Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (29 page)

Even so, there are other dog behaviors suggestive of their self-knowledge. In most actions, dogs do not grossly misestimate their abilities. They surprise themselves by jumping into water after ducks—only to find that they are natural swimmers. They surprise us by leaping to scale a fence—which they may in fact be able to clear. On the other hand, one regularly hears that dogs
don't
know a very basic fact about themselves: how big they are. Small dogs strut up to enormous dogs: their owners proclaim that their dogs "think they're big." Some big-dog owners who endure lap sitting likewise assert that their dogs "think they're small." In both cases, the dogs' accompanying behaviors lend more credibility to the notion that they
do
know their sizes: the small dog is compensating for his small size by trumpeting his other qualities extra loudly; the large dog raised with a lap to sit on continues with this close contact just as long as he is tolerated, and then finds a large-dog-sized pillow to sit on elsewhere.

Both small and large dog are tacitly acknowledging an understanding of their own size. It might seem unlikely that this means they are thinking about the categories
big
or
small.
But look at how they act on objects in the world. Some dogs will attempt to pick up a felled tree, but most dogs with stick-carrying habits will choose similarly sized sticks at every opportunity, as though they have gauged what can be picked up and held in their mouths. From then on, all sticks in the path of a searching dog are quickly assessed: too big? too thick? not thick enough?

Further suggestive evidence that dogs know their size comes from their rough-and-tumble play. One of the most characteristic features of dog play is that socialized dogs can, by and large, play with almost any other socialized dog. This includes the pug who leaps onto the hocks of the mastiff, reaching his knee. As we've seen, big dogs know how to, and often do, moderate the force of their play to smaller playmates. They can withhold their fiercest bites, jump halfheartedly, bump into their more fragile playmates more gently. They might willingly expose themselves to attack. Some of the largest dogs regularly flop themselves on the ground, revealing their bellies for their smaller playmates to maul for a while—what I called a
self-takedown.
Older, learned dogs adjust their play styles to puppies, who don't yet know the rules of play.

Play between dogs of mismatched statures often does not last long, but it is usually an owner, not a dog, who moves to stop it. Most socialized dogs are considerably better at reading each other's intent and abilities than we are. They settle most misunderstandings before owners even see them. It's not the size or the breed that matters; it's the way they talk to each other.

Working dogs provide another glimpse into what dogs know about themselves. Sheepdogs, raised from their first weeks of life with sheep, do not grow up to act like sheep. They do not bleat or scream, chew their cud, aggressively head-butt, nor suckle from the ewe, as sheep do. Their cohabitation leads dogs to interact socially with sheep—using social behaviors characteristic of dogs. Those who study sheepdogs observe, for instance, that dogs will growl at sheep. Growling is a dog communication: the dog is treating the sheep more like a dog than like a possible meal. These dogs' only fault is to overgeneralize: not only are they clear on their own identity, in some sense—they also think that everyone else is a dog, too. One could call this foible very human: they talk to sheep as though they were dogs, just as we talk to dogs as though they were humans.

Between play bouts, stick-retrieving, and sheepherding, do dogs sit around thinking,
My,
but
I'm
a
fine
medium-sized
dog,
aren't
I?
Certainly not: such continued reflection on size or status or appearance is peculiarly human beings' lot. But dogs do act with knowledge of themselves, in contexts where such knowledge is useful. They respect (for the most part) the limits of their physical abilities, and will look pleadingly at you when you ask them to leap a too-high fence. A dog will hop discreetly around a pile of his own defecation encountered on the ground: he recognizes the smell as
his.
If the dog is reflecting on himself, one might wonder if he thinks about himself in the past—or in the future: if he is quietly writing his autobiography in his head.

As we round the corner Pump stops in her tracks. She moves as if to sniff something a half-step back; I slow to indulge her; and she darts back around the corner. There are still twelve blocks, a brief park, a water fountain, and a right turn until we get there, but she knows this walk. She'd been glancing up at me for blocks, and with that final turn, it's confirmed. We're going to the vet.

Psychologists report that those people with the most prodigious memories—able to flawlessly recite a string of hundreds of random numbers read to them once, as well as identifying every moment the reader blinked, swallowed, or scratched his head—are sometimes the most tortured by what they recall. The complement of remembering so thoroughly can be the strange inability to forget anything at all. Every event, every detail, piles on the garbage heaps that are their memories.

