What If Dogs Think We Are Immortal?

[Weatherman2020]

What if in the dog world, humans are elves that routinely live to be 500+ years old?


"They live so long… but the good ones still bond with us for our entire lives."

"These immortals are so kind we must be good friends to them."

Many dogs never get to see their owners grow old and weak.

"Now I am old. The fur around my muzzle is grey and my joints ache when we walk together. Yet she remains unchanged, her hair still glossy, her skin still fresh, her step still sprightly. Time doesn’t touch her and yet I love her still."

But some do.

"For generations, he has guarded over my family. Since the days of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather he has kept us safe. For so long we thought him immortal. But now I see differently, for just as my fur grows gray and my joints grow stiff, so too do his. He did not take in my children, but gave them away to his. I will be the last that he cares for. My only hope is that I am able to last until his final moments. The death of one of his kind is so rare. The ending of a life so long is such a tragedy. He has seen so much, he knows so much. I know he takes comfort in my presence. I only wish that I will be able to give him this comfort until the end."

 

[shockedcanadian]

We are, if we earn our way into heaven.

 

[Weatherman2020]

We are, if we earn our way into heaven.

Well, yes our souls are immortal but we don’t ‘earn’ a trip to heaven.

 

[shockedcanadian]

Well, yes our souls are immortal but we don’t ‘earn’ a trip to heaven.

I am sure going to try.

 

[Weatherman2020]

I am sure going to try.

Save your breath.
Grace + Faith + X = heaven.

X=0

 

[shockedcanadian]

Save your breath.
Grace + Faith + X = heaven.

X=0

?

 

[Weatherman2020]

?

There’s nothing but Gods grace and your faith that gets you in.
What did Jesus say to the man on the cross next to him that had become a believer as he hung dying there?
Today you will be with me in paradise.

 

[bluzman61]

Fantastic post, OP. Thank you.

 

[jwoodie]

Read or see White Fang by Jack London. He captures the relationship wonderfully.

 

[MisterBeale]

Dog Smarts: The Science of What They Think About and Know

Dogs come to us with active minds, senses of humor, and multiple intelligences.

www.psychologytoday.com

" . . . Self-awareness in dogs

Are dogs self-aware? We really just don’t know. I conducted what has come to be called “the yellow snow study” when I walked my dog companion Jethro along the Boulder Creek trail, just outside city limits. To study the role of urine in eliciting urinating and marking, I moved urine-saturated snow (“yellow snow”) from place to place during five winters, and I compared the responses of Jethro to his own and others’ urine (for details please see "Hidden tales of yellow snow: What a dog's nose knows -- Making sense of scents" and "Dogs: When They Smell Their Pee They Know It's 'Me'"). When people saw me do this, they tended to avoid me and shake their head, clearly questioning my sanity. But the experiment was easy to conduct. You can easily don an ethologist’s hat and repeat this experiment and risk being called weird.

I learned that Jethro spent less time sniffing his own urine than that of other males or females and that, while his interest in his own urine waned with time, it remained relatively constant for other individuals’ urine. Jethro infrequently urinated over or sniffed and then immediately urinated over his own urine, and he marked over the urine of other males more frequently than he marked over the urine of females. I concluded from this that Jethro clearly had some sense of “self.” He displayed a sense of “mine-ness,” if not necessarily of “I-ness.” Biologist Roberto Cazzola Gatti confirmed my findings using what he called the “Sniff Test of Self-Recognition” on four dogs. In her book Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell, Dr. Horowitz wrote about the results of a more systematic study of self-recognition with dogs in her cognition laboratory. She observes that the dogs “peed only on other dogs’ containers, not their own. They saw themselves.” While neither Dr. Horowitz nor I are sure that these studies confirm the presence of self-awareness, they do indicate an awareness of identity.

Dogs with a sense of humor

Pondering a dog’s sense of humor can uncover a lot about what they know. In his classic book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Charles Darwin wrote: “Dogs show what may be fairly called a sense of humor, as distinct from mere play; if a bit of stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away. The dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same maneuver, and evidently enjoying the practical joke.”

While I’m always careful to say that I don’t really know if dogs and other animals have a sense of humor and enjoy comedy, the anecdotal evidence is pretty overwhelming. For example, my companion Jethro not only was a savvy food thief but also quite a jokester. He’d run around with his favorite stuffed animal, a rabbit, in his mouth, shaking it from side to side and often looking at the people who were around to see what effect this had on them. When they laughed while he was doing this, he seemed to do it more and more. When they weren’t paying attention to him, he would stop running around or he would bark, look to see if they were watching him, and continue running here and there with his stuffed toy.

Or consider Benson the burper. My friend Marije tells me that Benson, a Bernese mountain dog, likes to come up to her, face to face, look her in the eyes, and burp. He seems to get a kick out of doing it and doesn’t burp at other times. Is this his way of saying “hello” or “I love you”? Or is he just having a good old time doing it to his human? Marije also insists that Benson is not mimicking her or her daughter Arianne.

Where to from here? It's an exciting time to be interested in dogs and other animals' minds

While we know quite a lot about dog "smarts" and their cognitive capacities, there's still much to learn. It's clear that dogs display multiple intelligences just as they display individually distinct personalities. Talking about "the dog" is extremely misleading because of enormous amounts of individual variation among domestic dogs.

Clearly, it's an extremely exciting time to study animal minds. The field of cognitive ethology is growing rapidly and more neuroimaging studies are being conducted (please see "Jealousy in Dogs: Brain Imaging Shows They're Similar to Us" and links therein). Not only will comparative research into animal minds teach us a lot about them, but so too, we'll learn more about the evolution of cognition and about the origins of our cognitive skills.

