Inside Of A Dog Part 14

In these contrived setups, the dogs acted with interest and devotion, but not as though there were an emergency. Dogs frequently approached their owners, and sometimes pawed or nuzzled these seeming victims, now silent and unresponsive (in the heart attack case) or crying out for help (in the bookcase scenario). Other dogs, though, took the opportunity to roam around in the vicinity, wandering and sniffing the gra.s.s or the floor of the room. In only a very few cases did a dog vocalize-which might serve to get someone's attention-or approach the bystander who might be able to help. The only dog who touched the bystander was a toy poodle. The poodle leaped into the bystander's lap and settled down for a nap.

In other words, not a single dog did anything that remotely helped their owners out of their predicaments. The conclusion one has to take from this is that dogs simply do not naturally recognize or react to an emergency situation-one that could lead to danger or death.

A killjoy conclusion? Hardly. If dogs lack the concepts emergency emergency and and death death this is not to their discredit. One might as well ask a dog if he understands this is not to their discredit. One might as well ask a dog if he understands bicycles bicycles and and mousetraps mousetraps and then censure him for responding with a puzzled tilt of the head. A human child is also naive to these concepts: an infant has to be screamed at as he zeros in on an open electrical outlet; a two-year-old who saw someone hurt would likely do little but cry. They will be and then censure him for responding with a puzzled tilt of the head. A human child is also naive to these concepts: an infant has to be screamed at as he zeros in on an open electrical outlet; a two-year-old who saw someone hurt would likely do little but cry. They will be taught taught to understand emergency situations-and then the concept of death. So too are some dogs trained, for instance, to alert a deaf companion to the sound of an emergency device, such as a smoke alarm. The teaching of children is explicit, with some procedural elements- to understand emergency situations-and then the concept of death. So too are some dogs trained, for instance, to alert a deaf companion to the sound of an emergency device, such as a smoke alarm. The teaching of children is explicit, with some procedural elements-If you hear this alarm, get Mommy; the dogs' training is entirely reinforced procedure. the dogs' training is entirely reinforced procedure.

What the dogs seem to know is when an unusual unusual situation occurs. They are masters of identifying the usual in the world you share with them. You often act in reliable ways: in your own home, you move from room to room, spending long pauses in armchairs and in front of refrigerators; you talk to them; you talk to other people; you eat, sleep, disappear for long stretches into the bathroom; and so on. The environment is fairly reliable, too: it is neither too hot nor too cold; there is no person in the house apart from the ones who have come in the front door; water is not pooling in the living room; smoke is not drifting in the hallway. From that knowledge of the usual world comes some acknowledgment of the unusual fact of someone's odd behavior when injured, or of the dogs' own inability to act as they customarily can. situation occurs. They are masters of identifying the usual in the world you share with them. You often act in reliable ways: in your own home, you move from room to room, spending long pauses in armchairs and in front of refrigerators; you talk to them; you talk to other people; you eat, sleep, disappear for long stretches into the bathroom; and so on. The environment is fairly reliable, too: it is neither too hot nor too cold; there is no person in the house apart from the ones who have come in the front door; water is not pooling in the living room; smoke is not drifting in the hallway. From that knowledge of the usual world comes some acknowledgment of the unusual fact of someone's odd behavior when injured, or of the dogs' own inability to act as they customarily can.

More than once Pumpernickel got herself in dire straits (once, trapped on a catwalk heading off a building edge; another time, her leash stuck in the elevator doors as the car began to move). I was amazed at how unfazed she appeared-especially as contrasted with my own alarm. It was never she who got herself out of the fix. I believe that I was more worried about her well-being than she was about mine. Still, much of my well-being hinged on her-not on her knowing how to fix dilemmas, great or small, in my life, but rather on her unremitting cheer and constant companionship.

II.

WHAT IT IS LIKE.

In our attempt to get inside of a dog, we gather small facts about their sensory capacities and build large inferences upon them. One inference is to the experience of the dog: what it actually feels like feels like to be a dog; what his experience of the world is. This a.s.sumes, of course, that the world is to be a dog; what his experience of the world is. This a.s.sumes, of course, that the world is like like anything to a dog. Perhaps surprisingly, in philosophical and scientific circles there is a bit of debate about this. anything to a dog. Perhaps surprisingly, in philosophical and scientific circles there is a bit of debate about this.

