How do we explain "dog treks?"

[BenBurch]

How does one explain the anomalous and sometimes quite long cross-country treks dogs make to re-unite with their owners?

See this video; http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4633822

And in my past is a similar story.

We owned an old rural tavern when I was a child. We had a dachshund named Willie that we gave away because we could not house break him - we had him for 4 months total. The couple who took him lived 35 miles away to the north with a lot of woods and fields and streams and roads and railroads in between where we were and where they were.

Well, about 3 years later, my Mom was closing the tavern one night when there was a blizzard going on, and as she was taking the trash out, she heard a dog whimpering in the darkness next to the steps. She turned on the light and there was a small dachshund caked in ice and snow at the foot of the steps. She brought him in and got towels and dried him off and called us all out of bed and we all were in the kitchen looking at this dog. My Mom said "there is something familiar about this dog!" Then my grandmother said "Willie?" and he went nuts. It was Willie. And somehow he had gotten to us in the dead of winter in the teeth of a blizzard.

Of course we couldn't send him away again. We took him to a specialist who removed his prostate and his housebreaking problem ended, and he lived with us for the rest of a fairly long life.

So;

How do they do this? Smell? Infrasound? Magnetic sense analogous to birds? How?

Is there some rational explanation?

Thanks?

-Ben

[TobiasTheViking]

- The new owners didn't want him anymore and dumped him in front of the tavern.

- Coincidence(think of how many dogs that run away and don't reunite with their prior owners).

- The new owners sold him to someone in your town, and he was checking out the town.

[BenBurch]

Originally Posted by TobiasTheCommie

- The new owners didn't want him anymore and dumped him in front of the tavern.

We though of that; But we saw them a month later and they were amazed that he had found us. He had been gone about a month from their place when he showed up.

Quote:

- Coincidence(think of how many dogs that run away and don't reunite with their prior owners).

Always possible.

[monoman]

I think Randi has a similar, personal, story and explanation but someone with a better memory than me will have to recount it.

[plumjam]

Wow, interesting story.
And 35 miles is much further for a dachshund than a border collie.
I'm wondering whether he could smell something on the wind, miles away, that was distinctive about where you lived. A particular farm, or a brewery, or something.

(there was a story a while back, in the news, about a dog whose owner lost him while at a regular train journey away from home.. the dog caught the train home and got off at the right stop )

[Pup]

Back in the days when hogs were allowed to run loose like dogs, there were hog stories.

Quote:

In the spring of 1806 or 1807, David Brownlee settled in Coitsville [Ohio]; he hailed from Washington county, Pa. In emigrating he brought with him a sow and a half a dozen pigs, five or six months old... These swine were in their stye every evening, and regularly at their troughs at feeding times, and things for a time went on very pleasantly with the porker family...

Now one evening in early summer the pigsty was empty; none of its occupants put in an appearance. Not much solicitude was felt about their absence for a few days, then a dilligent search was made for their whereabouts, but they could not be found and were given up for lost.

After a time, Mr. Brownlee went back to Washington County to harvest his wheat that he had left growing. To his great surprise he found all his swine, with an addition of eight or ten pigs to the family, not one missing. (From Historical Collections of Ohio by Henry Howe, 1896)

Seems like either a certain small proportion of domestic animals who can range freely will do "treks." Or telling the classic animal trek story is satisfying enough that it's become part of human mythology.

[LibraryLady]

And yet another reason budgies are superior.

[Modified]

My parents had a cat that was lost about a hundred miles from home and found his way back. It took him nine months though, so he might have wandered around for thousands of miles before he came upon familiar territory. When he was lost he weighed about 22 pounds. When he got back, he was a rather sickly 8 pounds and had a broken tail. He was a lot friendlier after that though.

[quarky]

Sea turtles do some fairly amazing navigation; not sure if science knows how they manage such journeys to the nesting grounds, but isn't it possible that (some) mammals would have the same navigational tools?

[Gevaudan]

Wolves have territories ranging from 50 to one thousand square miles, and wild small felines can have terrotories up to 30 miles. Whatever pets are using to do treks, it's probably an ability they inherited from their wild ancestors.

[I Ratant]

I saw a cat drag his sorry butt back home after being forcibly removed at least 30 miles across some very inhospitable country.
Took it several weeks, but he came back in one (skinnier) piece.

[Jimbo07]

Originally Posted by Gevaudan

Whatever pets are using to do treks,

charts, gyrocompass, binoculars...

[EHocking]

Quote:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gevaudan
Whatever pets are using to do treks,

charts, gyrocompass, binoculars...

