patw Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 I met a young gentleman named Michael T., an academic sort of person (don't know if it is appropriate to mention his full name since he hopes to do a more comprehensive test and publish his study), who had used a unique mode of communicating with his border collie. He had lighted pads that said YES and NO. Mike used cruder forms of the pads outdoors. Mike trained his dog this way. The guy asked the dog: Do you want a cookie? If the dog wanted the cookie, he touched the YES pad, which lighted up and the dog got the treat. When the dog misbehaved, he would ask: Do you want me to punish you? If the dog touched YES, the dog would be put in the crate that it particularly hated. If NO, then no punishment. Every communication with his dog was using the YES or NO pads. With the dog answering questions like "Do you want to go for a walk?" YES! or "Do you want a bath?" NO!, the dog soon learned the meaning of the YES and NO pads, as any intelligent border collie might. Mike was soon getting the dog to answer questions like "Did someone come to the door today while I was away?" and the dog was answering accurately because Michael would test the circumstances and in his academic way make sure that the dog was responding accurately (e.g. he would be away for 10 minutes and send a neighbor to ring the door bell). Soon the BC was answering questions like Are you hurt? Does your leg hurt? Or does your stomach hurt? and the dog was answering YES or NO, which told Mike where the problem was. Are you sad that Spot died? (Spot was the dog that got into nasty fights with all other dogs and was run over by a car) - to this after some thinking the BC touched both YES and NO!!!!!!!!! What do you think of this whole thing and this method of training? Will it work or does only Mike think it works? If it works, I might want to try this method too because it will be cool to ask a BC all kinds of questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSnappy Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 I think this is a pile of nonsense. How does the dog know what "hurt" means or "sad" or "did someone ring the doorbell" or whatever? It's one thing to train a dog to respond to simple commands, but complex concepts of pain, sorrow or visiting neighbors during an owner's absence I don't see being communicated in any reliable way to a dog, and then reflected back to the trainer. Are you a spammer? This is your first post? It's very bizarre. "Spot" died did he? That's awfully sad. Rover weeps for him, and Lassie wants to help. Run Jane, Run! RDM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patw Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Hi, thank you for that feedback. Maybe that method is bullshit. But I have heard of Koko the gorilla who answered pretty complex questions asked to her in sign language and Koko also conveyed elaborate happenings and described events like a red-headed woman getting into a fight and firetruck arriving at their trailer. Koko also described death as "deep sleep" and picked out her own boyfriend from videos of male gorillas. Koko also asked for a bunny and a cat as her pets. Google Koko for more info. Maybe that YES/No method is bullshit and maybe Border Collies are not as smart as a gorilla. Who knows. I am curious to hear what others think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack & Co. Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 If you use the Search function and try words like "mental" or "games", you can read previous threads about mental stimulation for BCs. You mentioned in your other post that you have owned 7 dogs in the past. What is so different about this dog that you are planning such elaborate teaching projects? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patw Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 If you use the Search function and try words like "mental" or "games", you can read previous threads about mental stimulation for BCs. You mentioned in your other post that you have owned 7 dogs in the past. What is so different about this dog that you are planning such elaborate teaching projects? The others were couch potatoes, most of them greyhounds from rescue and one was a bull dog with bad health problems. None of them ever needed stimulation as my BC. The Border Collie seems to be a dog that is extremely intelligent and hyperactive. So intelligent that it could get into trouble if it is not stimulated. This is summer now but I am already worried what will happen when the temperature gets 30 below! Besides I am starting to feel bad for another BC who is at the shelter here and I will get her if no one else gets her in two weeks, which is when they "pull" the dog, i.e. put it to sleep. I am falling in love with the breed and from the discussions here I am getting increasingly interested in herding too. We have only one dog now but we're used to having 3 to 4. Can't help it if I am starting to love the Border Collie and herding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack & Co. Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Just curious, did you know that BCs were such active dogs before you got yours? ETA- if you're already frazzled trying to figure out how to keep a housebound BC stimulated this winter, why would you add another? Where do you live BTW? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patw Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Just curious, did you know that BCs were such active dogs before you got yours? LOL, no!!! But the rescue did warn me it was given away because it was too active, too hyper, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dixie_Girl Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 There was a Border Collie in Germany(I think) that had learned the name of a gazillion(exageration, but it was a lot!) toys. When an unknown toy was thrown into the mix, this dog would use the power of deduction to get the unknown toy. With time and patience, I think most Border Collies could do this. I think they could learn where there tummy or foot or tail is. But emotions like sad and happy and feelings like hurt or painful, is not in their realm of understanding. Gorillas can be taught these things because the great apes have brains capable of processing that data. That said, I bet the dog he tested was reading body language more than he realized. