How Do They Know?

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74 – June, 2020

By Chris Robinson

There are numerous stories of heroic canine rescues and dogs that either have been trained or have learned to detect seizures, low blood sugar and some forms of cancer among other health issues. We all know that dogs are sensitive to our emotions. If there is tension and stress in the house or happiness, dogs respond. If you are having a good time, the dog always gets in on the fun. If you are feeling down or having a bad day, they seem to know and will put their head on your lap or a paw on your knee. If you are angry, they know to stay out of your way. But what about all those occasions when dogs do something intuitively, in many cases, things for which they have never been trained or taught? There are times when dogs display a “sixth sense” that is downright spooky.

A few years ago, doing my real job as an investigative reporter, I interviewed a former U.S. Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) who told me a head-shaking-in-bewilderment story about his Belgian Malinois, who had been deployed with the SEAL in Afghanistan and was now his family pet. Before he got to the story of the dog’s unusual behavior while they were clearing a building on that deployment, the ex-SEAL said that the dog had adjusted a lot quicker to civilian life than he had and within a couple of months of the dog’s retirement, was the favorite playmate of not just the ex-SEAL’s kids but all the kids in the neighborhood and was, without a doubt, the very best fielder on the neighborhood ball field. To the kids’ annoyance, he was also almost always fast enough to beat the runner to the base after he fielded the ball. The ex-SEAL said the dog hadn’t been taught this “trick”. He’d just learned it by watching the kids.

That the dog had special intuitive and learning powers became apparent on several occasions during their deployment but especially on one day when the SEAL’s fire team was clearing a building of suspected Taliban fighters. His dog had just apprehended a Taliban hiding behind a cabinet grabbing the guy and biting down so hard that he broke one of the bones in the guy’s arm. While some of his teammates attended to the bitten Taliban, the SEAL and the dog moved on to the next room with the dog still amped up from his combat with the Taliban fighter. The room was empty except for what appeared to be a bundle of ragged blankets along one wall. The dog approached the bundle, sniffed it a couple of times, gently nosed it once or twice, pawed it very lightly a couple of times and then indicated to his partner that he should investigate the bundle. When the SEAL did, he found a sleeping toddler under the ragged blankets. (Taliban fighters will often use infants and toddlers as “bait” for American special forces in the hope that the military personnel or their war dogs will attack or harm an innocent child to create an incident.) The ex-SEAL said that the dog had never been trained to differentiate between adults and children simply because the bad guys often use children to prey upon the tendency of American service personnel to be kind to kids and they will send children in first to either distract our people before a Taliban attack or to actually harm our personnel. The dog somehow knew that he wasn’t to harm this child but how he knew is something for which the ex-SEAL had absolutely no explanation.

Click here to read the complete article
74 – June, 2020

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jun 20 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.