Thirty-five years ago, the philosopher Thomas Nagel began a long-running conversation in science and philosophy about the subjective experience of animals when he asked, "What is it like to be a bat?" He chose for his thought experiment an animal whose almost unimaginable way of seeing had only recently been discovered: echolocation, the process of emitting high-frequency shouts and then listening for the sound being reflected back. How long the sound takes to bounce back, and how it is changed, gives the bat a map of where all the objects are in the local environment. To get a rough sense of what this might be like, imagine lying in a dark room at night and wondering if someone is standing at your doorway. Sure, you could resolve the question by turning on the light. Or, bat-like, you could hurdle a tennis ball at the doorway and see if (a) the ball comes back toward you or flies out of the room, and (b) if a grunt is heard at about the time the ball arrives at the threshold. If you're very good, you might also use (c) how far the ball bounces back, to determine if the person is very tubby (in which case the ball loses most of its speed in his belly) or has washboard abs (which will reflect the ball nicely). Bats use (a) and (c), and in lieu of tennis b.a.l.l.s they use sound. And they do it constantly and rapidly, as quickly as we open our eyes and take in the visual scene in front of us.

This, appropriately, boggled Nagel's mind. He thought that the bat's vision, and thus the bat's life, are so wildly odd, so imponderable, that it is impossible to know what it is like to be that bat. He a.s.sumed that the bat experiences the world, but he believed that that experience is fundamentally subjective: whatever "it is like," it is that way only to that bat.

The trouble with his conclusion has to do with the imaginative leap that we do make every day. Nagel treated an inter interspecies difference as something wholly unlike an intra intra species difference. But we are perfectly happy to talk about "what it is like" to be another human being. I do not know the particulars of another person's experience, but I know enough about the feeling of being human myself that I can draw an a.n.a.logy from my own experience to someone else's. I can imagine what the world is like to him by extrapolating from my own perception and transplanting it with him at its center. The more information I have about that person-physically, his life history, his behavior-the better my drawn a.n.a.logy will be. species difference. But we are perfectly happy to talk about "what it is like" to be another human being. I do not know the particulars of another person's experience, but I know enough about the feeling of being human myself that I can draw an a.n.a.logy from my own experience to someone else's. I can imagine what the world is like to him by extrapolating from my own perception and transplanting it with him at its center. The more information I have about that person-physically, his life history, his behavior-the better my drawn a.n.a.logy will be.

So can we do this with dogs. The more information we have, the better the drawing will be. To this point, we have physical information (about their nervous systems, their sensory systems), historical knowledge (their evolutionary heritage, their developmental path from birth to adults), and a growing corpus of work about their behavior. In sum, we have a sketch of the dog umwelt. The parcel of scientific facts we have collected allows us to take an informed imaginative leap inside of a dog-to see what it is like to be a dog; what the world is like from a dog's point of view.

We have already seen that it is smelly; that it is well peopled with people. On further consideration, we can add: it is close to the ground; it is lickable. It either fits in the mouth or it doesn't. It is in the moment. It is full of details, fleeting, and fast. It is written all over their faces. It is probably nothing like what it is like to be us.

It is close to the ground ...

One of the most conspicuous features of the dog is one of the most conspicuously overlooked when contemplating their view of the world: their height. If you think that there is little difference between the world at the height of an average upright human and that at the height of an average upright dog-one to two feet-you are in for a surprise. Even putting aside for a moment the difference in sound and smell close to the ground, being at a different height has profound consequences.

Few dogs are human-height. They are human-knee height. One might even say they are often underfoot. underfoot. We are magnificently obtuse when it comes to imagining even the simple fact of their being less than half our height. Intellectually we know that dogs are not at our height, yet we set up interactions such that the height difference is a constant problem. We put things "out of reach" of dogs, only to be frustrated by their attempts to get them. Even knowing that dogs like greeting us at eye level, we typically do not bend down. Or, bending down just far enough to allow them to reach our faces with a leap, we may get annoyed when they then leap. We are magnificently obtuse when it comes to imagining even the simple fact of their being less than half our height. Intellectually we know that dogs are not at our height, yet we set up interactions such that the height difference is a constant problem. We put things "out of reach" of dogs, only to be frustrated by their attempts to get them. Even knowing that dogs like greeting us at eye level, we typically do not bend down. Or, bending down just far enough to allow them to reach our faces with a leap, we may get annoyed when they then leap. Jumping up Jumping up is the direct result of desiring to get to something one needs to is the direct result of desiring to get to something one needs to jump up jump up to reach. to reach.

