[rachel long]

I hadn’t heard of Dognition until this post, but it sounds fun and fascinating!

[rachel long]

I love your explanation of your hide and seek game Dan! I’m going to have to start doing that with my dogs 🙂

[rachel long]

I’ll have to reach out through social media! I did write a blog post for work a bit ago about teaching my dogs to “[cover their nose](https://www.petdoors.com/blog/teach-your-dog-to-cover-their-nose/)” and there is a video there too 🙂

[rachel long]

My staffy knows how to crawl but sometimes doesn’t like to so I have to reinforce with the treat too! The staffy is about 65 pounds, my golden mix is 50 pounds. They can jump over each other standing/bowing/laying down, it is pretty adorable 🙂 Hugging is definitely the “crowd favorite” whenever we do tricks for friends!

I love the laundry idea, my golden mix can “clean up toys” and pick up trash and place in garbage cans. I’ll have to try the same with laundry! He has helped me before in picking up socks that I’ve dropped, and he’ll pick up my keys if I ask after dropping them when my hands are full. I have a video of him [picking up trash](https://www.petdoors.com/blog/earth-day-for-you-and-your-pet/) actually!

I’ve wanted to teach the whisper trick, I love it! But no success with that one

[rachel long]

I’ll have to go follow you guys on Instagram! 🙂

[rachel long]

Hi Linda! My staffy goes crazy barking whenever my other dog lets out even just a quiet “woof”, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is related to pack behavior 🙂

[rachel long]

That is such a cool story! During the rainy season, one of my dogs likes to run through puddles at the barn. We usually go to the barn before work, and he quickly learned to avoid puddles on workdays or else have to get rinsed down and go to work wet.

On my days off, even if we went to the barn at the same time, he would immediately run into the puddles and lay down and get filthy. He knew we’d be there longer, and I guess it was worth it to him for the extra enjoyment from the mud he would get to have before getting rinsed down and going home. While I know he isn’t aware of what day of the week it is, he can take the cues from my routine to estimate what the rest of the day’s routine is going to be like and make a choice based on that conclusion, which always blows my mind 🙂

[rachel long]

That is a very interesting article, car2ner!

[rachel long]

I just read this article, and it is such a cool project! I look forward to following the research 🙂

[rachel long]

The idea of mutts not being able to develop stronger and smarter dogs over time with the lack of natural selection is a very good point in my opinion. I do think there might be some influence of friendliness increasing in mutts, as only the most loving dogs find homes and are more likely to live to produce puppies. In today’s society, it seems the degree of friendliness could play in a role in survival (though so often that is still not good enough).
I think it is kind of interesting and sad to think that while hybrid vigor will definitely still play a role in creating awesome mutts, human interaction will still lead to dogs with undesirable traits, purebred or mixed, producing offspring with issues that could lower their quality of life.

[rachel long]

My American Staffy smiles when he greets people he is really excited to see or who he’s excited to see but also concerned about how they will react to him, as a submission signal.

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