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Root Beer Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 As I read that, I though it was going to have a punchline. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PSmitty Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 Me, too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaska Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 There was a Border Collie in Germany(I think) that had learned the name of a gazillion(exageration, but it was a lot!) toys. When an unknown toy was thrown into the mix, this dog would use the power of deduction to get the unknown toy. With time and patience, I think most Border Collies could do this. I think they could learn where there tummy or foot or tail is. But emotions like sad and happy and feelings like hurt or painful, is not in their realm of understanding. Gorillas can be taught these things because the great apes have brains capable of processing that data. That said, I bet the dog he tested was reading body language more than he realized. 1. The dog you are thinking of is Rico. Here's a link where you can read about him: Rico 2. Heck, most dogs (and probably lots of other species) can learn names for their own body parts, and hence learn to manipulate them on their handler's request. If you are interested in how to train this, here is a link: Body Targets 3. There is a very strong case to be made that dogs do experience at least some of the same emotions we do, although it may not be possible to know whether they experience them in the same way (and for that matter, it may not be possible to know whether you and I experience them in the same way). I'm not going to try to make that case here, because it has a lot of nuances I'm not prepared to explain, but I'm almost finished reading Patricia McConnell's new book that discusses that very subject, and when I do, I'm am planning to post a review for you all. McConnell pulls together a lot of fairly cutting edge neurological research, with references, to make her case. Whether or not you buy it, the book is a very educational read. Hint: the first step is defining exactly what is meant by "emotion". Here's a link to the book: For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaska Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 What do you think of this whole thing and this method of training? Will it work or does only Mike think it works? If it works, I might want to try this method too because it will be cool to ask a BC all kinds of questions. And now to respond to the OP. Regardless of whether Mike did as you described, I don't see how you could ever get to the point where you could ask your dog "all kinds of questions." It doesn't make sense that you could "ask" a dog a question it has never heard before in a language it does not know and have the dog reliably give a correct answer. It's no different than me asking you a question in Croatian (assuming you have no clue how to understand Croation). You'd just be guessing. Unless ESP is at work here, if you ask the dog a question it has never learned the meaning of, your odds of getting a correct answer are random (i.e. 50:50, if you're talking about yes/no questions). Could you teach the dog to give the correct answer to specific questions? Sure. It's easy to teach a dog that if you say "do you want a cookie?", one action will get him the cookie and the other one won't. You've probably already done that with your dog. My dogs know they won't get treats unless they are sitting. If I say "want a cookie?", they usually sit, and if they do they get a treat. If they don't sit, they don't get the treat, but does that necessarily mean they didn't want one? It could, but it could also mean that they don't really understand the connection between sitting (i.e. saying "yes") and getting the cookie. So before proceeding you would need to be sure the dog really, really understood that it is his action that is controlling the outcome. The part about "when the dog misbehaved" it got to choose whether or not to go in the crate...well, I think I'd have to hear more about what was going on here. Skipping over the "misbehaved" part (misbehavior is in the mind of the human; the dog just sees it as behavior), let's just talk about the guy's question and the dog's response. Guy says "blah blah blah punish?", dog hits pad #1, guy puts dog in crate. When he says the same thing again, if the dog hits pad #2 it doesn't go in the crate. So again, the dog is eventually going to learn that when he hears ""blah blah blah punish?", he can control whether or not the guy is going to put him in his crate by which pad he hits. Is the dog going to generalize this to one pad meaning "I want the thing signified by that word you just said" and the other pad meaning "No, thank you"? That's a tough one. I don't know if that's will happen or not. Dogs don't generalize well at all -- we know that. Then again, when my dog wants something, even if it's not a treat, he's forever trying a sit out to see if it gets the correct response from me, so maybe so, maybe so. In his mind, sitting has become his version of hitting the "yes" pad. (Sometimes, anyway...) But "yes" doesn't just mean "I want." Like many of our words, "yes" means several other things to humans. A quick check of a dictionary gives us several applications for "yes": Used to express affirmation, agreement, positive confirmation, or consent. So the dog would not only need to generalize to the level of one pad meaning "I want" and the other meaning "I don't want", but in