I do this a lot with my cats and dogs as well, they are smart, they just don't speak my language, so since they were small I spoke to them with sign language, for example if the dogs are still hungry after I give them food, I do the hand gesture of clapping in ASL and that way they understand that there's no more food and can see my hands that I am not hiding/holding anything

There's not much else that I can do when they go insane barking tho..... But they do trust me a lot and I can tell easily when they are trying to tell me things such as "follow me" which happens when they find something weird like a dead frog or some other animal they don't know (neighbors have chickens)

Also they lately have gotten into making holes in the yard (the dogs) if anyone has ideas how to stop that, that'd be great.....

why you want to stop your dogs from making holes in the ground? it's like making playing children stop

Common reasons include holes in the ground leading to dogs escaping out of fenced areas, or just general property damage (dogs can quickly dig large holes which are walking hazards, and don’t look as nice as a well kept yard). Also, when children play in the street, for example, wouldn’t you stop in that kind of situation? Or if children were digging large holes on someone else’s / public property?

Can't you just cover the holes, instead of trying to force dogs out of their nature?

well you could say this about any behavior. Why teach children to stop peeing their pants, isn't that just trying to force them out of their nature?

There's nothing abusive about training a dog about proper behavior. Anyway, I think a dog's nature is more about obeying humans than digging holes. That's kind of the deal we made thousand of years ago

peeing their pants will make them smell and mprobably irritate the skin. digging holes is a completely normal behavior for a dog (unless it's excessive or coupled with abnormal behavior).

I was at the beach a couple days ago and dug two excellent holes, one was artistic in nature an the other was a nice holder for a bottle of wine.

Nice way to pass the time while chatting with friends.

> Anyway, I think a dog's nature is more about obeying humans than digging holes

The international Canis organizations call such speech slavery and a canine revolutionary uprising is nigh.

There are dogs that have vocabularies of several hundred words. People should breed those together, rather than the incomprehensibly stupid existing breed characteristics.

Smart dogs are working dogs. If they've got no work, they'll get up to bad things usually because you've left them in your house all day. If you want a pet, get a dumb dog. Or, a very lazy breed, like a greyhound.

Greyhounds are as full of love as they are glorious stupidity. I highly recommend them to anyone considering dog ownership.

I do wish I had a border collie (very intelligent working dog) in my life though. I should go round befriending local farmers so I can play with their dogs :D

Agreed. I think people forget that smart animals are smart enough to do bad things because they feel like it

I had a particularly smart and runty beagle when I was a kid that watched the cats jump the fence once, and then worked out that she could leave whenever she wanted.

The donkey has the reputation for being stupid and lazy because it, unlike the horse, is smart enough to tell the human “I don’t care”

I had a super smart poodle mix growing up, and it was smart enough to easily open the latch on its cage from the inside with its tongue. It also knew how to rearrange chairs in order to climb onto the dinner table.

The ones that are too smart outsmart the owners, which some dog owners see as a bad thing.

Do you really want to breed half-sentient predators that survive just fine in the wild and human settled areas?

Your cute little buddy living a hard life after a few feral generations after being bred for intelligence... I don't know most people live lives almost completely sheltered from wildlife, but let me tell you, wild dogs can be scary.

Yes, definitely. Because most of the dogs that would actually be looked after would be great for a variety of other tasks - everything from being service dogs, dogs that check for illegal substances by smell, police dogs, dogs who can herd animals and a variety of other tasks. Even new tasks that people still haven't been able to offload to canines.

If the animals can provide more value to humanity and will be allowed to become smarter and somewhat evolve, i think it's definitely worth it. Otherwise, if selective breeding for utility wasn't a thing already, we probably wouldn't have breeds that are passable for any of the tasks above.

As for wild dogs, this hasn't ever been a major problem in my country. I haven't seen any, there have never been any news stories about people being bitten or killed by wild dogs, i don't know anyone who has had run in with them and frankly there are bigger problems in the country - things like racoons and other small animals that carry rabies, foxes and the occasional wolves that kill off young deers and does alike, beavers that build dams and flood portions of the forest and so on.

Edit: looked for any studies that i could find, sadly there were none that'd attempt to quantify how many stray dogs there are in the country and how many of those have attacked people and how many have attacked other animals. Just found a news report of one person being bitten by them: https://baltics.news/2021/03/16/in-rezekne-region-a-woman-is...

