For sevensins :)

Because your wish is my command

This one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIfHiiPAmW0

Thank you for reminding me of this. Its just SO cool. You HAVE to watch it all the way through the end.

Thought I’d make this its own thread

Edit, if someone knows how to embed it please do. I apparently am more computer stupid than I thought.

Super neat!

I just was watching this and Bev came up behind me and kept clapping for the dog with the clicker went off LOL. I didnt explain anything to her and we have never used a clicker with our dogs so it really is THAT easy to understand the concept.

This really is one of my favorite videos...I have played it often on my phone..."guys, guys, seriously look at this!!!"

Awesome! That last part confused him...there was only one. He looked like, wft? lol. Poor thing. Very cool though.

But from a cognitive POV that’s what was so cool! In order to have a tallest, you have to have a point of comparison. That the dog recognized, even for a second, that the point of comparison was missing is pretty amazing, and gives dogs far more credit for cognitive abilities than we previously thought.

I think we are at the cusp of making some pretty cool discoveries about what dogs (and other animals) are capable of. Up until now it has been kind of like judging a fish on his ability to climb a tree. But now that we have a more universal way to communicate, I bet we’re just going to continue to see more and more amazing stuff.

YES, thank you! :hail: I love this video for all of the reasons you've already stated in this thread. It may not seem like the dog is doing a whole lot to some people at first, but when you actually stop and realize what it is that's actually going on...

This... you know some shockjock somewhere is thinking they could get their dog to do that with low level stim and simply let off when the dog gets near the correct column.
But that’s not the point. The point is that the dog is doing all the cognitive work. The dog is figuring out what is tallest, not the human directing the dog.
Its hard for me to articulate, but that switch - from human directing, to the dog figuring it out on his own, from an obedient dog to a thinking dog, THAT switch, is what gets me so excited about this type of training. So cool

I really like the end. And her comment about it. "If I were her, I probably would have done different, but I would have been wrong." There IS no tallest. If my dog ever got an answer right that I got wrong, I'd be so thrilled.

Mine do all the time.

WOW that's awesome

With what? Things like this?

All sorts of things.
Just today Bates was telling me there was something under the futon that I needed to help him rescue. I found his cuz, gave it to him and he continued to tell me there was something under there. I looked and looked, nothing. I told him there is nothing there, he insisted. So i got a flashlight and sure enough one of his clear plastic bottles that he stole from the recycling was under there.

Another time he came and woke me up. I told him to go lie down. He bugged me more. I got up, thinking he had to go outside, but he wouldn’t go down the stairs. Turns out my daughter had a nosebleed and he was trying to alert me to it.

This one is weird, but bear with me. We were at the stream and Bates alerted to a tree. Just sat there barking at the tree then looking back at the kids, then barking at the tree, then looking at the kids. Finally I got up to look carefully at the tree. Nothing. No animal in it, no bugs... it was a dead tree. Bates wouldn’t let it go though. At some point I put my hand on it and realized it was not only dead, but rotten and hollow. I told the kids to move, gently pushed, and the whole thing came down with a crash. It wasn’t a huge tree, but still, would not have felt good to have it fall on any of us. I swear Bates walked off with a smug look on his face.

It makes me wonder how much is foresight on his part and how much is just a sense of “this isn’t rightâ€. I get that dogs have senses we don’t. He might have heard the tree cracking where we couldn’t, he might have smelled something in the kids room that was off, but to then take that information, extrapolate that it was potentially problematic, then figure out how to remedy it, communicate that to me... Its a lot.

Alright, that was cool. The look on the dogs face at the end is great. I love seeing them think.

Wow, now I want to teach my dogs to do that. I'm probably too lazy, though. I also want to know how to embed videos, and think someone should tell us.

Well, I think it is because dogs have the ability to fast map. So, since the process of elimination (having more than one tube) wasn't available, it stumped him to not have anything to compare it to. For humans, we'd probably think...well, there's only one so it's taller than nothing or...it's the tallest one since there isn't any other one....and we might drop the ball in.

I think it shows that dogs do have the ability to grasp actual concepts,(to what degree of complexity, who knows) where before I think most scientists didn't think they thought things through in that much detail.

I agree...


But I’m sad
I posted this on another forum and a bunch of people said the dog looked bored and lacked enthusiasm.
Apparently dogs are only useful for their obedience skills, not their cognitive ones

I'll be honest, I was chuckling because I was thinking if I had Mia doing that, it would be going about 4x the speed. Then again, Mia does everything on fast forward.

Anyone who doesn't think that dogs can think in a more abstract sense is invited to come live with Mia for a week. That dog is constantly making me redefine what I think dogs are capable of understanding and learning.

Maybe he was slow and didn't appear to be overly enthusiastic because he is only mildly amused by this "ridiculous" game. He's probably wondering when the human in this game is going to change things up and introduce something more challenging. "Oh, all right....I'll do this a few more times, but it's really getting rather repetitious."

The dog does not look bored or lack enthusiasm, she is well engaged with the activity at all times. It's not a fast paced kind of behavior, I think getting the ball into the tube wouldn't be the easiest thing for a dog, and is something that needs to be done with deliberation. She therefore has been rewarded for precision over speed, and you get what you reward.