“My dog knows when I’m leaving the house long before I actually leave.”
“My dog can predict when a storm is coming.”
I commonly hear stories from pet parents who are convinced, even insist, that their dog can somehow predict their actions and even forecast impending thunderstorms.
It isn’t difficult to understand how some of us arrive at these conclusions.
Take this scenario, an hour before you’re to leave the house and go off to work doggy begins to follow your every step. Up and down the stairs or into the bathroom, doggy is there by your side unwilling to break off.
She might even beat you to the door and camp out in front of it in anticipation of you leaving. You conclude that she was able to foresee your departure for the day and chalk it up to canine ESP.
Or this scenario, suddenly Ruffus begins to pace around the house. Maybe he’ll pant heavily and exhibit obsessive behavior like spinning in circles. He may even refuse to head outdoors to do his business.
Soon enough, the skies darken, rain pours down, and the sound of thunder is in the air. You conclude that Ruffus was able to predict the coming of the storm.
So can dogs see into the future? Yes they can, but not in the mystical sense that many of us would rather believe.
Ever hear the story of Clever Hans?
Hans was a horse that in the early 1900’s was thought to possess the skill to calculate arithmetic. During the height of his popularity, he would perform to large crowds and time after time he would astound with his ability to arrive at the correct response. Hans couldn’t speak, off course, so he would stomp his hoof to indicate the answer.
Skeptics were only too eager to disprove his ability and he was given a series of tests to verify his authenticity. It didn’t matter whether his owner was present or not, nor did it matter if the mathematical problems were verbal or written, Hans answered correctly.
Despite the various challenges and tests given, no person was able to detect fraud or trickery. This increased his fame and reputation and made him a standout among horses.
That is until a psychologist named Oskar Pfungst proved to everyone that Hans wasn’t demonstrating any advanced cognitive skills but was instead able to pick up on the subtle, almost imperceptible, signals that humans communicate.
As Hans stomped his hoof, every raised eyebrow, every curved smile, every person who straightened their posture in anticipation of a horse arriving at the correct answer, gave Hans a clue that he was on the right track and provided him with a cue as to when to end the stomping.
He wasn’t calculating. He was reading the facial expressions and the body language of the humans around him.
What does this have to do with our dogs? Everything.
This ability to pick up on otherwise undetectable cues is not limited to horses; dogs have long been able to read the many faint indicators we humans give off.
Perhaps due to the evolution of domestication, dogs have learned to interpret our visual cues far beyond our own abilities to do so. Without understanding this valuable trait, we are often lead to conclude that our dogs are demonstrating a kind of otherworldly ability, such as calculating arithmetic or seeing into the future. As bright as our furry friends are, they’re not Einstein or Nostradamus.
Taking a second look at our two previous scenarios, when doggy anticipates our leaving and beats us to the door, we now understand that she has been able to pick up on the small signals which indicate that we are leaving.
These signals may be as uneventful as putting on our shoes, picking up our keys, or retrieving a jacket from a closet. Either separately or combined, the dog has formed an association to each of these and they become key predictors of things to come.
The same can be said of dogs that show signs of anxiety prior to a storms arrival, sometimes long before. Changes in wind speed and barometric pressure again serve as subtle cues that dogs can sense and thus help predict an incoming storm. No magic, just the ability to read signals we either can’t detect or have tuned out on.
Science is just beginning to scratch the surface of what dogs can do and what they’re able to perceive.
Their senses of sound and smell, for instance, are capable of detecting information that fare exceeds our own abilities.
So before we conjure up some fantastical ideal of what a dog can do, let’s credit them for being able to do something we humans often struggle with…interpreting the intent of humans and their surroundings by the subtle signs that are all around.