Scolded enough for jumping up, dogs happily find there is plenty of interest underfoot. There are, for instance, lots of feet. Smelly feet: the foot is a good source of our signature odors. We tend to sweat pedally when we are mentally taxed: stressed, or concentrating hard. Clumsy feet: sitting, we dangle them, but not with dexterity. They act as single units, with toes only existing as places between which extra odors may be discovered by a roving tongue.

If the foot smells so interesting, of course, then the way we treat them must be awfully frustrating: d.a.m.ned shoes. We cloister our odors. On the other hand, shoes left behind smell just like the person who had been in them, and they have the additional interest of carrying on their soles whatever you squishily stepped in outside. Socks are equally good carriers of our odor, hence the gaping holes that regularly appear in socks left bedside. On examination, each hole has been lovingly poked by the incisors of a dog with a sock in her mouth.

Besides feet, at dog height the world is full of long skirts and trouser legs dancing with every footfall of their wearer. The tight whirling motions the warp of a pant leg presents to a dog's eye must be tantalizing. Between their sensitivity to motion and their investigatory mouths, it is no wonder one can find one's pants being nipped by the dog at the end of your leash.

The world closer to the ground is a more odoriferous one, for smells loiter and fester in the ground, while they distribute and disperse on the air. Sound travels differently along the ground, too: hence birds sing at tree height, while ground dwellers tend to use the earth to communicate mechanically. The vibration of a fan on the floor might perturb a dog nearby; likewise, loud sounds bounce more loudly off the floor into resting dog ears.

The artist Jana Sterbak tried to capture a dog's-eye view by rigging a video camera to a girdle worn by Stanley, her Jack Russell terrier, and recording his perambulations along a frozen river and through Venice, the "city of doges" (pun probably intended). The result is a manic, jumbled rush of sights, the world akilter and the image never calm. At fourteen inches above the ground, Stanley's visual world is a glimpse of his olfactory world: what catches his olfactory interest he pursues in body and sight.

But by suiting up animals with critter-cams we are mostly getting an idea of their vantage vantage on the world, not their entire umwelt. With most if not all wild animals, only by taking such a vantage may we have any information about their world, their day: we can't keep up with a diving penguin as a camera strapped to its back can; only an inconspicuous camera could capture the tunnel building of a naked mole rat underground. To watch Stanley from the vantage of his back is to be surprised at the view. There is the temptation, though, to think that by capturing a picture of Stanley's day we have completed the imaginative exercise. It is but the beginning. on the world, not their entire umwelt. With most if not all wild animals, only by taking such a vantage may we have any information about their world, their day: we can't keep up with a diving penguin as a camera strapped to its back can; only an inconspicuous camera could capture the tunnel building of a naked mole rat underground. To watch Stanley from the vantage of his back is to be surprised at the view. There is the temptation, though, to think that by capturing a picture of Stanley's day we have completed the imaginative exercise. It is but the beginning.

... It is lickable ...

She is lying on the ground, head between paws, and notices something potentially interesting or edible a short stretch away on the floor. She pulls her head forward to it, her nose-that beautiful, robust, moist nose-nearly but not quite in in the particle. I can see her nostrils working to identify it. She gives a wet snort and brings her mouth to aid in the investigation: by turning her head ever-so-slightly on an angle her tongue reaches the floor. She test-licks it with quick swipes, then straightens up and sets to a more serious posture from which to lick, lick, lick the floor-long strokes with the fullness of her tongue. the particle. I can see her nostrils working to identify it. She gives a wet snort and brings her mouth to aid in the investigation: by turning her head ever-so-slightly on an angle her tongue reaches the floor. She test-licks it with quick swipes, then straightens up and sets to a more serious posture from which to lick, lick, lick the floor-long strokes with the fullness of her tongue.

