Dog owners are lucky because their pets can understand them, humans can make a variety of commands, and dogs know what to do. Are dogs this intuitive and part of their nature, or do they need dog training? Does the owner need to drill in the command to be followed, or is it natural?
To answer whether it normal and instinctive for dogs to follow people. A study by frontiers in psychology conducted a study to see if dogs can read pointing gestures by people.
Dogs learn by observing people and strays will get along with total strangers as revealed by a study. Analysis of results from actual testing was about 80% of the stray dogs, follow direction via a gesture to the selected spot. Also, these strays were not trained as well and still got the direction right. Subtle gestural communication can be part of how stray dogs act, especially without an owner to get something in return.
From 10,000 to 15,000 years, both man and dog have been co-existing as a hunter pair and owner-pet relationship. In terms of domesticity, dogs have been living normally in a human environment for a long time. It is this co-relationship that led to inter-species communication, in which dogs learned to act around humans. Knowing the commands, and gestures as prompted by voice command makes the difference.
There are several layers to be answered whether a stray dog can understand humans as is, or is the training given to it? Do dogs understand a signal and hand gesture by humans, intuitively and without the need to recognize the person making the gestures. Tests should be devised to see how stray dogs react to human gestures.
Stray dogs are a fixture in many cities, and especially developing countries, that are not keen on catching them. Stray dogs might be a bit wild in behavior, most are untrained when they react to humans too. If there a streak of wildness in a dog, then it will conflict with people, wild behavior will be curbed. More than often, bad relations between people and stray dogs can decay fast into trouble, there should be a solution to it.
Researchers led by Dr. Anindita Bhadra executed a study to learn more about stray dogs in several cities. There conducted experiments on solitary stray dogs, with two food bowls that they pointed to. This is to see if the stray can understand the gesture made. Made note whether the stray followed or not, and how the dog felt during the test in normal conditions.
These were the base of the observation on the experiment conducted by the researchers.
a. Half the dogs did not follow the gesture, but it might be bad encounters with humans as the cause. Those who went to the bowls were less anxious and friendlier, went to the bowl about 80% going the bowl pointed at. Stray dogs can read gestures with no problem.
b. Stray dogs can read humans, whether recognized or not and decide based on it. They are smart and have the ability to abstract.
c. Whether strays or with an owner can learn, with or without training. Next studies should be what their personalities are.
Read: Stray Dogs Understand Human Cues: Communication Between Humans and Dogs Transcends Training
