Dogs And Concepts Of Time

[MolassesLass]

Every night withotu fail, no matter what we're doing/watching they will start whinging for dinner, even though they don't get fed for half an hour. If we feed them later then boy do we know about it

I'm intrigued by this whinging around mealtimes thing - do people mean that their dogs start barking/whimpering? Our two kind of just stand there and look a bit soulful - maybe it's just that they really can't tell the time

My dogs are all different:

The Bullmastiff will stand right in front of you and nudge you and get excited if you look at him. Eventually he starts to "huff" (not a full bark, we call it his "indoor voice" ). He does this whenever he wants us to do something (like let him outside).

Male BC comes and lays his head on my lap and looks up at me.

Female BC paws at me.

[Quickasyoucan]

If my dog has no concept of time why does he get up (and want me up ) at 5.55 am on the dot every day of the year. Even if daylight saving has stopped or started it is still exactly the same time every day.

Unfortunately has recently added an earlier "get her up" attempt into the mix 4.00 am.

Jokes aside I have always thought it was some external cue, like someone who goes to work at that time in the neighbourhood. But the circadian rythmns thing sounds quite interesting.

He knows what time I am due home and my neighbour who sometimes looks after him when I am going out for an evening says he starts waiting by the window at that time and seems put out if I don't arrive...

He also puts himself to bed at exactly 8.30 pm every night!!!

[ruffpup]

I've had interesting experiences but no proof, either way. When I got a little dog then moved into a new house weeks later, my mother stayed with the dog. I was catching buses to work which didn't pass anywhere near my house or the surrounding streets. My mother noticed about 10-20 minutes before I arrived home on foot the dog would disappear, finally found under the curtain at the front window, apparently waiting for me, every day. Dog would not be tempted with a treat or anything until I came home.

Now driving to work, the same thing, I drive up and there's a little face at the window. On the rare occasions I come home early, it's a circus. Whatever the routine is, I disrupt it No face at the window if I come straight to the door, if I mess around at the letterbox etc the face appears at the window, and great excitement.

Most other dogs I've known well have had the excuse of hearing the owner's car, but mine didn't at first.

She hassles me to go to bed too, if I'm staying here on the 'net too long late at night.

[Kajtek]

I think dogs have a very poor concept of clocks.

I agree with no concept of calendar ie days of the week but I am a bit confused when it comes to clocks.

My boy sleeps in his bed in our bedroom and almost every day at 5.30 am he comes to my side of the bed and "tells" me to get up. We do morning walks so there is a reward for this behaviour. We no longer use an alarm clock as he is pretty reliable.

I know it's a routine, etc. but how does he know it's time to get up? Any suggestions?

Edit: Just noticed Quickasyoucan that you also have a doggy alarm-clock

Edited March 18, 2011 by HonBun

[Niques]

There have been some recent papers that suggest some animals may have episodic memory and supposedly some species can mentally time travel. If I remember correctly it was focused on caching species like squirrels and corvids.

The corvid research is really interesting.

I had a lecturer who's big in the field of Mental Time Travel in non-humans and it's a fascinating topic.

Personally, I don't think dogs have anything more than the ability to process to external cues (and learn responses to them) and their own circadian rhythm.

[Aidan3]

I think dogs have a very poor concept of clocks.

I agree with no concept of calendar ie days of the week but I am a bit confused when it comes to clocks.

My boy sleeps in his bed in our bedroom and almost every day at 5.30 am he comes to my side of the bed and "tells" me to get up.

I'm pretty sure he's not reading your clock... or am I?

[Staranais]

If you go into the bush for a week and leave all your clocks/watches/cell phones at home, you'll fast lose your sense of time too & you will start eating when you're hungry, sleeping when you're tired, getting up when it's light or when your companions get up, and stopping walking when it's dark.

I think my dog just lives like that all the time.

[corvus]

My boy sleeps in his bed in our bedroom and almost every day at 5.30 am he comes to my side of the bed and "tells" me to get up. We do morning walks so there is a reward for this behaviour. We no longer use an alarm clock as he is pretty reliable.

I know it's a routine, etc. but how does he know it's time to get up? Any suggestions?

Well, I used to be able to tell myself before I went to sleep at night what time to wake up in the morning and sure enough I would wake up within 2 minutes of that time next morning. Of course, I was never game enough to depend on it. But I think bodies have pretty good internal clocks. What's more, I've noticed with Erik that he very much follows habits of arousal and down time like the article points out.

