# Do guide dogs know their owners are blind? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 28, 2020, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501 "2020-03-28T09:14:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501/21 "2020-03-29T03:09:55Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > Cool! Was that Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael? My friend got all three of her dogs from them. > > I also had a friend who lived in San Rafael, and he said he often saw the trainers out with their “trainees.” And you could really tell which ones were the new dogs! That’s the one. We live just within the 50 mile zone for having a breeder. They used to have tours, but they restricted the place some after they had some disease problems. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501/22 "2020-03-29T03:15:39Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Dogs have the ability to learn language, at the level of a toddler. Your claim that there is not a lot of cognition going on strikes me as dismissive of plain observation. Our dogs had a range of intelligence, ranging from a Lab dumb as a brick to a border collie who could understand some abstract concepts. We trained him to sit at corners - and he figured out that if he wanted to cross the street in the middle of the block he would sit to tell us. We had a treat dispensing machine he figured out in under five seconds. When the Lab got career changed we let him at the machine. He never figured it out - though the border collie tried to teach him. No self awareness, though. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501/23 "2020-03-29T05:38:54Z")
\*\*Do guide dogs know their owners are blind? \*\*Heck, they probably don’t even know their owners aren’t dogs. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501/24 "2020-03-29T06:03:49Z")
“Ours is not to wonder why; ours is but to do or die”. That’s dogs for you. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501/25 "2020-03-29T16:48:06Z")
A guide dog may understand at some level that it has better sensory perception than its handler. That’s a long distance from the dog understanding what sight is or any higher level ability to associate its own perceptions and abilities with its handler’s. I’m pretty sure my dog grasps that he can hear the sound of dangerous deliverymen and squirrel invaders before I do, yet I doubt there is much reasoning involved, it’s just natural for a dog to warn of intruders and through experience he’ll pick up that I’m not doing that like he does, not much more of a process than patterning. Despite all that, I think guide dogs do understand somehow that their handlers need them and depend on them even if they have no idea why. ---
**Author:** ![jerez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c68b51/32.png) [@jerez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jerez)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2020, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501/26 "2020-03-29T17:48:30Z")
I’ve heard many accounts from credible sources of little dogs knowing when their owner is about to walk through the door. The idea is that the dog recognizes the sound of its owner’s car, which isn’t too surprising, given dogs’ hearing, even when the dog reacts that way from a second- or third-floor apartment and the owner has parked on the next block (chances are the owner drove past the apartment first). And of course even humans are capable of recognizing the habitual sounds of their neighbors. Another explanation I’ve read, in cases in which the owner arrives home at the same time every day, has to do with the atmospheric temperature (rises/falls predictably). All of that seems logical, but I’ve noticed that owners (again, the credible ones) don’t seem entirely convinced that their dogs don’t “know” things. I find it fascinating to see them agree with science and simultaneously entertain other notions that they’d rather not talk about too much. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-guide-dogs-know-their-owners-are-blind/850501.md?page=1)