Could a Dog Know I’d Recently Been Attacked by Another Dog?

Source: Laura Alessia/Pexels.

For decades I've been interested in "all things dog," focusing on their cognitive, emotional, and moral lives, and how they sense their world. Anyone who's spent even a short amount of time around dogs knows they love to snort and sniff just about everything, including odors we find utterly repulsive. We all know dogs like to stick their noses everywhere, and they often snort when they’re doing it or shortly thereafter.

Dogs are hyper-osmic. They basically "see" through their nostrils. Their supersensitive noses are legendary, so much so that their approach to life could be summed up as “sniff first, ask questions later.” When they can, dogs will spend upwards of 33% of their time with their noses pinned to the ground, and we also know they'll freely put their noses into body parts, including groins and butts, that we think are disgusting and totally human inappropriate, but totally dog appropriate.

After being attacked by a dog, a dog who knew me uncharacteristically avoided me when we got together

I'm an ethologist who studies various animals and watch them very carefully. The question at hand here is could a dog know I had had a previous stressful encounter with another dog? I wanted to consider their point of view given their unique sensory capacities.

Yesterday, I was attacked by a dog while out on a gravel bike ride north of Boulder (Colorado). My friend Andy and I had stopped to guide a stray pig back into the field where she lives and as she nonchalantly ambled through an open gate without a care in the world a dog shot out and lunged at me. Instantaneously, he had my entire right calf in his large mouth and when I yelled as he bit down he released his grasp and ran back into the field. I was shaken but okay, just some scratches and a small puncture wound. I continued my ride and kept thinking about what had happened. My friends joked that the dog let go of my calf because he knew I wrote books about them!

About a two hours after being attacked as I was riding home, I saw a dog who knows me, Sharona, and her human Gabrielle. I told Gabrielle what had happened to me. When Sharona sees me, she always runs up to me with her tail wagging wildly and greets me with a her body wiggling all over the place. This time, she stopped about a foot away from me, lowered her tail, and cocked her head from side-to-side and clearly wasn't sure about what was happening. Neither Gabrielle nor I had any idea. I asked Gabrielle if Sharona was okay and she told me she was just fine. I told her what had happened and immediately she asked, "I wonder if she knows something is off, might she know something stressful happened to you?" A few minutes later Sharona approached me and was her usual self.

I'm not claiming Sharona knew I had been attacked by another dog, but clearly there was something amiss. Gabrielle and I got into a long conversation and wondered whether Sharona had picked up some cue from me, most likely with her wonderful and highly sensitive nose. Was I putting out some sort of stress odor (a pheromone), was she picking up some sort of odor from the dog who had launched on me. was she smelling the blood on my leg, or was it some combination of these different odors? Ethologists call such a potpourri a composite signal. I'm sure at some level I was still stressed from the frightening experience that had happened around two hours before. Research shows dogs can smell when we're stressed. It's also possible that my body language added to this complex cocktail of signals that alerted Sharona that something was different and wasn't right.

I had to get home to clean my wounds and as I was riding there I realized that I was still very sweaty from the ride and I kept thinking about Sharona's totally uncharacteristic response to me when I crossed her path along with Gabrielle's incredulity. Was there an odor on my body or on my cycling clothes? What was Sharona thinking? Was she puzzled about picking up some novel odor?

What was going on in Sharona's highly evolved nose and mind?

I called Gabrielle who knows a lot about dog behavior and she encouraged me to write this up as a thought experiment, both of us hoping someone would do a more formal study, of course not allowing anyone to get bitten. After I told the story to some others including someone who studies dogs and a dog trainer, they agreed it was a story worth telling . Somehow, Sharona put 2 + 2 together and got 4. Would Sharona know if I had had a playful or enjoyable experience? Did she detect a novel and stressful odor?

Where to from here?

Being able to know about something that had happened to another individual would be adaptive for wild canids and other animals. It also could be adaptive and advantageous for a dog to know this as well concerning a human or other dog with whom they interact.

Years ago I did what has come to be called the "yellow snow" study in which I moved my dog's urine from one place to another to see if he could recognize his own pee. I learned that he could. After my study was published, other researchers picked up on what I did and conducted more formal, systematic studies and essentially came to the same conclusion.

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In a similar vein, I hope someone will be able to shed more light on this thought experiment about what was likely going on in Sharona's nose and brain. It wouldn't be all that surprising that she knew more than we thought she did but I simply cannot figure out what it was or how she did it. I hope the story I offer here, similar to the "yellow snow" study, generates more formal research because there always are surprises about what dogs and other animals know and feel in their sensory cosmos.

When we learn more about a dog's point of view about matters at hand, it'll be a win-win for all.