or the different bark they have when they want out or want in. There just seems to be a different pitch or inflection. Conversely, even though I try not to take my personal problems out on my pets, I can never be unhappy about something in my life without my dogs "picking up" on it. If I walk out to my dogs and I just had an argument with my wife or son, they act a lot differently. They will approach me cautiously and act like they are apologetic, before asking for petting and hugs. If I am in a normal mood, there is no cautiousness in their approach to me. I could go on and on about the different circumstances that lead me to the same conclusions that this researcher has reached. Even though monkeys and the like have bigger brains and seem to be more like us, not many monkey types have lived in human homes, sharing practically everything from food to the bed, but dogs have for thousands and thousands of years. Therefore they have learned to think like us (to a limited extent) and communicate with us with body language, facial expressions, voice tone and inflections, etc. I have seen suprisingly astute intelligence from dogs, when I truely went out of my way to trick them. Try throwing a toy for them a few times and then pretend to throw the toy but with a quick hand movement, hide it. When they do not see it or find it in the general area you alledgedly threw it to, they will not believe you threw it and search around you, not around some other area that it could have been thrown to. This works with many dogs, even if they have never sniffed or touched the toy prior. I believe it is because they have the sense the we humans sometimes trick them, for our amusement, and this is past down genetically, or at the very least, learned early in their life. Chimpanzees and the like, do not think like this about us. At least not according to the TV shows about their abilities and intelligence. I believe, given more time, humans and dogs will eventually "easily" converse, and we will know exactly what they are saying to us. They will be the second most intelligent living thing on the planet, if they are not already.

DDR-DSH, Thanks for the article. About a year ago I read an article in the news paper about a German University doing a study on a particular herding dog. Evidently the owner claimed the dog could identify a large number of objects. My memory is poor as to the exact number but it was high. They placed all of these objects in a room and then the owner would tell the dog to go fetch the shoe for example. The dog had an extremely high success rate considering the high number of objects.( wish I could remember, afraid to guess but it was very impressivd.) At any rate after much success they decided to place an object in the room that the dog was not familiar with. The dog did not have this item in his vocabulary. So they sent the dog into the room to retrieve the ( lets say a hammer.) The dog goes into the room and is there for some time, longer then normal, and finally returnes with the hammer. They repeated this test over and over and the dogs success was I believe in the 80%. They concluded that the dog was going into the room and looking at all the items he was familiar with and reasoned that it was none of them so he concluded it must be the item he is unfamiliar with so he brings it back. They ruled that this dog had the reasoning powers of I believe a 4-5 year old child.

We always had dogs as a child and my fascination with them and training started young. I remember dogs we had that we simply could not fool for any length of time when it came to something that meant alot to them. My mother would ask if we wanted to take them for a walk and of course they learned that right off. So we tried spelling and of course they learned that right off. We then tried spelling words like " take a hike" to no avail. We did this with out changing the tone of our voice because we didn't want the dogs to get excited for nothing if we couldn't take them for a walk. We changed the routine regularly to no avail. The dogs figured out that when we were saying things they did not understand that it " might be a walk they are talking about". They would set up with their ears up and intently look at us, waiting for any sign we were talking about them. As soon as our contenence would change such a smiling ( which we could not help most of the time, with those four eyes glued to our eyes waiting for a tell tale sign that it might be something good) they would leap up and mob us. I often wondered if they thought that we could not turn them down with their display of excitement, even if we were not talking about going for a walk. They knew us through and through. Brings back such fond memories. Hope this made sense.