Umwelt :*)
Written by Pam on July 25, 2015
pronounced: OOM-velt
When I am not training and enjoying our dogs, I am reading about our furry friends. I have just finished a book by Alexandra Horowitz, “The Inside of a Dog”. Love it! It is written from a different prospective though – Horowitz explains from a scientific point of view how dogs perceive their world around them and truly how they perceive us – their human friends. She explains over and over again how a dog’s behavior is anything but simple nor fully understood. The behavior of dogs is complex and meaningful. She allows the reader to take the role of actually being a dog – to try to embody the animal – to be able to intensely smell and hear things from a far distance. This book truly gives the reader a better sense of understanding the minds of our dogs and why dogs …do what they do. It also gives the reader so much more to think about when you think about your dog! Horowitz, insists that in order to understand the life of a dog, we need to know what things are meaningful to the dog… like that of what it can hear, see and smell – as well as how the dog acts on the world or what actions the dog knows and takes to live.
I particularly loved the chapter on “When our Eyes Met”. Horowitz makes many comparisons throughout the book, but specifically in this chapter she caught my attention in discussing how wolves and dogs are different in small but very meaningful ways. When you think about all the literature that is available today on where our furry friends originated and how they came to be our domestic – sometimes best friend – it is amazing to understand that our dogs do things quite differently from that of the wolves. They look us straight in the eyes – they make eye contact! Our dogs also inspect us – they inspect our faces for more information, for reassurance and for guidance. This, to me, is very pleasing – I actually enjoy the moments of looking into all our HGT dogs eyes. From observing the human, the dog learns new behaviors as it does from the other dogs. They watch each other, and learn from each other and discover how things should be. An undesired activity should not get any attention, but a behavior that is enjoyed, should get praise and a reward. This is why I try to convey to everyone that reads our blogs, that punishment does not work, you need to allow the puppy time to discover what you are trying to convey and by such observation (and a handy tasty treat) you will get that HGT pup to be the best of the best :*)
Another interesting point of view is Horowitz’s explanation of what I call our HGT’s doggie kisses – are they truly a lick of likeness or a taste comparison to see if there is some type of metabolic change going on with their human friend. It all starts with that nuzzle then that long sniff and very often a very long wet-sloppy kiss. What the dog is really doing is collecting all the smells that you are bringing home for the day. These smells are a smorgasbord of stink, sweet and everything in between that the dog longs for! What interests me the most of all this smelly stuff, is that if there is a change in your coded smell, the dog can detect an imbalance, a metabolic change or a health problem surfacing. Surprisingly there are distinctive smells that some researchers rely on to decipher various infections, etc and the dogs are being trained to recognize the smells produced by such metabolic changes, etc. Surprisingly dogs can also smell our emotions. Horowitz talks about how small children can show fear of certain dogs and it is likely that the dog can smell fear, anxiety and sadness too. Anyway with the sense of fear, there is the sense of love – I always want our dogs to have that freedom of whatever they want to sense, but that greeting sense to me is one that I always treasure and you know, I actually nuzzle, sniff and kiss them right back – although my kisses are more air borne:*)
There is so much packed in this small book. I will continue to blog more information gathered from this book – but if you want to do some reading on your own, pick up a copy – it’s a great read! Enjoy, Pam
