Posted on 10/07/2012 6:11:02 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Dogs love car rides because they feel as if they are on a hunt. For example, cats never love car rides, or at best merely learn to endure them because when riding in a car cats don’t feel as if they are on a hunt. Why when in a moving car, can a dog feel as if it’s on a hunt whereas a cat doesn’t? Because dogs evolved to hunt by feel whereas cats hunt by instinct.
This will make more sense once one understands what hunting for an animal feels like. In our mind hunting means stalking, chasing and killing prey in order to obtain food, but in the animal mind a hunt is a state of “emotional suspension” whereby the predator when highly aroused, projects its “self” (i.e. its “emotional center-of-gravity) into its prey—and if—the prey acts like prey, then whatever the prey does the predator mirrors by feel the equal and opposite movement in order to counterbalance it. This in fact is how a predator “knows” how to catch its prey. (Best visual example of this is watching a cheetah take down a gazelle on a nature show wherein the cat by virtue of “being in drive” has projected an emotional calculus onto its movements so that at some point in time its own trajectory intersects with the gazelle at a common point in time and space.) And in such a state an animal feels weightless. Feeling weightless is what hunting feels like.
Cars are perfect vehicles for arousing an emotional state of suspension because the feeling of weightlessness can be induced by the phenomenon of physical synchronization. (This allows wolves to pool their collective energies onto a midpoint so that as a group they can take on prey animals in a coordinated manner that they cannot physically overpower even when in numbers.) Because a dog projects its “self” into the forms of things toward which it is strongly attracted or bonded with (for example people in a car), and because everyone in the car is 1) facing the same direction, 2) swaying in unison to the dips and bends in the road, 3) accelerating and de-accelerating perfectly in sync with the momentum and change of direction of the car, the dog is induced by all this synchronized physical movement into a state of emotional suspension and therefore the dog feels as if it is part of a group that is on the hunt. The more the car moves and the faster stimuli whiz by the more the physical energy is channeled into the feeling of suspension. The question now becomes how much sensory input, i.e. energy, can this feeling of weightlessness sustain and here we can see different temperaments of dogs begin to precipitate out so that they respond in various things.
For some dogs the feeling can grow so strong that when their emotional or carrying capacity is exceeded, they strike at things going past. This is when the prey instinct, an automatic, hardwired reflex, takes over in order to make the kill. (We need to remember that it’s only in our mind that a dog on a sidewalk is motionless relative to the dog in the moving car. For the dog in the car, the dog on the sidewalk is moving 30, 40 or 50 mph and that’s a pretty fast prey animal.) Some dogs have a higher carrying capacity and can retain a feeling of arousal for the potential moment in the future when they will be let out of the car so as to express the internalized energy in a concrete way, such as running around, rolling on the ground, playing Frisbee or going for a hike with their owner.
Cats on the other hand (as well as all other animals) have a far more limited emotional capacity than dogs and so the phenomenon of induction by virtue of physical synchronization is not as likely to get going. For example, a lower emotional capacity is why when cats have their bellies rubbed and they start to get excited, they quickly hit an overload circuit breaker and then the reflex to claw and pounce comes up and, since the owner’s hand as prey-isn’t-acting-like-prey, they have to run away. Whereas dogs of course can have their bellies rubbed all day and simply wallow in higher and higher states of ecstasy, i.e. weightlessness.
JRTs are varmint killin machines.
That is a great animated GIF! Hopefully the dog survived - looked like the car was going at least 40mph.
I believe it. Feisty little guys with a strong bite.
Have to agree.
My dog like to ride with me because he knows we are about to hunt some delicious chinese food.
Dogs really handle weightlessness fairly well. I often floated my Lab around the cabin of small aircraft. He usually seemed to think he had chosen a defective seat, as he would find another as soon as he could stop floating.
Although I have no first hand experience with the same maneuver and cats, I have been warned to NEVER ATTEMPT this with a cat! Words and statements along the lines of “lucky to have survived” are to be associated with such attempts. Of course, YMMV.
When I’m driving my dog is in the back seat laying down. He stays there when I slow down, speed up or stop at a traffic light. But if I use the turn signal, just the click as I turn it on will have him pop up between the seats with his front feet on the console and back legs on the seat or floor watching out the window with anticipation. And as a terrier mix, seeing a cat will get him all excited.
one of my dogs loves the car; the other one loves to get in the car, but 2 blocks from house starts to whine and whimper
Need to take him through the drive-thru (fast food) IMMEDIATLY after, and buy him a burger or something, ( I gave my dog a sausage and egg burrito off the dollar menu, and let him eat it in the car ) after he got shots and blood drawn, and we have no problems with the vet, because I associated good things, (human food) and the vet.
BTW compared to what you just spent at the vets, one dollar is NOTHING. Honestly one of the best dollars I spent on him. Hope this helps!
We go up to my cousins cabin in Michigan quite often, and she LOOOVES it up there. A heavily wooded lot, that she gets a good run of, with lots of...SQUIRRELS!!!
She can be sleeping in the backseat, and we get to within 1 mile of Taylor rd, which is wooded rd that leads to the cabin, and she's up and begins to whine.
I get the door open to the car and one leg out, and she's out of the car and running.
OMG. I saw exactly that scene last week at Home Depot. We stopped there after early church when the store had just opened and the parking lot was fairly empty. A white truck stopped down the row from me where I was waiting for my husband to come back. As the drive hopped out and headed to the store, two Chesapeake Bay Retrievers stood up in unison and fixed their eyes in the direction their owner had disappeared. They stood there for a while at full attention.
Finally, the older one disappeard from view when he sat down to rest, and the younger one followed suit. About that time another white truck pulled into the space next to the truck with the dogs. The driver started to get out of his truck, and the two Chessies jumped up and started barking furiously. The new driver quickly retreated back into his cab and moved his truck down by me. He caught my eye and looked a little sheepish and went into the store shaking his head. The Chessies remained on alert until the stranger was out of sight, and then they sat down again. It was pretty funny.
We don’t see dogs riding in the beds of pick ups often around here. I’m sure the 2nd driver was startled.
I’ve done some trapping. Bobcats are a prize, and worth more, more finite habitat. Coyotes have a better nose and are more leery of a trap. Both are quite curious and cautious.
Their domestic counterparts are idiots in comparison...
Straight up.
90% of the time, Odin is snoring on the back seat while we’re moving.
When we stop and people are near the car, *then*, he “hunts”.
Until then, he doesn’t bother because he’s smart enough to know the other people can’t catch us.
Our dogs like going for rides because they like doing time/distance problems and then they bet on their answers. The other three don’t know that the little one bribes me to slow down after the bets are in. I’ve got like a dozen chew toys now.
That is a good looking dog. Do you take the pictures yourself? They look professional.
They think dogs have a sense of smell that is 1000 times more acute than ours. Man has five million receptors, dogs have 300 million to my understanding. So when the dog sticks his head out the window, maybe it’s like watching the country side flow past at 1000 mph but seeing every detail going back in time a good ways, like watching some of the best movies ever at once.
Freegards
What is the JRT like? Their special needs and characteristics...?
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