Dogs Are They Aware.

[autonomous_unit]

Maybe some of the posters here should look up the word "anthropomorphism".

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Yes, I did that but then I started to doubt that all these people around me are really self-aware individuals.

Hmm, I've just realized that my sig can relate to cultures as well as people!

[siamesekitty]

I've heard that a dog's brain is at around the level of a three-year-old child.

And I think they do dream as well. I've seen my dog make some funny sounds and pawing while asleep, as if she was chasing a cat or something in her dream.

[Abandon]

our soi dog dreams about sleeping

[anna234cn]

I always wish all the soi dogs could sleep under cars.

I think dgos can think in an easy way. They dont have complex thoughts and make only some simple decisions and behaviors. For example, as long as they see people running, they must will chase the person without thinking why the person run. And they like to bark to strangers. I'm gonna move to my new apartment soon and many soi dogs there like to scare me by barking. I hate them. Of course I hate the old lady who feeds them everyday much more.

[Kringle]

Spayed or neuter all of them and the soi dogs will at least subside. As long as people keep feeding them they will keep mutiplying and it's jkust comes downto just not being healthy much likely safe for people. Have to teach the public to take care of what they have whetehr it be the dogs,cats or even thtrash they throw on the streets. Way too many people feeling good for "themselves" to just feed an animal than truly take care of the problem. I even get upset with the monks not educating the people in the "proper" care of animals.

[Khun Larry]

I've heard that a dog's brain is at around the level of a three-year-old child.

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Thai or Farang?

[bina]

oh dear, i thought i would skip this post but:

Dogs dont think.....they act purely from instinct in the wild and from training in the domesticated world. They recognise some sounds like their name because it is repeated to them so many times. I think it was Pavlov who tested this theory many many years ago. he waited till a dog was hungry then rang a bell and fed it.....after doing this a few times....he rang the bell soon after feeding the dog and the dog came back for more food. the dog had developed a conditioned response and became hungry when it heard the bell even though it had just eaten.

Dogs seem to be aware of certain things but once again it is from instinct or conditioned response. But funnily enough they do dream ???

dogs jdo think:

what the quote above (soirrry i remember animals not people) says is conditioning but there are several different types which i wont go into if u want u can post privately since i train dogs and am now training one of my goats using conditioning BUT

the 'higher' the animal, the more curious and therefor more intelligent... dogs do think and take things in to consideration but it is a trait that is bred for...

there is a joke about training dobermans that u teach them once then they invent new things to the training to see if u keep up... actuallyin trainingthats called 'anticipation and there is also 'offerring a move' that is the dog takes what u teach him/her one step further which is a lot of fun.... border collies, boxers poodles are known for that aspect and makes training difficult and fun as they have to be kept busy w/new things or they get bored really quickly...

i worked with people who use various methods of training/conditioning for service dogs which requires the dog to really think thru situations before it responds. the dog must assess the situatin and then make a decision based on, of course, appropriate behaviors that it is expected to do...(phone call, get keys, get help from know address).

if nobody has noticed, most dogs are very very good at training people also...

pure conditioning is like w/my lambs, i ring a bell they run to me to get their bottles and i call them also eventually, no bottle but i call and they come running but they still butt against me and make wag tail and facial nursing requests... but sheep are really pretty dumb since they are bred to be herd oriented and no thought is really needed in a herd of sheep...

mix dogs obviously inherit whatever aspects of 'drive' i.e. hunting/chasing, search/find, retrieve, herding whatever

canaani and soi dogs are the prototype dog and are intelligent but are much more intstinctive in action /reaction and up til now, people have not bred them for other things than that... so they do the best dog like activities but are more difficult or less 'pliant or flexible' in training thats not pure usage of instinct or conditioning....

by the way, drug dogs are not given the drug but are raised nursing from the bitch with the drug (or bomb material) taped on her so they literally nurse the smell and associate it with mom from birth and the handlers later use this in the conditioning and training.

i know too serious for the posters but press my button etc etc........

[penzman]

There is a particular species of bird in Scotland, the name escape's me ,annualy it burie,s over 30,000 seed's in designated location,s ,when winter come's they retrieve no more than 80% of that stash ,a large amount of cogitative process must take place to undertake such a task .

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So, do they build little grain silos and try to keep other birds away, or do they scatter it everywhere and then spend the winter randomly pecking for seeds? I've seen people with about the same organizational skills, so I am still not sure what this says about cognition.

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Squirrels do something similar. They gather food which they hide randomly nearer to the nest.

[Abandon]

nice post bina.

behaviourist psychologists consider all human behaviour to be conditioning too you know, so because a dog might 'consider' an action first, or be very intelligent, does not show that it is not conditioning. Of course other psychologists think that 'all behaviour is conditioning' is not accurate so......

