What do dogs think?

Great Debates
21

One Christmas we wrapped presents for our dog, with treats inside. He carefully pulled off the wrapping paper. He now does that, with permission, for our presents too.

Our dog, half border collie, can remember and plan. He has successfully faked me out, when I blocked him from going in one direction, by moving in the direction I wanted him to go, and then cutting back. When he has found something interesting in a bush, he heads there every day for the next week at least.

I think he thinks we are funny dogs. He desperately wants to be part of our pack. We howl together, but he never starts until I do. He makes it very clear what he wants, though.

22

How much of our own language recognition requires understanding? If my boss tells me to sit I don’t consciously bend my legs and plant my kiester on a chair. I just sit.

One thing I’ve noticed about dogs is that the brain of the smartest dog on the planet turns to oatmeal at times like that. Much like mine.

23

Foooooood.
Time to nap.
My ears/flank/rear end itches.
Oooo, a dead thing. Let’s roll.
Ball!!!
I hate men in brown uniforms.
Hey baby.
Is it dinnertime yet?
The vacuum cleaner is Satan.

There are many complex thoughts, but these form the keystone of canine existence.

Yes, good memories have a powerful hold on a dog’s psyche. Our lab once encountered a groundhog in a corner of the yard, and after a massive staredown succeeding in routing it and giving it a buttchomp as a sendoff. For weeks, she’d revisit that spot in the yard. Sort of like Civil War veterans returning to the Gettysburg battlefield.

24

What I find amazing is how my cocker spaniel somehow can remember by smell or what have you a person that he hasn’t seen in years in the sense that at first sight after the individual revisits he knows that the person is a good guy or a bad guy.

And how quickly the brain works in this regard: He appears to love me dearly and is allowed to sleep on our bed at night. When he is in a deep sleep and I approach, he may instinctively awaken ready to chew my face off but in less than a fraction of a second he stops instantaneously when he awakens and sees that it is me. Now that is fast thinking.

There is no question in my mind that they have emotions of sadness, worry, anger, likes and dislikes. When I say: I’ll be back he stays where he is. If I don’t say anything he hesitantly follows me. If I say its time to sleep, he immediately runs ahead of me and jumps on to the bed or couch.

He pouts on legitimate occasions. No question in my mind that they think and make themselves very heavy if you try and get them to go somewhere that they don’t want to go. But my best guess is their thinking ability does not extend much further than a one and a half year old human being.

25

I’ve been told they don’t understand words but tone of voice. That the command sit will only work given a certain amount of circumstances. It’s quite easy to teach a dog to sit from standing. But it’s hellish to teach it to sit up, from lying down. I can certainly fool him with my tone of voice: “Let’s go home and watch daddy sit by the computer and play Civ3 for five hours straight!” - said in an excitable voice, will get him jumping and eager.

I’ve also heard that their sense of smell is like our sight, i.e. it’s the sharpest sense, giving the most vivid input. So would their sight be like our hearing? Secondary but still very important? But then, their hearing is better than ours…

I have little doubt that a wolf doesn’t have a complex set of thoughts: Hunt, eat, nap, mate, protect. But a dog seems to go beyond that. They play, even as adults. Wolves don’t do that.

26

I’m sure that’s true, just from personal experience. If you just observe cats and dogs, you realize cats are visual, like people are. So if they’re searching for something, they just look for it and they’ll find it. A dog tries to find it by smell, and sometimes they won’t think to look for it- they’ll end up going by it a few times while you yell “It’s right over there, damn it!” But they’re not stupid, they’re just not searching for it the way we would.

27

That’s because in a former life, he was an Airedale Terrier! :slight_smile:

Here’s what I imagine Buddy the Beagle thinks:

"Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Holy shit! What was that sound? A cougar? (gawd, I hope not!) No, it’s a squirrel! A squirrel! A FREAKING SQUIRREL! HEY! YOU STUPID SQUIRREL! GET THE HELL OFF MY PROPERTY BEFORE I TEAR YOU TO SHREDS!! AW-WOOO! AW-WOOOO!