GPS - Gatto Positioning System

or

CatNav

[blutoski]

Originally Posted by monoman

I think Randi has a similar, personal, story and explanation but someone with a better memory than me will have to recount it.

It was a cat that they had to abandon at a rented vacation cabin. It reappeared on their kitchen table two weeks later.

The explanation is that their neighbours rented the same cabin immediately after, adopted the cat, took it home, and the cat walked back to Randi's house.


One of the other explanations for some pet trek stories is that an abandoned animal was replaced with a similar one and the storyteller was just too young and too emotional to notice.

[portlandatheist]

One thing I've noticed with my dog, and this is obviously subjective, but she always wakes up from a dead sleep when we are close to home. It doesn't matter if we've been away for hours or weeks. It could be the smell, the combination of turns after leaving the highway, who knows, but she always seems to know that we are close to home. It never ceases to amaze me.

[Skeptic Ginger]

The Straight Dope isn't too helpful but does have a couple interesting tidbits on bird navigation.

And this Pet Place article kind of sums it up, it hasn't been properly researched.

[Gevaudan]

Originally Posted by portlandatheist

One thing I've noticed with my dog, and this is obviously subjective, but she always wakes up from a dead sleep when we are close to home. It doesn't matter if we've been away for hours or weeks. It could be the smell, the combination of turns after leaving the highway, who knows, but she always seems to know that we are close to home. It never ceases to amaze me.

My dog Cookie used to do the same. She would appear to be dead to world while we were driving but would always wake up as we entered my parent's neighborhood (she liked to play with their dogs), the neighborhood where the dog park was or the shopping center with Petsmart.

I thought perhaps she was timing the distance, but no, she did it even if we were held up by an accident or a stop at the gas station. Then I thought perhaps she was figuring out where we were by scent (I assumed she could detect scent even with the windows rolled up).

You know what it turned out to be? She was waking up and getting excited when I started to make a lot of turns.

I figured it out one day on the way to my parent's house and had to take a different route because an accident blocked the road. The detour involved driving through a residential area, and even though were way out in the middle of nowhere in a town we'd never been before, Cookie started looking out the window and making excited noises, clearly thinking it was playtime with mom's dogs. I tested the idea a few times by driving to different places where I normally didn't take her, like the bank, and sure enough it was the same performance every time. It wasn't simply that we were in a new area - if I had to pull off to the side of the road and take a leak along a stretch of country highway, she wouldn't stir.

[Dogdoctor]

I think the majority are either coincidence or mistaken identity. That particular one would just be a coincidence.

[fishbob]

How do we explain "dog treks?"

Ven de dog is valking tru de mud or de snow.

[Rolfe]

I think it's a combination of things. Stuff like Randi's story, where for some reason the animal was transported back into its familiar territory. And mistaken (or deliberately deceived) identity. And also some genuinely impressive long-distance returns, which I suspect are to do with the animal covering a lot of distance more or less at random, and fortuitously straying back into familiar territory. The spectacularly good sense of smell probably helps with this part.

What I don't think exists is a "homing instinct" which allows these animals to set off in the right direction and deliberately navigate home from a long distance outside their familiar territory. Otherwise there would be a lot more such examples, and a lot fewer lost dog (or cat) posters.

[OT]
I thought my pony had quite a good sense of direction. Once or twice when I was lost, he pulled deliberately to turn in the direction I later discovered was the way we should have gone. But then one day I took him on quite a long round trip from his then base. We returned to base along a ride we often took as a short out-and-back trip. However, it was blindingly obvious he didn't know where he was. He clearly thought we'd been out too long, was reluctant to go forward (even though he was facing home!), and kept trying to turn round. When I dropped my OS map and had to turn back to retrieve it, he set off back up the track (away from home) with great goodwill, and made an unholy fuss when I insisted on going "on" (as he clearly perceived it) after I'd remounted. All this on a section of track I'd have sworn he knew well. I didn't really notice the exact moment when the penny finally dropped in his little equine brain, but at least he didn't try to flee the stable yard when we reached it a few minutes later.

So much for the good sense of direction!
[/OT]

Rolfe.

[aggle-rithm]

Originally Posted by Gevaudan

Wolves have territories ranging from 50 to one thousand square miles, and wild small felines can have terrotories up to 30 miles. Whatever pets are using to do treks, it's probably an ability they inherited from their wild ancestors.

