Lately, the news and the world around us have left me feeling uneasy. Sometimes, I have to make a conscious effort to focus on things that lift my spirits instead of bringing me down. So I decided to turn back to one of my favorite topics: dogs.
Whenever I write, talk, or even think about dogs, I feel a bit lighter. Luckily, I have a great research assistant at home. His name is Bear. Many things about Baby Bear fascinate me, but one of the most remarkable is his uncanny ability to know what time it is. I have carefully inspected him, and I still haven’t found an Apple Watch strapped around his furry wrist. He doesn’t carry an iPhone. No clock sits at doggy eye level anywhere in the house.
Still, Bear always knows. Honestly, I could probably set my watch by him. I get up in the morning and sometimes have to look at my Apple Watch or iPhone to figure out what day it is, let alone what time. Bear apparently requires no such technological assistance.
- Meal approaching? Bear knows.
- Something normally happens at a particular point in the day? Bear knows.
- A familiar part of our daily routine is approaching? Bear knows.
And apparently Bear isn’t unusual. Dogs have an impressive ability to anticipate events that regularly occur throughout their day. So how do they do it?
Dogs don’t tell time the way we do. They probably aren’t thinking, “It’s 4:57 and dinner is at 5:00.” Instead, their brains and bodies pick up on a mix of different clues.
One clue is their circadian rhythm, the internal clock that humans, dogs, and many other creatures share. Changes in light, sleep, hormones, hunger, and activity all help the body know where it is in the day.
Bear might not know it’s 5:00 on the clock, but his body senses how much of the day has gone by. Dogs are also especially good at learning patterns.
From a dog’s point of view, people are pretty predictable. We get up, turn on lights, make coffee, open doors, sit in the same chairs, turn the TV on and off, make food, take walks, and certain sounds happen at certain times.
We might hardly notice these routines, but our dogs definitely do. Bear spends a lot of his day following me and watching what I do. Sometimes I think I’m supervising him, but really, he might be studying me instead. Dogs are great observers, especially when it’s something that matters to them. And honestly, not much is more important to a dog than their people and the chance that food might be coming soon.
But there’s another interesting part to how dogs sense time. Smell.
A dog’s world is full of scents that people can’t even notice. Researchers have found that dogs can tell their owner’s scent apart from someone else’s.
Dog cognition researcher Alexandra Horowitz has described an interesting idea: smells change over time. A fresh scent is stronger, while an older one fades. A dog that can notice these changes might figure out not just what happened, but when. Imagine that.
While I check my Apple Watch, Bear might be checking out the invisible world of scents in our house. There are other clues too. Sunlight shifts during the day. Temperatures go up and down. The neighborhood gets busier or quieter. Birds are active at certain times. People leave for work and come home. Traffic changes. Even the sounds in the house are different in the morning, afternoon, and evening. To us, these may be background noise. To Bear, they may be information.
When you put together all these signals (an internal clock, learned routines, changes in the environment, smells, sounds, and a dog’s amazing ability to watch people), maybe Bear’s magical sense of time isn’t as mysterious as it seems at first. Or maybe it still is.
Because living with dogs has taught me something else. Just when we think we’ve figured dogs out, they do something that makes us wonder all over again.
Scientists can explain circadian rhythms. They can study canine cognition. They can measure dogs’ extraordinary olfactory abilities. They can investigate learned behavior and environmental cues. But anyone who has loved a dog has probably experienced moments that still make us ask: How did you know that?
I’ve had those moments with Bear. I don’t need to explain every single one. What I do know is that tomorrow morning, I might need to check my phone to remember what day it is. Bear won’t. He’ll already know exactly what part of the day it is, what should be happening next, and if I’m running late. No Apple Watch needed.
And somehow, after spending some time thinking and writing about dogs again, the world feels a little better.