[lilli_star]

I'm not sure about my dog, but I know my cat sits in the window and waits for me to come home from about 4:30pm onwards. My neighbour across the road found it very amusing when I first moved in!

[Aidan3]

But I think bodies have pretty good internal clocks.

They do, but interestingly, it is not set to 24 hour time! http://library.thinkquest.org/25553/englis...dy/rhythm.shtml

[Diva]

Well, I used to be able to tell myself before I went to sleep at night what time to wake up in the morning and sure enough I would wake up within 2 minutes of that time next morning. Of course, I was never game enough to depend on it.

I still do that, and I am happy to depend on it in most normal circumstances. It's very reliable.

I have no idea what episodic memory dogs may have, I expect not much, but I think they they have a good sense of duration, of how long things last. If I consistently train for a 3 minute 10 second sit stay then they will start to shift after that time precisely, even if I am not the one timing it.

Edited March 18, 2011 by Diva

[whiskedaway]

Something that I found interesting is that Akira (and now Halo) always knows what time OH will get home and I attributed it to her hearing his car. However in January she went to stay with Tobster, and Tobster said that at 5pm on the first day she went and looked out the window and waited for about 20 min. This is the time we'd normally get home from work, and there was definitely no car signalling we were home.

[cowanbree]

I think they do. My neighbours tell me that my dogs are generally very quiet until around the time I am normally home and then every single car going past sets them off as they think it is me home. He says the same car can go past all day with no noise but let it drive past at 5.30 and everyone knows about it..

[jacqui835]

Dogs understand routine.

They pick up cues on certain thing going to happen eg, like opening the fridge after 9pm they know its dinner, when the tv goes off, they know it's bedtime etc.

Nothing at my home is time schedules but there is a routine at home that they both know and understand.

My dogs are fed late (after 9pm)... so if I feed them before 9pm, it doesn't hit them that this is dinner because after 9pm and they will start whinging about getting some food.

That's interesting. My dog is almost always fed at about 8-8:30pm after we eat, but every now and then, I will give him his dinner earlier just because and he seems to understand that he only gets fed once a day.

He also seemed to have an understanding of time, or at least routine, because from his actions, I can actually tell what time it is. 6am, he will wake up, start annoying my partner as he knows he'll get nowhere with me but Dan may very well let him out. 5pm he knows is walk time, and I know it's 5pm because he will come and find me and try to rest his head on my lap and look up at me, asking to be walked (this was before I started full-time work). We get home at random times each night, but he starts to loiter around the gate from about 5:30pm onwards and runs towards it if there are any car noises or people walking past (this is according to my neighbour, who loves him and watches him during the day for me).

If they don't have 'memories', they can still definitely build associations. He knows whole trips off by heart, for example, if I start heading for the vet, he knows after about 1-2 mins in the car that that's where we're going. You can tell from his reactions that he knows where we're headed.

[fuzzy82]

My biology teacher in school told us dogs have no concept of time. (He also told us dogs have no complex feelings beyond 'content' and 'not content')

But I tend to disagree. Firstly because my dogs are more excited to see me the longer I have been gone. If it was a case of 'she is gone', then they should be just as happy to see me after 5 minutes as they are after 8 hours. But judging by their level of excitement, it's a case of 'she has been gone x amount of time' (obviously they don't form that thought, but they understand that concept).

Secondly, I have talked to people whose dogs have SA, and after working on it the dog can be fine when left alone for up to 30 minutes. But if the owner is delayed and the dog is alone for 1 hour, the dog will have destroyed the house. So again, it's a case of 'I have been alone x amount of time'.

Thirdly, in a stay, they can hold it longer and longer with practice. They reach an mount of time that they have been sitting when they think 'I've had enough of this' and get up. So they must be aware of sitting for a long time vs sitting and jumping up straight away.

[Kajtek]

I'm pretty sure he's not reading your clock... or am I?

No clock in the bedroom

Unfortunately, he has no concept of Saturday, Sunday or a public holiday

Edited March 19, 2011 by HonBun

[jazzy4]

Does anyone have any examples of their dogs being able to 'tell the time'?