One thing is for sure and that is we should be very careful in not underestimating what is going on in the minds of other animals. My take on matters at hand is that we're not learning anything that suggests that we've been overestimating their cognitive or emotional capacities. More data will only add to the rapidly growing database about their impressive and highly evolved cognitive and emotional lives, information that must be used on their behalf. Unfortunately, and very frequently, it is not. . . . "

12 Amazing Dog Brain Facts​

12 Amazing Dog Brain Facts | Great Pet Care

Your dog's brain is a powerful thing! Check out these surprising dog brain facts and learn what's really going on in our dogs' heads.

www.greatpetcare.com

 

[EvilCat Breath]

If you have ever seen an animal grieve the loss of their human loved one your questions would be answered.

 

[MisterBeale]

Dog Smarts: The Science of What They Think About and Know

Dogs come to us with active minds, senses of humor, and multiple intelligences.

www.psychologytoday.com

" . . . Self-awareness in dogs

Are dogs self-aware? We really just don’t know. I conducted what has come to be called “the yellow snow study” when I walked my dog companion Jethro along the Boulder Creek trail, just outside city limits. To study the role of urine in eliciting urinating and marking, I moved urine-saturated snow (“yellow snow”) from place to place during five winters, and I compared the responses of Jethro to his own and others’ urine (for details please see "Hidden tales of yellow snow: What a dog's nose knows -- Making sense of scents" and "Dogs: When They Smell Their Pee They Know It's 'Me'"). When people saw me do this, they tended to avoid me and shake their head, clearly questioning my sanity. But the experiment was easy to conduct. You can easily don an ethologist’s hat and repeat this experiment and risk being called weird.

I learned that Jethro spent less time sniffing his own urine than that of other males or females and that, while his interest in his own urine waned with time, it remained relatively constant for other individuals’ urine. Jethro infrequently urinated over or sniffed and then immediately urinated over his own urine, and he marked over the urine of other males more frequently than he marked over the urine of females. I concluded from this that Jethro clearly had some sense of “self.” He displayed a sense of “mine-ness,” if not necessarily of “I-ness.” Biologist Roberto Cazzola Gatti confirmed my findings using what he called the “Sniff Test of Self-Recognition” on four dogs. In her book Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell, Dr. Horowitz wrote about the results of a more systematic study of self-recognition with dogs in her cognition laboratory. She observes that the dogs “peed only on other dogs’ containers, not their own. They saw themselves.” While neither Dr. Horowitz nor I are sure that these studies confirm the presence of self-awareness, they do indicate an awareness of identity.

Dogs with a sense of humor

Pondering a dog’s sense of humor can uncover a lot about what they know. In his classic book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Charles Darwin wrote: “Dogs show what may be fairly called a sense of humor, as distinct from mere play; if a bit of stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away. The dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same maneuver, and evidently enjoying the practical joke.”

While I’m always careful to say that I don’t really know if dogs and other animals have a sense of humor and enjoy comedy, the anecdotal evidence is pretty overwhelming. For example, my companion Jethro not only was a savvy food thief but also quite a jokester. He’d run around with his favorite stuffed animal, a rabbit, in his mouth, shaking it from side to side and often looking at the people who were around to see what effect this had on them. When they laughed while he was doing this, he seemed to do it more and more. When they weren’t paying attention to him, he would stop running around or he would bark, look to see if they were watching him, and continue running here and there with his stuffed toy.

Or consider Benson the burper. My friend Marije tells me that Benson, a Bernese mountain dog, likes to come up to her, face to face, look her in the eyes, and burp. He seems to get a kick out of doing it and doesn’t burp at other times. Is this his way of saying “hello” or “I love you”? Or is he just having a good old time doing it to his human? Marije also insists that Benson is not mimicking her or her daughter Arianne.

Where to from here? It's an exciting time to be interested in dogs and other animals' minds

While we know quite a lot about dog "smarts" and their cognitive capacities, there's still much to learn. It's clear that dogs display multiple intelligences just as they display individually distinct personalities. Talking about "the dog" is extremely misleading because of enormous amounts of individual variation among domestic dogs.

Clearly, it's an extremely exciting time to study animal minds. The field of cognitive ethology is growing rapidly and more neuroimaging studies are being conducted (please see "Jealousy in Dogs: Brain Imaging Shows They're Similar to Us" and links therein). Not only will comparative research into animal minds teach us a lot about them, but so too, we'll learn more about the evolution of cognition and about the origins of our cognitive skills.

One thing is for sure and that is we should be very careful in not underestimating what is going on in the minds of other animals. My take on matters at hand is that we're not learning anything that suggests that we've been overestimating their cognitive or emotional capacities. More data will only add to the rapidly growing database about their impressive and highly evolved cognitive and emotional lives, information that must be used on their behalf. Unfortunately, and very frequently, it is not. . . . "

12 Amazing Dog Brain Facts​

12 Amazing Dog Brain Facts | Great Pet Care

Your dog's brain is a powerful thing! Check out these surprising dog brain facts and learn what's really going on in our dogs' heads.

www.greatpetcare.com

 

[JustAnotherNut]

I don't know if my dogs think I'm immortal..........but I do know they think I am the greatest human everrrrrr and that feeling is mutual

 

[JustAnotherNut]

?

Ephesians 2:8, 9

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

 

[shockedcanadian]

Ephesians 2:8, 9

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

Well my Faith has definitely wavered of late.

 

[JustAnotherNut]

Well my Faith has definitely wavered of late.

That happens to everybody at some point atleast once in their faith journey. Keep searching

 

[whoisit]

There seems to be one very special dog in people's life, Alice was mine, She was amazing. Part Greyhound, part Golden Retriever, she was large but lived to be 19. Long life for large dog, but Greyhounds are known to live long lives.