Surely on more than one occasion you have been coming home and you have seen your dog at the window waiting for you or at lunchtime you have seen him sitting in front of his plate waiting for food or you have even seen him sitting on the door telling you that he is already It was time to go for a walk.
Because they seem to know what time it is
Dogs are creatures of habit just like humans and, even if they don’t have a watch or a mobile phone on them, they know perfectly well when it’s time to eat or go for a walk. These pets have a series of mechanisms that make it easier for them to know when it is their turn to do something. The first, as is evident, is a physiological response of your own body, since, like humans, they adapt to the changes of day and night and have a daily routine in which they go for a walk to relieve themselves, or eat at different times.
Although this is the simplest mechanism of all, it is also the most effective. But there are other mechanisms such as the use of their sense of smell. As we have already mentioned on other occasions in Mascotissimas, a dog’s sense of smell is between 10,000 and 100,000 times more powerful than that of a human being, which makes it its most important weapon.
In this way they are able to detect changes and predict, for example, when we are going to return from work, since it is a daily routine for us, but also for them. During your absence, the smell is distributed indiscriminately throughout our home,It fades with the passing of the hours.And the dog is able to notice it. The concentration of the particles that come off our skin becomes, in this way, a fairly accurate tool to predict when we are going to walk through the door.Hence, we always find him waiting when we get home.
As National Geographic mentions, Alexandra Horowitz, a doctor in Cognitive Science from the University of California and author of various books on canine behavior, explains “how odors move”in a roomas the day progresses: “Warm air rises and usually circulates in currents along the walls to the ceiling, heads toward the center of the room, and falls. If we could visualize the movement of the air throughout the day, what we are really visualizing is the movement of the smell throughout the day”. These movements, which usually occur cyclically and at certain established times, allow them to anticipate daily activities , such as eating or walking.
In addition to smell, they are also very observant and relate some movements to previously performed behaviors.If, for example, you approach the door and raise your arm (even if you don’t take the leash), your pet probably thinks that you are going to go to the street. This also happens with the tone of voice. On many occasions they do not know what you are saying but from the tone of voice they deduce if it is something positive or negative.
