You’ve heard the stories about dogs that showed up on their owners’ doorstep after being lost for months or years. Sometimes, these days, it’s because they have an ID “chip” that tells a vet or a pound where they live. We blogged about the “Return of Pickles on Chrismas Day,” on January 18. And just the other day, I overheard a conversation about another dog that found its own way home on Christmas Day.

How do dogs find their own way home after being lost? Do they have ESP? Here, from smalldogsparadise.com is an interesting three- part article about dogs and ESP.

Canine ESP: How It All Began

Canine ESP: Do Dogs Rally Have ESP?

Canine ESP: Can Dogs Sense Danger?

These articles talk about:

• A Collie named Bob, who found his way from the East Coast back to his home in Orgeon,
• A mixed-breed named Henry who was left with friends when his family moved from Illinois to Michigan. Six weeks later, Henry greeted his family on a street corner in their new town in Michigan.
• Prince, a German Shepherd who swam the English Channel during World War I to find his owner in a trench in France.
• A mixed-breed dog named Daisy who somehow moved herself and four puppies 30 miles from to an apartment in New York City to re-unite with the people who had befriended her at a summer vacation resort.
• A German Shepherd in Georgia that “knew” when his owner had been injured in a plane crash in Pennsylvania. The dog lay motionless until its owner regained consciousness.
• A dog that saved the three children in his family from a forest fire burning five miles away.
• A dog in Virginia that sensed when his family, vacationing in Florida, was in trouble — they had been marooned in a flood.
• Gary Cooper’s dogs, who sensed the exact moment that he passed away.

Some of the scientific studies of parapsychology in animals are summarized in this article from empowerment.com.

Lots of people think they have an ESP connection with their pets. Not surprisingly, scientists say that the ability to have an ESP connection depends on the strength of the emotional tie between the subjects — in this case, you and your dog.

If you’d like to test your doggie-ESP, here are some experiments you can do.

And here’s a place where you can get your own ESP cards, although you may have to modify them a little for your dog.

Is this the ultimate test of the strength of your relationship with your dog? Whether you have ESP or not, it’s fun to try to “tune in” to your dog.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 12:03 am and is filed under Books, Dog Communication, Dog Talk, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.