I had a chance to read the book, "Inside your dog' by Alexandra Horowitz, who is a cognitive psychologist specializing in researching and understanding dogs. I've have boiled down 5 insights from this book that are genuine ahas. As a dog owner you will see your dog in a different way. If one is not a dog owner, they might wonder what the fuss is all about....
Aha 1: Humans see first, hear next and then the other senses follow. A dog smells first, hears next and other senses follow. So a dogs world view is dominated by smelling not seeing. Sight is supplemental to smell. "I smell bacon, I think I see it too...."
Aha 2: We live 5 to 6 feet above ground with our eyes. They live 0.25 to 1 foot above ground with their nose. Their sense of smell is approximately 30 times stronger than ours. The smells closer to the ground at 10 times stronger than 5 to 6 feet in the air. So they are smelling approximately 300 times more than we are any given moment. Where we see table tops and sofa tops - they see furniture legs and dust and stray socks below the furniture. In the same house, what they perceive is completely different from what we perceive.
Aha 3: Our functional view is human. i.e., when we walk outside, we see a house, a building, a car and a tree. And we see them as functionally useful to us. They see patches of grass, fire hydrants and squirrels. Where can they pee, which other dog peed - who went by?
Aha 4: Our time interval even psychologically is a second. Their sense of time is more elongated. Meaning, that they tell time by their nose. Is this food fresh or is it stale? Is the upcoming breeze bringing some information about what is coming around the corner? So their sense of time is a little of the fading past, a little of the present and a little of the coming future. They live in an expanded sense of time through their nose.
Aha 5: Don't touch my new shoes! This command makes no sense to them. They don't know what a shoe is. They don't know what a hair brush is. They don't know anything about any of our possessions. So saying don't touch my shoe is completely confusing to them. For them a shoe is a fountain of information. It smells of your feet - so it belongs to you. It gives them information about where you have been and what you have been in contact with. So when they go after an object of yours, they are trying to learn more about you and your comings and goings.
Obviously there were many more insights in the book (what domestication means, how wolf-pack analogy is wrong, what is Umwelt - etc). But the big take away for me, is to be able to perceive the world from the dog's point of view, rather than blithely anthropomorphizing the experience.
3 comments:
Wonderful insights and in-"smells" about dogs. hmm..
Looks like there are a lot of things for us to learn from these dogs. Top most in the list for me would be their secret against allergies. After a close encounter of the lawn kind either during mowing or from a lawn party, my nose never seems to stop sneezing.
Human nose seems to be 1000 times more sensitive compared to that of a dog, for allergies, if not for the nasal perception. This secret alone from the dogs, could bring someone a quick fortune in the allergy headquarters of the worlds :)
The perfect birthday gift for my mother.
I think the author is making this way too complicated.
I think it can be collapsed to one Aha.
Is that a treat? Did someone say treat? Where is the treat? I’m going to sleep until I hear the word treat.
The only name that I both recognized and also hold in high regard is Feynman’s. I of course know Warhol, but don’t think much of him. Of the rest, I find Horowitz most intriguing. If for no other reason than for ammunition for my war against anthropomorphism.
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