Yawn Game

In this game, you yawned and recorded whether Remington Valor yawned in response. Yawning in dogs can be an indicator of stress, but we were measuring something different - social yawning. The rationale behind this game is that even as young children, we laugh when we see someone laughing, and we cry when we see someone in distress. Our ability to "catch" the emotions of others is called emotional contagion. A common form of emotional contagion is yawning. If you see, hear or even think about someone yawning, you will probably feel an irresistible urge to yawn.

Remington Valor did not yawn in response to your yawn, but this is not surprising. Although dogs are one of the few species besides humans that contagiously yawn, there is variation among dogs. Data from several research groups shows differing results, but our preliminary data shows that only 20% of dogs yawn contagiously.

Eye Contact Game

In this game, you timed how long Remington Valor held your eye contact. Before babies can hug or speak, they use eye gaze to bond with their mothers. Research with dogs has shown that a similar phenomenon may happen with owners and dogs. Owners whose dogs stared at them for longer had significant increases in the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin, also known as the "hug hormone," is related to feelings of bonding, pleasure and affection.

Judging by the extraordinary length of time Remington Valor spent gazing soulfully into your eyes, you probably often find her staring at you for no reason. You might wonder if Remington Valor is trying to tell you something, like she is hungry, needs to go to the bathroom or has an opinion on what to do over the weekend. But Remington Valor may not want or need anything - she may be just hugging you with her eyes.

Arm Pointing

Although the pointing game may have seemed simple, the skills it required are quite specialized. Dogs are one of the only animals to rely on human gestures - but even among dogs there is variation. Compared to other dogs, on this scale Remington Valor was more like a chimpanzee. Although chimpanzees are extremely intelligent in other areas, when they play a similar game they do not use a human point to find the food. Instead, they tend to use more self-reliant strategies. This does not mean that Remington Valor is not communicative. She may be more responsive to other signals, such as your voice. Or, because she didn't need your help to find the treats, Remington Valor decided to solve this problem on her own. Remington Valor might depend on you more in situations where the solution is not as obvious.

Foot Pointing

Remington Valor is one self-reliant dog. In both hand pointing and the foot pointing game, she consistently made her own choices without much input from you. Since you probably do not usually point with your foot, this game was simply testing how flexibly Remington Valor uses your communicative gestures.

Since Remington Valor did not follow your gestures in either the hand or the foot pointing game, she may depend on other ways of communicating with you. However, just because Remington Valor did not use your gestures, does not mean she did not understand them as communicative. It could be that because she could see a treat in both places, she didn't feel like she needed to take your advice. This shows quite an independent streak - one that you've probably noticed.

Memory versus Pointing

Remington Valor was clearly trying hard to figure this one out. When she saw you hide the treat under one cup but point to the other cup, she wanted to use the information you were giving her, but she also knew what she saw. Rather than choose one strategy, she switched back and forth between the two, which shows impressive flexibility.

Memory versus Smell

Since dogs have such a keen sense of smell, you may have been surprised that after you switched the cups, Remington Valor used her memory over her sense of smell. She went to where she remembered seeing the treat hidden, rather than sniffing out where the treat was.

Because a dog's nose can sniff everything from narcotics to cancer, whenever we run a study where we hide a treat under one of two cups, the first question people always ask is, "Can't my dog just smell the food under the cup?" It was certainly our first question, but extensive research by half a dozen independent research groups has concluded that dogs do not rely on their sense of smell to find the food in these games.

If dogs were using smell, they would go directly to the cup with the hidden food. In fact, these studies found that dogs only choose the correct cup around half the time - which means they are guessing. Dogs do have an excellent sense of smell and can probably detect food if allowed to sniff both cups before choosing. But when you study their first choice, they cannot localize the food to a specific cup from a distance of six feet away.

Delayed Cup Game

This game was a perfect demonstration of Remington Valor's excellent working memory. After you hid the treat Remington Valor had to retain the information for up to two and a half minutes before making a choice.

This skill comes in handy in the wild. Feral dogs tend to be endurance hunters, slowly wearing down their prey. During the chase, the prey may not always be in direct sight, and feral dogs have to remember where their prey was last seen and predict where they might reappear.

Inferential Reasoning Game

Congratulations - when playing the most difficult game in the most difficult dimension, Remington Valor's performance was masterful. When you showed Remington Valor the empty cup, you were providing indirect information on where the treat was - she had to make an inference that because that cup was empty, the treat must be in the other cup.

This ability to infer by exclusion is problematic for most dogs because they are often confused by conflicting social cues. By lifting up the empty cup, you were actually drawing attention to it, and some dogs prefer to choose this cup even though it was empty. The fact that Remington Valor was able to control this impulse shows an impressive ability to make inferences.

It also sheds some light on why Remington Valor's performance in the Communication dimension was more self-reliant. Because Remington Valor is such an excellent problem solver on her own, she probably doesn't see the need to turn to you for help.

Physical Reasoning Game

Remington Valor did seem to understand the principle of solidity - that one solid object cannot pass through another - at least some of the time.

Although this might have seemed like a simple game, it was actually quite complicated. First, Remington Valor had to infer that you hid a treat (since Remington Valor didn't actually see you hide it). Then she had to understand enough of the physical world to infer that a piece of paper at an angle indicated that the treat was hidden behind it. It is impressive that Remington Valor figured out the answer as often as she did.

By no means did Remington Valor do badly on this game; in fact, she developed quite a clever strategy. She developed a right or left side bias, meaning when she didn't know which side was correct, she went to one side every time. This is pretty clever, because 50% of the time she was correct.