Yeah, go ahead and run, girly squirrel! Stupid, flea ridden animal.

After all that work, I could sure use a treat. Please, please, please. Thank you! How about another?

Oh, fine. Yeah, yeah I know what the vet said. I’M TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT, OKAY? It’s very stressful trying to keep the property cleared of squirrels, you know. A little compassion would be nice. I mean, who else…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

28

I agree that dogs think, but just like everyone else its because I have a dog and I ~know~ he thinks. He knows what Walk means, he knows what Car means, he knows what Truck means (and he knows which is which), he knows what Momma means, he knows what Daddy means (and he knows that those are individuals, not generic)…Im sure he doesnt understand language the way we do though, Im sure its more a combination of syllable sounds he responds to.

Another interesting thing is when my sister in law or brother in law were visiting from Sweden, within about two weeks he figured out Nej (pronounced either Nay like old english or Nigh) meant ‘No’, Comer* meant ‘Get Over Here Dirtball’, Uppe®* meant ‘On the Bed’, and Javle Fon Hund meant he had succeeded in his favorite pasttime of driving someone crazy. What makes it worse is my brother in law (and sister in law but she doesnt use it much) also speaks a Swedish dialect called Piteamal*. He was starting to respond to that as well. So, now he is practically a bi-lingual dog; quite a few commands he will respond to either Swedish or English.

Ive always figured dogs thought in pretty much a similar way as to how we think when we are 3 or 4. I can remember some of the impressions/thoughts/ways of thinking I had when I was 3 or 4. My parents body language and tone often meant far more to me than the actual words or phrases, many of which I didnt understand. I can remember the sensation of not knowing what the hell this gibberish was my parents were speaking and so trying to determine what they wanted by their tone, etc.
*Apologies ahead of time to Swedes for my spelling, my Swedish spelling is terrible.

29

Dogs can understasnd much more than just tone. My lab had a pretty large vocabulary. He knew the difference between “ball”, “bowl”, “frisbee”, “cold beer”, “bone”. He also understood many commands and hand signals. He definitely dreamed. Would run in place and give little barks accompanied with REM. He would get extremely upset when the wife and I argued.

Some dogs are pretty smart.

30

Some dogs are way more intelligent than many people think. Check out Rico:

31

Agreed. But to elaborate on that, I find it confounding when people start trying to rank species in some kind of intellectual order, with humans automatically being placed at the top of the tree. I just have to take one look at either of our dogs on any given day, to see how little they require in terms of their happiness and wellbeing. This is of course in comparison to us humans who are oh-so-superior, yet spend the majority of our lives working, coming home, eating, sleeping, then getting up and doing it all again. All so we can feed our dogs and pick up their shit down the park.

32

I must say I am bit surprised by the sentiment that dogs and humans are very similar. Dogs do not contemplate their mortality, dogs do not create art, technology, etc. Until an animal is capable of writing the Ninthe symphony or creating an atomic bomb, i just don’t think it is that close. All animals apart from humans are missing that evolving problem solving, communal knowledge. Dogs today are much like dogs hundreds of years ago.

33

You can’t be sure, but if they don’t, it’s because they don’t know about it.

They have some basic mechanical problems making this difficult.

That’s your opinion. Just don’t confuse it with fact.

34

It’s when it comes to solving puzzles that you can see evidence that dogs think they’re smarter than you.

Princess, who has passed on, and Pete have/had always been outdoor dogs in the above freezing weather. Their house of choice are those insulated igloo houses, which is a nice home, but prone to having leads pulled under the rounded edges. The only problem with being an outdoor dog is sometimes they get their leads tangled, and need some human intervention so they have the full extent of their run of the yard again - and this usually means that they’ve gotten caught up around a tree or their house. So the hapless humans go out to untangle them.

