Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

by Alexandra Horowitz

gaze following, which infants do before reaching one year old. Dogs do it even sooner.

dogs in a context where they can get information from a person’s pointing gesture.

Chimpanzees have been given variations of this task in captive research settings. Surprisingly, though they seem to follow points, they don’t always do well at following gaze alone. Dogs perform admirably.

Best, dogs can use simply the person’s head direction—her gaze—to get information.

Attention-getting The first of these abilities, when seen in children, is called “attention-getting.” Informally, you may know it as anything that your dog does to interfere with what you are currently trying to do.

There are dogs who will stand barking continuously over a retrieved tennis ball, while their owners socialize with members of their own species.

So far, the dogs have kept pace with the developing child: gazing, following a point, following gaze, and using attentiongetters.

Do they also point, as best they can, with their bodies? Do they point with their heads to show you something?

In other words, pointing with that gaze: showing. This is visible daily in non-experimental settings. Ball dogs crazy about retrieving generally deliver their slobbered spheres to the front side—the face—of the ball tosser, not to her back.

Finally, dogs use the attention of others as information, both to get something they want and, more remarkably, to determine when they can get away with something.

We make requests appropriate to the state of knowledge and capacity of our audience. You do not ask the baker to explain string theory and the physicist for a loaf of seven-grain, sliced. In experimental settings mining the same four elements of dog, experimenter, food, and knowledge, dogs seem to distinguish between humans who might be helpful to them and humans who will likely not.

Let this be a lesson that begging at the table is probably encouraged by your eye contact toward the dog—even just long enough to tell him no begging!

the tests aim to get at what the dogs intuitively understand about the knowledge states of the human, not what the dog might have learned about what to do when you see someone who is blindfolded.

Dogs have gone through trials with odd humans wearing buckets, blindfolds, or holding books in front of their eyes, blocking their vision. They outperform chimps: dogs preferentially beg to the looking—to those whose eyes they can see. This is just how we act, preferring to talk, cajole, invite, or solicit those whose eyes are visible. Eyes equal attention equals knowledge.

The dogs methodically used the level of their owners’ attention to determine under what circumstances they were free to break the owners’ rules—just as they used the information from other dogs to get attention back toward them in play.

Lest you think that you can use this knowledge to trick your dog into behaving himself while you are at work by simply pretending to be home with him—over speakerphone or video— one experiment brings very disappointing news.

What is surprising is that dogs, so much less humanlike than these primates, are so much better at realizing what is behind our gaze, how to use it to get information or to their advantage. Dogs can see us as our primate cousins cannot.

Canine Anthropologists

Noble Mind

Inside of a Dog

You Had Me at Hello

The Importance of Mornings

Pump changed my own umwelt.

My enjoyment of a narrow winding path in a shady forest, lined with low bushes and grasses, comes in part f...

sidewalks and buildings, with their investigatory sniffing possibilities in mind: a sidewalk along an uninterrupted wall without fences, trees, or variation, is a block I’d never want to walk down.

the best panoramic olfactory view.

I smell the world more. I love to sit outside on a breezy day.

My day is tilted toward morning. The importance of mornings has always been that if I awoke early enough, we could have a long, off-leash walk together

I feel partway to full dogness myself.

GO FOR A “SMELL WALK”

Yet dog-walks are often not done with the dog’s sake in mind,

There were the smell walks, where we made zero progress but she inhaled untold purple, mesmerizing molecules. There were Pump’s-choice walks, where I let her choose which way we went at every intersection. There were serpentine walks, where I restrained myself instead of her as she weaved on leash from my left to my right and back again. As a younger dog, she tacitly agreed to go on runs with me when I agreed to occasionally stop and circle around her as she circled around an interesting dog. As she got older, there were even non-walking walks, where she lay down, and just stayed put until she was ready to move on.

TRAIN THOUGHTFULLY

Training can take a long time; be patient. When even a “trained” dog does not come to calling, too often people chase him down and then punish him—forgetting that from the dog’s point of view, the punishment is linked with your arrival, not his earlier disobedience. This is a quick, effective way to get him to never come when you call him.

ALLOW FOR HIS DOGNESS

Let him roll in whatever-that-thing-is once in a while.

Animalness matters: adapt to your dog’s capacities rather than simply expecting him to adapt to our strange notions of how to be a dog. We want our dogs to heel—I have seen people turn furious when their dog does not—but dogs may be more or less prone to walk close to, and in step with, their social companions.

Also, most dogs exhibit handedness— pawedness—

Do not leave him alone for

most of his life.

GIVE HIM SOMETHI...

One of the best ways to see your dog’s capacities and interests is simply to provide a lot of possible things to interact with. Wiggle a string in front of your dog’s nose along the ground; stash a treat in a shoebox;...

Dogs like both the familiar and the new. Happiness is novelty—new toys, new treats—in a safe, well-known place.

PLAY WITH HIM

Games that children find mind-bogglingly fun work with dogs too. Peekaboo, disappearing around the corner or under a blanket instead of behind hands, is especially fun when dogs are learning about invisible displacement, that objects continue to exist when you can no longer see them.

Play imitation games, mirroring what your dog does: jumping on the bed, yelping, pawing the air.

Treat your hands as he does his mouth and grab head, legs, tail, belly. Give him a good toy to hold on to, or be prepared for some nips. Watch as your own tail may begin to wag.

LOOK AGAIN

Notice how your dog uses his eyes; the frenzy of his nose; how his ears fold back, prick up, and pivot toward a distant bark. Notice all the sounds he makes, and all the sounds he notices. Even the way the dog moves,

SPY ON HIM