Posted: 10/26/2005 6:55:46 AM EDT
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One of my pet peeves with dog trainers is the idea that dogs spend their time trying to dominate people in their family, and that you have to spend a lot of time doing "Alpha rolls" and similar crap to teach them who is boss. I don't know where these people get dogs stupid enough to think that they are boss over the master (who is larger and provides the food) or what they do to them, but I have owned lots of dogs and never had one that was confused about who was boss in the house. These people who believe this will tell you that any time a dog puts his paw on you or sticks his nose under your arm asking to be petted is trying to dominate you. According to the theory, these behaviors have nothing to do with affection, or simply the fact that anyone in their position would learn to like an occasional backrub and the affection that goes with it. My view is that these behaviors are exactly what they appear to be -- the dog wants companionship and a backrub. The idea that they are trying to dominate you (in the vast majority of cases) is, IMO, simply bullshit. All the dogs I have owned have never had any special "dominance" training and they will happily take orders from any child in the family old enough to walk and talk. They will attempt to prove their dominance over other dogs, but they won't try it with any humans in the family. My 165-pound Shiloh Shepherd is very dominant with other dogs, but will literally let a 2-year-old lead him around by the collar. I have argued that dogs have a far higher need and desire to be a member of the family and to cooperate than they do to dominate the family -- and I think there are good biological reasons for thinking so. My dogs have always shown the desire to do whatever I ask, simply because I ask it. In most cases, I don't even need treats to train them. They will learn to do things just because it pleases me. Now this research has come in which apparently confirms my beliefs. www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/26/tech/main981130.shtml Man's Best Friend Is Pretty Smart (Page 1 of 2) BUDAPEST, Hungary, Oct. 26, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (AP) Quote Dogs, says canine intelligence researcher Vilmos Csanyi, love to imitate humans. "This is not a little thing," he adds, "because they must pay attention to the person's actions, remember them, and then apply them to their own body." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (AP) This story was written by Colin Woodard. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At Eotvos Lorand University's Department of Ethology, visitors are usually greeted not by a security guard, but by a delegation of friendly mongrels, tails wagging. Dogs have the run of the place. They play in classrooms, visit faculty members in their offices, or nap in the laboratories. Animals here are no surprise - ethology is the zoological study of animal behavior - but the total lack of cages is. And why would there be, asks research fellow Adam Miklosi, who leads much of the research here into the cognitive abilities of man's best friend. "If you were studying human behavior, you wouldn't keep your subjects in a cage for 20 years and then ask them some questions?" he asks with a smile. "These are animals who've been brought up in a normal way, which allows us to see and understand them in their natural environment, which is the human environment." After a decade studying dogs in their human habitat, Mr. Miklosi and his colleagues have accumulated a body of evidence suggesting that dogs have far greater mental capabilities than scientists had thought. Dogs' smarts, it turns out, come out in their relationships with people. The implications of this research are more esoteric than the average dog owner may appreciate. The research doesn't exactly mean that dogs and their masters can enjoy Chaucer together, but it does mean scientists have reason to consider what dog-human communications may say about language skills development. Another implication is that dogs may make better cognitive study subjects than primates, which have been the focus of the field thus far. Until recently, domestication was thought to have dulled dogs' intelligence. Studies in the early 1980s showed that wolves, from which dogs probably descended, can unlock a gate after watching a human do it once, while dogs remained stumped after watching repeatedly. That never sat well with Vilmos Csanyi, the recently retired head of Mr. Miklosi's department. Mr. Csanyi, who had dogs of his own, suspected the dogs were awaiting permission to open the gate, that they regarded opening the gate as a violation of their master's rules. In 1997, Csanyi and his colleagues tested 28 dogs of various ages, breeds, and closeness to their owners, to see if they could learn to obtain cold cuts on the other side of a fence by pulling on the handles of dishes while their owners were present. Dogs with a close relationship to their owners fared worse than outdoor dogs. But when the dogs' owners were allowed to give the animals verbal permission, the gap between the groups vanished. Since then, Csanyi's team has demonstrated just how much dogs can accomplish by paying attention to people. In one classic experiment on dogs' use of human visual cues, food is hidden in one of several scent-proof containers. The animal is allowed to choose only one. Beforehand, the experimenter signals the correct choice by staring, nodding, or pointing at it. Chimpanzees, humans' closest genetic relatives, have always done poorly at this test. Dogs solved the problem immediately. Dogs also excel at imitating people. In one of the laboratories, graduate student Zsofia Viranyi demonstrates with Todor, an enthusiastic little mutt. Todor sits attentively as Ms. Viranyi spins around in a circle and comes to a stop. "Csinal," she says. ("You do it!") Todor does a little 360 on the tiled floor and lets out an enthusiastic bark. He easily imitates Viranyi's bow, lifting of an arm, and other tasks. The team found that some dogs can even imitate previously unseen actions performed by a person they haven't had close contact with. Other dogs learned how to operate a simple ball-dispensing machine by watching people use it. "We thought it would be very difficult for dogs to imitate humans," Csanyi says, Chimps have great difficulty doing so, even with their larger brains. "But it turns out [dogs] love to do it. This is not a little thing, because they must pay attention to the person's actions, remember