You try to do something logical, which is get the dog to walk in the direction that would unwrap them. Through 17 years of observation and two dogs, I’ve determined that over 90% of the time the dog thinks that you are being silly when you try to get them to walk in the direction you want them to go." I know what pulling on the lead means, I come to you. I’ll go this way, how come you’re pulling that way?" You pull a little harder to give them the idea that they ought to come to you from this direction. “Shannon, it’s so much closer if I walk to you this way! Watch, I’ll so you.” they seem to think as they struggle to go the opposite way than you request " Hey! Why are you pulling me the other way? It’d be faster if I get to you this way!" They seem to think as they continue to fight their way in the opposite direction. Eventually you need to drag them by the collar in the direction you want because there’s no way in hell they’re going to be talked into walking the way you want, no matter where you move to and give a cluing in tug. " Oh! THIS way. I didn’t try this way before I called you for help. Yeah, that worked, Shannon. Why didn’t you say so earlier?" :dubious:

35

I can’t say much, except what I’ve observed. I have owned Standard Poodles for most of my life. They’re smart dogs. No, not the little ones, the big dog sized ones. You see them in the circus.

One, over a period of several weeks, figured out the remote control controlled the TV, and figured out how to turn it on.

Several of them have figured out how to open swinging, latched, and knobbed doors.

A few of them have responded to mirrors. My theory is that they do know their own reflection… and don’t care. My reasoning is as such: It’s the puppies that respond to mirrors, and bark and chase themselves in it. Really young ones. As they grow older, they no longer do this. However, they do respond to dogs on TV.

One, while watching Westminster, responded extremely strongly to a similar looking poodle. It later turned out to be his uncle. Furthermore, he likes to watch soccer and nature shows with bears. At one point, a man came out of a blind in the background. Noticing this, he charged the TV and attempted to inform the man in no uncertain terms to go back in the blind.

All of them have been able to ‘find mommy’ or ‘find daddy’. If not in a easily locatable area, some check by process of elimination through most likely areas.

They can judge relative size of two mounds of food. I don’t know if they can count, though.

With about 80 percent accuracy, they can ‘find the new toy’, given four old toys and a new toy. Repeated about fifty times over four years.

Anything else you can think to try? Oh, one more thing, insofar as judgement goes. Older dog, baby. Baby pulls older dog’s ear hard. Dog’s head whips around, mouth firmly closes over the baby’s hand. Not a mark on the baby. That’s judgement, if I ever saw it.

36

This reminds me - a coworker’s dog used to bark at dogs on TV. One day she caught him barking at Scooby Doo.

37

We are similar, because we created dogs in our image. We’ve bred many animals through the millenia, but only dogs can be said to be designed, until recently with gene manipulation and such.
Dogs solve problems, as do many other animals, including octopodes.
And science is quite clear that primates and canids have communal knowledge and/or culture, which is an important reason we could make dogs from wolves. I suppose we could have started out with jackals as well, and maybe some breeds of dogg do have jackal in them.

38

When I was growing up, my neighbor had a golden retriever and a mutt that we used to take care of when they went away. The two dogs were practically inseparable but the golden retriever also liked to check things out…So, if he was outside, he wanted to go inside and look around for a while. Sometimes, I’d get impatient with his constant desire to do this and leave him inside with the other outside. Then, I’d come back later and not only would he be outside with one of the windows open…But, it was a window I could have sworn I latched.

So, to see what was happening, I put him inside with the other dog outside and watched surreptitiously from outside. Sure enough, he understood the basics of the window needing to be unlatched and opened. Admittedly, he couldn’t quite figure out when he had pulled the latch up enough to unlatch it. But, he did go by trial-and-error. So, he’d work on the latch for a bit, then try to push open the window. If that wasn’t working, he’d go back to the latch. And, eventually he got it opened.

39

Another thing about dogs that is indicative of a complex emotional life is that they have buddies.

A guy who lived upstairs from me a few years ago had a dog called Bobby. Bobby used to run around the village, and one day he met Stimpy, and brought him home. They became inseperable. The village where I lived had dozens of dogs running around, but Bobby and Stimpy chose each other to be friends. They didn’t need each other for food or anything, they just hung out together for company. One day Stimpy disappeared, and Bobby went into a deep depression for months afterwards.

40

Forgot to mention this fantastic story. He fed himself, then let his best buddy out, then the other guys he liked - but not the dogs he didn’t like.