assigning human characteristics to dogs

[Sharon]

I've always been cautious about the anthropormorphism of animals as a whole. However, I'm believing that dogs grieve.

My old setter died in Dec at 13 1/2. I've had her daughter since birth who is now 10. Since her mother's death, this girl won't leave my side unless in the woods/fields. At night she cries /whines after I've gone to bed - has never done this. ( Not taking her to bed as the JRT would want to come too and then no one would get any sleep.)

Any other stories on grieving dogs?

[Bluebulldog]

I know dogs are highly empathetic. They know when we are ill, or uneasy.

I'm sure there are some Christian Fundamentalists who will jump on and flame for this, but yes, I believe that dogs, ( and most creatures who posses a certain sized brain) have souls. They certainly have emotions, and grieving is one of them. We see them feel grief, sadness, joy, comfort, desire.......it could be argued that it's strictly an instinctive response....well I say poppycock.

[BurlyGirl]

Back in 2003, we had four dogs. One was 13, and her daughter was 8. When we had our old girl put down, her daughter exhibited behaviour that looked like grieving. She was lethargic, lack lustre and just plain 'down'. This went on for a couple weeks until I took her to university with me. A week with new sights, sounds and smells, and she seemed to snap out of it. When I brought her back home, she seemed to carry on pretty well. It looks like she just needed a 'vacation'.

Currently, I have my old girl (12 and a half) and my young dog. When I am physically sick - a headache, a cold, etc - it is the old girl who doesn't leave my side. She is stoic and good company as her person is broken. When I am emotionally down -- stressed out or sad -- that is the young dog's territory. She parks herself by my side and sticks around, despite anyone's best efforts to try to tell her to move. She seems to consider herself my moral support. I noticed this a while back and only started mentioning it the past while. It's a definite pattern that we've all noticed.

[terrym]

I think there is way more to what our dogs can do or process than we will ever know.

[GrizzlyAdams]

Dogs can sense changes in body scent due to sickness and anxiety hence why they say dogs can smell fear...Dogs are sociable animals and look at their owners as gods. If you get excited your dog gets excited, if you are under the weather you probably act much differently than if your not. Dogs pick up on this change in behaviour and inturn change their behaviour to better suit their masters. This applies to dogs who mainly have 1 owner or dogs that are treated well and loved. Abused animals do not express these behaviours due to the lack of bond with their master. Many species in nature depend on each other for survival and will mimick the dominant species behaviour. Some good books to read upon are canine psychology and yes it does exsist. Talking from experience here as a psych major who studied behaviourism and has a fully trained german shephard who can fetch me beer from the fridge and follows commands based on hand signals and or verbal commands. Dogs can take on the intelligence of roughly a 3 year old child. Another fun topic to learn about is "calming signals".

[MikePal]

My wife's family has a great dog story showing human traits; they used to own a small convenience store just outside Morrisburg. Their dog was a fixture there and used to greet everyone who came into the store equally with a wagging tail looking for a pet.

One day after they took the dog in for it's grooming and hair cut, which changed it appearance quite a bit. One of the customers came into the store and when the dog came up wagging to greet him he looked down and laughed at the poor little dog and made fun of it appearance. The dog left, and no word of a lie, it never went to meet that man ever again. Totally ignored him from that day forward whenever he came into the store. Held that 'grudge' for years.

Of course they show empathy, I have had dogs for over 50 years, many many stories of dogs showing 'human' emotions.

[huntingdad]

I think they are way more emotional and intuitive than we give credit. When we adopted our lab cross rescue she was a strong puller on leash (still is). She pulled everyone. Huge prey drive too. I'm over 4 times her weight and she pulled me a lot. My parents watched her for us for a bit. My Mom is small with a bad hip. As soon as Mom put the leash on her she wouldn't pull and calmed her prey drive. As soon as someone else would take the leash the usual dog was back. Mom's not a dog trainer or anything like that. I believe Missy just sensed her fragility.
HD

[JBen]

Currently have two interesting dogs, each with their own distinct personalities.
One is a young Malamute/Lab cross named Chaos (aptly named)
One is an old American Staff named Knuckles or Old man.

Both came to us from bad situations, especially Knuckles. We often describe him as an "old soul".
One "aspect" that is utterly unmistakable is his dislike or intolerance for tension. If my two girls are having go at it, as teen siblings do, and teen girls even more-so. Or If I am having words with one of them as dads and teen girls do.

He will quietly slink off and hide at just the smallest amounts of tension. He is probably more in tune to it, and affected by it, than many humans or young children.

[Waftrudnir]

... canine psychology and yes it does exsist.
...
Dogs can take on the intelligence of roughly a 3 year old child.
...

fully agree with that analogy, and it is a good explanation of why dogs do and also do not do certain things.
but when it comes to putting an actual age for reference, I'm not so sure. Dogs have no concept of language, which a 3 year old already has, but they likely exceed the emotional intelligence of a 3 year old

[GrizzlyAdams]

They have similar learning capabilities of a 3 year old child including language. 3 year old dont know the meanings of words just like dogs dont but both will respond to tonal inflections and strings of words to form a statement. Dogs learn commands best when they are kept short and do not sound similar in tone as other commands they know. So training your dog on the word stay and lay down could be confusing so I would train one command as stay and the other as down. By eliminating the extra word it will increase their learning and response to a command. My dog learned visual signals easier than spoken words because its easier to use different motions as opposed to changing your tone for each command. Just some food for thought...