Do dogs understand pointing or not? I have heard conflicting information on this.

Do dogs understand pointing or not?
I have heard conflicting information on this.

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  1. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    Next time you're around a dog that's friendly and has its attention focused on you, point down at the floor. Unless the dog is a hyper scatterbrain, it'll follow your finger.

  2. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Only if you train them to.
    Every time I would point my dog though I dropped a treat under my hand. The moron.

  3. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    My last dog I would point at the grass and say "what's that"? to where crickets were making noise, and she'd look over and pounce at the spot the sound was coming from. Pointing can be an effective method for directing their attention.

    You gotta teach them behavioral basics as a puppy though, otherwise you end up with a dog incapable of listening.

  4. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    Try it yourself if you have a dog. It's not any harder than voice commands if you only use pointing for specific things.
    Takes dogs a bit longer to learn contextual pointing, but even then it's just time rather than difficulty.

  5. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    yes

  6. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I always assumed they follow your line of sight, which would explain why works sometimes, depending on what you do

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      They follow eye line of sight but this thread is about finger pointing

  7. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >dog not looking at anything in particular
    >point
    >dog begins investigating
    We'll set aside that pointers fricking exist, so clearly some dogs understand what it means.
    Maybe they don't look at exactly what you pointed at, and maybe they don't know what you want is something other than their attention, but a dog clearly understands that pointing is a signal that something of interest is happening. Particularly intelligent dogs may understand more than that.

  8. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yes. I was able to drive an English Springer Spaniel like a drone without moving anywhere myself. It didn't take any training but I had to excitedly imply there was possibly prey where I was pointing. He obviously wasn't a Border Collie that could do crazy shit though.

  9. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yeah trained my mutt sign language pointing barking and facial expressions

  10. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    There's literally a breed of dog called a pointer

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >do humans understand pointing or not?

  11. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    I'll try to get a video of it tommorow for you. It's kind of hard to capture it definitively, but I'll give it a shot. 😀

  12. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yes, but you need to train it. We play fetch where I toss the ball out of sight and I can point to where it is and he'll change course and start searching for it in the general area I pointed to. It's pretty cool.

  13. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    depends on the dog and whether or not they understand pointing

  14. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    Larping homosexual

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      How is he larping? cats belong in nutribullets

  15. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yeah. I have trained all my dogs to know pointing as a generic "over there" that changes based on context, since dogs also understand context. A point can mean "your food is there" or "jump up there" or "move over there" or "stay there" or "that thing is yours now" all depending on the situation at the time.
    I started doing this without even thinking about it when I was still a kid, so it has always seemed to me like a very natural way to communicate between human and dog.

  16. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yes, they may not get what you want them to do, but they understand pointing

  17. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    yes unlike cats

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Cats understand pointing, they just think frick you I'll do what I want.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Cats understand pointing, they just think frick you I'll do what I want.

        easily disproven by trying to point at a cat treat. They will lick your finger every time because they don't understand pointing and think you're holding it.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Maybe your cat is moronic, mine gets it without failure.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          I point my cats at food and treats and they find it just fine.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Cats have poor vision up close

  18. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Yes. They do.
    /thread

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