Packs of wolves or wild dogs can cover a huge distance while chasing their prey. I'm sure they would have gone extinct a long time ago if they finished such a chase, then looked around and said, "Where the hell are we?" They have to get the meat back home to the cubs, so by necessity they must be able to unconsciously map the terrain they're crossing.

It's funny they can do this, but lack the working memory necessary to unwind their leash from around a tree.

[Ladewig]

Originally Posted by TobiasTheCommie

- The new owners didn't want him anymore and dumped him in front of the tavern.

Originally Posted by BenBurch

We though of that; But we saw them a month later and they were amazed that he had found us. He had been gone about a month from their place when he showed up.

But isn't that what you would expect heartless people who dumped a dog they didn't want to say?

[Jimbo07]

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

so by necessity they must be able to unconsciously map the terrain they're crossing.

Of course, humans can landmark, and even lacking sophisticated tools can come up with some way of finding paths. We don't do it on the basis of scent, but we also have other mental tools.

[IllegalArgument]

Surviver bias, we only hear about the dogs succeeded.

There is no way to quantify how many dogs didn't find their way back home. We are only hearing about the possibly lucky few that made it.

Not to say that the dogs that didn't make it home ended up badly, may have simply found a good home in their travels.

At least that's what I like to think.

[Silly Green Monkey]

And perhaps even, a good home that had just lost a very similar dog....

[sphenisc]

Originally Posted by EHocking

GPS - Gatto Positioning System

or

CatNav

TomTom?

[Gevaudan]

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

Packs of wolves or wild dogs can cover a huge distance while chasing their prey. I'm sure they would have gone extinct a long time ago if they finished such a chase, then looked around and said, "Where the hell are we?" They have to get the meat back home to the cubs, so by necessity they must be able to unconsciously map the terrain they're crossing.

It's funny they can do this, but lack the working memory necessary to unwind their leash from around a tree.

Of course, there's no situation in nature analogous to being tied up to a tree, so there was never a chance for that to be programmed into their brains. Good point, though. If the dog was driven in a car, then they'd probably be automatically making a mental map that would aid them in getting home. I seriously doubt anyone will ever, say, take a bunch of dogs out to random locations, radio collar them, then turn them loose to see if they can get home so we could get a firm answer on this. It would be interesting to see if certain breeds of dogs had better "homing instincts" than others, for example.

Have to admit, I got a hell of a laugh at the mental picture of a pack of wolves suddenly realizing they had no idea where they were.

[Dogdoctor]

On the other hand lots of lost dogs/cats don't do anything remarkable. Lost wolves might just have to abandon their cubs and start all over. Nature is not a benign happy land of freedom, many of them die.

[casebro]

Originally Posted by Gevaudan

... I seriously doubt anyone will ever, say, take a bunch of dogs out to random locations, radio collar them, then turn them loose to see if they can get home so we could get a firm answer on this.

Have to admit, I got a hell of a laugh at the mental picture of a pack of wolves suddenly realizing they had no idea where they were.

Re the radio collaring. By now, there must haver been enough critters collared to study their paths. Or maybe only the latest ones, with GPS? My boat system of 15 years ago made a line on it's chart showing where I had been. The newer systems ought to be able to show whether the wolves have to re-trace their steps to get back to the den, or can navigate cross country. Hmmm. Best chance to see would be GPS collared transplants.

I'll bet the data in in some wildlife biologist's lap top, needing interpretation...

[Jimbo07]

Originally Posted by Silly Green Monkey

And perhaps even, a good home that had just lost a very similar dog....

That would be too good a coincidence. Our border collie may look like a border collie, but the white stripe up her face and the pattern of her mane (is that correct on dogs?) is certainly distinct from her brother's.

[kedo1981]

OH! OH! OH OH OH OH pick me, pick me;

How about a hamster trek

Many yarns ago when we lived in our little rental house, we had a pair of hamsters, Jimmy and Shelly, they had couple of litters and Shelly would always eat them.
No matter what you did, what the conditions were, she would eat them.
Well one night I got a little feed up with it and I chucked the little cannibal out the door.
This rental house had no air conditioning so in the summer it was very hot.
So one summer night there was a cooling rain and we opened the windows and doors to let the breeze blow in. This was a good 4 months after I tossed out the rodent, and what do you know, here she comes waddling in across the kitchen just like she owned the place. A bit dirty but no worse than she was before, Jimmy of course was happy to see her, they screwed like there was no tomorrow. Needless to say they had a litter right away, and she of course ate them. The end

[BenBurch]

Originally Posted by Jimbo07

That would be too good a coincidence. Our border collie may look like a border collie, but the white stripe up her face and the pattern of her mane (is that correct on dogs?) is certainly distinct from her brother's.

