Do Dogs Intentionally Use Their Body Language to Communicate?

Oh, and yes, dogs communicate with body language. When Shadow wants to go outside, he looks at the leash and harness, the door, then me, in that order.

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Oh, and yes, dogs communicate with body language. When Shadow wants to go outside, he looks at the leash and harness, the door, then me, in that order.

Not even a fool could disagree. Ask David Hume:

"Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant."

Thanks, Burl. The colloquial expression is "when you hear hoofbeats, you expect horses, not zebras."

The practicality of least hypothesis. The easiest, simplest explanation is often the most correct. Of course, not always. Maybe one in ten times, it is a zebra. But exceptions often reinforce the main rule or maxim.

A dog looks at the leash and harness, the door, and then at you. You, the human, (in this case, me) have a flash of insight and notice that these objects have to do with being outside. So, you get up and go to the back door and the dog happily goes out to pee, bark a few times, sniff some scents, whatever. Is that just a mindless automaton that stumbled upon a sequence that you, the human, interpreted in our dastardly "anthropromorphic" way, as a communication to go outside, when no such thing was happening? Okay. As we say here in Texas, even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while. But the dog does it again the next time he wants to go out. And again. And again.

So, you (in this case, me), the human decide this is the dog's communication to go outside. Simple and easy answer. And someone comes along to say that the dog was not communication because he was not speaking in a southern accent of american english and that, instead, it is a tension to need to go outside and the release of peeing and whatever. That's okay for the blind hog in one instance. But what about the repetition of the "communication"?

 The colloquial expression is "when you hear hoofbeats, you expect horses, not zebras."

Priceless wit there!  It sums up David Hume beautifully!