A new study reveals a novel way of dog training through imitation
A well-trained dog is a happy dog … and a happy dog makes for a happy owner. New research shows that dogs can “just do it”—learning actions from their owners by imitating.
The authors conclude: “Dogs have a mental representation of the human demonstration … the ability to imitate a novel action after a delay without previous practice suggests the presence of a specific type of long-term memory in dogs.”
Living in human social groups has made domesticated dogs particularly keen on relying on human communication cues. That means that dogs can learn, retain, and replay actions taught by humans after a short delay. This is all reported by Claudia Fugazza and Adám Miklósi and published in Springer’s journal Animal Cognition. They ran tests with dogs and their owners where the dog was taught a behavior to imitate, removed from the situation, and then could replicate the behavior after a break.
This suggests that the human-dog relationship greatly affects a dog’s learning ability and training readiness. To further your relationship with your own dog, try a few training exercises. You’ll both be happier for it!
Credit: Animal Cognition/Claudia Fugazza