"Total Recall" Questions

I don't think this is at all surprising. But by this do you mean you think dogs can count? It depends what you mean by 'count' I suppose. I doubt very much that dogs count things as humans do. I don't find it surprising they can remember 5 different things and fetch them. I also don't find it surprising that they can recognise a quantity. If I see three things, I know there are 3 without having to count them out 1, 2, 3...same with five etc. I should think dogs are quite good at this. But could you train a dog to count to 100? No, I doubt it. I bet their ability runs out when the quantities get too big to 'recognise'.

I'm sure that if you fished around you'd find some studies or experiments though, I bet people have tried to test this.

 

I used to use that recall signal until a trainer pointed out that the dog could think the last, longer whistle, meant stop! So I try to do three equal pips now!

 

I suppose that's true if you have trained a stop on the whistle which is something I haven't bothered with Juno so for me not a problem

 

There is a book by Stanley Coren The Intelligence of Dogs Which mentions this particular Lab. There is a lot of information about which breeds tend to be the most trainable, but he points out that intelligence and trainablility are not the same thing. He is generally of the opinion that dogs do reason things things out, at least on some level.

One of the commonly held views is that Labs make better SAR (Search and Rescue) dogs than Goldens, because a Lab is more likely to ignore his handler, if the dog is on the track, where a Golden is more likely to pay attention to the handler, even if the dog knows the handler is wrong.

One of the best cases for (some) dogs ability to think and generalize is a dog (poodle I think) that can identify several hundred toys by name. Even more, when asked to get a toy he/she has never seen, he would select the one that he had never seen before from a group.

Another good story was about a large dog that was being annoyed by a visiting small (purse) dog in her home. After a while the big dog, picked up the small dog carried it into the bathroom and dropped it into the empty bath tub.

 

I've read this same reason for the popularity of Labs as Seeing Eye dogs for the blind. The owner tells the dog to cross the street but the dog has been trained to look for traffic and must disobey the owner if it's not safe to cross and some dogs would do whatever the owner said.

@Ski-Patroller have you heard of Dr. Brian Hare's Dognition? I think you might like it. Oban and I did it, Oban is a Charmer.

https://www.dognition.com/

If you sign up for his online course at Duke the first two sessions of Dognition are free. Saves a bit of money. I bought the book too. Oban and I had fun doing it.

http://brianhare.net/mooc/

 

Heavens,you can tell by my pips if I think Dexter is too far from me pip- pip- pip- pip- peeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP !

 

Same here, third peep lengthens with distance Just making sure the sound carries

 

Thanks

I signed up for the free sessions. As it happens I'm a Duke graduate. BSME 1965