Quote: Carol Boche

What is funny though, is that I had to have my vehicle worked on and they gave me the same make and model vehicle to drive but a different color.

My dogs acted the same as I came home. How did they know it was me?
I do not have a schedule either, it is pretty much all over the board.

Ok, my vote now, given this and Randy's study is that the dog can smell you coming. Yes, you are *in* the vehicle, but they can smell your handprint on the door handle.

My dogs are always already at the front window wagging like crazy and I can sometimes hear Loki doing his excited hound dog wail from the driveway depending on how long I have been gone.
They must hear my car from at least a couple houses away to already be looking and wiggling.

When the hubby pulls up they wag and do the happy dance but it is not as excited as they get when I pull up.

any other car is alarm time, even if they cant see the driveway they know by the sound that it is a strange car.

Yes, that study. If I could remember more about it, like what year it was, would be helpful. I know it was before cellphones (yes Virgina there was such a time), microwave ovens while not still exotic were used mostly in the food industry, and I'm sure that it predates any silly notion that dogs could sense grandmal siezures. I don't remember it being a very controled study in the strictest scientific sense, but they did take some pains to remove any clues that might cue the dogs and skew any results. Some of the dogs were very uncanny in their ability to anticipate the owners arrival, in some cases several minutes before it would be reasonably explained by smell or sound. And most could recognize it was not the master coming to the door even though the stranger had driven up in the owners car and the dog couldn't see out the windows. That part is the most easily explained. But still. Anyways thats about all I can remember, except I'm pretty sure it wasn't done by some small group that also held claims of alien abductions. For all I know the study may have originated by the people who finally proved to the world that some dogs have the ability and empathy for humans to accurately predict certain health issues before the occurrence.

I wouldn't be surprised if the seeress Cassandra was found to be a dog in disguise, so my attention is never to far from my dog.
Randy

 Quote: Michele McAtee

 Quote: Carol Boche

What is funny though, is that I had to have my vehicle worked on and they gave me the same make and model vehicle to drive but a different color.

My dogs acted the same as I came home. How did they know it was me?
I do not have a schedule either, it is pretty much all over the board.

Ok, my vote now, given this and Randy's study is that the dog can smell you coming. Yes, you are *in* the vehicle, but they can smell your handprint on the door handle.

Oh how I would love to believe that (however, I don't really think I can)...

It was bizarre though...we have semi trucks, heavy equipment, concrete trucks, employees in their work pick ups, Doug has a pick up and an Excursion and I have my Expedition.... and they knew it was me in a totally different vehicle.

I will have to try it again.....maybe I will drive one of Dougs vehicles and see what happens....

My dog absolutely knows our family cars and hears them coming up the road long before the humans do.

His reaction if it's one of us is totally different then if it's a strange car. If he's crated his bark his very high-pitched and excited. If he's loose he goes crazy running from window to window whining.

If it's a strange car he gives a serious, deep stranger alert bark, hackles up, and doesn't move from the spot where he can see them.

I mentioned this on another thread but I recently rented a car and when I pulled in to my normal parking spot I could hear True in his crate giving his stranger bark. He was really pissed and didn't calm down until he heard my keys in the door and knew it was me.

Yes, the Dogs do know the Car
It does not matter where we park the car and Dog Trailer at
the Club it can be different every time but the Dogs always head for the right car with the Sleeve in there mouth. Also they know the car if you are coming home anytime, ours live outside and you here them bark before we pull up

Randy, I think the study you are referring to was a book called "Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home." I had to look up the author, because I couldn't remember, but it's by Rupert Sheldrake. It's about various unexplainable phenomena that people attribute to dogs and other animals.

I believe they only actually experimented with one dog (though they did lots of surveys), but came to the conclusion that this particular dog (not necessarily representing the majority of dogs) could tell when his owner was coming home without any apparent cues (schedule, smell, hearing, sight, etc.).

I'm actually hesitant to recommend the book (it has a significant number of bad statistics and charts in other places that are very misleading), but the study in question was pretty solid from what I could tell.

When I was small, we could always tell when my dad was coming home from work because the dog, Lucky, would go and look out the window like 5 minutes before he pulled up. She was never wrong.

A little off topic but yesterday we had a storm system rumble through the state.
She was under the desk and shaking when the (huge) storm and cold front were literally 150 or more miles out.

What is she sensing that far away? is it a change in pressure, an electrical smell, can she hear the thunder that far off..
who knows?

but they sure are amazingly complex creatures with finely tuned perceptions and intelligence!

The National Geographic Channel ran a program about dogs where they said it was documented that dogs have sensitive enough hearing to recognize the sounds of specific cars from a block or more away. My dog often goes to the door at 5 PM and waits for my wife to come home. About the time she is a block away (tested this by being on the phone with her) he starts to whine and doesn't stop until she walks in the door.

I've been walking him when my son has come home from school. Hans recognizes the car, even though often because of the position of the sun and glare he can't (or rather I can't) see through the window well enough to recognize who is there. Hans knows every time. I don't know if it is because he recognizes the sound or the car itself, but he gets all excited and wants to follow the car down the street after it passes us.