Pet Forum / Miscellaneous / Animal Health / November 2005

Was wondering what the conventional wisdom is as far as dogs being able to
recognize 2d representations of 3d objects (like on the television). I'd
always thought that they couldn't but I've been doubting that for some time
since I got Erwin. Erwin definitely watches the television with us. He likes
to sit in the seat where he can have his head on someone's lap, as well as
see the television. He gets rather bored if you try to put him anywhere
else. This isn't really conclusive evidence that he associates it with
anything more than just pretty lights (after all, he's obsessed with the
laser pointer).

Anyways, just today we had an incident that has led me to beleive that Erwin
can and does recognize the images on the TV as though they were 3d objects
(details follow). Is this at all unusual? Or was I just misinformed all the
time (come to think of it, I may have gotten that particular 'fact' from
watching "Turner and Hooch" back when it was new...) .

So here is the situation:

Today, Devin (my little brother) Erwin and I were watching Stewart Little 2
on the television. Through the first part, Erwin just kind of dozed off, and
slept quite peacefully. When he'd sufficiently relaxed, he woke up and
started watching the TV. This happened to be right when a rather realistic
talking cat came on the screen. He started growling at the cat on the
screen. When the talking cat was no longer on the screen he calmed down a
bit, when the cat came back, he started growling again. This was with two
seperate talking cats, that he had the same reaction. No reaction to people
on the screen, or talking 'mice'.
We turned off the TV, and he calmed right down.

I don't *think* there is any other reasonable explanation for this.

Dale