Nearly everything is lickable. A spot on the floor, a spot on herself; the hand of a person, the knee of a person, the toes of a person, the face, ears, and eyes of a person; a tree trunk, a bookshelf; the car seat, the sheets; the floor, the walls, the all. Unidentifiables on the ground are especially ripe for tonguing. This is revealing, for licking-bringing molecules into oneself, not merely taking a distant safe stance toward them-is an extremely intimate gesture. Not that dogs mean to be intimate. But to be so directly in contact with the world, intentionally or not, is to define oneself differently with respect to one's environment than humans do: it is to find less of a barrier at the edge of one's own skin or fur from that which surrounds it. No wonder it is not unusual to see a dog duck his head fully into a mud puddle or twist his supine body in exaltation of spirit and the rank earth.

The dog's sense of personal s.p.a.ce reflects this intimacy with the environment. All animals have a sense of comfortable social distance, the breaching of which causes clashes and the stretching of which they try to contain. While Americans balk at strangers standing closer than eighteen inches, American dogs' personal s.p.a.ce is approximately zero to one inches. Repeating itself on sidewalks across the country this very second is a scene that demonstrates the clash of our senses of personal s.p.a.ce: the sight of two dog owners as they stand six feet apart, straining to keep their leashed dogs from touching, while the dogs strain mightily to touch each other. Let them touch! They greet strangers by getting into each other's s.p.a.ce, not staying out of it. Let them get into each other's fur, sniff deeply, and mouth each other in greeting. It is not for dogs the safe distance of a handshake.

As we have a limit to the proximity of others we'll endure, we also have a limit to the distance we prefer: a kind of social s.p.a.ce. Sitting over five or six feet apart makes for an uncomfortable conversation. Walking on opposite sides of the street, we do not feel we are walking together. together. Dogs' social s.p.a.ce is more elastic. Some dogs happily walk in parallel but at great, owner-distressing distances from their owners; others like to trot at your heels. This extends to their sense of fit with us, resting at home. Dogs have their own version of enjoying the pleasantness of a book that fits closely but not too tightly into a box. Pump wanted to sit so that her body was cupped by the embrace of a small upholstered chair. She would fill the s.p.a.ce created by my bent legs when lying on my side in bed. Other dogs position themselves with the length of their backs against the length of a sleeping body. The pleasure of this alone is enough for me to invite a dog onto the bed. Dogs' social s.p.a.ce is more elastic. Some dogs happily walk in parallel but at great, owner-distressing distances from their owners; others like to trot at your heels. This extends to their sense of fit with us, resting at home. Dogs have their own version of enjoying the pleasantness of a book that fits closely but not too tightly into a box. Pump wanted to sit so that her body was cupped by the embrace of a small upholstered chair. She would fill the s.p.a.ce created by my bent legs when lying on my side in bed. Other dogs position themselves with the length of their backs against the length of a sleeping body. The pleasure of this alone is enough for me to invite a dog onto the bed.

... It either fits in the mouth or it's too big for the mouth ...

Of the innumerable objects we see around us, only a very few are salient to the dog. The array of furniture, books, tchotchkes, and miscellany in your home is reduced to a more simple cla.s.sificatory scheme. The dog defines the world by the ways that he can act act on the world. In this scheme, things are grouped by how they are manipulated (chewed, eaten, moved, sat upon, rolled in). A ball, a pen, a teddy bear, and a shoe are equivalent: all are objects that one can get one's mouth around. Likewise, some things-brushes, towels, other dogs-act on them. on the world. In this scheme, things are grouped by how they are manipulated (chewed, eaten, moved, sat upon, rolled in). A ball, a pen, a teddy bear, and a shoe are equivalent: all are objects that one can get one's mouth around. Likewise, some things-brushes, towels, other dogs-act on them.

The affordances-the typical use, the functional tone-that we see in objects are superseded by dog affordances. A dog is less threatened by a gun than interested in seeing if it fits in his mouth. The range of gestures you make toward your dog is reduced to those that are fearsome, playful, instructive-and those that are meaningless. To a dog, a man raising his hand to hail a cab says the same thing as a man reaching to high-five or one waving goodbye. Rooms have a parallel life in the dog's world, with areas that quietly collect smells (invisible detritus in the crook of the wall and floor), fertile areas from which objects and odors come (closets, windows), and sitting areas where you or your identifying perfume might be found. Outside, they do not so much notice buildings: buildings: too big; not able to be acted on; not meaningful. But the building's too big; not able to be acted on; not meaningful. But the building's corner, corner, as well as lampposts and fireplugs, wears a new ident.i.ty each encounter, with news of other dog pa.s.sersby. as well as lampposts and fireplugs, wears a new ident.i.ty each encounter, with news of other dog pa.s.sersby.

