[yorkietalkjilly]

Dogs usually do very well in their own home on their own as they spend so much of their life at rest. They are genetically thought by some to be crepuscular and their natural tendency is to be more active at dawn and dusk and rest through much of the rest of the day but generations of domesticity and living hand-to-fist with humans has turned them more toward our diurnal lifestyle of activity during the day, resting at night. But it seems they resort to their old genetic tendency to rest during the day when we aren't home. Stray and wild dogs sure seem to be most active at dawn and dusk. Still, I wonder why my Tibbe gets the zoomies just before bedtime many nights of the week!!!

Still, when left alone in their own home and with little stimulation while we're gone, the smarter dogs just adjust to that situation and sleep, resting up for when their owners get home, things begin to percolate, food is brought out and life gets going. And most of them know within a matter of minutes when to expect us to walk in the door during the work week or even when we go shopping! They come to know about how long we routinely stay away. Anyone who's ever lived with a dog and had a working family member come home about the same time every day knows how a dog begins to anticipate the worker arriving or knows about how long Mommy stays away when she does the grocery shopping and runs errands.

I saw a TV special recently that showed that dogs' internal "clocks" that seemingly predict when the worker will be home might be based on the amount of our scent left in the home after we're gone out and how, after a few hours and our level of scent begins to wane, the animal internally calculates from experience, the time we return and our physical presence refreshes the level of our scent to the level he's come to associate with us being home.

To test one dog who got up and stood looking out the window about the same time every afternoon, day after day, just prior to his Daddy coming home from work, on the "test day", the man's wife waved one of his unwashed t-shirts through the air in the area of the resting dog to keep Daddy's level of scent in that room higher than it would have been just prior to his arrival home and, that day alone, the dog slept right through the time he usually stood up and watched out the window for Daddy to arrive home! Can't recall, but I think they said they repeated the test over and over and it worked the same every time but even if they didn't say it, knowing how studies work, you know they did. It sounds odd but our level of scent in the home could be an important indicator to our dogs who seem to know when to expect a worker home every day. No doubt they have other indicators such as the light coming through the window, ambient stimuli - sounds, scents, vibrations and other humans activities but seeing that dog sleeping right through his alert time on that day of testing really was amazing.

So, if I had a new dog I'd leave my old t-shirts or sweats nearby him when I left along with his kong toys and things and not worry too much as he's going to mostly rest while you are away and bowl you over at the end of the day when your tired after work and he's all rested up and rearing to go!