> Dogs are not stupid and they are always very eager to learn and decode what you want them to.
Yeah, many are so clever that they very convincingly pretend they don't know what you want. My dog sometimes does this when he doesn't want to go back home. Being smart and obedient are two orthogonal things.
> not so smart that it's getting bored or trying to figure out how to escape.
This could be understood as if the most intelligent dogs were always bored or trying to escape. To clarify: intelligent dogs do need more stimulation, this is very true. But as long as they get it, they're happy.
>I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language.
>Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own.
That's a false equivalence, as well as untrue.
It takes intentional effort on our part for a dog to learn even a small subset of our vocabulary. When dogs learn our language, they only learn the few words that we make an effort to teach them, and these typically correspond directly to an action we demand of them in exchange for a reward. Dogs cannot pass this knowledge amongst themselves, each dog has to be taught by a human individually.
Dogs have made no specific effort to teach me, at least none that they managed to make recognizable to me, yet I can tell when they are excited, hurt, angry, &c, but mostly because a subset of body language and vocal attitude are instinctive or socially universal to most mammals (shouting and sharp poses convey aggression, for example).
I believe I understand more dog body language than dogs understand human body language. There is no human equivalent of a wagging tail, yet I understand that. There is no dog equivalent of a pointing finger, and they do not understand it: dogs will look at your finger instead of where you point.
This dog and the whole process of teaching is fascinating because it highlights how much we depend on verbal communications and easily discount other types.
> I believe that such dogs do exist, but they are rare.
it may as well be that every dog senses it, and it is our ability to communicate with and understand the dog rarely reaches the level necessary for the information to be actually communicated.
>They have an amazing sense for picking up territory cues from their owners.
Seems to me like something a powerful sense of smell would make trivial. A dog can instantly detect the points past which its human pack members never venture.
> I've clicker trained my cats to sit and also to follow my finger.
Dogs are so invested in human approval that even abuse can be an effective training 'method' much of the time. As you likely know, before scientific training methods started gaining popularity, this was the predominant tradition for training dogs. And in an anthropocentric way and from a position of utter ignorance, that somehow became the cultural standard. If you can't yell at or pinch or shove an animal and still have it be interested in pleasing you, it's 'not intelligent'.
It's absolutely absurd. It's not fair to dogs or to other animals, and erases the massive, fundamental similarity in the way dogs, cats, and other creatures of all kinds actually learn. All because humans struggle to separate the notion of intelligence from being interested in or useful to ourselves.
I love this phrasing, as I think it sums up the difference between dogs and other animals with regards to human communication. It's possible to communicate with other animals if you put in the effort, but dogs on the other hand are often willing to put in the effort to communicate with you!
>>The reason a dog brings the toy to the human is because they know that the human is better at throwing and the dog is better at fetching. Teamwork, y'see.
Honestly I always thought that the dog was just being diligent and making sure that its humans did his daily exercise routine by throwing a toy.
> We're predisposed to seeing meaning, and perhaps "intelligence", everywhere.
I’m guilty of this with my dog. I can’t help it with her head tilts and deep stares! Her inner monologue is probably less sophisticated than I like to think it is.
> "...training dogs has a huge wealth of actionable knowledge needed to interact with humans..."
yah, i couch this as 'dogs are first-order humans', feeling many of the same emotions (joy, pleasure, contentment, anger, fear, hurt, etc.) but more plainly and openly, without language (standing in for our more developed frontal lobes) as an indirection layer.
that (indirectly) leads to the notion that in the best of circumstances, you don't train (or own) a dog, you develop trust (and a relationship) with them, for which they're willing to cede their independence to your judgement, much like humans and leadership. the leader has to prove their worth to the group, not the other way around.
> Did the dog differentiate the scenarios based on intent or did it recognize my apologetic behaviour as non threatening?
Apologetic behavior is a pretty good post-facto signal of intent! Humans also rely on it with each other. So I'm not sure that relying on sort of secondary signals like that is a real problem for the theory that dogs can read and care about human intent.
Yeah, many are so clever that they very convincingly pretend they don't know what you want. My dog sometimes does this when he doesn't want to go back home. Being smart and obedient are two orthogonal things.
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