How to Truly Understand Your Dog:

Beyond Human Perception

It is reductive to say that dogs “exist in the moment.”
It’s a fallacy, used to apply unnecessarily harsh control methods onto them.
"They won’t remember it. They get over it. Move on."

Dogs may live in A moment, but their moments are not at all like ours.

Excuse me, have you ever truly met a dog?

When you leave your home with your dog, if you are sighted, you see your local area by means of your brain processing the light that hits the environment and bounces back into your eyes. You are experiencing at the speed of light when you step out into the day.

Dogs, as primarily olfactory (scent-based) animals, their experience of the world always contains echoes of what has gone before.
Chemical traces, pheromones, of dogs who have walked past your home last night, the cat that walked along your garden gate in the early hours.
Your dog is a literal time traveller.

Sensing residual paths of others moving through space - Those paths are stronger on the most recent footprints
Your dog knows which direction they went, hours ago, when you were all asleep.

The mixture of scent, the layers that are relevant to them versus those that are not.
Your dog can distinguish, they know who on the dog field has treats on them, even if that person forgot they had them in their pocket.

Scent carries emotional learning experiences, as with us, the smell of your gran’s perfume or Sunday dinner will stick with us. But our olfactory system is pathetic, we get 20% of what our dogs do when we take in a scent.
Your dog can have an emotional response to a molecule of a scent that was laid down a day ago.

…If they have vision, they also see. They experience the present now, too.

Try to think how that must feel.
Today, last night, yesterday. Friends, foes all there in front of you all at once.
Imagine all this, while someone is simultaneously demanding your attention and expecting you to perform a command before crossing a road.

Never forget that your dog experiences things you could never imagine. Your brain is human, your culture and lived experience are human. You will never truly be able to get into the mind of a dog; it is not within your imaginative capacity to do that. Such an intense sensory experience would be overwhelming, even for a short time. You’d go mad, you are not set up for it.

We are forever hobbled by our human-centric way of seeing, but that’s fine, if you are open to accepting that and using it to inform your behaviour.

If you are open to engaging with dogs as complex thinking, feeling, experiencing entities and give them space to dog.

Understanding the rich, multi-layered world your dog experiences can be complex and challenging. If you live with a dog (an animal!) And you’re struggling to bridge the gap between your human perception and your dog's lived reality, and you're looking for guidance in fostering a deeper connection based on empathy and understanding, get in touch.

Let's work together to help you truly understand and support your pal!