r/aww • u/thetinydancer1 • 5h ago

Our Pomeranian plays Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde. She waits for her cue, then walks onstage all by herself

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u/Foe117 5h ago

i am pretty sure doggo's can be smarter than we take them for. like the pupper knows the context of what they're doing is for the stage, but it likes what it's doing on cue.

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u/AvalancheOfOpinions 4h ago

You'd like the book, "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know," by Alexandra Horowitz, the director of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. You're right, they're definitely much smarter or at least much more aware than we give them credit for. For instance, they memorize facial expressions, so they know when you're angry or happy just by your look. They're also deeply in tune with human eye contact and use their own eye contact as communication.

But they see the world in an entirely different way too, so stuff that's obvious to us isn't obvious to them and vice versa. Like they have incredible senses of smell and hearing and ours is relatively awful. They "see" the world through scent more than sight. Imagine trying to navigate while blindfolded, only through smell. They can detect marks months after they've been made. If we had their perception, it'd seem like a super power.

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u/rcknmrty4evr 2h ago

Something that really opened my eyes to how much dogs truly learn and keep track of their humans is having two elderly dogs throughout my life. My first was my childhood dog that lived until 20~ (found as a stray so not sure exactly, but minimum 20), and my current dog who is 16. They spent YEARS picking up our subtle gestures and doing the same routines what not, and even in their old age with very poor hearing and/or eyesight, they immediately understood commands, what we want them to do, what’s going on etc.

I mean this may seem obvious and not that crazy, but sometimes I’ll barely even move and my 16 year old dog, who is very close to, if not, 100% deaf and poor eyesight, immediately understands what’s going on and does it before I even really start the gesture I was going to do to direct him. He still understands people’s emotions, he can tell when people are sad or mad or happy.. sometimes it’s just surprising how little he acts like he’s losing his senses.. until there’s a loud noise he has zero reaction to or someone walks in the house he hasn’t seen in a while and takes a minute to smell and remember who they are lol.

It’s also interesting how smooth the transition from verbal/visual commands to visual/physical was. I can usually give visual gestures to command him, but if he’s doing something like barking out the sliding glass door because he thought he saw something lol, I can walk up and gently tap him and he just goes and lays down or whatever else. It’s not something we ever specifically trained or taught, he just picked it up as he lost his hearing.

Dogs pay attention to a lot more than many give credit to.