My dog recognizes different cars by their noise profile. So he'll wake up from a nap and get excited whenever my wife pulls onto our street, but stay down for any other car.

It probably helps that we're the only prius on the block, but still impressive!

I heard about a test someone did, after wondering how their dog was always standing in the window at the end of each workday, anticipating their owners arrival home. After casting about, a theory was developed that the dog "smelled time". That is, as the day wore on, the scent of their owner, decreased in the air; at a low-enough concentration, the dog knew it was about time for the front door to open and their owner to arrive home.

To prove the theory, someone went to the owner's work at noon-time, and gave him a new shirt, collecting the one he'd been wearing for half a day. They took that worn shirt, and swirled it through the air back at the house; recharging the owner's scent in the air. The dog was asleep and away from the front door, and surprised when its owner arrived home at the normal time.

Certainly interesting enough to do another test, but instead without another human entering the house.

Maybe a sealed box that opens to vent the scent. You'd need to have the same box do the same, with no scent too.

My parents dog knows where she is going in the car. On the way to the beach where she goes for her runs there are 3 rumble strips on the road, she always starts getting excited as soon as the car goes over them. Even though she's probably still 6-8 miles from beach!

They also take her to a local pub that is dog friendly and she has friends there. She knows when she is going there as she starts getting excited when the car turns right at a certain roundabout. Go left or straight on, nothing, but turn right and she's right up all excited!

My dog is like this. She knows (without looking out the window) when we are close to home or some other exciting places, and I can only imagine that she has memorized the turns we take to get to those destinations. It blows my mind because there are no obvious indications, and I highly doubt I would pick up on them if blindfolded in the car.

EVs have a high pitched whine and our dog can hear the car from a long way out.

Our last cat did this, too (though in our case the car was a Mazda 3). It took me a while to realize what was going on.

Oh yeah, had some dogs like that when I was a teenager. They could recognize my Firebird from a few blocks away. :-)

Yep, mine does too. Their hearing is amazing.

Our dogs are also also very good at picking up other cues. Not only can we not say "walk," but the "well..." as in, "well, time to take the dogs" gets the same reaction now.

Our SPCA-special (shepherd / husky / other?) learned after _one_ event that the tub running with the bathroom door open means that it's bath-time, and time to head out through the pet flap to the safety of the outdoors.

This is not a difficult task but my dog absolutely recognizes the various ways I end meetings during work or discord chats while gaming and always starts bothering me for pets when I'm done.

My pup knows that when I say “thank you” in a certain tone of voice that it’s nearing the end of a meeting. She’ll wait patiently the whole time until I say it, then perk up. And she gets annoyed when anything prolongs the meeting after that signal, and start getting restless because she knows the meeting should be over.

My dog does this too!

It's a bit weird, but I think our animals spend far more time observing us than we realize.

I love this kind of cause and effect linking that dogs do - mine has noticed that I often go in the downstairs restroom before walkies and now I regularly find her sitting expectantly on the bottom of the stairs when I come out. She only seems to be able to remember about 4 words though.

Curious how you determined what she had determined.

For mine, when I have my keys he runs right to the car. Without them, he'll run past to the sidewalk. If I grab my keys and laptop (to go to work) he'll walk away and lay down.

She hates car rides, so she'd run and hide when she saw me with glasses on. I finally clued in the day I forgot to put my glasses on before going to the car, and she was happy to go outside.

My first dog was a ¾ poodle ¼ cocker spaniel. She knew where the car was going; anticipated events from objects including leashes, combs, toys, and food; and deduced ever changing codewords for activities before moving a muscle.

I interpreted that sentence to mean poodles were a less obvious working dog:

"Yet almost all gifted word learners are working breeds. Those include the obvious breeds such as … but also less obvious ones such as poodles"

Yeah, that’s not that impressive.

>I surprised that poodles were called out as a less obvious smart dog.

poodles have stigma of circus/show dog. few people know that poodles are actually water retrievers and rated as second smartest dog.