thanks for the replies on the female to male handler issue. Now the program manager made a statement that I am wondering if it has an weight also. He has been working with one of our MWD's for cert and stated that since we have the same routine everyday and only do detection training on certain days of the week that the MWD is only good on certain days of the week and those are the days the we normally do detection. CAN DOGS TELL WHAT DAY OF THE WEEK IT IS? I Thought you all might get a kick out of this!!!

While i do not know if they can tell monday from friday. What i do know is that they are very schedual and habit sensitive.

Like this say you heel your dog and then do a long down.
well after a while he will do it automatically.

the same with training scheduals.

if you only track on mon wed and fri. and ob on sat and sun.

eventually the dog is going to get used to the schedual.

Having an internal clock, spacial awareness, orienteering ability, and sensitivity to environment are all VITAL parts of survival for almost any organism alive today.

It's really pretty damn amazing. It's done a number of different ways, using a number of different senses, but all animals have those abilities.


Wild foxes learn the mating and breeding habits AND TIMEFRAMES for almost all of the rodents in their environments within 1 season of being introduced into a new ecosystem. Then, they can predict behavior so as to increase their ability to hunt those rodents during any given time of year.

I don't know if what you described above has anything to do with animals having time awareness, but dogs certainly have those abilities.

When I trained bitework with my old male that passed some years ago, we had a set training day and time. Every morning on training day he would slowly get all amped up in anticipation of training, even if I wasn't even home to take him to training. So without any cues from me, he knew what day of the week it was and that it was about time to get busy.

This annoyed my wife to no end when I was away on business because he would pester the crap out of her ALL DAMN DAY.

Just want to echo Roberts post, dogs are very keen due to habit. They are very much creatures of habit. For instance my dogs eat at 9PM at night, Let me get good into some tv show and miss 9o'clock they are outside going crazy in their kennels, literally jumping off the walls. Sometimes I'll peek slowly through the blinds and they'll be out of their houses, sitting by their kennel gate, just looking at my back door. On Saturday mornings they get all amped up early in the morning when I walk out back because they know I am going to get them to load up in the truck for some heavy training that morning.
When I was heavily into weightpulling pitbulls. Sometimes the weightpulls would start in the evening if indoors, sometimes early in the morning like 8ish and sometimes in the middle of the day like 3PM. I use to alter my training time around when the trial would be. So if it was to be an evening pull, I'd start to train in the evening, if it was a morning pull, I'd get up early and pull, or if work interfered I'd pull at the time the trial was going to be on saturday and sunday (when I'm off). So my dogs were always amped up and ready to go for their turn on the track, because they were just use to pulling at that time. I also use to work them in intervals. To get them in the habit of getting all amped and pulling, then back in the crate for 15min or so and another pull over and over. I utilized their habit forming senses so that they never got cold. My dogs could get pumped, go out pull, go back in the crate and maintained a steady readiness because they knew they would be back out pulling again, so they never turned themselves completely off. Some other dogs you'd see pulling at a different time of day from their usual training time would go out and just go through the motions. If the weight got a little rough, they really wouldn't give their all when pulling at off times.

I can only add that Saturday is the only day I get up before 8AM because I'm a lazy, old, retired guy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />. That's also the only morning that my dog Thunder starts raising hell about 7:15-7:30. We leave for the schutzhund field about 8:30.
My other training day is Thursday evening at 7 PM. Same reaction from Thunder about one half hour before. I don't even own a watch, so those two days are the only ones I'm sure of. Being retired is nice. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />