What Dogs Know

[Rhianon]

I know dogs know more than we give them credit for sometimes. But this really amazed me last night.

DH was playing with Paris and her "squeaky." The game is that he throws it, pretends to chase her around the house, and she grabs it and runs to "home free"--which is her bed. There she chews until she's ready to go again and then drops squeaky for DH to try to grab and throw.

Anyway ... last night DH pretend to throw Squeaky but actually hid it under her bed. He then said "where's Squeaky?" and she went racing all over the house looking for it. As she was running past me in the other room I said "look under your bed, silly!"

She went straight for her bed and found Squeaky.

We don't use the word "bed" for anything. We don't say "go to your bed" or any other direction about her bed. How the heck did she know what I was saying?

[Racetrackreject]

Because she's smart and you guys are engaged with her, so she learns things.

I've found that Tanner is quite good at locating missing items, if he knows what it is. If I ask him to find something and he doesn't know what it is, he runs around crazy, but if he knows what it is, he puts his nose down and hunts for it. It's pretty awesome if you are like me and lose everything.

[Rosie B]

I had a moment like that yesterday with Emma, my american cocker. She is my girl. I was coming down from the barn with Max (my toddler) in my arms and she ran down to the front door of the house. Instead of going in the house, I was planning to go around the side and to the snowfort we had built for Max where my husband (Erick) was waiting. Well before I got down to where Emma was, I called Emma's name and she turned to me, eyes bright like she knew I wanted something unusual, and I told her "Go find Erick!" and she immediately turned, and ran around the back of the house, and ran into the snow fort with my husband. I've never told her to do that before, but she knew exactly what I wanted and did it.

[boots-aregard]

I taught my former poodle to do this. First I had to teach him to differentiate between three toys (His squeekie, his towel and his rope), then I had to teach him to "go get towel" or whatever, in the same room we were in. Then I put them in plain sight in another room and taught him to fetch his toys from that other room, and then I hid the toys and he had to search them out. Kept him busy for hours.

Unfortunately, it took hours to teach, too, which I think had more to do with teaching him the words than the toys and the hunt.

I was going to teach my current poodle as well, but the time investment is just too great. But he plays the same game you talk about. I don't think he'd find his toy under his bed, tho, nor would he look for it there, even though we DO use the word bed all the time ("Go to bed!")

They can be very smart about what they want to be smart about. I'm always amazed that they learn the sound of the various car engines, so that when we drive home they know it's us. I'm amazed because they are home all day listening to cars go by and some stop, and doors slam and it ISN'T us, so I wonder how they finally differentiate to know that THIS car noise is us (soon) and that car noise is not. Dogs aren't supposed to be able to look into the future.

[Literiding]

This article is a bit mind blowing on just how much a dog can learn:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144252.htm

The authors demonstrated that their dog, Chaser, learned the names of 1,022 objects -- no upper limit is apparent -- they stopped training the dog after three years due to their time constraints, not because the dog could not learn more names.

{snip}

The dog understands that names refer to particular objects, independent of the action requested involving that object.

{snip}

Their third experiment demonstrated that the dog also understands names for categories of objects or common nouns, and not just individual names or proper nouns.

[SnowHorse]

I've got two stories in the same spirit.

Our first year here (10 years ago) one day I heard a strange sound from the pasture. I looked up and saw a tiny baby deer scrambling across the pasture, with a coyote in pursuit. I screamed "noooooo!" and took off running after the two, who crossed the fence to the neighboring cow pasture, and disappeared in the weeds / bushes / high grass.

Wyatt, our older Weim, got ahead of me, managed to find and distract the coyote, and chased him away up a hill. I saw them disappear over the hill top.

I knew the baby deer had to be near, so as Wyatt returned, I called him over, and said "Wyatt, where's the baby". It took him no more than 30 seconds to find the baby, who was lying down in grass, exhausted and scared.

We just stood there for a while, hoping the baby would catch his breath, keeping the coyote away with our presence. I knew we couldn't stay there long because the mother - if nearby - would not approach with us there. So after a while we left the baby by himself, hoping he was now able to get back on his feet and recovered enough to move.

Anyway, while Weims are hunting dogs, Wyatt has never been trained to hunt, and he's so afraid of guns he would run away if you shot a single time. But, he knew what I wanted him to find, trained or not.



The second story is from a couple of summers ago.
One of my banty hens had decided to lay eggs in a bucket under the front porch. I really couldn't see well down there, because it was far underneath the porch, and the bucket was all black, so I wasn't quite sure what was going on in there.
Then one day I found the bucket in the yard. Some smashed up eggs here and there, and no Mama Hen - till I found her, half eaten, on the other side of the yard.
I shrugged it off at first, thinking there was no more to the story.
A couple of days later I heard sounds. Right next to the house, near the corner of the front porch on the side where the bucket had been.
Baby chicks!

Now, I had been neglecting that part of the yard - there is a flower bed with a big bushy rose, and I hadn't battled down the weeds growing next to it. So, I had grass/ weeds higher than my knee, and baby chicks - banties at that, so very tiny - somewhere in the middle of it. With no Momma Hen. I could easily step on them if I tried to find them.

