I have a sweet little doggie (Lhasa Apso) that is getting along in age. She is 12. She loves to sleep in our beds, on the couch, wherever. On a whim, we bought her a typical doggie bed for her comfort and just to see if she’d like it. We put it in a bedroom on the floor in a spot where the dog normally does not sleep.
The part that intrigues me and is slightly baffling is that that very night she took to it as if she knew what it was for without coaxing or cues. She seemed to know that it was a bed, moreover her bed. She exhibited typical digging and “nest making” behavior and immediately went to sleep in it. She sleeps there almost exclusively now.
Now, I know it’s a doggie bed because of a certain logic and learned knowledge. I recognize a normal human bed through the same process. How is it that my dog, who had never ever seen a doggie bed or observed other dogs using a doggie bed, knew its purpose? Does it relate to the beds geometry and shape or something? The doggie bed certainly does not appear all that natural in material and garish color, it is rather alien. Do they impregnate the bed with doggie pheremones or something?
Am I blinded by my own logic or do I seriously underestimate canine intelligence?
(I saw that there is a thread about innate knowledge already going but it appears to focus on human innate knowledge. I thought I’d start this thread rather than hijack Jon the Geek’s thread.)
Based solely on the observations of the dogs I’ve had over the years, my guess would be that a dog is like a person and would prefer to sleep on something soft, rather than the hard floor. Every dog I’ve had would prefer to lay on a throw pillow that had fallen on the floor (or even when it was still on the couch), rather than just lay on the carpet or wood floor. Dogs like to be comfortable too.
As your dog already is allowed to sleep on the human bed or the couch or wherever she probably views as any old place for a lie-down fair game. Dogs like sleeping on beds and couches for the same reasons we like to sleep on beds and couches…they are more comfortable than the floor.
Given a handy, cushy spot to lie down on she took to it like a fish to water. Since it is in your room she is happy with it because she is near you as well. My dog actually dislikes sleeping with me. She loves the bed and will jump up on it and be all cuddly for 10-15 minutes then she gets off and lies down in her doggie bed. I am guessing snoring and tossing and turning annoys her a bit so she gets the best of all worlds. Her own bed close to her people. In the morning she will return to the people bed to wake me up if I am being too lazy.
My dog is like that too. He gets up on the bed for 20mins or so at night and snuggles for a while then he jumps off and lies down on the pile of pillows and today’s clothes that arrange on the floor for him. At about 5:00am the next morning he will jump up again and go to sleep with us until we get up. We suspect that he gets too hot on the bed and that there just isn’t enough room. He sometimes sleeps on the bed all night when i’m away from home.
Not my dog. Through the nine years we have been together, she has steadfastly refused to use any form of doggie bed. I own about six “rejects” which she has never touched. No amount of coaxing could get her to lie down on one of them. I’ve bought the commercial kind. I’ve had big pillows made. Nothing. She sleeps on people beds, or on the floor. (We have a guest bedroom which she has claimed as her own.)
Now I have a puppy. I was hoping at least the pup would use the beds. She did, but not in the way I intended. She peed on them.
Thought – a 12-year old small-breed dog might not find it comfortable to jump on the big bed anymore. Oh, the dog can still do it, but perhaps the dog is willing to accept a more joint-friendly alternative.
I can’t answer the OP but my last dog did the same exact thing at the age of nine or ten. I totally mocked my wife when she bought it and layed it on the floor that morning. That night the dog went over and slept on it like she had been doing it for years. Weird.
Well, let say we end up in a foreign, alien planet, is tired, and see something that is soft, big enough to support us. And it is in a room (of some sorts), and it resembles a living quarters. We would think that big, soft, comfortable thingy is some sort of bed.
Perhaps, in the same way, your dog sees the bed as something soft and comfortable, and immediately claims it as its own? Did you specially indicate to her that “Hey, good doggy, this is for you?”
That’s the ticket! And if you have a dog that won’t lie on a doggie bed toss in some of your dirty clothes, especially underwear you sweated up while working in the yard. Remember that dogs think “the smellier the better.”
My year-and-a-half labrador flat out refuses to use a doggie bed. She’ll sleep on the couch all day (except for her two hours of chewing in the morning and hour in the evening), and snuggle up to either myself or my wife for evening television watching, so I know she knows what comfortable squishyness is. At night, she sleeps in a crate in our bedroom. She’s never been allowed on our bed.
She was diagnosed with hip displaysia a few months ago (which ended our 5-7 mile per day walks - now I know why she was grumpy after a walk…), so we bought her a good sized doggie bed for her crate. The first night, she promptly pushed it to one side of her crate and curled up in a ball on the hard crate floor. Wouldn’t go near it. We put it on the floor in the office so she could lay down while one of us was on the computer. She viewed it as a large chew toy to drag around the house. Now it lives in the basement, along with other doggie equipment never to be seen again (such as her first crate).
Of course, she’s smart enough that my wife and I think we’re going to wake up some morning and find she’s chewed herself some opposable thumbs overnight, so maybe she’s just messing with us. I wouldn’t put it past her…
Yes, she has never had occasion to be in another dog’s house, except for two in particular and neither had a doggie bed.
Yea, now that I’ve questioned my Mom, she did put it down when she brought it for her and said [Good Doggie Voice]"This is for you to sleep in, Mindy Doo![/Good Doggie Voice] (My dog’s name is Mindy). She sniffed it and walked away. Later on she came back and went to sleep in it.
I know audio cues are important to dogs, but I don’t think she understood it literally, at least I don’t think she did?
