Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [65]
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. When a life-sized video image (in visible digital) of the owner was displayed before dogs, they disobeyed at levels befitting being home alone with no supervision. While they could use their video-owners' pointing hints to help find food, they didn't bother to follow many of their verbal commands. Dogs are dutiful, but more selectively dutiful when the owner is reduced to a videotape. You cannot hope to reduce your dog's lonely wailing by telling him to stop over the answering machine—but you might be able to tell him where he can find that treat you left out for him. When you next visit the zoo, check in on the monkey cages. Maybe there are capuchin monkeys, quick-moving, tail-flaunting animals who leap easily and shriek piercingly. Or colobus, slow-moving leaf-eaters whose black-and-white coats often hide a small colobus clinging inside. Watch the male snow monkeys as they follow around the red-bottomed females. There is much to recognize here in our distant evolutionary cousins. We see their interests, their fears, their lusts. And most will notice and respond to you—most likely by moving farther away, or turning their heads to avoid your gaze. 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
I am I because my little dog knows me.
—GERTRUDE STEIN The dog's gaze is an examination, a regard: a gaze at another animate creature. He sees us, which might imply that he thinks about us—and we like to be considered. Naturally we wonder, in that moment of shared gaze, Is the dog thinking about us the way we are thinking about the dog? What does he know about us?
We are known by our dogs—probably far better than we know them. They are the consummate eavesdroppers and peeping Toms: let into the privacy of our rooms, they quietly spy on our every move. They know about our comings and goings. They come to know our habits: how long we spend in the bathroom, how long we spend in front of the television. They know whom we sleep with; what we eat; what we eat too much of; whom we sleep too much with. They watch us like no other animal watches us. We share our homes with uncounted numbers of mice, millipedes, and mites: none bothers to look our way. We open our door and see pigeons, squirrels, and assorted flying bugs; they barely notice us. Dogs, by contrast, watch us from across the room, from the window, and out of the corner of their eyes. Their watching is enabled by a subtle but powerful ability that begins with simple vision. Sight is used to pay visual attention, and visual attention is used to see what we attend to. In some ways this is similar to us, but in other ways it surpasses human capacity.
The blind and the deaf sometimes keep dogs to see or hear the world for them. For some disabled persons, a dog may enable movement through a world they cannot navigate alone. Just as for the physically impaired dogs can act as eyes, ears, and feet, so also do they act as readers of human behavior for