Well seen or frowned upon, dogs are the closest animal to humans that exists and, probably for this reason, everyone knows everything about them. Too bad, however, that in reality dogs are very different from what is known.
Indeed, a lot of what is said about them is wrong and many things are not known at all. Let’s see 8 things you probably don’t know about your dog , in no particular order and not of
importance
- Dogs have a sense of time
- Dog dominance is a human invention
- Dogs have a sense of humor
- Dogs have a lot of emotions
- Dogs have no sense of guilt
- Being alone is unnatural for dogs
- Dogs dream
Dogs have a sense of time
A widespread idea is that 5 minutes or 8 hours are the same for dogs. It is not so. Dogs have a sense of time, obviously they don’t know the time but they know if a lot or a little time has passed and if they do something routine, such as going out or eating, they know when it’s time to get ready.
How they realize the time
By means of external factors (the light that changes, the noises, the smells that change with the passing of the hours) and internal factors (hunger, the urge to pee, boredom).
Not only that, it has been found that when owners leave them alone at home, they know if they have been alone for a long or short timebased on the intensity of the smell left by humans, if they have recently come out and stronger, if they have been away for a long time and milder. It is known that the sense of smell of dogs is a real sensory prodigy. The dominance of dogs and an invention of humans
Many (ssimi) still explain the behavior of dogs in terms of dominance and invoke the submission of dogs to counteract their dominance over humans. One of his favorite phrases is “You have to make him understand that you are the pack leader.” The rule applies to everything from walking to eating. Some aberrant examples :
- The dog pulls on the leash
He wants to dominate you, you have to jerk him and force him to go at your pace making him understand that you are in charge; - The dog on the bed
Absolutely not, it means letting yourself be dominated and you must not allow it; - You must always enter the elevator first, through the doors, because if he / she enters first, he / she thinks he is more important than you;
- When to feed the dog
Only after humans, if not he thinks he is the leader of the pack instead it is you and you have to make him understand; - He growls when you get close to his baby food
And dominate, you have to take it off so he understands that you are in charge-
The reality is that dominance as an attribute of personality in dogs does not exist. In other words, there are no dominant dogs. Dogs do not want to dominate neither humans nor the world and to say it and the ethology of dogs. There is no dominance as an attribute of the personality, what exists are the resources and the value, relative and fluctuating, that dogs attribute to resources.
A crucial implication of the ethological reality of dogs is that those who speak of dominance and submission and use coercive methods to “educate” dogs do so by violating the nature of dogs and not, as they claim, because that nature requires it. Dogs have a sense of humor
Dogs laugh, smile and have a sense of humor. The smile can be seen from the muzzle, while laughter is a little more difficult to recognize because it is made by breathing, specifically a wide and faster exhalation than normal.
And a sense of humor
Dogs love to joke with each other and with their humans. And even dogs, like humans, are all different, there are the most and the least witty. Dogs feel a lot of emotions
Yes, dogs are not only gifted with extraordinary senses, but they also feel quite intense emotions. To be precise, they try:
- Fear;
- Love;
- Attachment;
- Stress;
- Anxiety;
- Embarrassment;
- Uncertainty;
- congratulates;
- Excitement;
- Anger;
- Jealousy;
- Sense of self;
- Disappointment / Expectation;
- congratulates;
- Pain (not only physical);
- Trust / Distrust;
- Satisfaction / Dissatisfaction;
- Sense of self;
- Serenity;
- Agitation;
- Insecurity / security;
- Mourning.
There is more: these are some of the many feelings, emotions and moods that dogs experience, and that it is very important to know and respect. Dogs have no sense of guilt
. Low ears, hidden tail, scuffling step, low gaze. The human looks at his dog, sees him feeling guilty, his anger melts and instead of scolding him he fills him with kisses. Maybe it doesn’t always go like this and not really for all owners, but certainly often and for many. Except that among the many feelings and emotions that dogs experience, it seems that the sense of guilt is not there.
And the big eyes, the tail, the ears and the miserable look
are a communication but not a fault. The fact is this: Dogs are extraordinarily sensitive to gaze, to the posture, to the voice, to the expressions, to the tone of humans (even to the smallest details, even those that humans are not aware of).
Guilty behavior is actually a reaction to what they perceive to be the mood of humans. Something like: “I feel angry, I worry, I show that I’m small so maybe you don’t blame me.” Being alone is unnatural
for dogs Dogs are social animals for which the we is more important than the ego. It follows that loneliness is not natural for dogs. What does it mean
It means that dogs suffer alone and that leaving them alone for hours and hours, a habit that unfortunately many owners have, is a form of abuse. There is no “you have to get used to” that holds.
That for dogs loneliness is suffering and a fact linked to their nature. Not only that, for dogs being alone is like living without living . It is the equivalent of a human locked up in a house without games, without telephone, without television, without radio, without books, without magazines.
For creatures that need a lot of physical and mental stimulation, being alone for hours and hours is devastating. That said, dogs need to know how to be alone peacefully. It is a competence that they must have, necessary for coexistence. Humans simply need to be aware of what loneliness means to their quadrupeds, not to abuse their ability and not to leave them alone for long. Dogs dream
It is scientifically proven that dogs dream. They dream of situations they have experienced, which reappear “unpacked”, as if they were clips from a film. They relive them to understand how they could have handled them differently. Experiences have also been found to influence dogs’ sleep. After negative experiences they sleep more, they dream (with dreams having that educational function seen at the beginning) and the quality of sleep is worse.
