These Games Will Tell You Exactly What Your Dog Is Thinking
Dognition games can help you better understand your pet.
Photo: D.L. Anderson
If you’ve always wondered what your Labradoodle’s thinking, Dognition can now get you closer to finding out. The company, cofounded by cognitive neuroscientist Brian Hare, PhD, lets you tap into your pet’s personality with games from dognition.com. We fetched more details from Hare.
On Guiding Dogs
"Canines have five types of cognition: empathy, communication, inferential reasoning, working memory, and cunning. Our exercises evaluate all five. They involve you doing things like yawning in front of your pet or hiding a treat. When you’re done, we send you a report that details how your pup performed compared with others."
On Boning Up
"Learning how your dog sees the world has real implications for how he fits into your family. When I played the games with my rescue, Tasmania, I found out I was wrong about him in some big ways. I’d thought he wasn’t particularly empathic, but he is! I also learned he isn’t reliant on working memory. In other words, he’s sensitive and forgetful—which is good to know when I’m trying to discipline him."
On Pet Proceeds
"Dognition is a citizen science company, which means your pup’s data become a resource for researchers all over the world. It’s helping us develop tools to assess when dogs start to show signs of cognitive decline, and to study pain in animals by examining whether canines with arthritis perform differently on our tests. It’s also being used to ask questions like, Are there real cognitive differences among breeds? But one question we’ll never be able to answer is whether dogs are smarter than cats. That’s like asking if a hammer is a better tool than a screwdriver!"
Want more stories like this delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the Oprah.com Inspiration Newsletter!
On Guiding Dogs
"Canines have five types of cognition: empathy, communication, inferential reasoning, working memory, and cunning. Our exercises evaluate all five. They involve you doing things like yawning in front of your pet or hiding a treat. When you’re done, we send you a report that details how your pup performed compared with others."
On Boning Up
"Learning how your dog sees the world has real implications for how he fits into your family. When I played the games with my rescue, Tasmania, I found out I was wrong about him in some big ways. I’d thought he wasn’t particularly empathic, but he is! I also learned he isn’t reliant on working memory. In other words, he’s sensitive and forgetful—which is good to know when I’m trying to discipline him."
On Pet Proceeds
"Dognition is a citizen science company, which means your pup’s data become a resource for researchers all over the world. It’s helping us develop tools to assess when dogs start to show signs of cognitive decline, and to study pain in animals by examining whether canines with arthritis perform differently on our tests. It’s also being used to ask questions like, Are there real cognitive differences among breeds? But one question we’ll never be able to answer is whether dogs are smarter than cats. That’s like asking if a hammer is a better tool than a screwdriver!"
Want more stories like this delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the Oprah.com Inspiration Newsletter!
NEXT STORY