order to continue with the experiment you described, it would need to generalize even further to one pad meaning "I want or affirm or agree or confirm or consent"...and probably even more than that. I don't know if dogs are capable of grasping each of those meanings, but I do know that for them to learn word-based languages at all, your chances are a lot better if each word you teach has a very specific meaning. Most of the words dogs learn have not only a specific meaning but a concrete meaning as well, like an object (like the toy names that Rico learned) or an action (like sitting). To teach a dog to understand or use a word for an intangible concept (like sadness) is gonna be tough, and that's not even considering whether dogs can even "feel sad". As for "did someone come to the door while I was away?", that's another toughie for dogs, because they mostly live in the moment. I'm sure you could teach a dog that when you say "Door?", it is supposed to give one response if there's someone at the door and a different response if there isn't. With a LOT of effort, you could gradually stretch out the time between the person's appearance at the door and when you asked the question, but I think it would get harder for dogs to respond correctly much sooner than for us, simply because they don't dwell on the past the way we do. In short, I definitely agree that you can achieve a high level of communication with your dog, if you are a skilled trainer and put a lot of effort into it. How much and what kinds of generalizations are dogs capable of? I don't think we really know the answer to that yet. From the way you described Mike's experiment, I can see a lot of holes in it, but as you said, you're just trying to summarize. Maybe if we saw Mike's formal writeup it would address some of the questions I've raised here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dixie_Girl Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 I should have expanded on the emotional stuff. Yeah, I believe dogs can "feel" sad. Or even depressed. I just don't think they have the ability to know neccesarily the dynamics of what they are feeling. Foster dogs do way better than foster kids. Foster dogs are happy to be happy. They respond to kindness joyfully. Where as the foster kid is not only feeling abandoned and ill towards the parent that got him there, but he also refuses to allow another adult to make him happy. He wants mama or daddy to make him happy. This of course is not the case 100% of the time. Nothing is really. Take Lucy and Missy. After 9&8 yrs with the same people, Lucy especially, showed signs that she was "waiting" to get picked up. But after a week or so, she settled right in. When they were brought back, Missy tried to follow the car. But by the next day, it was like they never left. If I am gone all day, or just to the little store and back, they give me the same welcome back! I just think until we can comunicate with them as people have done with the great apes we will never fully understand what is going on with them and what they understand. Perhaps, foster dogs feel the same as foster kids, but have a different attitude about what happens to them in life. How the sam hill do I know! I am just a poser! Gimme a break! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patw Posted June 23, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 About "Did someone come to the door when I was away?" A 3-year old can understand the meaning of this sentence. I have heard people say BC's have the intelligence of a 3-year old (some say 7-year old). So why shouldn't a dog understand such sentences? But again, if dogs don't understand such sentences, how can we claim they have the intelligence of a 3-year old? I don't have an opinion here either way - just trying to understand more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bo Peep Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 (edited) I believe dogs can sense sadness, or loss. Mine have shown that. I even had one female that would NOT breed to a male of mine. They wern't related, but she must have "felt" that in herself. "Hey, you're like a brother to me" LOL. It just wouldn't happen. She'd show her stuff to other males, but when we got back home it's a "no-go, baby" . Maybe mine sensed sadness or loss through me, I cried....they tried to help... After all these years, I still cry, and have the ashes to prove it. My one beloved dog that never herded, but led me to on going things......I love you Miss Lacey. Your ashes will be with mine. OK- I'm sick, but I bonded with my first BC. http://s179.photobucket.com/albums/w305/Bo...=view¤t=mom.jpg Oh how I miss that girl...... Edited June 23, 2007 by Bo Peep Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patw Posted June 23, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 While on the topic of this research, here is another one: I came across this site on a BC breeder's page. Apparently, the breeder - and the US Military - is exposing 3-16 day old pups to stress to make them super-dogs (e.g. holding the 3-day old pup upside down or exposing it to a towel that has been in a refrigerator. Read this article http://www.breedingbetterdogs.com/achiever.html I am strongly skeptical of such stressing myself because intuitively - well - I don't know how to explain it. But I wonder how you all feel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc4pack Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 Actually there are quite a few breeders (all breeds) that do this... As for things to do: google 'Belgian games" first thing that comes up ought to give you some ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShoresDog Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 Certainly BC's can learn the names of many objects. If I remember right, Anda's Ouzo knows the names of 30 or so of his toys? I feel very certain that they can sense feelings. Though it seems much less likely that they could connect words to feelings, we