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Dog can tell when owner comes home via unknown means

The combined efforts of skeptical groups all over the world for decades all hanging on weather the dog needed to take a whizz. :D
 
DavoMan said:
The combined efforts of skeptical groups all over the world for decades all hanging on weather the dog needed to take a whizz. :D
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What is FAR more funny is the amazed and delighted reporting of psi-believers who based their reputation upon the same!
 
CFLarsen said:
Can you rule it out? ;)
Nope, but Ockham does for me. ;)

It is a simple explanation, but I can't seem to remember anything about dogs having a sense of elapsed time. Do you have anything we could read?
Not immediately off the top of my head unfortunately - I didn't expect to be doing full dog research this late at night!

However I have owned dogs over many years, and have read up on them previously. Their "attention span" is not huge, but their sense of "time of day" is good. From that I gather from a number of sources (which I can't place my finger on right away that) they do have a sense of when things need to happen in relation to each other. Especially if it is habitual - e.g. outside to poop after dinner is eaten. Or in this case, start looking for owner's return about two hours after departure.

Perhaps Rolfe or BSM might be able to comment further, being vets and all!

Or simply bored.
True - good point.
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My dog has no idea when I'm coming home. If i turn up at home in the midle of the day by the time I open the door it's usually just streatching and yawning it's way out of it's bed, as I have woken it up. Then it come's over and does the pleased to see you, "did you bring food?" routine.

If it really knew what I was thinking it wouldn't pee on the carpet.

O.
:)
 
Remember watching a program on Discovery Science that was about how animals tell time, and it gave one mechanism inside the human (and I presume animal) brain: There's a gene that handles the production of a particular protein. The twist is, this protein inhibits its own production. Once enough of the protein is in the cell, the process stops, and the proteins begin to break down, along with their inhibition of the process. The result is a 24 hour loop going on in these cells. I don't know how precise it is, but it seems to be the basis of our biological clocks.

Separate program: Heard that some people, when they have their references to time cut off (sealed in a building without clocks, windows, etc.) will pick up a 32 hour schedule and be surprised when they come out and much more time has passed than they expected. I wonder if it's a mutation on those "clock cells."
 
On the whole this looks like a good contender for the million dollar prize. The owner could state that she could telepathically inform the dog that she was on her way home.

She would have all these details as evidence.
 
DavoMan said:
On the whole this looks like a good contender for the million dollar prize. The owner could state that she could telepathically inform the dog that she was on her way home.

She would have all these details as evidence.
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All we need is an applicant, a claim and a proposed protocall..


Maybe we could speculate on what the protocall would be.
 
I wonder if my dog can tell when I come home via unknown means. I'm not sure how to test this, because I only ever come home via known means.
 
My cats know when it's 5:00 am, because they routinely wake me up about 20 minutes before my alarm goes off.

On weekends they wake me up at 5:00 am even though the alarm isn't set. Little bastards.

How could they possibly know? Hmmm... maybe the lightening sky? Maybe the growling in their little tummies?
 
BPSCG said:
My cats know when it's 5:00 am, because they routinely wake me up about 20 minutes before my alarm goes off.
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Yeah, my cat tends to show up at my elbow like clockwork a few minutes before my alarm is set to go off too.

Thankfully, she's usually (just) patient enough to let the alarm go off before she starts herding me to her breakfast area.
 
I had a cat who was allowed a dollop of milk on Wednesdays and Sundays. He knew exactly when he was getting them because Mom would come home with the newspaper on those days. After several years she stopped buying a Wednesday paper, and he had "learned" his days of the week.

He used to put his nose in the corner of my eye to wake me up for school and feeding him on weekdays and bothered my mother on weekends. After I graduated, he stopped bothering me and went to my mother because she woke up earlier. It was pretty aggravating when he kept trying to wake her up at 5AM.

I used to wonder how Ridley and Saul knew when I was coming up the building stairs for the longest time until I realized. They could hear my "bell." After I come in the building door, I get the mail, and then do the key fumble. They hear the jingling and then I hear the jingling of them running to the apartment door. If we come in the back door, however, this doesn't work until we've got our keys in the lock.