Just to be clear, i am not attempting to say that wild dogs are not a large problem, just that it's not a problem everywhere to the same degree and that quite possibly there are other social factors at play - why would there be more wild dogs on one region of the world as opposed to another, especially when humans are the ones who breed these animals in the first place? Do the people not look after them? Are there puppy mills that get abandoned? Do people generally not view having dogs as a great responsibility? Are there no services that take care of wild and stray animals?

It's not like humans couldn't do anything about it either - if wild dogs are an inevitability in certain parts of the world, why not disallow "importing" dogs of these breeds to those regions and disallow breeding them there?

Here's an example of concentrated effort in regards to eradicating rabies in the country, i don't see why something similar couldn't be done in regards to stray animals (though it may only work on a smaller scale like in this country, at least without lots of coordinated effort): https://ec.europa.eu/food/sites/food/files/animals/docs/reg-...

I've lived in Norway (>30 years), Ireland (>10 years) and in California (3.5 years). There's extreme differences in culture around dog ownership in different areas. In the time I lived in Norway, nobody I knew had abandoned a dog. Getting a dog is a commitment for the lifetime of the dog; the only cases I've heard of relocation of dogs from anybody I knew has been for medical reasons (e.g. discovering somebody in the family has an allergy). In Ireland, it is similar, though people don't seem to take quite the same commitment (based on known several people that got dogs from shelters). In my relatively small social circle in California there were two families that got and handed off dogs in the 3.5 years I was there. It was just not seen as a big deal.

The two noises I used with cats are:

1. "sssssshheeeeessh" If you want them to leave, like a hissing sound.

2. A squeaking (by pursing lips together) to calls them or tell them you are interested to play.

Generally I don't believe cats really try so much to communicate - at least I don't get this impression.

I would say that with dogs they understand a lot more. They understand the concept of pointing and use it to communicate something of interest to me. For example, one of my dogs ran out of the gate and the other dog pointed to where they went using their entire body as an arrow. Another time a ball was lost in a stack of tires, so the dog requested help from me to retrieve it my pointing. I can ask "where is <object they know>" and they'll take me to it, or help me search for it - to the point where one of my dogs will help me look for my keys.

My dogs will also try to communicate with me too, mimicking what they believe I sound like. "Helllooooo" they really try to copy as a greeting. They also like to get involved in singing too - I think they somewhat enjoy some music.

What I like about my dogs too is that they understand the more subtle things. When two people are arguing or speaking heatedly they will try to break them up by pushing in-between. They are not allowed into certain rooms unless invited, but a small sideways nod lets them know they have a one time pass.

Dogs also very much like routine, the human world is confusing and if you delay feeding for a few hours for example, they don't understand why. They often do their best to fit in if you help them to.

I think people really underestimate how smart dogs can be. They * really * try to communicate back, but they are mostly unsuccessful. Try sometime to take an interest in their attempts to communicate with you, encourage it even. If they think they can communicate with you, you'll have a much better time. My dogs even help me keep my daily schedule.

Thank you for writing this -- it's 100% spot on from my experience. Dogs are extremely social animals and naturally have a strong need to communicate. Just a little time and effort put into understanding their signals as well as teaching them/guiding them towards ones that work better for you will go a long way.

When my dogs have lost a ball under something they will bow at the location and look at me; if that doesn't work they will come up and make a little grumble and wait for my attention, then go and bow in front of the location again. Similarly if they want to go outside, we set up a little bell by the back door that they can jingle. At first we would ring it every time we let them outside, or let them outside every time they accidentally knocked it. They learned the association pretty quickly. Now if they need to go out (or spotted some bunnies in the yard) they will ring it; if we don't respond immediately, they'll come up, make a little sound to get attention, and run back to ring the bell again. I also have the same experience re: permission into areas and one-time-pass signals. Also the singing -- it's fun to get a choir going!

It seems that some dogs are even able to learn to communicate via sound buttons [1]. Maybe that's interesting if you have smart dogs, might be a good way to better understand their needs.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LQt5TCHq6E

I've tried to do this with cats, but they never seem to recognize that I am making a cat sound. Did you start when she was a kitten? (Alternatively, I could just be uniquely bad at it.)

Cats hear and respond better to high pitched sounds.

I absolutely do mimic cat language and they very quickly pick up on it.

I’ve got sounds I make that call just about any cats. Like I’ve made the sounds to stranger cats while out walking and they immediately respond. It’s a clicking sound - pretty sure it’s a common sound.