Ruby
I tested out signallying to Ruby to fetch by just using my eyes. I was surprised by the results. I can use my eyes to suggest something from her as well as using hand gestures or commands.
Posted on 01/06/2012 1:04:54 PM PST by ColdOne
A new report in Current Biology highlights that some dogs have the skills of a 6-month-old baby, USA Today reported.
The study’s results “support the notion that dogs are sensitive to the cues of signaling humans’ communicative intent in a way that is analogous to preverbal human infants,” said Jozsef Topel, the study’s author and an associate professor in the Comparative Behavior Research Group at the Institute for Psychological Researches, Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest.
In the study, 16 dogs watched videos of actresses turning toward a plastic pot.
During the first experiment, one actress stared directly into the dog’s eyes and said in a high-pitched voice, “Hi, dog.”
In a second experiment, the actress said, “Hi, dog,” in a low-pitched voice, but did not make direct eye contact.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Ruby
I tested out signallying to Ruby to fetch by just using my eyes. I was surprised by the results. I can use my eyes to suggest something from her as well as using hand gestures or commands.
No, they do not, it is in fact quite a bit higher, although all dogs are not created equal, same as man.
I am quite certain that some dogs have some form of ESP, and further more, I will go out on a limb and say that my dog is quite a bit smarter than some adults I know, certainly smarter than some frickin democrat green tard.
Yeah I’ve loved the breed since the first time I got one. You can see the wheels turning as they work through problems.
Without a doubt. My dogs actually have a list of known words as long as my arm that must be spelled in front of them! The people that did this study need to find some smarter dogs. Sheesh ... 6 months?
My Jack Russel Corgi mix is no Einstein. She’s got a strong herding instinct and a blank stare.
Visual clues are a big part of how dogs communicate anyway.
Absolutely correct. We have 2 new dogs that were shelter rescues, so they came to us with some habits that were not that great. My husband tried his way to teach, with zero results, and then we sat down and talked about how the dogs are seeing things and gaging his directives. As soon as my husband understood how the puppies were using the info he was projecting, they improved drastically in response to his words.
Lol :D
I’ve got a German Shepard, lab, chow mix (but it’s about 95% shepard in appearance), and I am utterly stunned by the intelligence of this dog.
It can clearly understand full sentences, questions, it counts with barks, and it attemps to speak. It’s the funniest thing. He rolls his tounge and make noises that I have never heard another dog make while looking me directly in the eye. He does this asking for his begging strips. If I had to guess what he was actually trying to say, it sound like, “I want”.
I don’t know what it says about me but I spend two thirds of the day trying to outsmart my beagle.
‘He urged pet owners to keep up with their “baby-talk voice,” as it is likely to get the dog’s attention.’
I disagree with this. And am not seeing the point yet of the research (sorry, I myself am in a fog right now, maybe I’m pretty stupid now).
Even Cesar Millan would disagree - that nonsense of high-pitched baby talk works up dogs and agitates them. It may be OK to “get their attention”, but largely all it does is excite dogs who are already unstable. It is excitable. Low tones are better and are calming.
I’ve seen this so much with so many dogs, mine and others’ at the vets’ and so on. I want to scream at vet techs (invariably girls) who keep doing that screechy talk; all you’re doing is further exciting a frightened dog who doesn’t need more exciting.
Someone dumped a tiny puppy on my doorstep, and now I guess him to be 8 months old, no longer a tiny puppy, but a huge, Malamute mix with bright blue eyes. He knows how to sit, come, don’t, shake, rollover, open doors, pick up trash, and put it in the garbage. He likes to charge into the bedroom in the morning, and flop around on top of me until I give him a good petting. Most of all, he tries very hard to be part of the family, with kids, my wife, my two old, arthritic dogs, and the two cats. He is very playful, but gentle. He is great with commands once he knows them, but not as quick as most dogs when it comes to looks and hand motions, and he likes things on his terms. It makes me wonder if he has a little wolf in him. Then again, I’m used to boxers who get very attached to their people.
I have a German Shepard mix that is amazingly intelligent and seems to be able to follow simple conversations. My other dog a Boxer, Beagle mix is as dumb as a rock. The smart one is a one or two takes on a command and it learns it, the dumb one needs to go over and over a command. Like people dogs vary but some of them are vastly smarter then what is stated in the article. My point being that researchers don’t usually factor in for the variability of living things.
I agree. I started training dogs in the 1980s (just mentioning that to say I’ve been training a long time and watched different methods come and go). The thing about dogs is they are very intelligent compared to many animals, and some are quite good at certain types of problem solving. In other ways of course they will never be able to do things even some of the less intelligent humans (with average intelligence that is) can do. But if you know how to motivate a dog to learn behaviors they are amazing.
I started a project this year after a long time of not doing any formal training with my dogs. I am teaching my current dog a trick (really a behavior) a week for 2012. She’s a retired show dog and she knows only really basic things so she’s almost a blank slate. So far so good, she’s learned 2 new things. Most importantly she understands that she gets a treat when she can figure out what I want. She’s not overly smart (I would say average) but like most goldens she’s a pleaser so she should be easy. I would rather not train an extremely intelligent dog because they often spend more time figuring out how to get around you than figuring out how to please you. :)
If the 2-yr old eats his own poop.
I always wished I could get into my dogs’ heads for just a moment and see exactly how they think. Since they don’t think in words like we do. I assume their thoughts are in pictures, but who knows. It would be interesting.
We had a dog that I swear was trying to speak. He’d sit down in front of me and go “Ao-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa. Aoo wow-whoa-whoa...” And my folks for a while had some weird Russian breed of hunting dog that was so smart, they had to spell in front of him. He knew “toys” “ice cream” “go to town,” and several other words.
I’ll put mine up against some of my teenage son’s friends even. I can’t tell you how many times that dog has had its head twisted to the side staring at them when they do something stupid and get hurt.
One I had would run under the bed when I THOUGHT, "It's time for Schnitzel's bath." I didn't say a word...and it happened several times.
I had Democrat neighbors who had a dog that voted!
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