It's nothing smart, it's just conditioning.
 
DavoMan said:
In the middle of town at a randomly chosen time, they decided to catch a cab home. Within 30 seconds of the owner agreeing to go home, the dog at home went to the door & started wagging his tail.
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Every minute or two, the dog went to the door & started wagging his tail. One of those times was within 30 seconds of the owner agreeing to go home.

If "wagging his tail" means "someone is coming home," the dog was wrong 98% of the time. Only the 2% was observed and reported.

Just a mathematical probability, not a paranormal event.
 
BPSCG said:
My cats know when it's 5:00 am, because they routinely wake me up about 20 minutes before my alarm goes off.

On weekends they wake me up at 5:00 am even though the alarm isn't set. Little bastards.

How could they possibly know? Hmmm... maybe the lightening sky? Maybe the growling in their little tummies?
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It's because they are little bastards.
 
Re: Re: Dog can tell when owner comes home via unknown means

Sherman Bay said:

If "wagging his tail" means "someone is coming home," the dog was wrong 98% of the time. Only the 2% was observed and reported.
Just a mathematical probability, not a paranormal event.
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Is that the data gained from that research paper? In all honesty the maths is a bit over my head at this point.
 
DavoMan said:
Is that the data gained from that research paper? In all honesty the maths is a bit over my head at this point.
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No, and I'm sorry if I misled you. I should have entitled my post, "Consider this scenario..."

It well may have been the data omitted from the report, however, in the category of "remember the hits, forget the misses." It works for astrologers.
 
This link told me all I care to bother with on this subject.

Darat said:
Yo may want to read this: http://www.sheldrake.org/articles/fulltext/dog_knows.html
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Look at the data and ignore the analysis. The dog is "reacting" all over the place. They're calling "hits" on the dogs ability on occasions where the dog "reacted" to the return home up to 15 minutes BEFORE the trip started. Also note the number of occasions that show a reaction time of 0 minutes. That means the dog "psychically" reacted to the owner retunring home when they walked in the door.

Amazing.
 
Hmm..thats very interesting. I will look over these results again. Its just a lot of data and it's quite overwhelming for me. :(
 
DavoMan said:
Hmm..thats very interesting. I will look over these results again. Its just a lot of data and it's quite overwhelming for me. :(
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Include in your quest for knowledge some reading on the horse known as Clever Hans, a textbook case where an animal received unconscious cueing from a trainer and was able to seemingly perform math calculations. As long as his trainer knew the answer, that is.

Studies like this often suffer from a lack of knowledge of how people can be fooled, both statistically and otherwise. When results are obtained that seem impossible or unlikely, the correct step is to tighten controls -- make sure there is absolutely no contact between parties to the test, called double-blind. Typically when controls are tightened, the phenomena vanishes.

Then there is the method sometimes used in paranormal card tests. A testee is given a run to guess the next card out of ten, and if he desires and the run is unimpressive, that batch is discarded from the total results. While that might seem fair, it may distort random results into less than random ones. All the trials must be included, good bad.

The analogy with the dog test is that all activity of the dog must be considered, not just when a cameraman gets a phone call to turn on the camera (that in itself may cue the dog that something is up). In my family, our dog was always waiting at the window for us to come home from work. Amazing! How did she know? But when I stayed home sick, the dog was at the window most of the day anyway, not very remarkable.

You cannot pick out the statistics you want and discard the rest unless you are ignorant or trying to prove something that doesn't exist.
 
Good point! I remember reading something about clever hans in one of Mr Randi's books. Hey does the R man ever come on the forums? He's quite a celebrity & it was a buzz getting an email response from him.
 
I wish I remember where I heard this, perhaps it was here. But I am reminded of a story of a family that owned a parrot (or some other mimic bird) that had some curious habits. One that perplexed the lady living there was that the parrot would suddenly say "Daddy's home" (a phrase it had been taught) and then a few minutes later her husband would arrive home.

She noticed it no matter what time of day he happened to come back, the parrot would announce it in advance of any visible sign of the car's approach.

So, they decided to investigate with a cell phone... and found out the solution. Hint--the car was a manual transmission.
 
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