How do we explain "dog treks?"

Gevaudan said:
Wolves have territories ranging from 50 to one thousand square miles, and wild small felines can have terrotories up to 30 miles. Whatever pets are using to do treks, it's probably an ability they inherited from their wild ancestors.
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Packs of wolves or wild dogs can cover a huge distance while chasing their prey. I'm sure they would have gone extinct a long time ago if they finished such a chase, then looked around and said, "Where the hell are we?" They have to get the meat back home to the cubs, so by necessity they must be able to unconsciously map the terrain they're crossing.

It's funny they can do this, but lack the working memory necessary to unwind their leash from around a tree.
 
TobiasTheCommie said:
- The new owners didn't want him anymore and dumped him in front of the tavern.
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BenBurch said:
We though of that; But we saw them a month later and they were amazed that he had found us. He had been gone about a month from their place when he showed up.
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But isn't that what you would expect heartless people who dumped a dog they didn't want to say?
 
aggle-rithm said:
so by necessity they must be able to unconsciously map the terrain they're crossing.
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Of course, humans can landmark, and even lacking sophisticated tools can come up with some way of finding paths. We don't do it on the basis of scent, but we also have other mental tools.
 
Surviver bias, we only hear about the dogs succeeded.

There is no way to quantify how many dogs didn't find their way back home. We are only hearing about the possibly lucky few that made it.

Not to say that the dogs that didn't make it home ended up badly, may have simply found a good home in their travels.

At least that's what I like to think.
 
aggle-rithm said:
Packs of wolves or wild dogs can cover a huge distance while chasing their prey. I'm sure they would have gone extinct a long time ago if they finished such a chase, then looked around and said, "Where the hell are we?" They have to get the meat back home to the cubs, so by necessity they must be able to unconsciously map the terrain they're crossing.

It's funny they can do this, but lack the working memory necessary to unwind their leash from around a tree.
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Of course, there's no situation in nature analogous to being tied up to a tree, so there was never a chance for that to be programmed into their brains. Good point, though. If the dog was driven in a car, then they'd probably be automatically making a mental map that would aid them in getting home. I seriously doubt anyone will ever, say, take a bunch of dogs out to random locations, radio collar them, then turn them loose to see if they can get home so we could get a firm answer on this. It would be interesting to see if certain breeds of dogs had better "homing instincts" than others, for example.

Have to admit, I got a hell of a laugh at the mental picture of a pack of wolves suddenly realizing they had no idea where they were. :werewolf:
 
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On the other hand lots of lost dogs/cats don't do anything remarkable. Lost wolves might just have to abandon their cubs and start all over. Nature is not a benign happy land of freedom, many of them die.
 
Gevaudan said:
... I seriously doubt anyone will ever, say, take a bunch of dogs out to random locations, radio collar them, then turn them loose to see if they can get home so we could get a firm answer on this.

Have to admit, I got a hell of a laugh at the mental picture of a pack of wolves suddenly realizing they had no idea where they were. :werewolf:
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Re the radio collaring. By now, there must haver been enough critters collared to study their paths. Or maybe only the latest ones, with GPS? My boat system of 15 years ago made a line on it's chart showing where I had been. The newer systems ought to be able to show whether the wolves have to re-trace their steps to get back to the den, or can navigate cross country. Hmmm. Best chance to see would be GPS collared transplants.

I'll bet the data in in some wildlife biologist's lap top, needing interpretation...
 
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Silly Green Monkey said:
And perhaps even, a good home that had just lost a very similar dog....
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That would be too good a coincidence. Our border collie may look like a border collie, but the white stripe up her face and the pattern of her mane (is that correct on dogs?) is certainly distinct from her brother's.
 
OH! OH! OH OH OH OH pick me, pick me;

How about a hamster trek

Many yarns ago when we lived in our little rental house, we had a pair of hamsters, Jimmy and Shelly, they had couple of litters and Shelly would always eat them.
No matter what you did, what the conditions were, she would eat them.
Well one night I got a little feed up with it and I chucked the little cannibal out the door.
This rental house had no air conditioning so in the summer it was very hot.
So one summer night there was a cooling rain and we opened the windows and doors to let the breeze blow in. This was a good 4 months after I tossed out the rodent, and what do you know, here she comes waddling in across the kitchen just like she owned the place. A bit dirty but no worse than she was before, Jimmy of course was happy to see her, they screwed like there was no tomorrow. Needless to say they had a litter right away, and she of course ate them. The end
 
Jimbo07 said:
That would be too good a coincidence. Our border collie may look like a border collie, but the white stripe up her face and the pattern of her mane (is that correct on dogs?) is certainly distinct from her brother's.
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And Willie came back with his peeing problem, and he almost always had an erection... It was the same dog.

