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The Secret Life Of The Dog

Jed

By Jed,
in General Dog Discussion

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Jed

Jed

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Some really interesting stuff in there about expression recognition by dogs. And the silver fox segment, which has always fascinated me. I have always known that dogs recognize expressions, so it was good to have it explained.

How good was Betsy? I am sure Endal the now deceased Labrador assistance dog in UK could do more than that, would love to know!!

Watching that has clarified a lot for me, and it has also explained some things which were happening, and which previous studies negated.

For years, I was the owner of a deaf dog - he would look at my face, and if I smiled at him - he smiled back. 100% of the time. If I was abstracted, he would smile, and if I smiled back, he would be so pleased. If I was cranky, he'd cuddle up - I was never cranky at him. I don't think he ever had a negative from me, nor was he ever punished. I always wondered if the lack of one important sense made him use another more. He was the one who would come at night if I turned the torch on him. I always wanted to obedience trial him, but didn't have the time. He titled very easily (deafness wasn't hereditary) with wins at royals etc.

Dogs have no much more we haven't even begun to explore, I find it so exciting when something like this comes along. :cry:

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Erny

Erny

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I've only watched Part 1. Interesting stuff and I enjoyed it. Will watch the other parts when there is more time.

One thing in Part 1 - the segment about dogs having learnt to read human faces and the recognition that they read the left side of the human face as we humans do.

I noticed that the door way to that room in which they showed the experiment was to the dogs' left. It is more than possible and perhaps even likely that the documentary has not shown every step of the way in the experiment - I know that TV documentaries have big time restraints. But it did make me wonder if they didn't change the room around and show the human faces from other sides of the room, whether the fact that the doorway was to the left that could have lent itself to an influence of the dog's eye movement direction. ???

Maybe not. I suppose if they conducted the same experiment but with dog face pictures, the anomaly would have shown itself up there too. I know that dogs read our faces. Big time. But it is very interesting that they've learnt to do so in a different way for humans. Just goes to show how very sensitive they are to picking up facial expressions they really are.

Gotta luv dogs :banghead:.

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Jed

Jed

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Try it with your own dogs, Erny. I did - she came into the room, looked at me, left side first. She has big eyes and a lot of expression, so it was easy to spot.

I was interested in them looking at the picture cards - I think that comes later. Some of mine show great interest in some things on TV. Forgotten what now, but I've often wondered what they take in.

corrie, those foxes were pretty darned good. I could have a couple of them, specially the cuddly ones. Fascinating about the colours changing, although that was posted and discussed here some time ago. Just amazing. And soooo cute!!

Really fascinating to know how man selected wolves and bred them, and they changed. I suppose the tamer wolves hung around, and so it went from there.

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