“Chicken. Chicken. Chicken.” I’m woken by the sound of my own voice looping madly. My sleep-addled mind can’t work out what’s going on. What time is it? Am I still dreaming? Then Laika, my dog, bounds into my bedroom.
Laika is a good dog, or at least I thought she was. I recently bought a touchpad called FluentPet, which allows you to record your own voice onto an array of buttons so that pets can push them and “speak” words. Laika can ask me to fill her water bowl, go to the park or scratch her belly. The trouble is, the whole thing has backfired and she has started asking for treats at all hours. That has made me wonder just how far her mental abilities go. Is her doggy mind really clever enough to guilt-trip me into giving snacks? Come to think of it, does she know what a snack is?
Most dog owners, like me, have wondered about these deep questions, and we will probably never get fully satisfying answers. But thoughtful experiments and emerging technologies are starting to provide a clearer picture of the canine mind. So, with Laika at my side (and a pocketful of treats), I set out to discover what dogs really have going on between their fluffy ears.
On one level, it is surprising that dogs and humans can communicate at all. Our two species separated on the evolutionary tree…
