My Heroes! Smarter Than We Think

What ever would I do without my faithful doggie friends to protect me here at my country home?   Just this afternoon their frantic baying, barking, and howling “saved” me from an evil plastic bag tumbling over itself as a gentle breeze moved it erratically across the yard.

It makes you wonder how animals think.  People would feel foolish if the danger they got all worked up about turned out to be nothing more than an empty plastic bag but dogs’ brains obviously work differently.  No sooner did Baxter, our beagle, catch the dangerous bag, than it became a toy to shake and tear, to release until the breeze moved it almost out of reach, and then to pounce upon it again with all the ferocity he could muster.  Surely, no bag will ever dare venture into our yard again!

When she was a year or so old, our last German Shepherd, Lady, even took on the cut-out wooden Smokey the Bear figure at the ranger station in Sandilands Provincial Forest.  Whatever dastardly intentions Smokey might have had to harm us, he must have changed his mind pretty quickly when a nearly full-grown German Shepherd rushed him, snarling and barking her outrage!  Then, her brave task completed, she came trotting back to us with her tail held high and waving proudly.

 We smiled and told ourselves that Lady was acting out of instincts, that surely she didn’t “think” she was protecting us.  It’s a common perception that dogs don’t think, that they merely react to external stimuli out of their natural drives and instincts.  The truth is that dogs are much smarter than we give them credit for.  They can often think circles around their unsuspecting owners, because most owners haven’t learned how to think like a dog.

I’ve read that dogs may think in sensory impressions; visual, sound, and odour images.  I doubt that they experience videos inside their brains but I suspect they do share our ability to form and experience certain images, odours, and sounds in their minds.  This is why they get so excited when we return home at the end of the day; they have a visual or odour “memory picture” in their minds of who is arriving and so they are barking eagerly before we’re even in the door.

In Lady’s case, the Smokey figure didn’t fit any of her visual, sound, or odour images and so she wisely treated it as an unknown and possibly dangerous creature.  She “thought” the situation through, not verbally as we would, but in her sensory way, and “decided” on an appropriate response.  Our beagle did the same thing when he attacked the bag that didn’t fit any of his sensory impressions and therefore could well have been something dangerous.

And so I’m never alone on a day when no one human is with me here at our country home.  My faithful canine friends are brave enough and smart enough to protect me from danger of any sort.