LOL. God forbid I should call you an idiot, Russell. Suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, maybe? Hopefully temporarily...

Renee Felknor

Michell,

"one of my favorites was when Chuck said "Thirty minutes from now, London will take the stage and I am going to ask him to do something and he is going to ignore what i request and show me where Asia can be found (on this globe)." thirty minutes later, Chuck introduced London and said to him "London, would you kindly show me what I would use to wipe off the chalk on the blackboard please?" the dog went to point out Asia on the globe. weird huh?"

Not that strange. What you say isn't necessarily the response that the dog is trained to give. There was a comedian that trained his dog to sit on the command down, and down on sit. Was the dog being contrary? No it was doing what it was taught to do. To assume that the dog is making a descision based on an observation of an incident isn't telling the truth in most cases. Dogs tend to be self motivated, and often we teach things without intending to.

The problem with this discussion is that it is circular and dependant on the definition of the terms involved. When most people use the term think, they are using it in human terms and there is no evidence that that is the way a dog operates. Does that mean that there isn't a process involved, no. We use that process to get the behaviors we desire from them.

As for Ed's opinion, anybody that doesn't hold strong opinions in dog training isn't going to be very successful. Does everybody have to agree with them, no. Does the fact that you don't agree in one area mean that there is no benifit in other areas, not hardly. You don't even have to like someone to get value from training methods they use that work for you.

Do dogs "think" depends on the definition. They do definitly problem solve, apply those solutions to new situations, and modify behavior based on the circumstances without additional training. So do dogs think, my opinion is yes they do, does that meet the definition that most people use for "thinking", not hardly.

And since this seems to be going nowhere fast, Lets close it and get on to something with more value for training.