Good thing the Prostate removal helped him.
 
portlandatheist said:
One thing I've noticed with my dog, and this is obviously subjective, but she always wakes up from a dead sleep when we are close to home. It doesn't matter if we've been away for hours or weeks. It could be the smell, the combination of turns after leaving the highway, who knows, but she always seems to know that we are close to home. It never ceases to amaze me.
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As a child, I used to do this as well. I always assumed it was the particular combination of turns from the main road to our house, but hindsight suggests that it was just the fact that there were a lot of turns compared to the motorway.
 
kedo1981 said:
OH! OH! OH OH OH OH pick me, pick me;

How about a hamster trek

Many yarns ago when we lived in our little rental house, we had a pair of hamsters, Jimmy and Shelly, they had couple of litters and Shelly would always eat them.
No matter what you did, what the conditions were, she would eat them.
Well one night I got a little feed up with it and I chucked the little cannibal out the door.
This rental house had no air conditioning so in the summer it was very hot.
So one summer night there was a cooling rain and we opened the windows and doors to let the breeze blow in. This was a good 4 months after I tossed out the rodent, and what do you know, here she comes waddling in across the kitchen just like she owned the place. A bit dirty but no worse than she was before, Jimmy of course was happy to see her, they screwed like there was no tomorrow. Needless to say they had a litter right away, and she of course ate them. The end
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Some trek. From out the door to beck in the door over four months. But I guess hamsters are not bred for speed.

P.S.: Shelly needed more meat in her diet. Rats are omnivores.
 
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blutoski said:
One of the other explanations for some pet trek stories is that an abandoned animal was replaced with a similar one and the storyteller was just too young and too emotional to notice.
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That one happened to me. My wife brought home a cat that someone at her work who lived on the other side of town needed to get rid of. It was a pure black cat, with one distinguishing feature: his tail didn't work. It just hung limp. Our neighbors were ecstatic that their children's long-lost pet had found its way home. I asked them if their long-lost pet had a functioning tail, and it was clear from their hemming and hawing that it did. Since we already had two cats of our own, we were happy to let them adopt it anyway; I don't know what they told the kids.
 
I suppose it is possible too that animals may be taking note of particular weather patterns. Migratory birds rely on changes in weather all the time to assess when they need to fly to breeding grounds. I don't think it would be too far of a stretch that other animals might take notice of a particular climate to help them "home in" on familiar territory.
 
I once had someone bring me a male Samoyed which they found running around loose. I had a client with a male Samoyed and called them and sure enough their dog was missing. They came to pick up the dog and it jumped for joy when it saw them and responded to them when they called his name. A couple days later the owner called me back and said "You might think I am crazy or something but can a dog grow back a tooth?" I said "No". They said "Are you sure? Because you remember (I didn't) that our dog broke off his fang and this dog has all of his fangs. He acts just like our dog but if it he can't grow back his fang then it isn't him." They brought him back and in the mean time we had another person report to us their male Samoyed was missing and another male Samoyed was found. We got the right dogs to the right owners. Anyway the owners of the dog were convinced it was their dog till they saw it didn't have a missing tooth.

I had another client who had a cat that was missing for a year or more and they had moved. The cat found them at their new house. They were so happy. They brought me in the cat and also pictures of the cat to show that while it's body condition had changed it had exactly the same markings. They said it acted just like their old cat and they were sure it was because it fit right back into their home like it was the missing member of the family. I examined the cat and found it was a male and their old cat was a female.

I think this clearly demonstrates that people can fool themselves about the identity of their pet.
 
Dogdoctor said:
They brought me in the cat and also pictures of the cat to show that while it's body condition had changed it had exactly the same markings.

I think this clearly demonstrates that people can fool themselves about the identity of their pet.
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How common is this? We know the owners of the other puppies and their markings are all fairly distinct. I know... border collie... black and white (or red and white, or black white and grey, etc.) How common is it for two animals to have identical markings?

BTW, our dogs also have chips.
 
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