For example in the instance bina gives of the goat coming even though sometimes it does not receive a food reward - it does get love and affection which, as we know, animals crave like humans do. So they do get rewarded every time. Also it is proven that NOT giving a reward every single time actually strengthens the conditioning pattern. For example if the reward giving is patterned to be not time/schedule related, and not consistently given, the bahaviour is strengthened - perfect example is gambling - the rewards are not consistent and this strengthens the bahaviour.

Also there is another form of conditioning called operant conditioning. This is where an animal will display a behaviour that it has found gets rewards - such as if you reward (with love maybe) a dog for curiosity, it will display a behaviour of curiosity more.....

Psychologically we are talking here about INSIGHT - does an animal think and gain an insight from that? Most of the experiments on this have been done on rats and cats, and while most cat lovers like me like to think of their pet haveing insight and intelligence, the tests all point to this not being the case. Monkeys on the other hand, do have strong insightful learning.

[bina]

thanks pandit, i was implying operative conditioning which is what is used to work with service dogs etc..... just didnt have enough patience to explain

the gambling method of sometimes receiving a reward is techinically called the 'lottery method' and is always used: at first always rewarded, after, sometimes yes sometimes no and the rewards are pretty symbolic including throwup from someone have a strong epileptic seizure for instance: the dog licks the face which is also an 'asking for food' response from a puppy, and is re inforced by get the throwup (sorry its disgucsting sounding but for dogs they love it).. to train, the handler keeps chewed up food in mouth and play acts different epileptic seizure possiblilities, and when is finally on ground, dog licks face, gets the reward and then runs and phones (reallly!!) the programmed emergency number... the dog got the reward from the regurgitated food, and later of course, a secondary reward.... actually its fascinating....which is why dogs love to lick peoples faces, not love, food/mommy feeling!!! same as why dogs like to be around when changing nappies!!!

the goat is not getting love only ,she is getting the lottery possibility of getting food and goats equate nursing/food with mommy, and goats are affectionate and bonding mothers; what does that say about a goat that nurses from her own teat? apart from the fact that she is stealing my milk??

monkeys are equivalent to child around 5 yrs old (depending on species, old world or new world) my daughter works with monkeys in jeru. zoo... no real insight, but intelligent and curious - the monkeys not my daughter

pandit u know thses methods of operative conditioning etc are used to model behavior in humans, especially children who have gone thru trauma etc but u can even 're model' a bus driver w/o him feeling it:

read the book: dont shoot the dog........maybe i could start remodelling israeli rude behaviior... i use ideas from that when i deal with customers at the park....

and the thailand smile is one of them!!!!! smile, and the person's aggressive nasty behavior deflates.....

but never never never smile at a monkey... unless u can run very fast

Edited March 23, 2005 by bina

[Abandon]

another excellent post bina, I only learnt this stuff in books, but you have all kinds of interesting hands on experience with it.

I still doubt that dogs think in any meaningful way, though they are bright and adaptable.

While the words we use to think are dependent on the Deep structure (Chomsky) I feel that without words, then thought of animals is never comparable to humans thought.

[gburns57au]

another excellent post bina, I only learnt this stuff in books, but you have all kinds of interesting hands on experience with it.

I still doubt that dogs think in any meaningful way, though they are bright and adaptable.

While the words we use to think are dependent on the Deep structure (Chomsky) I feel that without words, then thought of animals is never comparable to humans thought.

I will stick by my comments....Dogs do not actually think for themselves....Bina, as a dog trainer and I have done this in the past also, you would know that you are training an animal to react to a stimulii. Some breeds are more amenable to training than others.....A dog with no training will react by inherited instinct....For instance a working dog would still chase livestock without training because it has been bred into it.....with training they then learn how to respond to given commands. The trainer of a good working dog will recognise the inherited traits and then refine them so it appears that the dog acts almost independently.

Interesting you say a sheep is a herd animal without recognising that a dog is actually a pack animal in the same way as Hyenas are. As a trainer you would know that if people recognised this fact then many behavioural problems in dogs can be resolved....by re-training the dog or the owner in an appropriate manner.

Dogs respond to instinct and conditioning only....yes they are different types of conditioning, And it is always wise to remember that the pack instinct is always in the dog and cant be trained out. A dog under stress will resort to pack mentality and instinct.

And while we humans are capable of reasoned thought...we are also pack animals and resort to pack mentality too.

