Dogs Watch Us Closely

Not only do dogs watch us—they also remember what we do, even when we don’t ask them to.

Dogs can learn by imitation—and not just from other dogs, but from humans too. Claudia Fugazza from the University of Budapest developed a unique training method called Do as I Do, where dogs learn to copy human actions.

Until recently, it was believed that this kind of learning was limited to primates. But it turns out that dogs can not only understand and remember what we do, but—when properly trained—they can repeat it too.

New research shows that dogs remember our actions—even when those actions seemed irrelevant to them at the time.

The study focused on episodic memory in dogs—the ability to recall specific past events. We already know humans use episodic memory, but now it turns out dogs can too. (Fugazza, Pogány, Miklósi, University of Budapest, 2016)

To prove that dogs use episodic memory, researchers needed to show that dogs could remember and reproduce a past event even when they didn’t expect a reward. First, seventeen dogs were trained to imitate human actions using the “Do as I Do” method. Then, in a new phase, the dogs were trained to simply lie down after watching a human perform an action—no matter what it was (like picking up a bag or touching an umbrella).

Dogs constantly watch us—and they remember what we do, even if it doesn’t seem to involve them directly.

After the dogs got used to just lying down, the researchers suddenly gave the cue “Do it!”

Even though the dogs didn’t expect that command and had no reason to memorize the action, many were able to repeat what they had seen earlier.

The results show that dogs remember human actions whether or not those actions are relevant or useful to them.

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Claudia Fugazza, Ádám Miklósi, Should old dog trainers learn new tricks? The efficiency of the Do as I do method and shaping/clicker training method to train dogs, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2014, Vol. 153, 53-61

Claudia Fugazza, Ákos Pogány, Ádám Miklósi, Recall of others’ actions after incidental encoding reveals episodic-like memory in dogs, Current Biology, 2016, Vol 26(23), 3209-3213