Beginning to understand how dogs perceive the world will help us communicate with them more effectively.
It will also potentially help us know how to read them and anticipate what they might be telling us or what they’re about to do.
This will certainly enhance training and development. Knowing what stimulates an individual dog can be used to reinforce or build on positive behaviours.
Like humans, dogs are all individual. And may have been born with or develop a variety of behavioural issues.
In any case, dogs possess a variety of sensory superpowers, understanding how to utilise these is key to training or rehabilitation.
This is after all why we employ and entrust them in so many working roles, as well as being hugely important in personal support, and to many humans’ wellbeing.
I always have known that there is lots of synergy between human and canine behaviour through my study of dogs over the years and working with them.
Fortunately, we are recognising neurodiversity in humans more and more within our society.
For me, this is a wonderful thing, not only for humans and society. But for dogs, because of the synergy between us and them.
If we look at this in more detail, dogs and humans are sentient beings.
Studies have shown dogs and humans develop mentally and learn in the early years in a very similar way.
A dog’s learning age is around the same as a 2 – 3-year-old child. Anyone with children, or memories of children at this age will understand certain behaviours and probably see the similarities in their dogs.
The reason I mention neurodiverse people is because it’s being realised neurodiversity is often a superpower.
In the case of neurodiversity, we look at two important areas of how we process information in our brains.
· Processing cognitive information
· Sensory perception
This thinking can be applied to dogs and should be applied to how we communicate with them. They are a different species, but elements of informational process and sensory perception are the same.
Processing information –
All dogs are individual and will process/respond to information in their environment based on individual dog.
Some dogs will take a second longer to process and respond to information. So, allowing for this will help us train behaviours.
Some will process and respond super-fast, again when we understand this, we shape our training around this accordingly.
Sensory perception –
Some common traits and tendencies relating to neurodiversity in people are heightened sensitivity to touch, texture, light, sound for example.
Lots of neurodiverse or typical people will sensory seek – this is known as STIMMING. The need to physically explore their environment to satisfying sensory curiosity for mental stimulation.
Examples include, touching objects for texture, popping bubble wrap!
Dogs are all about satisfying their sensory perception, it’s a key part of canine behaviour, and taps into their superpowers.
Touch, smell, taste, texture, sound, energy, and movement are all key elements in how dogs’ function, communicate, and explore the world.
Their senses are far more dialled into the world than ours in this way, they are animals, and these acute senses are all about their survival.
Knowing this, observing a dogs preferred tendencies will help in our training and conditioning to the world.
Depending on the individual dog, sometimes these senses are overloaded which can lead to crises behaviours.
So, when exposing dogs to new environments/situations, observe how a dog responds, guide through leadership/trust bond, build confidence so they find their sense of grounding.
Some dogs might never be totally comfortable with certain situations, we can help them manage in some areas. Try and be mindful, there is no one size fits all, every dog is different which creates a richness of diversity.
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