Lots of people say that their dogs are dumb, but then they never make the connection between their dog putting a paw up on your leg and getting a treat. The dog is deliberately doing something to get himself a treat, and how dumb can that make him?

Humans and dogs have a successful relationship that goes back thousands of years, and one reason why it works out so well is because we communicate in a way that they understand. Think about what they are saying when they bring you a stick. You know that they want to play fetch, don’t you?

These are just two ways that your dog can tell you what he wants and what he is thinking and this shows that indeed, he can learn!

Remember that just like we do, dog can see and remember a lot of language and posture, but they process it very differently from the way that we do.

Their eyes will take in light and color differently than we do, and they can see in low light much more easily. Thanks to the muscles on their head, they can rotate their ears to figure out where the sounds are coming from, and let’s not forget that great sense of smell.

These basic differences will tell you a lot about how different their mental functioning is. They understand cause and effect, but it’s much different from how we understand it.

When it comes to classic consideration, where the subject figures out the connection between cause and effect, we can beat it pretty easily if it was just a coincidence. On the other hand, dogs create a very persistent relation between cause and effect.

Then look at operant conditioning, where cause and effect are reinforced through positive and negative means, and the differences become even larger.

For example, consider my Golden Retrievers. Whenever we go to play fetch, we go out the back door. Whenever I am just going to let them out for half an hour without joining them, I send them out the side door. Because of this, they know that the back door is for games of fetch and that this is where they should go when I have the ball.

When I train my dogs, I use a very specific tone and hand gesture to go along with the command. This gives them all kinds of cues and I can expect them to sit, stay down, no-bite, fetch, release, come and even eliminate at a single command.

However, on the other hand, I still cannot prevent them from eating something off of the floor because they cannot connect the bellyache a few hours later with the food that they ate before. This is just something that takes too much time.

What you need learn from this is that your pet dog, whether he is a Husky, a Retriever, a Shepherd, a Chihuahua, or a Beagle, is still a dog. He can learn all sorts of things as long as you are patient, but don’t ever expect him to understand things the way that you do.

For instance, look at dogs that can dance on command on the show circuit, or search and rescue dogs that can locate small children and pull them from swollen rivers and bad avalanches. Service dogs can do everything from opening a door to pulling a wheelchair to guiding a blind person.

Remember, though, that they are not people, and that even when they try to act like us and communicate like us, they are still going to do things like eat little dead critters they find in the yard and turn around three times before they sleep!

Learn to pick the right Dog Bedding for your dog. Do not allow Puppy Potty Training become a time consuming or tedious affair.

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