Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [85]
I
WHAT A DOG KNOWS
Claims about what dogs know are made constantly. Oddly, they tend to cluster around the academic and the ridiculous. The former prompts researchers to ask if a dog knows how, for instance, to count sums. In one experiment the dogs looked longer—evincing surprise—when there were either more or fewer biscuits revealed behind a screen than they had been shown being hidden there one by one—indicating that they were keeping track of number and noticing when there was a discrepancy. Ta-da: counting dogs.
The other kind of claims are the far-flung: that dogs have ethics, rationality, a metaphysics. I admit to entertaining the notion more than once that my own dog seems to act ironically (whether or not she intends to).* One ancient philosopher maintained that dogs understand disjunctive syllogisms. As evidence, he gave the observation that in tracking an animal to a branching path, dogs can deduce that if the animal is neither down the first nor second of three trails, they realize, even without scent, that it must be down the third.*
Starting with an interest in math or metaphysics and working downward does not get us very far in understanding dogs. But start with their snuffling approach of the world, their striking attention to humans, and knowledge of the various means by which dogs learn about the world—and we might be able to learn what they know. In particular, we might approach an answer to whether they experience life as we do: whether they think about the world as we do. We mind our own autobiographical journeys through life, managing daily affairs, plotting future revolutions, fearing death, and trying to do good. What do dogs know about time, about themselves, about right and wrong, about emergencies, emotions, and death? By defining and deconstructing these notions—making them scientifically examinable—we can begin to answer.
Dog days (About time)
Back home, Pump gives me a perfunctory greeting, executes an unlikely pirouette, and then races off. Over the course of the day she has located all the biscuits I left around the house for her, and has waited until now to consume them, gobbling from the one balanced on the chair's edge to the one on the doorknob to the tricky one on a towering pile of books, which she delicately plucks off and spirits away.
Animals exist in time, they use time; but do they experience time? Surely they do. At some level there is no difference between existing in time and experiencing time: time must be perceived to be used. What many people mean, I suspect, in asking whether animals experience time is, Do animals have the same feelings about time that we do? Can a dog sense the passage of a day? And, critically, are dogs bored all day, at home alone?
Dogs have plenty of experience of the Day, if no word day to call it. We are the first source of their knowledge of days: we organize the dog's day in parallel with ours, providing landmarks and surrounding them with ritual. For instance, we provide all sorts of cues about when the dog's mealtime is. We head for the kitchen or pantry. It may be our mealtime, too, so we begin to unload the refrigerator, wafting food smells about, and making a racket with pots and plates. If we glance at the dog and coo a little, any remaining ambiguity is erased. And dogs are naturally habitual, sensitive to activities that recur. They form preferences—places to eat, to sleep, to safely pee—and notice preferences of yours.
But in addition to all those visible and olfactory cues, does the dog naturally know that it is dinnertime? I know owners who insist they can set the clock by their dog. When he moves to the door, it's precisely the time to go out; when he moves to the kitchen, sure enough, it's time to be fed. Imagine removing all the cues the dog has about the time of day: all of your movements, any environmental sounds, even light and dark. The dog still knows when it's time to eat.
The first explanation is that dogs wear an actual clock—though internally. It is in the so-called pacemaker