And Willie came back with his peeing problem, and he almost always had an erection... It was the same dog.

Good thing the Prostate removal helped him.

[ashirley]

Originally Posted by portlandatheist

One thing I've noticed with my dog, and this is obviously subjective, but she always wakes up from a dead sleep when we are close to home. It doesn't matter if we've been away for hours or weeks. It could be the smell, the combination of turns after leaving the highway, who knows, but she always seems to know that we are close to home. It never ceases to amaze me.

As a child, I used to do this as well. I always assumed it was the particular combination of turns from the main road to our house, but hindsight suggests that it was just the fact that there were a lot of turns compared to the motorway.

[casebro]

Originally Posted by kedo1981

OH! OH! OH OH OH OH pick me, pick me;

How about a hamster trek

Many yarns ago when we lived in our little rental house, we had a pair of hamsters, Jimmy and Shelly, they had couple of litters and Shelly would always eat them.
No matter what you did, what the conditions were, she would eat them.
Well one night I got a little feed up with it and I chucked the little cannibal out the door.
This rental house had no air conditioning so in the summer it was very hot.
So one summer night there was a cooling rain and we opened the windows and doors to let the breeze blow in. This was a good 4 months after I tossed out the rodent, and what do you know, here she comes waddling in across the kitchen just like she owned the place. A bit dirty but no worse than she was before, Jimmy of course was happy to see her, they screwed like there was no tomorrow. Needless to say they had a litter right away, and she of course ate them. The end

Some trek. From out the door to beck in the door over four months. But I guess hamsters are not bred for speed.

P.S.: Shelly needed more meat in her diet. Rats are omnivores.

[bokonon]

Originally Posted by blutoski

One of the other explanations for some pet trek stories is that an abandoned animal was replaced with a similar one and the storyteller was just too young and too emotional to notice.

That one happened to me. My wife brought home a cat that someone at her work who lived on the other side of town needed to get rid of. It was a pure black cat, with one distinguishing feature: his tail didn't work. It just hung limp. Our neighbors were ecstatic that their children's long-lost pet had found its way home. I asked them if their long-lost pet had a functioning tail, and it was clear from their hemming and hawing that it did. Since we already had two cats of our own, we were happy to let them adopt it anyway; I don't know what they told the kids.

[robinson]

While gone, the cat injured it's tail.

[Ixion]

I suppose it is possible too that animals may be taking note of particular weather patterns. Migratory birds rely on changes in weather all the time to assess when they need to fly to breeding grounds. I don't think it would be too far of a stretch that other animals might take notice of a particular climate to help them "home in" on familiar territory.

[BenBurch]

Originally Posted by robinson

While gone, the cat injured it's tail.

That sort of injury usually happens when a cat gets its tail caught. The cat pulling free causes a separation and can break the extension of the spinal cord that operates the tail.

It can be quite painful at the site of the injury.

[Dogdoctor]

I once had someone bring me a male Samoyed which they found running around loose. I had a client with a male Samoyed and called them and sure enough their dog was missing. They came to pick up the dog and it jumped for joy when it saw them and responded to them when they called his name. A couple days later the owner called me back and said "You might think I am crazy or something but can a dog grow back a tooth?" I said "No". They said "Are you sure? Because you remember (I didn't) that our dog broke off his fang and this dog has all of his fangs. He acts just like our dog but if it he can't grow back his fang then it isn't him." They brought him back and in the mean time we had another person report to us their male Samoyed was missing and another male Samoyed was found. We got the right dogs to the right owners. Anyway the owners of the dog were convinced it was their dog till they saw it didn't have a missing tooth.

I had another client who had a cat that was missing for a year or more and they had moved. The cat found them at their new house. They were so happy. They brought me in the cat and also pictures of the cat to show that while it's body condition had changed it had exactly the same markings. They said it acted just like their old cat and they were sure it was because it fit right back into their home like it was the missing member of the family. I examined the cat and found it was a male and their old cat was a female.

I think this clearly demonstrates that people can fool themselves about the identity of their pet.

[Jimbo07]

Originally Posted by Dogdoctor

They brought me in the cat and also pictures of the cat to show that while it's body condition had changed it had exactly the same markings.

I think this clearly demonstrates that people can fool themselves about the identity of their pet.

How common is this? We know the owners of the other puppies and their markings are all fairly distinct. I know... border collie... black and white (or red and white, or black white and grey, etc.) How common is it for two animals to have identical markings?

BTW, our dogs also have chips.