Edited March 23, 2005 by gburns57au

[bina]

fair 'nuff, of course they are pack animals, all the alpha male/female etc. youre correct but there are still breeds and personality traits that include thinking more than reacting: herd guard dogs are not highly intelligent or thinking breeds, they are chase (puppy style but adult and nasty ) based. i can tell with my puppies within a few days of being born, where they are in the hierarchy and tried to match hierarchy to the personality of the personity wanting the puppy (dominant doesnt go with a wimbly/wombly type family, shy submissive makes an awful working dog etc)

most 'bred' dogs are alightly less pack oriented except, again, the pariah types: canaan, soi, etc where i've seen canaan aunts rearing the dominant female's babies etc.

herding dogs are one of two types: guard in which case they are raised w/the herd (imprinted ) and act like dogs but think like sheep sort of I we worked with them in hampshire college agric. farm for environmentally friendly answers to coyotes and feral dogs)... etc

hyenas are not pack animals at all but solitary with a wide range probably a better example is wolves or jackals or even goats or horses who have definate leaders... in goats its passed on from mother to daughter for instance, a dominant (queen ) goat's baby daughter will also rule. males are not involved in all this, only active in breeding season, the rest of the time they give in to the females (women take notice! ); if u are really into this stuff, check out the wild capetown dog... my daughter and i just finished a project on them for the jeru. zoo (to get our certificates) and it was fascinating....

as u know for every dog there a thousand methods of training... i like the click method but awful for boxers in general, great for dobermans, rotties, alsations etc...

but as pandit said, no dog is insightful i.e. they dont think about the fact that they think, or why they did something, they just do it and get as u said, a reaction for good or bad...

your last sentence, definately true, only we tend to analyze and think things thru and try to change the situation, not always with success, and not always for the good

totally of course not thai related although i have to say the the workers here do not understand how i can live with two sloppy boxers in a small apartment, and 'work' them every day (go and get, leave it, etc)

[penzman]

Had a funny experience with my dog yesterday.

When she doesn't behave I usually walk out to the street and point to the house, she will sometimes stay where she is or walk away or towards the house. When she stays where she is and then lies down, I grab her by the collar and then tie her up, give her a slap on the ass and she then hides in her dog house.

Yesterday, she had a small fight with a new dog on the block, I pointed to the house and she figured she'd avoid the slap on the ass and immediately went to the dog house.

[gburns57au]

hyenas are not pack animals at all but solitary with a wide range probably a better example is wolves or jackals or even goats or horses who have definate leaders

I saw a doco about Hyenas a while back which gives a contrary view.....These Hyenas did live in a pack, usually a small family group and had alpha females etc......and where the Alpha female would kill the offspring of a lesser female. reminded me of a story about a woman in the US who kept only female dogs and would breed them with outside males.....her alpha female couldnt have a litter but one of the lesser females did....she forgot to separate them on going out once and came back to find the pups all dead...her security cams showed that the alpha female had killed them and the lesser female did nothing to stop her....once the pups were dead the lesser female collected the dead pups and put them in the nursery box (for want of a better term) to await the return of the woman. back to Hyenas....They usually hunt and scavenge in small packs much the same as the Basenjis did. Males often were solitary but usually only until they could take over a group from an older and weaker male.

My parents used to breed basenjis and the pack instinct was very strong in them.

[sbk]

Interesting posts. Reminds me of my cat, she had gone into the room of one of our staff. She was trying to get the cat out, calling her in Thai (mah mah) with absolutely no response. When she then said "Come on" in english (in the same friendly tone and body messages as with the thai words), the cat immediately came. (and yes, my cat does come when I call her )

I tend to disagree that dogs don't think. It seems to me to be typical human arrogance that just because we don't understand their thought processes they must not exist. Perhaps they perceive the world in a way entirely different from our own? (like my thai husband sometimes )

[bina]

yes dogs do know languages; our park dogs speak thai hebrew and english and hand signs; my boxer male spoke finnish (imported) now knows english, hebrew and of course the hand signs so i can do tricks (use words he doesnt know in sentences but signal him with hands and then people say, how did he know what u were saying' its really fun!!....,

goats and the two lambs are 'imprinted' on a metal bowl for grain and bottles of milk, so they just see the bowl, and i can lead them anywhere, even if there is no grain in side, different bowl, slow response... but can transfer them slowly to a different piece of equipment w/same association (when going thru petting circle gate, get grain in corner, so they see the gate and then start to run...

basenjis are pariah dogs along with the almost or now extinct new guinea singing dog etc... which is why i once posted here about the thai village dog as a pariah dog breed.. , as far as i remember the listing in the pariah dog site, your parents maybe have heard of myrna shibolet, the canaan dog breeder and judge?? the behavior u described occurs in canaans also to some extant and myrna is researching pariah dogs in general and i had mentioned the village dogs i had seen in udon thani area villages...