all could give interesting examples where they behaved in ways that made it clear they were responding to feelings. Someday when I get to the point I can tell the story without tearing up, I'll describe Daisy and my terminally ill father. ETA: Not only is the Patricia McConnell book really interesting, but as I read along it kept giving me ideas for things to do with Daisy. I highly recommend it. After the Rico story broke, the local San Diego cartoonist decided it was time to modify the traditional "Dogs Playing Poker" picture: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anda Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 Certainly BC's can learn the names of many objects. If I remember right, Anda's Ouzo knows the names of 30 or so of his toys? I That is true, he does know that many names of toys, and some of the toys have two names: one in English, one in Romanian, and he is not confused. Either I tell him "vaca" or "cow", he brings me the cow toy. He also knows his commands in two languages. And no, he is not confused about it. I often hear people saying here : Well, you have to use the SAME world every time if you want to get the same action. Meaning, tell him "Come Back" and not "Come Here", or the dog won't know he's supposed to return to you. Ouzo knows that "Come Here" has the same meaning with "Vino aici" and "Get your butt here" and "Where you think you're going" And also responds to hand signals, when I gesture him to aproach me. Or say "Closer" or "Mai Aproape". His latest trick, which is a generalization, is to shake a toy when I ask him "How do we play with this?". It started with one particular toy (he's not much of a shaker of toys), but it was a gorilla head on a rope, and I caught him once shaking it, and marked the behaviour by praising him and asking him "How do we play with the gorilla?". And as he was shaking it proudly, I'd say (unintentionally) "Like that?" (I was using Romanian). And not only he started bringing me other toys with hanging ropes - generalization from the gorilla on a rope- and waiting for me to ask him how do we play, but he started reacting to "Like that?" and shaking them at that verbal que. By now, most toys are presented to me and I have to ceremoniously ask him how do we play, so he can show me how he shakes the toy, then waits for praise Silly boy! Or if he wants to play with us, he shakes a toy to get US excited Does he know a gazilion tricks, like Dazzle knows? Nope, although I wish I had time to teach him. But I can have "a conversation" with him, kindda the same way you are using a total foreign language and know only a handfull of key words to get around. That is how I feel when I communicate with Ouzo. Both of us can get the messages accross clearly, but cannon have elaborate discussions because we are missing key components of each others vocabulary. I think the OPs ideas of communicating with a BC are very unrealistic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSnappy Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 I should have expanded on the emotional stuff. Yeah, I believe dogs can "feel" sad. Or even depressed. I just don't think they have the ability to know neccesarily the dynamics of what they are feeling. Oh I believe this too. I think they have a fairly broad range of emotional responses. However, I don't think they process them the way we do and I still can't figure out how you would be able to use a "yes" or "no" marker to examine and trade complicated emotional responses with a canine. I don't think dogs have the linguistic capacity to formulate those feelings - they may feel them, but they weren't really designed (as humans seem to be) to analyze and think about them, so I don't see how they could be taught to express them as a result. All learning is done in degrees - if you want to teach a dog to roll over, you first teach him to lie down, and then to look at his tail, and then to follow the treat with his nose or whatever ... it's a cumulation of small events that leads to one larger event. Even though dogs have the capacity for a broader range of communication than we often give them credit for, I don't really understand how you would communicate an emotion like "loss" or "sadness" to a dog, teach him to recognize and examine it when he feels it and then teach him to communicate it back to you. Hell, human beings pay psychiatrists thousands of dollars to learn how to identify and analyze and communicate those emotions back to someone!! And we were designed for it, emotionally and linguistically. So I don't buy into the notion that one could teach a dog to understand and process his internal emotional turmoil over the loss of a another dog and then communicate it to you. How the sam hill do I know! I am just a poser! Gimme a break! Hey, we're all posers. Someone give this kid a a banana! ETA: Sorry OP, for assuming you were a spammer - it was just such a WEIRD post as an introduction to the boards. Like the others, I was waiting for the punchline! Edited again to add: every time someone references "Rico" I immediately think of The Sopranos. Maybe I need to get out more ... RDM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borderlicious Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 I am baffled at how to teach a dog such precise "questions" to begin with. Does your leg hurt? My dogs don't even know what their leg IS until I pick up their foot and wave it around. Maybe I'm just bad at communicating with them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patw Posted June 23, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 I am baffled at how to teach a dog such precise "questions" to begin with. Does your leg hurt? My dogs don't even know what their leg IS until I pick up their foot and wave it around. Maybe I'm just bad at communicating with them. The "does your leg hurt" sentence makes clear sense to a 3-year old. Now either border collies, who apparently have the intelligence level of a 3-year old, understand sentences like this. Or they just don't have the intelligence of a 3-year old. Like I said I don't have an opinion either way but would like to know which way you seasoned Border Collie owners are inclined. