And, really, nothing actually changed except what your clock said. Every day still has 24 hours in it, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and everything goes on. Your dog may be a little confused by the change of schedule for a day or two, but to them all that’s happened is that you’ve suddenly started doing everything an hour later.

Humans are the only creatures on earth that run on clocks and calendars, which is why the time change is always a great opportunity to remember something very important.

Nature’s clocks are made by Nature. All of the plants and animals on the planet take their time cues from the intricate dance of three things: the earth, the sun, and the moon. Those three things are what give us our days, our months, our seasons, and our years.

If you were in a room with no windows and I told you, “It’s six p.m. Is it light or dark out?” would you be able to answer instantly? The answer depends on the time of year and your latitude. If it’s June and you’re not too far south, then it’s light out. If it’s December and you’re not too far north, then it’s dark.

In between, it could be either. Now, if you remember how seasons work, you could probably guess the answer depending on what time of the year it is, or how late or early it got dark yesterday. But those human answers are still based on artificial measures.

In the same situation, although without words, a dog would just know whether it was still day or night outside. They have a very strong internal clock that keeps the time.

People have asked me whether dogs can experience jet lag, and yes, they can. I’ve seen my dogs do it many times when they’ve traveled the world with me, although it seems to be worse going east than it is west — probably because going toward the sun makes the day seem shorter, while going away makes it seem longer.

At the same time, though, dogs get over it and make the adjustment a lot more quickly than humans do. I’ve had quick trips overseas where it seems like I never do adapt, while Junior seems to be ready and over it within a day or two at most.

But dogs also have a great psychological advantage: They don’t know they’re not supposed to be awake at three in the morning, so they don’t worry about it. Humans, though, know they’re “supposed” to be asleep in the middle of the night and get worried about it when they aren’t. If there’s one thing that’s great for inspiring insomnia, it’s worrying. Our own intellects and clocks and calendars help make the problem even worse.

This is where we can take a big lesson from dogs and learn to prioritize. In a dog’s world, all of the important things revolve around survival: protecting the pack, eating, sleeping, and relieving themselves. If there’s a stranger at the door, their favorite toy is suddenly not important.

For humans, we have pretty much the same needs with only a few exceptions. We definitely need to pay our taxes and rent or mortgages on time — but those, for us, are also survival things. But when it comes to other things, like seeing the latest movie, or knowing the score of that big game right this second, or dropping everything to answer an email immediately, well — nobody is going to die if those don’t happen right on time. You can put the toy down!

So when the stress of thinking you have too many things to do and no time to do them starts to get to you, remember how dogs tell time — not by minutes and seconds, but by hours and days. Remembering this can be especially important at this time of year as the holidays — and the stress that comes with them — approach.

Just keep in mind that you have time. You’re going to get everything done. Relax, and look at Nature, not the calendar.

Stay calm, and tell time like your dog!

The post Counting The Hours appeared first on Cesar's Way.

We actually have a lot more than just five senses, but only considering the classical five, this leaves the sense of smell as the one that a lot of people would give up if they had no choice. And I’m not just guessing here. Surveys have shown that this is the overwhelming answer.

But your dog would answer the question quite differently.

While humans may not even really notice their sense of smell until it’s assaulted by a very strong odor, for your dog, it’s their primary way of experiencing the world. It’s their first sense to begin functioning, even before they can see or hear, and it’s the way they first learn about their mothers and how they find their only food source.

To a dog, your scent makes up most of your “name,” and it’s how she knows you. It’s also how she’ll know when you’re ill or not in a good mood. Her nose lets her know what’s going on in the neighborhood, what kind of animal ran through the garden and how long ago, and which way it went when it left. To a dog, their nose is Google, GPS, and Facebook.

This is also why dogs that lose another sense, particularly sight or hearing, can make up for it. Their noses are so powerful that they can provide all of the navigational assistance or environmental information necessary. In fact, this can sometimes make it difficult for humans to even notice that their dog has gone blind or deaf for a long time, because they can “cheat.”

This is also the reason that a dog with perfectly adequate senses may appear to be selectively blind or deaf as we wave for or call him from across the dog park. He can see and hear us perfectly well. It’s just that something has engaged his nose for the moment, and he’s gathering all of the information he can.

Don’t actually try this at home, but if you want to be amazed at how powerful your dog’s nose is, imagine how hard it would be for you to find your way around the house just by following your sense of smell. You’d probably walk into a wall in the first minute. You can try this, though: Take a moment to close your eyes, see how many different scents you can identify, and if you can tell where they’re coming from.

You might be able to smell that coffee brewing, although to your brain the aroma may seem to be coming from everywhere. You may catch a whiff of the shampoo you used this morning, or the detergent you last cleaned your clothes in — but you’ll have no idea just from the smell how long ago you washed your hair or did your laundry.

Meanwhile, your dog can probably detect the last dozen meals cooked in the kitchen, and every visitor who’s been to the house over the last couple of weeks, as well as how long ago each meal or visitor happened. At the same time, she can smell the unfixed neighbor dog who’s going into heat, the nest of squirrels in the attic, the opossum living under the house, and the exhaust from the engine on the letter carrier’s truck, which hasn’t come around the corner yet but which is a looming threat.

And she’s sensing all of that and processing it without thinking about it. Why? Because information coming in through the nose is processed in a part of the brain called the olfactory bulb, which is in the limbic system.