For humans it is the form or shape of an item that is usually its most salient feature, leading to our recognition of it. Dogs, by contrast, are generally ambivalent about the shape in which, say, their dog biscuits come (it is we we who think they should be bone-shaped). Instead, motion, so readily detected by the retinae of dogs, is an intrinsic part of the ident.i.ty of objects. A running squirrel and an idle squirrel may as well be different squirrels; a skateboarding child and a child holding a skateboard are different children. Moving things are more interesting than still ones-as befits an animal at one time designed to chase moving prey. (Dogs will stalk motionless squirrels and birds, of course, once they have learned that they often spontaneously become squirrels running and birds on the wing.) Rolling quickly on a skateboard, a child is exciting, worth barking at; stop the skateboard, and the motion, and the dog calms. who think they should be bone-shaped). Instead, motion, so readily detected by the retinae of dogs, is an intrinsic part of the ident.i.ty of objects. A running squirrel and an idle squirrel may as well be different squirrels; a skateboarding child and a child holding a skateboard are different children. Moving things are more interesting than still ones-as befits an animal at one time designed to chase moving prey. (Dogs will stalk motionless squirrels and birds, of course, once they have learned that they often spontaneously become squirrels running and birds on the wing.) Rolling quickly on a skateboard, a child is exciting, worth barking at; stop the skateboard, and the motion, and the dog calms.

Given their definition of objects by motion, smell, and mouthability, the most straightforward items-your own hand-may not be straightforward to your dog. A hand patting his head is experienced differently than one pressing continuously on it. Similarly, a glance, even many stolen glances, is different than a stare. A single stimulus-a hand, an eye-can become two things when experienced at different speeds or intensities. Even for humans, a series of still images shuffled fast enough becomes a continuous image: as though changing ident.i.ty. To the common snail, wary of the world, a slowly tapping stick is risky to walk over; but if the stick is oscillated four times a second, the snail will move into it. Some dogs will endure a pat on the head but not a hand resting there; for others, the reverse is true.

These ways of defining the world can all be seen by watching a dog interact with the world. Dogs entranced by a blank spot on the sidewalk, those whose ears perk at "nothing," those transfixed by an invisibility in the bushes-you are watching them experience their sensory parallel universe. With age the dog will "see" more objects familiar to us, will realize that more things can be mouthed, licked, rubbed against, or rolled in. They also grow to understand that different-seeming objects-the man at the deli, and the deli man on the street-are one and the same. But whatever we think we see, whatever we think just happened in a moment, we are pretty much a.s.sured that dogs see and think something different.

... It is full of details ...

Part of normal human development is the refinement of sensory sensitivity: specifically, learning to notice less than we are able to. The world is awash in details of color, form, s.p.a.ce, sound, texture, smell, but we can't function if we perceive everything at once. So our sensory systems, concerned for our survival, organize to heighten attention to those things that are essential to our existence. The rest of the details are trifles to us, smoothed over, or missed altogether.

But the world still holds those details. The dog senses the world at a different granularity. The dog's sensory ability is sufficiently different to allow him to attend to the parts of the visual world we gloss over; to the elements of a scent we cannot detect; to sounds we have dismissed as irrelevant. Neither does he see or hear everything, but what he notices includes what we do not. With less ability to see a wide range of colors, for instance, dogs have a much greater sensitivity to contrasts in brightness. We might observe this in their reluctance to step into a reflective pool of water, in a fear of entering a dark room.* Their sensitivity to motion alerts them to the deflating balloon wafting gently curbside. Without speech, they are more attuned to the prosody in our sentences, to tension in our voice, to the exuberance of an exclamation point and the vehemence of capital letters. They are alert to sudden contrasts in speaking: a yell, a single word, even a protracted silence.

As with us, the dog's sensory system is attuned to novelty. Our attention focuses on a new odor, a novel sound; dogs, with a wider range of things they smell and hear, can seem to be constantly at attention. The wide-eyed look of a dog trotting down the street is that of someone being bombarded with the new. And, unlike most of us, they are not immediately habituated to the sounds of human culture. As a result, a city can be a explosion of small details writ large in the dog's mind: a cacophony of the everyday that we have learned to ignore. We know what a car door slamming sounds like, and unless listening for just that sound, city dwellers tend to not even hear the symphony of slams playing on the street. For a dog, though, it may be a new sound each time it happens-and one that sometimes, even more interestingly, is followed by a person arriving on the scene.

