Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [68]
Even our most ordinary behavior—walking across a room in our characteristic style—is chock full of information that the dog can mine. All dog owners watch their pups' growing sensitivity to the rituals that precede going for what in many dog-peopled households is called a W-A-L-K.*
Dogs quickly learn to recognize shoe donning, of course; we come to expect that grabbing a leash or a jacket will clue them in; a regular walk time explains their prescience; but what if all you did was look up from your work or rise from your seat before your dog was on to you?
If done suddenly, or if you cross the room with a purposeful stride, an attentive dog has all the information he needs. Habitual watcher of your behavior, he sees your intent even when you think you are giving nothing away. As we've seen, dogs are very sensitive to gaze and thus to changes in our gaze. The difference between a head lifted up or angled down, away from them or toward them, is large for an animal so sensitive to eye contact. Even small movements of the hands or adjustments of the body attract notice. Spend three hours looking at a computer screen, hands tethered to the keyboard, then look up and stretch your arms overhead—this is a metamorphosis! The redirection of your attention is clear—and a hopeful dog can easily interpret it as a prelude to a walk. An acute human observer would notice this, too, but we rarely let others oversee us so closely in our daily affairs. (Nor do we find it terribly interesting to so oversee.)
Their facility at anticipation of our actions is part anatomy and part psychology. Their anatomy—all those rod photoreceptors—allows them a millisecond head start on noticing motion. They react before we see that there is something to react to. The critical psychologies are of anticipation—predicting the future from the past—and of association. Familiarity with your typical movements is necessary in order to so anticipate you: a new puppy might not be tricked by a feigned tennis-ball toss, but with age he will be. Even without familiarity, dogs are skilled at making associations between events—between the arrival of one's mother and the delivery of food; between a shift in your focus and the promise of a walk.
Dogs pick up the theme of our quotidian habits, and thus are especially sensitive to variations in them. Just as we often take the same route to our cars, to work, to the subway, we take our dogs on similar walks. Over time, they learn the route themselves, and can anticipate that we turn left past the hedgerow and make a sharp right at the corner with the fireplug. If we introduce a new detour on our way home, even an unnecessary one—circling around the block an additional go—dogs adjust to the new route after just a few outings. And they even begin heading in the direction of the detour before their owner makes any movements in that direction. This makes them fine, cooperative walking companions—better than many humans I perambulate the city with, whom I constantly knock into as I lead them on a preferred route.
The complement of dogs' anticipatory prowess is their purported character-reading ability. Plenty of people let their dogs choose their potential romantic partners. Others declare their dog a good judge of character, able to spot a duplicitous person, a bad sort, on first meeting. They may seem to recognize someone who is not to be trusted.* What this ability might come down to is their close looking at our looking. If you feel hesitant about an approaching stranger, you reveal it, however unintentionally. Dogs are, as we have seen, sensitive to the olfactory changes that come with stress; they can also notice tensing muscles and the auditory change of quick breathing or gasping. (These physiological changes are among those measured by lie detectors: one might imagine that a trained dog could substitute both for the machine and its technician.) But they will let