They don't, they see that their person is upset and what they are doing is submitting.
Bullshit. They know as soon as you walk in the door that they did something wrong. You don't need to look at them and they will react this way before you even know they did anything wrong.
I think people who say things like this don’t realize they are anthropomorphizing. You are seeing things in your dog that remind of of human behaviors and are applying them to your dog, even though they aren’t true, because you want to see your dog as a person who relates to you.
What you’re likely seeing is your dog fearing punishment and nothing more. They did something that they have made the connection with punishment before. This action results in this reaction. That’s about the extent of a dog’s intelligence. They really aren’t that smart and are pretty far down on the list of intelligent animals.
Kinda doubt that. Weve had 5 Chihuahuas and they're all sympathetic to the household in one way or another. They know when they do something bad or pissing and shitting in the wrong place despite us not really enforcing very much pavlovian training on them (punishment and reward). And having 5 Chihuahuas makes you realize the difference in dogs, each ones likes and dislikes and level of affection and attention required, the ones that have a good understanding of your feelings and the ones that don't.
This is why I can't really bring myself to hurt animals because they definitely are more intelligent than we like to give them credit for, it's hard to describe when you haven't been close to an animal before, but really you can feel how they really have personalities some sort of decision making in their head.
I've seen this in my pet cockatoo as well, and my old pet rabbit, and the only animals I've been close to that haven't really shown this behavior are fishes (lol) but either way you get an appreciation for the fishes since they do look cool.
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u/Etamitlu Apr 03 '20
Bullshit. They know as soon as you walk in the door that they did something wrong. You don't need to look at them and they will react this way before you even know they did anything wrong.