They pay attention to the slivers of time between our blinks, the complement of what we see. Sometimes these are not invisible things but simply those we would prefer they not pay attention to, like our groins, or the favored squeaking toy we stuff in a pocket, or the forlorn, limping man on the street. We could see those things, too, but we look away. Human habits that we ignore-tapping our fingers, cracking our ankles, coughing politely, shifting our weight-dogs notice. A shuffle in a seat-it may foretell rising! A scootch forward in the chair-surely something is happening! Scratching an itch, shaking your head: the mundane is electric-an unknown signal and a whiff of shampoo. These gestures are not part of a cultural world for dogs as they are for us. Details become more meaningful when they are not swallowed up in the concerns of the everyday.

That very attention that dogs bring to us may cause them to acclimate to these sounds over time, to be inculcated in the human culture. Watch a bookstore dog, who lives out the hours of his day surrounded by people: he has become inured to strangers coming by, standing close while they riffle the pages of a book; to being scratched on the head, to pa.s.sing smells and ever-present footsteps. Crack your knuckles a dozen times a day and a nearby dog will learn to ignore this habit. By contrast, a dog unaccustomed to human habits is alarmed at every one: the most exciting and frightening thing that could happen to a dog left chained to guard a house is that it actually requires his guarding. Guard dogs may only occasionally see an unknown person walking by, a new smell on the air or new sound, let alone any rampant knuckle-crackers.

We can begin to make up for our human disadvantage in understanding the dog's sensory umwelt by trying to startle our sensory systems. For instance, to escape our bad habits of seeing things roughly in the same colors every day, expose yourself to a room lit by only one color-say a narrow bandwidth of yellow. The colors of objects under such light are washed out: your own hands are drained of their blood-filled vitality; pink dresses turn dully white; face stubble stands out like pepper in a bowl of milk. The familiar is made foreign. But for the yellow glow from above, this is much closer to what it might be like to have a dog's color perception.

... It is in the moment ...

Ironically, attention to details may preclude an ability to generalize from the details. Sniffing the trees, the dog does not see the forest. Specificity of place and object is useful when you want to calm your dog on a road trip: you can bring his favored pillow to help calm him. A feared object or person put in a new context can sometimes be reborn as unscary.

That same specificity might indicate that dogs do not think abstractly-about that which is not directly in front of them. The influential a.n.a.lytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that though a dog can believe believe that you are on the other side of the door, we cannot sensibly talk of his that you are on the other side of the door, we cannot sensibly talk of his ruminating ruminating on it: believing that you will be there in two days' time. Well, let's eavesdrop on that dog. He has slowly zigzagged through the house since you left. He has run through all the interesting unchewed surfaces in the room. He has visited the armchair, where food was once left unattended long ago, and the couch, where food was spilled last night. He has napped six times, had three visits to the water bowl, lifted his head twice at faraway barks. Now he hears your shuffling approach of the door, quickly confirms by nose that it is you, and remembers that each time he hears and smells you, you appear visually next. on it: believing that you will be there in two days' time. Well, let's eavesdrop on that dog. He has slowly zigzagged through the house since you left. He has run through all the interesting unchewed surfaces in the room. He has visited the armchair, where food was once left unattended long ago, and the couch, where food was spilled last night. He has napped six times, had three visits to the water bowl, lifted his head twice at faraway barks. Now he hears your shuffling approach of the door, quickly confirms by nose that it is you, and remembers that each time he hears and smells you, you appear visually next.

In sum, he believes that you are there. It is nonsense to suggest otherwise. Wittgenstein's doubt is not that dogs have beliefs. They have preferences, make judgments, distinguish, decide, refrain: they think. Wittgenstein's doubt is that before you arrive, your dog is antic.i.p.ating your arrival: pondering it. It is doubt that dogs have beliefs about things not happening right now.

To live without the abstract is to be consumed by the local: facing each event and object as singular. It is roughly what it means to live in the moment in the moment-to live life unburdened by reflection. If it is so, then it would be fair to say that dogs are not reflective. Though they experience the world, they are not also considering their own experiences. While thinking, they are not consulting their own thoughts: thinking about thinking.