Many thanks for the detailed info...
> Many thanks for the detailed info...
Hey you are very welcome! I hope it helped explain things -- and maybe gave you a new trick to try, with the aftershave memory enhancement. (I'd be interested in knowing whether it works for you).
Lots of people own dogs, and are content to have them as fairly happy, easygoing friendly pets because, for the most part, if you treat them decently they will give you unconditional love and companionship in return. That is making use of a very valuable -- if limited -- one of many of a dog's talents: they need to belong to a "pack" and to be valued. Just like people do, but even moreso.
(Dogs invented Teamwork and had their social sciences and religions down to a very fine art -- long before humans fell out of the trees and walked upright!)
Most folk stop right there, and assume that the dog's capabilities do, to. They liken dogs to "cats" -- something to be stroked and fed, a companion pet of extremely limited scope, intelligence, and usefulness.
Dogs actually have so much more talent than mere companionship, and for most dogs these talents are latent.
We marvel at "seeing eye" dogs (hey! That Dog can actually "see" not to cross the road in front of a taxi! Amazing!!! How *does* he do it???) and we marvel at bomb-sniffing dogs and bloodhounds that can find escaped prisoners, and rescue dogs that can find victims of avalanche...
And we marvel at the "bravery" and "obedience" of Police dogs.
Yet there is no mysteries here: it is all in a day's work for a dog. All these talents come naturally because dogs (all dogs, but GSDs and a few other breeds in particular) are extremely clever, extremely well-adapted, and extremely well-equipped to do very complex tasks. And they have a very sophisticated social "society" in which they operate...
...sometimes humans operate in that same society, if they know how and make the effort.
The more I work with dogs, the more I realize how smart and sophisticated they actually are. Most people choose not to, and instead try to fit their dog into "human" norms. Dogs will try to adapt to human ways because adapting is something they also do well.
But dogs think differently to us: similarly, yet not the same. They have completely different drivers.