Guidedog Pts...

[Are You Serious Jo]

They also pick up on changed behaviour of the owner when a loved dog dies. Dogs are supercued to humans as they co-evolved. Some dogs really become quieter and more affectionate when their owner is sad because they've learned that is the right behaviour in that context.

[minimax]

My dog mourns when dinner is over. She sits by the fridge where she last saw the container go and cries for it.

[Dame Aussie]

They also pick up on changed behaviour of the owner when a loved dog dies. Dogs are supercued to humans as they co-evolved. Some dogs really become quieter and more affectionate when their owner is sad because they've learned that is the right behaviour in that context.

Lili does this, if I am upset she will stop whatever she's doing and come and sit next to me and lean into me for cuddles :) it makes me laugh and cheers me up :laugh: sorry

[Guest donatella]

Mine are very tuned into me. They are energetic playful dogs who don't sit still however after my nights and I crawl into bed at 8am they just crawl in with me and sleep.

I often wake up to 4 eyes on me staring at my head but they don't play or make noise.

Edited April 11, 2013 by donatella

[Rosetta]

Mine could not care less how I am feeling - its all about me Mum :laugh:

[WreckitWhippet]

Go to google scholar and search for " Do dogs (Canis familiaris) understand invisible displacement?" you'll see a paper with lead author E Collier-Baker and me second author, you can download the PDF. That is the paper that got us an international award.

Hey well done Reverend Jo Not many people on this forum could lay claim to something like that!

REv Jo is a special one, she combines intellect with the ability to pull a rabbit out of her bottom

[Tara and Sam]

I know when my OH was in hospital for 3 months Sam did fret for him

he wouldnt eat after a month or so and was very restless

IMO he " senced" something wasnt right

partner had been away other times and Sam did not have the same reaction to him not here

When Sam passed away Tara was terrible for months after he passed away

she walked around smelling for him and looking for him

broke my heart to see her walk around with nose in air trying to find him

even though they had time apart from each other she did seem to fret badly for him

when he passed away at home I led her up to him and she started shakeing terribly and backed away and then whent and hid in the bedroom

they may not know the meaning of death as humans do but I am sure they do sence it

What about the dogs who stay at the owners grave for weeks ?

how does that get explained

as to the OP it"s a hard call to make unless in that situation

but as Steve said , if make that promise then I would follow it through

if I couldnt find a alternative before disussing options with the owner

[PuddleDuck]

I think they live in the moment. That moment may be confusion and 'mourning' because a dog or person they spent their life with isn't there anymore. But I don't think they go 'oh bugger, fluffy just died, I bloody hope that doesn't happen to me!'

[Guest donatella]

Mourning and loss isnt about thinking 'i hope that doesnt happen to me'.

Edited April 11, 2013 by donatella

[Are You Serious Jo]

Grief, mourning and loss is about losing your future with that person or animal and in some cases it could be that it reminds you of your own mortality. If you lose a child you grieve over the fact thwey will never grow up, a partner that you won't grow old together or take holidays etc. ever again. Dogs will stay by a grave because that is the last place they saw something associated with their owner. It's called a local cue.

[persephone]

Grief, mourning and loss is about losing your future with that person or animal and in some cases it could be that it reminds you of your own mortality. If you lose a child you grieve over the fact they will never grow up, a partner that you won't grow old together or take holidays etc. ever again. Dogs will stay by a grave because that is the last place they saw something associated with their owner. It's called a local cue.

That's my take on it as well ............

I do believe dogs can be sad or happy as well.... and that they can be sad that things have changed/something's missing

[Aziah]

I can understand and sympathise to why she did it.

Me too.

[mantis]

Grief, mourning and loss is about losing your future with that person or animal and in some cases it could be that it reminds you of your own mortality. If you lose a child you grieve over the fact they will never grow up, a partner that you won't grow old together or take holidays etc. ever again. Dogs will stay by a grave because that is the last place they saw something associated with their owner. It's called a local cue.

That's my take on it as well ............

I do believe dogs can be sad or happy as well.... and that they can be sad that things have changed/something's missing

Totally agree.

[skelp2]

BTW, there is NO evidence that dogs understand the concept of death, they don't have the requisite cognitive capacities.

The concept of their own imminent death or that of an owner or another dog perhaps?

I would suspect that there is a huge amount of irrefutable evidence that dogs understand when an owner, or another animal that they live with, is dying or has died. Dogs do grieve, do they not?

As with any mammal in particular, they also understand when their own life is in danger and react accordingly, using the flight or fight response.

In regards to this particular situation, it is a shame that the son chose to follow his mother's wishes. People who know they are dying do not always make rational decisions, just as people who are not dying also can make stupid decisions. In my opinion, this woman's decision was not entirely different to people who choose to have a fairly young and healthy dog put down for other nefarious reasons.

Yes - ask any person involved in killing dogs in pounds and shelters. I suspect they know exactly what is about to happen to them. The airy fairy idea that this dog did not "suffer" in any way before being killed is just denial of the reality IMO.