This part of the brain is sometimes referred to as the “lizard brain.” It is the center for fight or flight reactions and emotional responses, so it operates in the world of pure instinct, meaning it interprets all of the incoming odor information without your dog having to consciously process it.

To a dog, smelling is knowing, and his response to this information is instantaneous and instinctive. This is why we can go so wrong when we think that our dogs perceive the world in the same sensory order that we do: sight, sound, touch. But if we really want to perceive the world as they do, or at least understand how they do, then it’s one time where we’d learn more by not listening and not looking.

Take a deep breath, and welcome to your dog’s world.

Stay calm, and smell the roses!

The post Making Scents appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Now, I could say the same thing about gophers, hedgehogs, and a lot of other animals, but I don’t think anyone is going to immediately think that they’re just like us or vice versa. And yet, with dogs, a lot of the time our first instinct is humanization — to treat a dog just like a person — which is how a lot of canine behavior problems begin.

Ever talk to your dog like they’re another person? Of course you have. I do it too from time to time, and that’s okay. Just talking to your dog is a lot different, though, than treating them like human children and dressing them in little evening gowns or in polo shirts and khaki.

When it comes to dogs, we need to be constantly aware of how we are different and how we are exactly the same as them.

Naturally, most of our common traits come down to anatomy. Dogs breathe with lungs and have hearts that circulate blood the same as we do. They have most of the same organs as humans, like a brain, liver, stomach, and intestines. Dogs even have prostates, although they do not have an appendix. They do have blood types like humans, but in a lot more varieties than our A, B, and O.

Along with similar physiology, dogs have similar vulnerabilities to humans, and can also develop diabetes, heart disease, various types of cancer, and arthritis and other joint diseases. Like humans, dogs can become overweight and can become very sick if they eat something toxic.

There are differences in anatomy and diseases, of course.  Humans aren’t affected by distemper or parvovirus. On the other hand, we can catch campylobacter from our adult dogs, who aren’t affected by the bacteria that causes it. It can, however, be dangerous to puppies under six months.

In terms of psychology, science has already established that dogs and humans have similar brain structures and biochemistry, and even process information and emotions similarly, particularly in reacting to voices. However, dogs don’t react to things in the same way that we do when it comes to intellect and emotions. To assume that dog psychology is the same as ours is to be as mistaken as B.F. Skinner was when he assumed that humans, like animals, just mindlessly react to all stimuli.

On the one hand, dogs do need quite a lot of the same things we do — exercise, structure, and a sense of purpose. On the other hand, if we try to fulfill those needs in a dog the same way we would for another person, all we’re really going to do for the dog is give it a sense of anxiety and confusion.

Not humanizing your dog’s mind is the best thing that you can do.

It’s okay to realize that your canine friend isn’t like a toddler intellectually and never will be. Dogs can certainly be smart, and as smart as human children in many ways, but in a lot of others a dog will never think like a human — and yet people often expect them to. But that’s about as counter-productive as thinking that a human two-year-old would be capable of doing your taxes — or driving a taxi.

So the real key is to keep in mind in what ways a dog’s needs are similar to ours and in what ways they are very different:

Similarities and Differences

• Certain biological needs, like food, water, and exercise, are identical in dogs and humans, although humans will always be better marathon runners because we have more long-range stamina.

• Our dietary needs can be quite different, though, so some things that humans can eat safely, like grapes and chocolate, can be dog poison.

• Mentally is where dogs and humans differ the most. We tend to live in the past or future, while dogs live in the “now.”

• Instinct is something that dogs rely on, but which many humans have forgotten how to use.

No other animal has formed the kind of bond with us that dogs have, so they will always hold a special place in human culture — and human hearts. They also have a lot of lessons to teach us about ourselves, Nature, and how to balance our own intellect and emotion.

Go ahead and love your dogs or talk to them. Indulge them when they’ve calmly earned it, but always remember that what your dog needs is not always the same as what you do — and vice versa.

Stay calm, and celebrate the differences!

The post Similar And Different appeared first on Cesar's Way.

The easy way to remember it is:

Nose, Eyes, Ears, In That Order

When you approach a dog, the dog has already investigated you by scent, from as far as fifty yards away. To a dog, our scent and energy are our “names,” and the dog will have figured out quite a lot about you just through smell alone. This is also why your dog will sometimes start barking at something long before you can see or hear it. It’s not psychic powers. It’s sense of smell.

This nose-eyes-ears priority of senses to a dog follows the pattern in their development as a puppy. Dogs are born blind and deaf and rely on their sense of smell in order to find their mothers and nurse, so their first association with survival is scent. This connection lasts for the rest of a dog’s life, which is why they are constantly sniffing, especially in strange or new environments.

When you’re out on the walk, you might be able to detect the scent of the grass nearby, but to a dog that grass really is a record of what’s been going on – and the information in it is more than just which other dogs have peed there.

Scent Information

Living things constantly give off aromas. We don’t do it just by sweating. Every time we exhale, we send scent information out into the world. We also constantly shed skin cells and hair, which get carried off into the wind and eventually settle on the ground. Where our shoes or feet touch the ground, they also leave scent information.

A dog can smell all of these molecules and learn a lot from them: who or what has been there, how long ago they were there, how close they are now, and which way they went. It’s a world that’s mostly invisible to us, but it is the place your dog lives every day.

The post Natural Dog Law 4: A Dog’s Senses Form His Reality appeared first on Cesar's Way.