"Wyatt!!
Come here, Good Boy.
Wyatt, find the babies"

He looked at me, and very carefully stepped into the flowerbed, with his nose pointing down. I got closer, and the babies were right there, under his nose - four of them. They may have been three days old, at best.

"Good BOY, Wyatt, GOOD BOY."
Hugs, ear rubbing.
"You're a GOOD BOY"

I got the babies out safely and raised them.

That dog may be hard headed and goofy, but he's GOLDEN when I need his help. Truly. And, he loves little critters

[Racetrackreject]

I love those stories Snowhorse!

I've used my JRT to find kittens. It usually goes like this:
"Listen. Do you hear a kitty?"
*ears perk up and the bouncing starts*
"Can you find the kitty? Where's the kitty?"
*nose down, finds kitty*

[Koolkat]

And what they know they don't know, also:

There is a PBS special that involves the intelligence of animals. One involves a border collie that has a gazillion toys and of course he knows each toy's name. They can put a pile of toys behind the sofa and sit on the sofa and ask him to get toy X. Of course, he trots around to the back of the sofa, sorts through the toys and retrieves toy X. What is more amazing is that if they put a new toy back there with no designated name that he knows, and ask him to get toy "new name", he will go back and sort through all his known toys and find the new unknown toy name and bring it back around.

[fergusnc]

Great stories!

I still remember a New Years Eve at my sister's house 20 years ago. Just a sisters weekend sleepover. I had my college dog with me, and she had only been around my sister a time or two (due to a recent return from years on the opposite coast). We were sitting on the couch watching a movie and eating potato chips. I NEVER ate potato chips, so my dog didn't really know about them. I was on the right side of the coach, my dog on the floor to the right of my armrest and out of view, sleeping. My sister was on the left side of the couch, chips in the middle. She dropped a chip on the floor off to HER left and my dog continued snoozing. Conversationally, in a soft voice I said, "well look at that Hokus, your auntie Ellen just dropped a potato chip on the floor. I wonder if there is anything you could do about that." She opened her eyes, got up and went STRAIGHT to the chip, ate it and came back to her spot...resumed snoozing. My sister went out of her mind in amazement. This dog also knew all the names of the 20+ toys she had and would "go get so and so" from the other end of the house with 100% accuracy. But I couldn't have her off leash to save my life.

Speaking of off leash, before my stupid college self embraced that she was an ON leash only dog, I lost her in hundreds of acres of trails on the far end of campus. Horrible experience. Searched for her for hours. Friend had the great idea to call Dominos where another friend worked and we had the dispatcher tell all the drivers...as they came in for more pizzas...to keep an eye out. No cell phones back then. Our friend had not yet heard the news of my lost dog when he was coming out of an apartment complex on the opposite side of the huge campus, literally miles from where I lost her, and across two sections of busy four lane roads. He walked up to his Subaru Brat to find Hokus sitting in the back. She had never been in that vehicle before. And I never let her ride in the back of trucks and such. Maybe she'd seen the car in his driveway a few times when we were at their house...MAYBE. He said as he came into view, she saw him and barked furiously at him like she was telling him off for taking so long in getting back from the pizza drop off. Like it was his fault. He drove her to his home (he was the roomie of the friend helping me search) and when she and I went back to her house to get more help, still knowing none of the latest developments, we walked into the living room to find Hokus sitting on the couch, sharing hot dogs with yet another one of her roommates while they watched cartoons.
one other off leash episode also occurred in thousands of acres of woods, and as I ran crying and calling for her, told there was no way I'd ever see her again, I heard barking. I was told there was no way it was my dog as it was nowhere near where she'd gone out of sight. I ran back to where I'd parked my car/towards the barking and found her sitting at the passenger door, barking her head off. And when she saw me, the tone of her bark changed to that reprimanding bark I later heard about in the pizza story. And she barked at me for a good bit of the drive home.
Man, I loved that dog to the moon and back. One of a kind.

So glad she lived through those two stupid college kid moments of "I know everything". And so glad I learned after only two major disasters and didn't allow a third!

[M&M]

My friend said to herself, "Now, where did I put the duct tape?" You all know what her dog did.

[Tabby]

What great stories! I always thought my dog was brilliant but she was nothing compared to your puppies. My dog simply seemed to understand English at the same level as a human. I could ask her to bring me my slippers. She'd run around the house looking for them - including upstairs and in the basement. She would always get the slippers that belonged to whoever was asking. When she brought the first one, you asked her to bring the other and she would trot off and get it. If we had a house guest who didn't have slippers there, she'd bring the person his/her shoes. If you had multiple house guests, she seemed to know whose shoes were whose by name (i.e. Bring John's slippers vs bring Betty's slippers). But that's nothing compared to these.

[SnowHorse]

Tabby - I disagree with you on your "But that's nothing compared to these."

If I asked Wyatt to bring me slippers or ANYthing at all, he'd look at me, and his expression would spell out loud: "You want me WHAT? I think you need to go see a Dr. about that."