Some may be fearful of the smells and strange people but they really don't have a clue about death. I have been on both sides, I have held animals as they were PTS when I was doing vet nursing and I also am a cognitive researcher who has done research with dogs in order to determine what they are capable of doing and understanding. I can tell you right now there are no papers that demonstrate dogs understand death, but plenty that provide evidence they don't. Your anecdotes are just that, your own experience coloured by your emotions and it is not evidence. Trust me, if dogs could be shown to demonstrate the cognitive capabilities to understand death there's be a Nature paper and you couldn't escape the press, it would be huge news. We think non-human apes might have a limited ability to think into the future but dogs can't. Do some feel a bit of fear because of the vet clinic and someone holding their leg, sure, but it's fantasy to believe they know they are going to die. So let's not scare people with misinformation.

Oh, I see, you know exactly what every dog is thinking, or not thinking.

Funnily enough yes, you do your experiments the right way you can confidently extrapolate your findings to the species as a whole :laugh: Can you post a linky to your work disputing the current literature? Where did you publish :D

So you experiment on dogs? Hmmm, interesting.

One benefit of age is that you come to understand that not all things on this earth can or will be explained by 'science'.

I will give you a little challenge. How, scientifically of course, would you explain why a dog would exhibit unusual behaviour (pacing, panting, obviously stressed) at the same time as it's owner dies unexpectantly, and whilst that owner is not present ie: at another location?

I knew you didn't know enough about cognitive research and would come back with suspicion :laugh: Cognitive research involves setting up tasks for the dog (or other animal) to do with a reward at the end. They love it because they get to play games. How you set up the task depends on what you are trying to learn, how they solve the task tells you what they are capable of.

Those anecdotes are just that, stories that are unproven. You can't eliminate human bias as an explanation for what is described. As a scientist you can't just believe what you read in books without proof, anyone can write a book, doesn't make it true. I would be a bad scientist if I believed what someone told me without any evidence especially when the carefully controlled experiments say otherwise.

You know nothing about my background. I don't pretend to have any great knowledge of animal behaviour, being an electrical engineer by trade. Setting up tasks with a reward at the end is only an extention of Pavlov's experiments in conditional response, is it not?

What I am suggesting is that you have made quite bold statements about what dogs can comprehend, based on what is an inexact science ie: claiming an exact understanding of how dogs think. You seem to expect everyone else to bow to your perceived superiority on the subject. Testing on the psyche of mammals, higher order mammals such as dogs, dolphins, chimps etc.. will never be exact, because their communication is not verbal. Even human psychiatry is an inexact science, despite humans being able to verbalise.

You can brush off my challenge as anecdotal,which I expected, but it seems it is impossible to explain it scientifically.

[Are You Serious Jo]

You know nothing about my background. I don't pretend to have any great knowledge of animal behaviour, being an electrical engineer by trade. Setting up tasks with a reward at the end is only an extention of Pavlov's experiments in conditional response, is it not?

No, nothing like it.

What I am suggesting is that you have made quite bold statements about what dogs can comprehend, based on what is an inexact science ie: claiming an exact understanding of how dogs think. You seem to expect everyone else to bow to your perceived superiority on the subject. Testing on the psyche of mammals, higher order mammals such as dogs, dolphins, chimps etc.. will never be exact, because their communication is not verbal. Even human psychiatry is an inexact science, despite humans being able to verbalise.

You can brush off my challenge as anecdotal,which I expected, but it seems it is impossible to explain it scientifically.

The very reason we are so careful in designing experiments is because they are non verbal. If you know what you are looking for and can work out a way to test so that the only way to solve a task is for the animal to have a particular cognitive ability. You assume we are working blindly but that is far from the truth. The work done builds on other work till there is a very clear picture of what a species is capable of. You can only solve the trap test if you have means end reasoning. You can only solve double displacement tasks if you have secondary representation. You can only show mirror self recognition if you have self awareness. It is far from an inexact science, we know a lot about the cognition of animals.

[m-j]

Donatella has touched on something science doesn't understand very well, and that is the emotional lives of animals. There is evidence that some social animals at least are empathetic towards others of their own species - something that seems to be going by the wayside in this thread in the rush to pit science-based evidence against someone's beliefs to prove them wrong. It amazes me that sometimes people who know a lot of psychology seem to forget all about things like cognitive dissonance and sunk-cost (and Dunning-Kruger?) when they get caught up in an argument with someone else. There are a plethora of cognitive biases that at least tend to make me more considerate when I disagree with people. The burden is on me to be more understanding because I know about that stuff.

Anyway, an animal doesn't need to grasp the finality of death to grieve.

Sorry going OT here but re the bolded bit, I watched a doco where they had "trained" elephants to track ivory poachers. The motivator to follow these people over 100's of kms over rough terrain for several weeks was their "empathy" for the decreased elphants. They took the elephants to the site of the slaughter (they didn't know these elephants) and allowed them to scent the remains and then when they were ready they would track the poachers. For the doco they set it up using remains from a real slaughter and an ex poacher utilising all his skills.

I'm not an expert on elephant body language but when the poacher was in sight the elephants definately increased their effort to get to the poacher and they did seem agitated.