Animals and Cognition

Pets are a huge part of most of our society. They love us unconditionally for their entire lives. We are probably not worthy of them, but I believe we do the best we can by loving them and taking care of them everyday we share together. Part of caring for a pet involves a little insight into what makes them tick. This article is intended to serve as a thought provoker so you and your dog can maybe understand each other a little easier and both be better for it.

I just want to scratch the surface of this subject and talk about animals and their cognitive abilities. I am not talking about animals who are super-trained to put round blocks in square holes. I am referring to your average everyday interactions. I am not a doctor or veterinarian. Neither am I a dog whisperer or animal therapist. I just love animals and find it interesting to delve into their behaviours and emotions. Especially how they relate to our own. We are all of us animals after all.

Let me start out with what I mean by an animal's cognition. Cognition is loosely defined as “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.”

Thank you Google! *salutes*

Now that we have that cleared up. Let’s begin. Have you ever just sat quietly with your pet and put all of your attention on them and them alone? No television in the background. No radio in the other room playing some random pop song. Just you, your pet, and silence. If you have never done this before you may want to try it out for fun. If you have done this before, what kind of things do you think about? Ever wonder what your pet is thinking about? An unfortunate amount of people would say, “Well, nothing. Its just a dog.”

I would tend to argue with you there, and I am about to…

In simple terms. If it has a brain and the neurons are firing... it thinks. When you sit and look at your dog, you may be thinking how funny looking they are. Consider they may be thinking the same of you. At least in the way that a dog would think it. I mean really, we have so little hair! Obviously we can’t ask a dog what is on their mind, but that does not mean we can’t have a general idea. After all, if your dog needs to go outside to pee, they are going to let you know.

What do you do? You take them!

Good human…you get a treat.

Now how did you know they needed to pee? Through body language of course. Now this may seem elementary to some, but many people just don’t make this connection. In the same way that you made the cognitive recognition to take your pet out. Your pet made a cognitive decision to tell you they needed to go. Your dog was not born with the innate sense to hold in their pee until you realize they have to go. They were not born with the instinct to run in circles until you get the hint.

They learned it!

These days animal behaviourists make a fortune off training you and your dog how to read each others body language and in your dogs case, verbal commands. That being said, you can learn most of the things they tell you from simple observation. Remember when I said to sit quietly with your pet? When you do this take note of what your pet does during that time. Also focus on what your pet does before every action. Have I lost you yet? Still there? Good, but I will explain anyways.

I have been around dogs pretty much all of my life. My family sometimes had five dogs at a time. I always thought of them as the brothers and sisters I never had, and I have a decent understanding of their actions on a primal level so I will use them as an example.

Let’s say your dog is just aimlessly wandering around the house. You may think he/she is bored and just wandering to wander. In many cases this is probably true. If you have a dog like mine it is usually a bit deeper than that.

See my dog has favourite toys, he knows which is which, and it changes every other day or so. He is a Shepard-mix so he likes to chew things up. We call him Drogo the Destroyer for a reason. With that in mind we often have to throw away the disemboweled husks of some of his more well used toys. From time to time he walks through the house aimlessly as if he is bored. He has plenty of other toys and he loves them all. So why not play with one of those?

After asking myself this question for awhile, I decided to take one of his toys away prematurely (an old fox stuffed animal). I even made him watch me toss it in the garbage to be extra thorough, and then took it out when he was in his crate for the night so I could stash it away. A few weeks later as he was pacing from room to room picking up each toy and dropping it again just to wander some more. I asked him if he wanted his fox. His head immediately snapped around, his ears went up, and he let out the cutest bark that you could only expect from a playful puppy. I had just made his day. Once I gave it to him he only put it down long enough to walk over and give me a full body slam and a lick on the arm to say, “Dad you’re an ass, but thank you.”

As another example…

My wife and I spoil our dog. I am not ashamed to admit it. He is pretty much our furry child. That being the case…we buy him tons of toys to play with. He has everything from bouncy balls, rope toys, stuffed animals (not so stuffed anymore) and the occasional bone or pig ear. The funny thing is that his favourite toys in the world are cardboard boxes of any kind. Even egg cartons will make him the happiest dog in the world. He loves tearing small pieces off of them and leaving them for us to clean up. The interesting bit is when it comes time to clean up all those little cardboard pieces.

My wife will pick them up and throw them all in the trash, room by room, while the dog follows her around looking like she is, well, throwing his favourite toys in the garbage. Later in the evening we will be watching television and he will run in with a huge piece of cardboard. After some investigation we realized that he had been stashing these pieces in various locations through out the house. Being good pet parents we let him keep his little “secret”, but this tells me a few things. First off, he thinks enough to be able to have clear favourites. Secondly, he thinks enough to know that we are going to take his cardboard away eventually and that he should stash some for later. Lastly, and I think most importantly. We have never seen him hiding these. He makes sure that we are not around when he adds to his stash of goodies. So he is making a cognitive decision to be secretive.

Animals are capable of a whole range of reasons for some of the seemingly random things they do. I am convinced that there are some things my dog does just to make me laugh so he can see me happy. Watch your dog next time they do something goofy and try to see if you can figure out why they did it. They may have noticed you were unhappy a moment before and wanted to cheer you up. They may also just be a goof as mine is prone to be at times. Animals may process information differently than we do, but their brains are capable of much higher functioning than many of us give them credit for, and at the end of the day we share more in common with them than any of us may think.