Dog Days of Summer Special Guest Post!

A few months ago a publicist contacted me about a book I had on my radar.  I knew it would be perfect for Dog Days of Summer 2019 and happily agreed to accept a copy for review.  When I explained my August activities, Beverly agreed to see if the author would be willing to provide a special post for the occasion.  So Booker T's Farm is happy to welcome the author of "What's Bred in the Bone," Jan S. Gephardt.  

How much does your dog understand?

By Jan S. Gephardt

Have you ever wondered how much your dog knows? Does she understand your facial expressions and gestures? How much of what you say does he really comprehend? And when your dog greets you at the door with a wagging tail, is it really love—or does she just see you as a meal ticket?

Recent studies suggest the answers are “often,” “more than you might think,” and “it’s probably a lot like love.” Just how much your dog understands is still being studied, but it’s already clear we have more in common with our canine companions than we might think.

Humans have a longer history of evolving side by side with dogs than with any other domesticated animal species. Archaeologists have found dog remains with a human burial from as long as 14,000 years ago. Geneticists have found mutations that would suggest a more domesticated diet dating back some 32,000 years. And a sandstone cliff in Saudi Arabia offers pictorial documentation of a man hunting with dogs on leashes that’s more than 8,000 years old. 

So dogs and humans have had a pretty long time to get used to each other. How much have we “rubbed off on each other”? Some researchers say quite a lot! Neither humans nor dogs would be what we are today, without each other.

That’s true physically, but studies in dog cognition also tell us it’s true in terms of dogs’ brains. This first became clear when dogs showed they could easily understand gestures such as a human pointing to an object, although chimpanzees could not. Researchers also have shown that dogs pay attention to where we are looking, and recognize the difference between happy and angry human expressions.

Verbal Virtuosos

Dogs can’t speak our languages, but they can respond to our wishes, cued by words (sounds) we’vetaught them, and guided by the tone of our voice. (Scientists haven’t, as far as I know, done studies on “selective hearing” in dogs who choose not to respond). Probably the most famous canine “verbal virtuoso” was Chaser, a border collie who belonged to a psychology professor named JohnPilley.

Pilley and Chaser were able to demonstrate that she had a vocabulary of 1,022 different nouns (the names of toys), and that she could comprehend (by reacting appropriately to)sentences containing a prepositional object, a verb, and a direct object. Pilley memorably showed her talents to the world on an episode of 60 Minutes, first aired in 2014, but still available online.

And while dogs can’t read the way humans can, it is possible to teach them to recognize individual written words (visual symbols) and respond to them as if they were verbal commands. Several different dogs have been taught to do this, as an inspiration for elementary students just beginning to read. The largest “written vocabulary” I found online was four words, demonstrated by a Labrador Retriever in the UK, named Fernie.

But is it truly love?

Many people, especially scientists wary of being accused they’re anthropomorphizing, have been reluctant to say that our dogs “love” us.

Several studies have shown that oxytocin levels (the so-called “love hormone”) rise in both dogs and humans when the human smiles, when dogs and humans look at each other, when they snuggle, or when dogs are caressed. Some researchers believe this mutual reaction is key to dog domestication.

But oxytocin isn’t the only scientific proof. Studies of dogs in MRI scanners show the brain structure associated with anticipation and positive feelings (the caudatenucleus) lights up in dogs when they smell the odor of a familiar person.

And then there’s body language. How can you mistake the message of the facial expressions, the wriggling body, the wagging tail? How can you mistake the hugs?

Dog owners know: they “get” us, in a way few other animals do. After 32,000 years, even scientists are beginning to agree.

It's clear that Jan has done her research and it's even more evident in "What's Bred in the Bone."  I'm about 100 pages in and already I've fallen in love with the dogs I've encountered, especially Rex.  Be sure to check back Friday for my review and thanks so much Jan for stopping by!