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSnappy Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 Actually, the study did not say that Rico has the intelligence of a three year old, or that any dog has the INTELLIGENCE of a three year old. What it said was that Rico has the fast-mapping object identification skills for learning comparable to a three year old human child. This is a portion of learning behaviour related to communication skills, but is not an overall indication of intelligence. Fast-mapping is also a learning method that appears to be applicable only to children, which suggests it's a formative skill developed in the process of expanding intelligence; therefore, it doesn't mean that dogs are as smart as three year old children, but that they share a learning method with them at one stage in their overall development. Children in the process of becoming adults are more than just the sum of their fast-mapping skills. Rico learned to identify an abundant number of objects that were important to him (ie toys). He did not learn to converse. I think this is misunderstood by a lot of people. Undersimplified if you will. But you have still not addressed the issue of how you communicate the concept of "hurt" to a dog. How does a dog understand what "hurt" means? "Hurt" is not an object - it's relative experience. So how could you teach the dog to understand whether or not it hurts and communicate it? Also remember that when comparing species, dogs are not people and people are not dogs. To use the phrase that a dog is as intelligent as a three year old child is only selecting a comparative marker that humans understand and using it as a benchmark to help people get what they are saying. Dogs have something like a 97% correct ability to sniff out cancers, when used for this purpose. Humans have a 0 success rate at the same activity. They are completely different animals. RDM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maralynn Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 I'm wondering if the dog who "answers questions" is doing it by reading body language or listening to voice inflections. Dogs do pick up on that sort of thing quite readily. Missy picks up on words she knows (I think it is aound somewhere from 50-75 now), body language, voice inflections and excitment. She is also quiet biddable and really wants to please. Add those all together and you get a dog who learns quickly and seems to figure out what you want because it picks up on verbal cues and body language. If Missy doesn't quiet understand what I'm telling her to do, she'll start offering behaviors, then all I have to do is reward the one I want, then repeat the command and reward again. She gets it down in anywhere from 3-6 repeats. But it is a combination of things that makes it possible, not just because she has a high IQ (which I'm sure she does.... ), or human like intteligence. Like Anda, I feel like I can communicate with my dog quiet well, but it is far different than communicating with a human. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eileen Stein Posted June 23, 2007 Report Share Posted June 23, 2007 I came across this site on a BC breeder's page. Apparently, the breeder - and the US Military - is exposing 3-16 day old pups to stress to make them super-dogs (e.g. holding the 3-day old pup upside down or exposing it to a towel that has been in a refrigerator. Read this article http://www.breedingbetterdogs.com/achiever.html I am strongly skeptical of such stressing myself because intuitively - well - I don't know how to explain it. But I wonder how you all feel. This is not a new idea. Michael Fox published on it back in the 70s, and Scott Lithgow advocates it in his Training and Working Dogs for Quiet Confident Control of Stock, published in 1987. If I remember correctly, the theory (or their theory, at least) is that by alternating stress and gentle handling at an early stage of development you will stimulate the development of serotonin secreting neurons in proper balance with norepinephine secreting neurons. I stressed young puppies (not very much, just mildly) in one litter and did not see any difference in the outcomes, and according to a neuropsychiatrist friend of mine the explanation of brain development in the Lithgow book was quite speculative and not all that accurate. I haven't done it since. My belief is that pups encounter sufficient unavoidable stress just in the process of being introduced to the world and all its different sensations to keep the serotonin neurons coming along nicely. But of course I believe in handling pups a lot during this stage, and exposing them to a lot of new places and things. As for the Q&A with the Border Collie, I can well believe the first few. But when you get to this one Mike was soon getting the dog to answer questions like "Did someone come to the door today while I was away?" and the dog was answering accurately because Michael would test the circumstances and in his academic way make sure that the dog was responding accurately (e.g. he would be away for 10 minutes and send a neighbor to ring the door bell). disbelief sets in. How, exactly, would a dog learn what "Did someone come to the door today while I was away?" meant? If Michael said, "He just knows," then disbelief takes root and flourishes. I think RDM put it well in her comments about the meaning of "equal to a 3-year-old" in intelligence. That's a shorthand way of describing them -- they are roughly equal compositely, not identical in every respect. There are many things border collies know that a 3-year-old does not know, but their conceptual language skills brings the average down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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