Just curious re how a dogs mental processes work. In a multi-dog household if one dog misbehaves and the owner punishes that dogs in front of the others do they understand and absorb that lesson as potentially applying to themselves and what might happen if they misbehave, or not?
It seems to work that way in our household. But I am not sure that they understand that the other dog did bad and is getting punished. Maybe more of “If he’s in trouble, maybe I am too”.
Example: Skip was patrolling the kitchen floor for crumbs, husband tripped over him, yelled at him. “Skip - Out!” Skip went to lay down by the furnace vent, and so did Otter and Samson, even though they were sitting out of the way in the kitchen. Maybe they heard “Out” and assumed it applied to them too. Seconds later we have three sets of mournful eyes on us while we cook.
We believe that it helped with Samson’s potty training, as he was the third dog. So he just followed the other two for commands to “go outside” and did what they did.
Who can say what’s in a dogs head? Other than “feed me!”
There is no definitive answer here, but more opinion, I would guess.
Based upon my experience, I would say no. Our dog’s learning was clearly individual, and not based upon observance of other dogs behavior.
Dogs do learn good (and bad) behaviour from each other, but I don’t know how much of that comes from observing the others getting punished specifically.
In as much as punishment works, it works because it is applied *immediately *after the bad act. It’s called operant conditioning.
I seriously doubt that dogs have the reasoning ability to distinguish exactly what behavior resulted in the other dog being punished.
In my experience, it doesn’t work like that. Instead, I get this:
One dog gets told off, displays submissive body language and retreats to a safe place. The other dogs follow suit, presumably because the boss is in a bad mood and it’s best not to take any chances. Often, another dog will then slowly and sneakily try to do what the first dog got told off for, as if to say “Soooo… She’s not allowed to eat the cat’s food/jump on the furniture/etc, I wonder if I’d be allowed to.”
I’d think it is something like this.
Dogs are social creatures and like humans they learn acceptable behavior from the group.
In the wild the Alpha wolves I doubt need to individually school each and every other member of the pack as each one, in turn, goes for the newly killed deer out of turn. I believe an object lesson to one or two sends the message to the rest of the pack.
That said it can only go so far I think.
Not sure if this helps but a few weeks ago I read (sorry no cite) that dogs have a sense of fairness but not of equity (think I got that right). Essentially they’d have two dogs and ask the dogs to perform some task. After the task was done they’d give one dog a treat but not the other. The dog without the treat, after a few goes, decided that was unfair and refused to perform. However, if they gave one dog (say) a piece of kibble and the other dog a steak then both seemed content despite the disparity in the quality of the treat.
I offer the above just to show that dogs do see what is happening to other dogs and makes some assessments from that. They are not human in cognition but they are not brain dead either and can and do learn from others.
Mine pick up habits from each other but having never punished one I can’t speak to that.
Why not? It seems a simple enough query which is well suited to a definite answer via a controlled experiment. Just get a bunch of dogs who would not be disinclined to engage in a particular behaviour (say, eating from either of two bowls in a room). Reserve half the bunch as a control group. For the other half, have them observe (maybe repeatedly) another dog get punished for eating out of the leftmost bowl. Then see what proportion of the dogs in each group seem disinclined to eat from the leftmost bowl. If the hypothesis that dogs can learn by observing another’s punishment is true, then we would expect that, in general, dogs in the control group would exhibit no particular avoidance of the leftmost bowl, whereas dogs in the other group would.
I’d be surprised if such an experiment hasn’t already been carried out and published in some psychological journal. I’m pretty sure it’s been done with primates at least.
I read this thead went over to my neighbor’s house to try it on their two dogs. I took them out and yelled at a bush. I made sure the dogs were within earshot but I was in no way looking at them and they weren’t near me, just in earshot.
Both dogs reacted like they were in trouble.
For ten seconds, till they realized it wasn’t them they could care less. I think they just heard a mean voice and reacted like “OK what did I do now.”
I would think they just react to a negative regardless to who or what it’s applied to.
We should try an experiment. Dog owners start yelling at other things when your dog is in earshot but make sure you’re not directing eye contact or in any way looking at him, and see how he/she reacts
I want to see video evidence of this experiment.
The good thing is, you showed that bush who’s boss.
I have three dogs currently and my answer is ‘no’. Dogs are social creatures and quite intelligent but they are much simpler than people and incapable of making many of the mental connections we do, or having such complicated emotional responses.
Very few animals are intelligent enough to observe another individual experiencing negative consequences of an action and think ‘I had better not do what A just did; if I do, the bad thing that happened to him might happen to me’.
They have a good understanding of what I do and do not allow, but they have no understanding at all of ‘misbehaving’ as a concept. Neither do they feel ‘guilty’ - dogs do display placating behaviors in the face of anger that most people assume are ‘guilt’ but that is purely a conditioned reaction. If they get screamed at for getting in the trash, they will cringe when you discover the trash, but they don’t know they did ‘wrong’. This is why it’s kind of shitty to lose your temper with a dog - the things they do that anger you aren’t deliberate.
I don’t ‘punish’ my dogs, though, beyond telling them to stop doing things.
Quoth toodlepip:
That sounds to me like your dogs are, in fact, learning from it. If they weren’t, then the other dogs wouldn’t be slow and sneaky about repeating the act.
Sounds like what a researcher into dog behavior said recently in an interview - in experiments, dogs adopted the various poses and behaviors we associate with looking guilty or contrite, whenever they were yelled at, regardless of whether they had done anything wrong. She said that it was a human leap to an unwarranted conclusion to say that the dogs were acting on the basis of guilt.
On the other hand I’ve often had the experience of entering a room and seeing one of my dogs slinking out with a guilty appearance, long before I noticed they’d been in the trash or committed some other crime and had a chance to yell at them.
They know guilt. They also know how to fake it. 
I have participated in the training of probably almost a hundred dogs.
I’ve never seen that kind of two-levels-removed abstract learning in dogs. And I have known some scary smart dogs.
I tired but did you ever get a dog to hold a camera phone in the correct positon 
Now THAT a dog can do. The OP’s question, not so much.
The single hardest thing to explain to a training client.
I tell them, as far as the dog can tell, you’re punishing him for being home when you discover the trash on the floor. He sees you reacting to the situation in front of him, and has no reason to abstractly back up in his mind and associate your NOW with his PAST. Only abstract language can make that leap, not the limited vocabulary that even the best-trained dog shares with his trainer.