Do dogs know when you're getting ready to leave?
Arne Koch
2025-05-17 04:19:29
Count answers: 2
For what it’s worth, my observations, which are just anecdotes, are that Willie’s greeting behavior varies tremendously based on how long we have been away. When we returned from New Zealand, after being gone for 3 weeks, he ran between Jim and I, whining endearingly, flipping in circles, licking our faces raw . . . a very, much more intense greeting than if one of us had been gone for a day or two. Do you observe that your dog greets you differently when you’ve been gone longer? However, there was no statistical significance between the dogs behavior if left alone for 2 or 4 hours. In brief, they recorded the behavior of dogs left by their owners for 30 min, 2 hours and 4 hours, and found that if the dogs had been left alone for 2 or 4 hours they greeted their owners with more ‘intensity,’ and were more active and attentive, than when the duration of separation had only been 30 minutes. One is that the dogs perceived a separation of 2-4 hours as not being particularly different, but very much different from a 30 minute separation.
Curt Bartoletti
2025-05-17 01:51:14
Count answers: 2
They already know. Even before the carry-on suitcase comes out of the closet, they know. It’s likely all these things – certainly the cumulative effect of all of these things. The more things I do to prepare to leave town on a business trip, the more depressed and glum-looking my dogs get – especially on these work-related trips where I leave my husband behind to take care of the dogs. They are focused solely on conveying how much they’d like to come with me, as evidenced by their following me from room to room, or parking themselves by the door and following me to the car with every piece of luggage. They are demonstrating how miserable they are going to be while I’m gone, demonstrated with glum, sad-sack expressions and deep sighs every few minutes.
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