hyenas could be, i just know that we have a huge striped male ranging in our orchards and he gets about 12 kilom. away he's very scary and not too shy and the dogs are terrified of him when he's approached the chicken houses, and there is no others that i've heard of here... he is watched also by the nature preservation. society here; havent ever notice females or packs, do have several packs of jackals who we have been siting for years, same den sites, etc.....

never really saw trained cats until i visited thai workers in a nearby kibbutz; a bunch of guys living near the chicken houses keep three cats (and contrary to the israeli expectations, not for future food sources); the cats only speak thai, and they actually listen and respond to commands like; down, stay etc... cats are not my thing but i thought this was interesting...

sbk maybe u should bring that cat thing up in the 'why thais think ' thread thats been going on forever that should stir them up a bit: thai animals reflect the thai mentality, bla bla bla......

[dog]

I think this dog has had his Day!?

[Abandon]

Interesting posts. Reminds me of my cat, she had gone into the room of one of our staff. She was trying to get the cat out, calling her in Thai (mah mah) with absolutely no response. When she then said "Come on" in english (in the same friendly tone and body messages as with the thai words), the cat immediately came. (and yes, my cat does come when I call her  )

what self respecting cat would reply to mah mah - that means 'doggie'.

yes dogs do know languages; our park dogs speak thai hebrew and english

Wow, here we were wondering if dogs can think and all along yours can speak.

[siamesekitty]

Interesting posts. Reminds me of my cat, she had gone into the room of one of our staff. She was trying to get the cat out, calling her in Thai (mah mah) with absolutely no response. When she then said "Come on" in english (in the same friendly tone and body messages as with the thai words), the cat immediately came. (and yes, my cat does come when I call her  )

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what self respecting cat would reply to mah mah - that means 'doggie'.

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Actually she said "มา มา", not "หมา หมา"...meaning "come over here"..

[siamesekitty]

A questions for fellow dog-owners: have you ever had problems with your dog howling and whining when nobody's home? I used to have 2 female dogs, mother and daughter. The mother recently died, and now the other one seems to have separation anxiety.

This is a grown dog, but she's been with us since she was born, and has never been alone before. If nobody was home at least she had a companion, her mother.

The rest of the family is on a trip abroad now, and I have to go to work during the week, what can I do to stop her making such a ruckus when she's alone? It's driving the neighbors crazy!

[Darknight]

For instance a working dog would still chase livestock without training because it has been bred into it.....with training they then learn how to respond to given commands. The trainer of a good working dog will recognise the inherited traits and then refine them so it appears that the dog acts almost independently.

Very true

I've had two border collies in the past who we got as a puppie. They had never seen a sheep in their life , we only trained them to listen to standard sit stay commands.

When our horses were outside in the back yard field, they would herd them from the fence, looking at the horses trying to stare them down running with them and suddenly stopping and laying flat on the ground when they didn't want them to move.

The herding behaviour was already there , if we would have wanted to make them sheep dogs we only would have needed to teach them the signals for left and right , drive and stop

I have a big problem with people trying to describe "thinking" or "consiousness" as

ON or OFF. It comes in all degrees throughout the natural world. it's not exclusive to man. i've seen my horse think several times, my dogs thought, even my parrot whas a sleazy thinker some times.

That said i encounter a lot of people sometimes with a consious capacity lower then a dog.

"The frog in the well , determines the size of the world by the rim of the pit he's in"

Lao tzse

[aughie]

Try leaving the radio on for your dog. Background nosie and the sound of voices may help.

[chuchok]

[siamesekitty]

LOL, yeah chuchok, that's what I've been thinking too.

Thanks aughie. I've thought about recording my voice, or leaving the TV on but for some reason the radio didn't really cross my mind. I'll try that and see if it helps. (My neighbors will probably inform me if it doesn't!)

I think I'll start a new thread on this, as to not mix it up with the current topic about dogs' cognitive abilities.

[gburns57au]

People think that a dog thinks in the same manner as us and this is not true....As with kittys dog....she doesnt think "oh I am lonely, I will have a howl" As a pack animal that is separated from the pack (human or canine) she is crying out to attract company which is merely an inherent instinct. A dog doesnt think to itself that it is hungry, it feels an ache in its belly and knows it needs to eat to stop the ache again an instinct.

[bina]

truely said BUT prozac for animals (i kid u not its the american thing no?) seems to help; but so would getting a new puppy as a playmate, or even a kitten if she doesnt eat cats, or a guienea pig (we had a bitch that would clean her guinea pig for hours, poor sodden thing....)

Edited April 9, 2005 by bina