Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (27 page)

What I found there was remarkable. These dogs play-signaled only at very particular times. They signaled reliably at the beginning of play—and always to a dog who was looking at them. Attention might be lost a dozen times in a typical play session. One dog gets distracted by a ripe smell underfoot; a third dog approaches the playing pair; an owner wanders away. What you might notice is simply a pause followed by a resumption of play. In fact, in these cases, a quick series of steps needs to be followed. For the play not to be permanently severed, the interested dog must regain his partner's attention and then ask him to play again. The dogs I observed also play-signaled when the play had paused and they wanted to resume the game—again, almost exclusively to dogs able to see the signal. In other words, they communicated intentionally, to an audience able to see them.

Even better, in many cases the record of where the dogs were looking revealed that a dog who had paused play was distracted—looking elsewhere, playing with someone else. One option for his erstwhile partner would be to play-bow madly, hoping to lure someone over to play. But more mindful would be just what they did: used an attention-getter before doing a bow. Importantly, they used attention-getters that
matched
the level of inattention of their playmates, showing they understood something about "attention." Even in the middle of play, they used mild attention-getters—such as an
in-your-face
or an
exaggerated
retreat,
leaping backward while looking at the other dog—when their partner's attention was only mildly diverted. If a dog's desired playmate was just standing there staring at him, these attention-getters might indeed be enough to rouse him, as a wave
hello?
in front of a daydreaming friend. But when the other dog was very distracted, looking away or even playing with another dog, they used assertive attention-getters—bites, bumps, and barks. In these cases, that mild
hello?
would not do. Instead of using a brute-force method of trying to get attention by any means necessary, they chose types of attention-getters that were just sufficient, but not superfluous, to get the desired attention. This was truly sensitive behavior on the part of the players.

Only after these attention-getters were successful did the dogs signal their interest in playing. In other words, they were using an order of operations: get attention first, then send an invitation to rumble.

This is just what good theorists-of-mind do: think about their audience's state of attention and only talk to those who can hear and understand them. The dogs' behavior looks tantalizingly close to a display of theory of mind. But there's reason to believe that their ability is different than ours. For one thing, in both the experiments and my play study, not all dogs acted equally mindfully. Some dogs are oblivious in their attention-getting. They bark, get no response—and then bark and bark and bark and bark. Others use attention-getters when attention has already been gotten, or play signals when play has already been signaled. The statistics show that most dogs act mindfully, but there are plenty of exceptions. We can't tell yet whether they are just the underperformers or whether they indicate that the species has an incomplete understanding.

It may be a little of both. Rather than contemplating the mind behind the dog, most dogs are likely to simply interact. Their skill at using attention and play signals hints that they may have a
rudimentary
theory of mind: knowing that there is some mediating element between other dogs and their actions. A rudimentary theory of mind is like having passable social skills. It helps you play better with others to think about their perspective. And however simple this skill may be, it may be part of an inchoate system of fairness among dogs. Perspective-taking underlies our agreement to a code of conduct between humans that is jointly beneficial. Watching play, I noticed that dogs who violated the implicit rules for attention-getting and play-signaling—simply barging in on others' play without following the proper, mindful procedures, say—were shunned as playmates.*

Does this mean that your dog is aware of and interested in what's on your mind right now? No. Does it mean that he might realize that your behavior reflects what's on your mind? Yes. Used to communicate with us, this is a large part of dogs' seeming humanity. Sometimes it is even used in nefarious ways only too human.

And it is in the particular signals they use with each other. The wolfhound's high-rumped approach: the play bow, an invitation to a game—making perfectly clear his ardent intent to play with, not eat, the little dog. In return, the Chihuahua bowed: accepting the offer. In the language of dogs that is enough to see each other as equals in play. Their disparate sizes aren't irrelevant—and this explains the hound's drop to the ground: he handicaps himself. By putting himself at the little dog's height—taking the Chihuahua's point of view—and exposing himself to her attacks, he levels the playing field.

They endure jostling body on body. Bodies in full contact is a reasonable social distance for dogs. They bite with impunity: every bite is matched, or explained with a play signal—and every bite is restrained. When the hound hits the little dog too hard, sending her scurrying backward, she could for a moment be seen as small, fleeing prey. But the difference between dogs and wolves is that dogs can put aside their predatory instincts. Instead the hound takes back that swipe with an apologetic play slap, a milder version of the bow. It works: she rushes right back into his face.

Finally, when the hound is pulled up and away by his owner, the Chihuahua tosses a bark to her departing playmate. Had we kept watching them, had he turned around, we might have seen her open her mouth or leap a tiny leap—calling out in the hopes of continuing the game with her giant friend.

The study of dogs' cognitive abilities emerged from a context of comparative psychology, which by definition aims to compare animals' abilities with those of humans. The exercise often winds up splitting hairs: they communicate—but not with all the elements of human language; they learn, imitate, and deceive—but not
in the way
that we do. The more we learn of animals' abilities, the finer we have to split the hair to maintain a dividing line between humans and animals. Still, it is interesting to note that we seem to be the only species spending any time studying other species—or, at least, reading or writing books about them. It is not necessarily to the dogs' discredit that they do not.

What is revealing is how dogs perform on tasks that measure social abilities we thought only human beings had. The results, whether serving to show how alike or unalike dogs are to or from us, have relevance in our relationships with our dogs. When considering what we ask of them and what we should expect from them, understanding their differences from us will serve us well. Science's effort to find distinctions illustrates more than anything else the one true distinction: our drive to affirm our superiority—to make comparisons and judge differences. Dogs, noble minds, do not do this. Thank goodness.

Her personality is unmistakable and omnipresent: in her reluctance to climb the steep steps out of the park—but then forging ahead of me strongly and gamely; in her great spasms of running and scent rolling of younger days; in her delight at my return from a long trip—but not dwelling on it; in her checking back for me on our walks but also always keeping a few paces apart. For a dog who is in fact wholly dependent on me, she is incredibly independent: her personality is forged not just in interaction with me, but in the times wandering outside without me, in exploring her space alone. She has her own pace of life.

Despite the wealth of scientific information about the dog—about how they see, smell, hear, look, learn—there are places science doesn't travel. It perplexes me that some of the questions I have most often been asked about dogs, and that I have about my own dog, are not addressed by research. On matters of personality, personal experience, emotions, and simply
what they think about,
science is quiet. Still, the accumulation of data about dogs provides a good foothold from which to extrapolate and reach toward answers to those questions.

The questions are typically of two kinds:
What does the dog know?
and
What is it
like
to
be
a
dog?
So first we will ask what dogs know about things of human concern. Then we can further imagine the experiences—the umwelten—of the creatures who have this knowledge.

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.

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.