Do Dogs Understand Time?

20th April 2015

Wayyyyy back in 2014…we reached out to dog behaviourist gurus via social media to ask them whether 'dogs understand time?’ Unfortunately, we didn’t get the answers we were looking for....well actually we didn’t get any answers at all. So we thought that we would have a sniff around and find out if dogs do actually understand the meaning and passing of time. So here is what we found…

It’s something that every pet owner can so easily relate to; the guilt, the stress and anxiety of taking off on holiday, and having to leave our fur kids behind. In fact, this was the inspiration and reason behind why we founded PetStayAdvisor. We wanted to help ease the pain for pet owners in finding a great place to leave their pets, or help with finding that perfect pet sitter so that they can go away on holiday, safe in the knowledge that their pets are happy too. But I am sure that whilst the majority of us are away, we think about and miss our pets, and to some extent, count down the days until we get back to see them again (guilty as charged). Within this thought process, we are betting that you have also wondered whether your pets miss you? And if they do miss you, do they understand that you have been away for 10 days already, and if you and when you will be coming back?

Time

So we started researching this topic by looking at an article on www.psychology.com written by Gregory Berns (2013), a well-known scientist, decoder of dog brains, and author of ‘How Dogs Love Us’. What we loved about the article, is that within the first paragraph we were nodding our heads in agreement. By paragraph five we learnt that studies suggest that dogs can tell the difference between 30 minutes and two hours. If you would like to read more about Gregory Berns theory on whether dogs miss us it can be found here. 

So let’s think about this for a second; have you ever left something behind in the house, only to return a few minutes later? Does your dog wag its tail profusely? Relating to our own experience coupled with this research, I am guessing no? However, after a shopping trip for example, the greeting is somewhat more enthusiastic. From personal experience I would even go on to say that my dogs definitely know when I have been to work all day. I know for sure that my female dog lays around on the sofa for much of the day. The evidence is clear… hair and slobbery, dribberley bits. But when I get home, I see her waiting by the door through the glass window (she is not psychic, but rather hears the car arrive), and then both her and my furry boy go wild. They proffer they’re furry toys, chase each other around and generally behave badly for the first five minutes.

Intuition

We then sniffed out a great website by Purina, the pet food company, and an article written by Dr Joanne Righetti, who also believes that yes, our dogs definitely miss us. In this story, Dr Righetti affirms that dogs are much like us, in that they have a built in body clock, that tells them when they are hungry, what time of day it is; due to whether it is dark, light or dusk and the sounds that we hear at different times of the day. But do dogs actually know when we are coming home? Dr Righetti believes for now, that they are highly attuned to our routines and associate that with environmental triggers, and it’s these environmental aspects that assist our pets in understanding the passing of time and when roughly we get back home.

We then came across an amazing story about the stray dogs of Russia and how they have come to ride the subways in order to move from one part of town to another, whilst mastering busy intersections. In this story the author reported that many that travel on the subways work together and get off at the correct stops, after they’ve judged and remembered about how long a train ride is. So can this really be true? If it is, then potentially dogs can really understand time? If you would like to read more about the amazing stray dogs of Russia’s journeys and how they survive, you can find it here.

Research on how dogs perceive time appears to be quite limited. However, William Roberts, an animal cognition researcher, suggests that animals remain 'stuck in time' and without abilities such as being able to form memories, animals only live in the present. Roberts thinks animals are 'stuck in time' because they can't mentally 'time travel backward and forward. Therefore, if animals are 'stuck in time', as Roberts suggests, could this mean that understanding time is uniquely and fundamentally human? And if that is true, how can we explain what seems to be complex planning by the Russian subway riding strays? or when our dogs are having a dream?

Well, whatever the theory, it still doesn’t make us feel any less guilty when it comes to leaving our pets behind when we go on holiday :( How about you?

So until next week, stay safe and enjoy lots of cuddles!

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