Inside Of A Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, And Know Quotes
"The first way to begin understanding dogs is by forgetting what we think we know."
"To a dog, a rose is undistinguished from the rest of the plant matter surrounding it—unless it has been urinated upon by another dog, stepped on by another animal, or handled by the dog's owner."
"Dogs make eye contact and look to us for information—about the location of food, about our emotions, about what is happening."
"The key to dogs' success living with us in our homes is the very fact that dogs are not wolves."
"The same object, then, will be seen by different animals differently. A rose is a rose is a rose. Or is it?"
"Understanding a dog's perspective—through understanding his abilities, experience, and communication—provides that vocabulary."
"As a result, even with inherited genes, dogs aren't just carbon copies of their parents."
"The very notion of the mind of a dog was tainted."
"The wind that whisks through the grasses? Irrelevant to the tick."
"Behaviors seen as 'dominant' or 'submissive' are used not in a scramble for power, they are used to maintain social unity."
"We do better to explain dogs' taking commands from us, deferring to us, and indulging us by the fact that we are their source of food than by reasoning that we are alpha."
"The reality of wolf pack behavior contrasts starkly with dog behavior in other ways."
"The pack unit organizes social behavior and hunting behavior."
"Wolves seem to learn from each other not by punishing each other but by observing each other."
"Dogs, too, are keen observers—of our reactions."
"Punishing the dog for his misbehavior—the deed having been done maybe hours before—with dominance tactics is a quick way to make your relationship about bullying."
"To evoke the outdated, simplistic model of packs glosses over real differences between dog and wolf behavior and misses some of the most interesting features of packs in wolves."
"We are all domesticated, too: inculcated with our culture's mores, with how to be human, with how to behave with others."
"If you've left your dog indoors long enough that he races outside to squat, this urgency might preempt his ability to cache some urine for later marking."
"Dogs usually urine mark only after spending some time sniffing the area."
"The message this dog will leave may be intended for certain audiences only."
"Dogs who are kept penned by themselves spend very little time marking."
"Dogs who are kept in similar-sized enclosures with other dogs mark much more frequently."
"This makes sense if the message conveyed is about sex: seeking it oneself, or declaring oneself fit to be seeked."
"Dogs realize that there is a difference between gazing toward the door and turning to look at the clock on the wall."
"A dog has dictated this entire chapter to me."
"Imagining that dogs' thoughts are but cruder forms of human discourse does the dog a disservice."
"Their silence can be one of their most endearing traits."
"It takes all of six seconds for Pump to go from masterful to maladroit."
"The order of operations is turned upside-down for dogs. Snout beats eyes and mouth beats ears."
"Dogs can navigate and find food with their remarkable noses."
"By contrast, dogs have a higher flicker-fusion rate than humans do."
"Dogs pay attention to humans: to our location, subtle movements, moods, and, most avidly, to our faces."
"I am startled and a little flustered to look up from my work and see Pump watching me."
"The dog's gaze is an examination, a regard: a gaze at another animate creature."
"Dogs are able to anticipate us—and, it seems, to know something essential about us and others."
"The blind and the deaf sometimes keep dogs to see or hear the world for them."
"Dogs are much better at learning about things that are important to us in our visual world than we seem to be in understanding theirs."
"The combination of dogs' attention to us and their sensory prowess is explosive."
"Dogs are able to attend to things we never notice."
"Dogs use their sensory skills in combination with their attention to us."
"Dogs pick up the theme of our quotidian habits, and thus are especially sensitive to variations in them."
"Dogs don't stop looking—at the gimpy walk, at a rush of leaves tumbling down the sidewalk, at our faces."
"For dogs, too, the identity of a person is not just how she smells and looks; it is how she moves."
"The dog observes us, thinks about us, knows us."
"Dogs' performance is mixed. Oh, sure, if the test is run simply as described, then they have no trouble looking behind the screen for the toy."
"The very skill at social cognition that is their triumph as a companion to humans contributes to the dogs' failure at other physical-cognition tasks."
"When presented with a problem of any kind, dogs cleverly look to us. Our activities are sources of information."
"By standard intelligence tests, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast, that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool."
"In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can magically transport them to higher or lower heights as needed; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs and things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs' eyes!"
"Dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we're not around."
"Once a problem is solved—a hidden treat is unearthed, an unjustly closed door is opened—with or without a person's help, the dog is quickly able to apply that same means to solve it again and again."
"It is the natural workings of any nervous system to adjust its actions over time in response to experience—and of every animal with a nervous system to thereby learn."
"Dogs' easy mastery of new procedures and concepts presumably stops prior to grasping what a quark is."
"The question, then, is whether these are cases of true imitation, or of something else."
"Watching play, I noticed that dogs who violated the implicit rules for attention-getting and play-signaling—simply barging in on others' play without following the proper, mindful procedures, say—were shunned as playmates."
"Does this mean that your dog is aware of and interested in what's on your mind right now? No. Does it mean that he might realize that your behavior reflects what's on your mind? Yes."
"Her personality is unmistakable and omnipresent: in her reluctance to climb the steep steps out of the park—but then forging ahead of me strongly and gamely; in her great spasms of running and scent rolling of younger days; in her delight at my return from a long trip—but not dwelling on it; in her checking back for me on our walks but also always keeping a few paces apart."
"Claims about what dogs know are made constantly. Oddly, they tend to cluster around the academic and the ridiculous."
"The best scientific tool proposed to determine if dogs think about themselves—if they have a sense of self—is a simple one: the mirror."
"The study of dogs' cognitive abilities emerged from a context of comparative psychology, which by definition aims to compare animals' abilities with those of humans."
"Every dog that you name and bring home will also die. This inescapable, dreadful fact is part of our lot for introducing dogs into our lives."
"The warmth of a dog saves a lost, cold child; a man in a frozen lake can grab on to his dog waiting on the ice."
"Their success is due instead to what they do know: that something has happened to you, which makes them anxious."
"If they express that anxiety in a way that attracts other people... great."
"Dogs certainly have the potential, with training, to be rescuers."
"What the dogs seem to know is when an unusual situation occurs."
"They are masters of identifying the usual in the world you share with them."
"More than once Pumpernickel got herself in dire straits."
"I was amazed at how unfazed she appeared—especially as contrasted with my own alarm."
"A world that either fits in the mouth or doesn't."
"The dog's sensory ability is sufficiently different to allow him to attend to the parts of the visual world we gloss over."
"To live without the abstract is to be consumed by the local."
"For dogs, 'right now' happens before we know it."
"Navigating the world of human time with their expanded window of the present, dogs function a little ahead of us."
"Their joy when you return home... is translated directly through their tails."
"We have the feeling of knowing exactly what the dog is doing."
"The importance of mornings has always been that if I awoke early enough, we could have a long, off-leash walk together."
"What is special is the life story that each dog owner creates with and knows about his own dog."
"Every moment with Finnegan is infinitely richer because of what she taught me."
"When I looked into her eyes, she was a puppy again."
"By definition, not every dog can be the special dog—else special becomes ordinary."
"I saw her frustrations, her resignations, her impulses pursued or abandoned."
"The specialness of a dog is the life story you create and know with them."
"Behavioral scientific approaches to dogs build on the singular understanding of the dog owner."
"After knowing Pump, and losing Pump, I met Finnegan."
"She lifted her head and turned toward me, her head pulsing slightly with her breathing."
"Her ears lay flat, curling up a little at the bottom like a felted leaf, dried in the sun."