Dogs Have No Sense of Time

Dogs have no sense of time. If we read this one time in the many dog books, we have read, we read it a dozen times. The books all claimed that dogs can't tell the difference between an hour, a day, or a week. When you are gone and return home, to the dog it could be an hour, a day, or a week. That is why they get so excited on your return. After about the third time we read it, Ken asked, "How do they know dogs have no sense of time? Did they interview a dog?"

I don't know if there is any truth in this statement. I do know that Emme and Rudy have some sense of time in our daily schedule and know when it should be meal times and know when it is time to go to bed. Can they tell the difference in amount of time? I don't know.

When we picked them up from the kennel yesterday, they were wild with excitement to get home. They were much more excited than they usually are if we take them with us to run errands to the post office and library and return home in 30 minutes. Yesterday they seemed to know that they had been gone a while and they were excited to get home again. They spent the day needing to be near us and each other. Rudy couldn't get enough of his lovies. He would lie on the rug for many minutes at a time loving up one lovie, only to be replaced with another one a few minutes later. Emme spent a considerable amount of time chewing on her bone. They were both "Velcro dogs" sticking close to one or the other of us all the time. Emme needed to be close to Rudy and would lie down near him and roll over on her back. I don't know if dogs have a sense of time, but I sure do. I thought of Emme a thousand times while we were on vacation and I was really glad to see her again yesterday morning. It is nice to have all four of us together again.