Best Buddy Pets - Dog Psychology

Dogs are very clever. Think of the many ways they get you to do what they want. Few of us can resist the soulful looks and the outstretched paw when eating something our dog also enjoys.

One of the reasons for the long relationship between people and dogs is the dog's considerable ability to communicate in terms that people can understand. How many times has your canine friend offered a ball with an expression that you easily interpret as 'let's play fetch'?

These are only two of the many examples that demonstrate that dogs have a great aptitude for learning complex behavior.

Dogs are able to understand a lot from our language and body posture, but they process the information very differently from humans.

Their eyes detect colors very differently and have a greater ability to see in dim light. Their muscles of the head allow them to rotate their ears to quickly and accurately locate the precise source of sounds. And, of course, they have an extraordinary sense of smell.

The differences are also evident on other levels of mental functioning. Dogs cannot understand cause-effect relationships like their human companions.

Associating a stimulus with a response, known as classical conditioning, can be much more readily overcome by people. Humans are much better at altering an undesired response. These mental associations are much more persistent in dogs.

Operant conditioning, or understanding naturally related cause-effect relationships, typically by positive and negative reinforcement, is even more different between dogs and people.

I always go outside by the back door with my Golden Retrievers when we're going to play fetch. When I do, we nearly always actually play. By contrast, countless times I let them out by the side door, where I never follow them. Instead, I leave them to play alone for at least a half an hour. And yet they still immediately go to the back door where they expect a game of fetch.

Clearly associate a unique word and tone and a specific hand gesture with each command. As a consequence, your dog can learn a wide variety of selected behaviors. You can teach such actions as sit, stay, come, roll-over, fetch and even eliminate on command.

Yet telling them repeatedly not to eat certain items that their own experience has shown results in upset stomachs is a waste of effort. They will likely repeat the same unwanted behavior at the first opportunity. They simply can't understand the effect when the cause is much earlier in time.

Your lesson from these examples is this: Your canine friend, whether Lab or Collie, Beagle or Poodle can learn an amazing variety of things, as long as your expectations are not unreasonable.

One woman who is well-known in the show world has trained her companion to perform a complex, long dance routine. Search-and-rescue dogs have been trained to find skier in avalanches and pull children from rivers. Service dogs can be taught to open doors and pull wheelchairs.

But don't expect them to reason like people, even when trained to imitate us. No matter how many times you warn them not to, they will continue to eat grass.