them, and then apply them to their own body." Dogs' unusual ability and motivation to observe, imitate, and communicate with people appears to be with them from birth. Two years ago, Csanyi's graduate students were given either a puppy or a wolf cub to raise. They fed the animals by hand, coddling and doting on them. At five weeks, each cub was placed in a room containing an adult and the student who had raised the cub. Both sat motionless. But while the wolf cubs merely sniffed both humans before climbing into the student's lap to sleep, the puppies yipped at their caregivers, licking their hands and trying to establish contact. Three months later, the canines were given the opportunity to try to remove a piece of meat from under a cage by pulling on a rope in the presence of their caregiver. Dogs and wolves both mastered this promptly. Then the rope was anchored, making it impossible to obtain the meat. The dogs tried a couple of times, then turned to their masters for assistance or cues. The wolves ignored their caregivers, yanking on the rope until exhausted. "The wolves ... were only interested in the meat," notes Miklosi. "The dogs were of course interested in the meat, but knew that one way to get it might be to figure out what the human wants them to do." To Csanyi, this proves that dogs have acquired an innate ability to pay attention to people, and thus to communicate and work with them. This is a skill that wolves don't assume even when raised from birth to learn it. Dogs are "very motivated to cooperate with and behave like people," says Csanyi. "That's why dogs can do things no other animal can do." |
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Dogs, like people, can be pretty damn smart.....when they aren't being stupid. ETA: an intersting aside to this. I had a large lab/retriever/chow mix that was the best damn animal I have EVER owned. Like me, he was goofy as hell....often it was a toss up as to which of us was the most stupid of the two. However, he had an amazing ability to learn and communicate.... case in point: a few years ago my wee cousin was staying with me after getting booted out of the house again ( she's just like me and the dog...high IQ, dumb as a bag of hammers ) and happened to have stayed out so late one night that I locked up and left her to fend for herself ( she'd forgotten her keys...again) and I went to bed. around four in the morning I hear a scratching and whining at my bedroom door...it was my dog, Denver. I finally got up after telling him to stop it three or four times....oddly, he NEVER did this so I don't know why I didn't pick up on it. right off. anyway, I get out of bed and open the door, he leads me to the front door and lo and behold there's my wee cousin at the door. so I open the door and I asked her how the hell she got Denver to do that....she said..." Oh, I just told him to go get you. " Dammit.....I sure miss that dog..... 
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I agree with you. I have never caged or kenneled any of my dogs. Mine live with the family and wouldn't voluntarily go in a cage. They showed me that they would much rather be with people than be alone in a cage. I have never had any of the problems that are supposed to happen if you don't cage them. |
I had mine down to hand commands and even a couple of eye contact commands...like: "get out of the dining room until we're are done eating...youuuu"...I just gave him a "look" and he would go sit in the living room and watch TV until we were done and then I'd give a short whistle and he'd come in for his scraps. |
The smartest dog I ever saw was one I raised for my grandson. He is a Shar Pei-Boxer mix. He does a lot of interesting things. Perhaps the most remarkable is that he clearly listens to human conversations that aren't directed at him, and he understands English. He even taught himself to spell. As an example, if we told him to go get a ball or a toy, he knew the difference between them. If he couldn't find it in the immediate area he would come back and ask for further instructions. If we told him it is upstairs in some particular room, he would immediately run to that room and retrieve it. He had not been taught any of this. He just picked it up from listening to us. We later discovered that we could even spell the name of the rooms and he could still figure out where it was. My Shiloh is also pretty bright. He did all the basic commands by either hand or verbal signals at three months old, without training. He hasn't shown that he can spell yet, though. |
I bet that dog could fetch a beer if asked. Perfect. |
Just FYI, there are instructions somewhere on the net on how to teach a dog to fetch a beer. You just take it in small, logical steps until the entire behavior is complete. Only one drawback -- you have to leave a rope attached to the refrigerator handle and teach the dog to open the refrigerator. |
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I knew a guy who trained his pup to run towards anyone he pointed to and said "Get em!" He'd go to a public park, scope out the finest young lady there, and send his pup towards them as he ran after. The young lady would see the dog running towards her thinking that he had escaped his owner and bend down and help 'capture' him. This gave my friend the perfect opportunity to say "Thanks, so do you live around here...blah blah.." That dog was the perfect wingman indeed! Give that doggie a bone! |
Though there is one girl I wish I had never left and I sure wish my late best friend was still alive.....I can live with it. Whenever I think about my dog I just get sick with grief. |
No you just haven't met those stupid people. Most dog trainers I have talked to tell me they spend more time training the humans than training the dogs. There is a show on National Geographic TV (I think?) called The Dog Whisperer. He's a mexican and his schtick is he trains problem dogs. Of course, most of this time is spent with the owners. |
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A few years back, while stopped at a light, there was a pickup stopped in front of me. A guy was driving it and he had a dog sitting up there with him. The guy told his dog to go get him a soda. Instantly, the dog went through the rear sliding window and opened a cooler chest in the back. The dog had a little trouble getting the soda can because it was a bit too large for its mouth, but he finally got it and happily went back through the window and gave the soda to the guy. This was all done before the light turned green. That was a cool thing to see. |
