Heather Lees - Intersubjectivity Between Dogs and their Owners

It is known throughout the world that dogs have a special "connection" with their owners. What some people don't realize is that there is a certain phenomenom that also takes place. When owner's train their dogs, it is as if they are training them to think a certain way that is similar to how the human may think. An example that I realized that relates to this most is a situation that happened over New Years Eve. A group of friends and I went to a party where the host had a huskey dog. However, the relationship between him and his dog was something that I have never seen before. Knowing that children are often afraid of how dogs might react to them if they do not happen to know who that child is, Brian (the owner of the dog) decided that he was going to train his dog, Nanook, in a way that would help make children as well as their owners completely comfortable.

Although he had told me before that this was his plan, I had never seen it be put into action until that night. As soon as a child walked up to Nanook, he automatically layed down and placed his paw over his mouth. Once this happened, he then maintained eye contact with Brian at all time until he said "it's okay." At that moment, he then lifted his paw from his mouth and stood up. Even though the dog and his owner obviously cannot speak words to eachother in a way that is understood. There was a different type of language obviously being used when it came to training this dog as well as maintaining the same understanding in certain situations.

In class, we had talked about intersubjectivity and used an example of dogs and their owners. At first, I wasn't sure how that could possibly happen. Not having a dog myself, I never understood this particular language that was being spoken between them. But then, when I thought more about it, I remembered this experience and it made total sense to me. I have always wanted a dog, but I knew that I would not be sure how to train it to do particular things that would be of importance. Intersubjectivity is the answer to this problem. Dogs have a sense of understanding when it comes to their owners and maintain an unspoken language with eachother to gain an understanding of what is to be done.