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By Root 732 0

own species. While a good attention-getter, a bark is not well applied if it continues to be used after it has failed to get attention. On the other hand, there is also evidence of very subtle visual attention-getters by dogs in reaction to the divided attention of their owners. By changing posture, as from a seated posture to standing, or from standing to approaching, dogs are able to reengage the owner enough to toss a ball or lunge playfully.

You are regularly a witness to the flexibility dogs show in attention-getting. If your dog did not rouse you from your armchair and novel by simply approaching you, he may have wandered off only to return carrying a shoe or another verboten item. Probably this causes you to chastise him gently and return to your book. More serious tactics are needed, he sees. Next may come whining, or a tentative woof; a tactile intervention—a slight push with a wet nose, nuzzling, or jumping; even a loud drop to the floor at your feet with a sigh. They are trying their best with you here.

Showing

So far, the dogs have kept pace with the developing child: gazing, following a point, following gaze, and using attention-getters. Do they also point, as best they can, with their bodies? Do they point with their heads to show you something?

Here again, experimenters set up a situation that they presumed would prompt the behavior, if the ability exists. The scenario is the gaze-following task, inverted. Instead of being the naïve ones, in these cases the dogs are informed but impotent: they alone witness an experimenter hiding a treat, damnably out of their reach. Their owners then wander into the room, and experimenters train their cameras on the dogs: Do they see the owners as tools which can help them? If so, do they communicate the location of the treat?

In these cases, it seems the only obtuse animals in the room are the humans, who may not see the dog's behavior as potentially showing them anything. That behavior consists of a lot of attention-getters (such as barking), followed, critically, by looking back and forth between the owner and the location of the treat. 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. And, if the ball is mistakenly dropped at the unresponding backside of the owner, the dog has an arsenal of attention-getters to employ, followed by relentless gaze alterations—looking at the face of the human holding the ball, and looking back at the ball in quick succession. The restless, attention-starved dog is never satisfied dropping found socks at your back; they are left within your sight, if not right on your lap.

Manipulating attention

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.

Research has determined this by asking if dogs choose intelligently when given a choice about whom to request food from. If every person is an equally good source of food, one would expect that dogs would approach all persons with that same beguiling expression—half entreaty, half expectation. There are dogs who do so, of course,* and those who reserve their begging for butchers, or owners who stuff their pockets with liver treats. But most dogs make a distinction that is important to us when we desire something: between possible and impossible collaborators. 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. When a person with a sandwich is either blindfolded or facing away, dogs suppress the urge to stay as close as possible to the sandwich.