Posted on 10/07/2012 6:11:02 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Dogs love car rides because they feel as if they are on a hunt. For example, cats never love car rides, or at best merely learn to endure them because when riding in a car cats don’t feel as if they are on a hunt. Why when in a moving car, can a dog feel as if it’s on a hunt whereas a cat doesn’t? Because dogs evolved to hunt by feel whereas cats hunt by instinct.
This will make more sense once one understands what hunting for an animal feels like. In our mind hunting means stalking, chasing and killing prey in order to obtain food, but in the animal mind a hunt is a state of “emotional suspension” whereby the predator when highly aroused, projects its “self” (i.e. its “emotional center-of-gravity) into its prey—and if—the prey acts like prey, then whatever the prey does the predator mirrors by feel the equal and opposite movement in order to counterbalance it. This in fact is how a predator “knows” how to catch its prey. (Best visual example of this is watching a cheetah take down a gazelle on a nature show wherein the cat by virtue of “being in drive” has projected an emotional calculus onto its movements so that at some point in time its own trajectory intersects with the gazelle at a common point in time and space.) And in such a state an animal feels weightless. Feeling weightless is what hunting feels like.
Cars are perfect vehicles for arousing an emotional state of suspension because the feeling of weightlessness can be induced by the phenomenon of physical synchronization. (This allows wolves to pool their collective energies onto a midpoint so that as a group they can take on prey animals in a coordinated manner that they cannot physically overpower even when in numbers.) Because a dog projects its “self” into the forms of things toward which it is strongly attracted or bonded with (for example people in a car), and because everyone in the car is 1) facing the same direction, 2) swaying in unison to the dips and bends in the road, 3) accelerating and de-accelerating perfectly in sync with the momentum and change of direction of the car, the dog is induced by all this synchronized physical movement into a state of emotional suspension and therefore the dog feels as if it is part of a group that is on the hunt. The more the car moves and the faster stimuli whiz by the more the physical energy is channeled into the feeling of suspension. The question now becomes how much sensory input, i.e. energy, can this feeling of weightlessness sustain and here we can see different temperaments of dogs begin to precipitate out so that they respond in various things.
For some dogs the feeling can grow so strong that when their emotional or carrying capacity is exceeded, they strike at things going past. This is when the prey instinct, an automatic, hardwired reflex, takes over in order to make the kill. (We need to remember that it’s only in our mind that a dog on a sidewalk is motionless relative to the dog in the moving car. For the dog in the car, the dog on the sidewalk is moving 30, 40 or 50 mph and that’s a pretty fast prey animal.) Some dogs have a higher carrying capacity and can retain a feeling of arousal for the potential moment in the future when they will be let out of the car so as to express the internalized energy in a concrete way, such as running around, rolling on the ground, playing Frisbee or going for a hike with their owner.
Cats on the other hand (as well as all other animals) have a far more limited emotional capacity than dogs and so the phenomenon of induction by virtue of physical synchronization is not as likely to get going. For example, a lower emotional capacity is why when cats have their bellies rubbed and they start to get excited, they quickly hit an overload circuit breaker and then the reflex to claw and pounce comes up and, since the owner’s hand as prey-isn’t-acting-like-prey, they have to run away. Whereas dogs of course can have their bellies rubbed all day and simply wallow in higher and higher states of ecstasy, i.e. weightlessness.
I always wished I'd enjoyed my ride to “work” as much as he did.......R.I.P. buddy!
dogs like the various smells
When my dog was a puppy I started every trip with a drive thru the fast food window for french fries. Nine years later, we get in the car, we get french fries, dog settles down immediately.
About vets...we barter professional services with our vets. Of course, we never make any money off that relationship, but the pets are well cared for.
We were keeping a dog for a friend. The demented thing went and tore a board off the fence and they both went and played in traffic. Of course our dog was hit and nearly died. The relationship with the vet started then.
The dog always thinks he’s driving.
Sometimes he *knows* he’s driving.
Nope Nope Nope- You are all wrong-’before cars were even invented, my grandfather used to take his buckboard pulled by his favorite horse Nellie, with his dog, down into town to get a drink. Since he wasn`t sober, someone would put the reins on the front seat [only seat] while my grandfather slept it off in the back of the buckboard. His dog would sit on the seat with the reins in his teeth and Nellie would trot back home and unceremoniously stop at front porch where my grandmother would promptly curse at the horse since my grandfather couldn`t hear anything anyway... True story. Dogs do not to ride - they want to DRIVE.
My doggies ready for the daily ride.
They make me smile!
Humans have newspapers and magazines(tv internet radio) to figure out whats going on. Dogs(canids) have smell as the magazine.
Driving a dog around is like a 5mb/sec download.
Our grandparents must have been neighbors! Grandpa always told us this story about seeing a dog driving a buckboard! Then, he’d start singing these old Norwegian sailor songs and Grandma would hide his whiskey bottle and then Grandpa would tell us the story about the cow pushing a wheelbarrow and then he’d fall off his chair. Kids nowadays just don’t get that kind of memory-maker.
A couple of years ago I was blessed (or cursed, lol) with six “dumped off” dogs at the same time. And, I loved them everyone.
I live in a rural area and would put them in the back of the pickup and give them a very slow cautious ride to the lake for a daily swim.
There was one house with new residents that I didn’t know. But, I was in the grocery store one day a a little girl shouted..”Look, Mom, it’s the dog catcher!” It turned out to be the new resident’s daughter, lol.
Toonces...lol :)
The FIRST time our dog (a lab/aussie mix) got a car ride was, I think, when I took her home from the Humane Society. She was 2, and she HATED it. She hated car rides....until, she figured out, good things happen in the car....especially food wise! People at the bank, at the coffee shop - any drive thru. Plus, we share food. Now she LOVES rides, in fact, she’s 12, and spends a LOT of time in our garage IN the Pick UP....waiting for a ride. (It’s like her dog house.) She is a very QUIET rider, however. Unlike a cocker spaniel we had who would run and chase cars IN OUR litte HONDA as we drove.
We got our Blue Heeler at an animal shelter. We put her in a small station wagon and got on the highway. Every so often we could hear her thud after jumping into the side window, followed by a yelp from the surprise of hitting the glass. It turned out that she is a dedicated car chaser, and she was trying to lunge into passing cars.I have to keep her on a short leash (or a crate) when we go for a drive.
Before my lab died, if I yelled “wanna go for a ride, Angus”. It sounded like a herd of Bison running across hardwood floor. He would dutiful sit in the passenger, except after the vet, when he would ignore me for a day or two.
You know how dogs love to chase cars.
Today I had my car chased by a Chihuahua.
I really think he thought that he was a whole lot bigger than he was.
“Need to take him through the drive-thru (fast food) IMMEDIATLY after, and buy him a burger or something, ( I gave my dog a sausage and egg burrito off the dollar menu, and let him eat it in the car )”
Great idea!! My dog LOVES Egg McMuffins and Cheeseburgers and eats them all the time (sorry Mayor Bloomberg). He would just love that.
“They are not stupid, not as smart as pigs, but able to figure out how to get a job from the master predator that affords some security and food.”
Of course. That reminds me of an article that asked if cats really like rolling on their backs and getting their tummies rubbed. The answer: Sure they do, if that means a steady supply of food.
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