My dogs know when it's dinner time, they have been conditioned to the fact that the closing song of the TV show means they get fed.

my cat does this also, she knows when neighbours starts she gets her dinner, i did not really now how much she really took notice of the song, i just thought it was the timing of it, till the week neighbours came back on this yr, one day they had a double episode & they played the theme song both times, the first time it played my cat got up & demanded dinner, which is her usual self, she ate it & came back into the lounge room & went to sleep for the remainder of the show, then that episode ended & the next one started & her head popped up, ears back & starts going crook for her dinner again then straight out to the dinner bowl going off looking for food,

i could not believe it - animals are smarter, than we as humans, give them credit for i think

[Danielle]

Ok so if dogs don't have specific memories then why do they grieve when their companion dog passes away? When we were kids our toy poodle passed away and our corgi mourned for a long time. She wouldn't eat, she searched the house and backyard. She lost a kilo in two weeks and had to be put on medication to make her eat. Her behaviour IMHO seemed like depression. Within three to four weeks she was back to her usual self.

So if it's true that dogs 'live in the moment' and don't have 'memories' as such, then why do they grieve? Shouldn't she have instantly forgotten our poodle and got on with life as normal?

I dont agree with that study at all, I believe dogs have a concept of time in the way of their body clock (as do humans) and I believe they do in fact have specific memories of events. I'm not sure if they can predict what will happen in the immediate future, I tend to think it's more of a pavlovian response, but they do have memories I'm sure of it.

[Greytmate]

Ok so if dogs don't have specific memories then why do they grieve when their companion dog passes away? When we were kids our toy poodle passed away and our corgi mourned for a long time. She wouldn't eat, she searched the house and backyard. She lost a kilo in two weeks and had to be put on medication to make her eat. Her behaviour IMHO seemed like depression. Within three to four weeks she was back to her usual self.

So if it's true that dogs 'live in the moment' and don't have 'memories' as such, then why do they grieve? Shouldn't she have instantly forgotten our poodle and got on with life as normal?

I dont agree with that study at all, I believe dogs have a concept of time in the way of their body clock (as do humans) and I believe they do in fact have specific memories of events. I'm not sure if they can predict what will happen in the immediate future, I tend to think it's more of a pavlovian response, but they do have memories I'm sure of it.

If 'life as normal' included communication with another dog (and it may have been subtle eye communication), then life isn't normal without the other dog being there. The normal behaviours the dog uses don't get the same reactions as they used to because there isn't the other dog there to react. That would explain the behaviour of a 'grieving' dog.

I think a dog can recognise an odour as being of an identifiable thing, so that is a type of memory I guess. But the smell has to trigger the memory, I doubt the dog has the ability to conjure up a memory of the smell in its imagination.

I have heard about another ability dogs have that has to do with time. A dog's sense of smell is acute, literally a million times better than ours. Dogs can smell crushed vegetation, and that is how some search or tracker dogs work, by sniffing out a trail of vegetation crushed by human feet. I heard a theory that dogs can detect the level of decomposition of the crushed vegetation, therefore knowing how long ago the trail was laid. The ability to smell to determine an increment of time.

I don't know if its true, but if it is, it is way beyond our human capabilities Sniffing to see if the milk is off is about all we manage to do with our limited ability.

Has anyone else heard of this?

[jr_inoz]

my two are definitely tuned into routines. If I put on my sneakers - then it must be time for a walk...

In regard to time and memory - they know what time of the day that I get home normally. I don't think it is tuned with my car though. If I am home at my normal time, they are sitting at the gate waiting for me. If I get home early (like on my half day off), they aren't at the gate and are still inside. (Could it be tuned to position of sun in the sky etc?)

Have a question though. My girl appears to have a very good memory. She was bailed up by a shar pei and a rottie when she was young. She is scared of both breeds now. (but fine with other big dogs). (Makes life interesting in the group 5 ring if we are in at the same time as the rotties in ring 6.)

My other girl has interesting reactions to things. She will bark at passing dogs at a dog show, but not ring 5 or 6 dogs, just gundogs. (Oh - and GSDs) Something has obviously happened in her past that I don't know about (she came here when she was 15months old).

For both dogs, it is like they have a memory. Is this association? how does this work?

Just on an aside - my dad had a mini fox terrier when he was a young lad. The dog would walk down to the train station every night to greet him when he got off the train. (train was about 1km away from home). Dad was fairly regular about the time he came home, but he didn't always catch exactly the same train - he would catch one of two or three trains. The dog knew exactly which train dad was on. Dad's mum would know what time he was coming home as the dog only left to go down and meet the train that Dad was actually on. Would love to know how people explain this one. It has always had me absolutely flumoxed (sp). Have no idea how the dog did this. Is there anything that explains this type of thing?