The overflowing garbage, collector of the day's past, is more than a little evocative when considering the memory of a dog. For if anything is on the dog's mind, it is that wonderful, odoriferous pile that we teasingly preserve in our kitchens, off-limits to the dog as a special form of torture. In that pile go the leavings of so many dinners, the extra-rank cheese that was discovered in the back of the fridge, clothes that have smelled too much for too long to be worn. Everything goes there but nothing is organized.

Is the dog's memory like this? At some level, it just might be. There is clear evidence that dogs remember. Your dog plainly recognizes you on your return home. Every owner knows that their dog won't forget where that favored toy was left, or what time dinner is supposed to be delivered. He can forge a shortcut en route to the park; remember the good peeing posts and quiet squatting sites; identify dog friends and foes at a glance and a sniff.

However, the reason we even pose the question "Do dogs remember?" is that there is more to our memory than keeping track of valued items, familiar faces, and places we've been. There is a personal thread running through our memories: the felt experience of one's own past, tinged with the anticipation of one's own future. So the question becomes whether the dog has a subjective experience of his own memories in the way that we do—whether he thinks about the events of his life reflexively, as
his
events in
his
life.

Though usually skeptical and reserved in their pronouncements, scientists often implicitly act as though dogs have memories just like ours. Dogs have long been used as models for the study of the human brain. Some of what we know about the diminishing of memory with age comes from tests on the diminishment of the beagle's memory with age. Dogs have a short-term, "working" memory that is assumed to function just as the psychology primers teach that human memory works. Which is to say: At any moment, we are more likely to remember just those things that we bring a "spotlight" of attention to. Not everything that is happening will be remembered. Only those things that we repeat and rehearse for later recollection will get stored as longer-term memories. And if a lot is happening at once, we're bound to remember only some of it—the first and last things sticking best. The dog's memory works the same way.

There is a limitation to the sameness. Language marks the difference. One reason why as adults we don't have many—arguably any—true memories of life before our third birthdays is that we were not skilled language users at the time, able to frame, ponder, and store away our experiences. It might be the case that while we can have physical, bodily memories of events, people, even thoughts and moods, what we mean by "memories" is something facilitated only by the advent of linguistic competence. If that's the case, then dogs, like infants, don't have that kind of memory.

But dogs certainly remember a large amount: they remember their owners, their homes, the place they walk. They remember innumerable other dogs, they know about rain and snow after experiencing them once; they remember where to find a good smell and where to find a good stick. They know when we can't see what they are doing; they remember what made us mad last time they chewed it up; they know when they are allowed on the bed and when they are forbidden from it. They only know these things because they have learned them—and learning is just memory of associations or events over time.

It is somewhat dispiriting to find that our knowledge about a dog's autobiographical sense has not advanced beyond Snoopy's affirmation half a century ago, "Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog." No experimental study has specifically tested the dog's considerations of his own past or future. But a few studies with other animals examine part of what might be considered their autobiographical consciousness. For instance, a test run on the Western scrub-jay, a bird that naturally caches food for later consumption, has shown what in humans would be called willpower. If I'm hankering for chocolate-chip cookies, and someone gives me a bag of chocolate-chip cookies, it is extremely unlikely that I would put them away until the next day. The jays were taught that when given a preferred food—their chocolate-chip cookie equivalent—they would not be given food on the subsequent morning. Despite what we can presume is a strong interest in eating the food straightaway, they saved some and consumed it the next day. And me, without my cookies.

We might ask whether dogs act similarly. If prevented from eating in the mornings, does your dog begin to stash food the night before? If so, that would be suggestive evidence that they can plan for the future. As we know from finding uneaten unidentifiables in refrigerated takeout containers, not all saved food is equally good over time. If your dog buries a bone in the dirt or in the corner of the couch each month for three months, does he remember which is the oldest, the foulest, and which is the freshest? Putting aside any overpowering odors emanating from your couch, it is not likely. If we consider the dog's environment, it is apparent that they simply do not need to use time in this way, as they, unlike scrub-jays, are provided with a regular supply of food. In addition, discriminating food by its expiration date, or saving food for later when you're hungry now, may be a difficult task for an animal descended from opportunistic feeders, who eat as much as they can when food is available, then endure long stretches of fasting when food is not. Some suggest, reasonably, that dogs' bone-burying behavior is tied to an ancestral urge to stash some food aside for the lean times.* Evidence that a dog can distinguish the freshest bone from the one that has rotted—or leaves some aside just to enjoy it later—would bear this out. It is more likely that most of the time dogs are not thinking about time when they are thinking about food. A bone is a bone is a bone, buried or in the mouth.