This is fascinating stuff - thank you for pointing the way to it @sanjibasenji
An Ancient Breed Indeed
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@eeeefarm said in An Ancient Breed Indeed:
That was typical of Eisenmann's dogs, so either he was telepathic or the dogs understood his words.
Wow.
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@eeeefarm it's very hard to accept. Not only that a dog could obey commands, but could reason and figure out that, for example, closing a door would decrease noise. Hmmm forgive me for being sceptical. Dogs do learn key words for sure. Trade, bickie, HOT, and a variety of commands and warnings but further than that. . .?
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@zande I might be skeptical too if I hadn't seen a demo for myself. And of course all the appearances he did back in the day, late night talk shows, Carson, etc. plus many, many articles in newspapers. And reports from when they were filming "The Littlest Hobo". Often a scene would be altered and Chuck would just tell one of his dogs what had to be done, and the dog would do it. Not a lot of advanced practise, just done and done. A lot of skeptical reporters tried to trip him up, but they could never find any hidden signals or signs that anything had been previously rehearsed, and Chuck was open to any request suggested.
Chuck didn't just teach one dog, he started with London, but eventually had four or five German Shepherds for film work and doing demonstrations. I talked to Chuck on the phone once, when I ordered three of his books. He was old then, in his eighties. I asked him if he thought a Basenji could learn by his methods and he said yes. I could never be as dedicated as Chuck, but I did read and apply some of what I learned, enough to indicate to me that it was the right track to getting the dog thinking about what request might be hidden in a stream of conversation.
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A friend of mine used to have a psychic dog act. Great trainer who fooled a lot of people.
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@scagnetti said in An Ancient Breed Indeed:
A friend of mine used to have a psychic dog act. Great trainer who fooled a lot of people.
There has never been anyone I am aware of that could do the things Eisenmann did, but someone else apparently came close.
https://americacomesalive.com/smart-german-shepherd-1927/#.Vecu7RFVhBc
In the end it probably doesn't matter. If there were cues of some kind that many, many reporters missed, it would still be incredible for someone to achieve that high a level of cooperation from a dog. Most if not all trainers would be pressed to do the sort of thing Chuck did even if they walked beside the dog and instructed him on every step. I saw it, with the dog working far away from Chuck, too far for subtle cues, and no verbal instructions after the first conversational suggestion....
