The Acoustic Dog

So quite a day, I have arrived at some integrated understanding of Eddies behavior patterns. Today was sunny and warm but the house still dripped from as the snow melted on the roof, rain drops have acoustic properties similar to other sounds that Eddie is afraid of. So the balance of positive and negative forces in Eddies decision making tipped in favor of the house. positive being a nice sunny day combined with fewer rain drips being less negative. It might have been the power of President Obama's speech to the country, because when it was over I went down and opened the front door and he padded right in up to the loft as if he had been listening through the door. It seems Eddie is an Obama dog. I will also point that running the chainsaw today did not seem to bother him a great deal. He hung around and observed from about 50 -100 feet, even when Niko wandered off to visit Tilla as is his predilection when the chainsaw comes out. One more observation of relevance is his fear of bowls. After Obama's speech I fed them as usual with Eddie being his usual apprehensive self. But it all makes sense now when bowl acoustics are taken into account. Many of the sounds that Eddie is apprehensive about like the clink of a tooth on a food bowl, the crinkly noise of gortex clothing, the clanks of gate latches at the pound all have an appreciable high frequency component. For a blind who relies on echolocation one way to replace the distance information normally received from stereoscopic eyes would be to judge distances by sound pitch. High pitched sounds seem closer because high pitch sounds do not travel as far as lower pitch sounds. He does not seem to mind the thud of a mall splitting wood, or the sounds of the snow blower, or tractor.

Eddies fear of bowls has nothing to do with the visually appearance but everything to do with acoustic appearance. Tonight when his tooth knocked the bowl he jumped back after being fairly relaxed. He thought and finally came back as he has done many times before. In addition As the snow melts I have been placing his bowl on bare dirt and rock ground and wondering why he all of sudden became more apprehensive to the point where I had place it further from the house and as it turns out on soft wood chips. In addition he has always had more trouble finishing his food than starting, which despite the obvious answer of appetite, I now attribute to the bowl acoustics since it is quieter when covered with food. Literally as he eats the bowl gets scarier.

The reason higher pitch is more frightening is that it means closer, which means an unknown potential threat must be resolved as safer or not in time to jump back if necessary. With limited brain processing power a closer threat requires a faster a decision, so the prudent reflex to develop is: jump back and then decide. This is pretty much Eddie's modus-operandi, which most people just call jumpy or skittish. The reason he and perhaps other feral dogs are more skittish around people is that humanized dogs have been exposed to human noises as puppies during a phase of brain development when the auditory centers of the brain are re-ordering and forming new neural connections in great numbers and at a high rate. Eddies brain is doing that but because is brain has already passed the puppy phase the process is slower . So wooden bowls might be quieter. I'll do the experiment starting tomorrow.

The acoustics of windows fit into place as well in this model because glass reflects higher frequency sounds much more than wood and sheet-rock. So a wall of windows would look as if the windows are much closer than the wall as if they were protruding into the room several feet like the ends of massive wooden beams. Acoustically skylight would look like a rectangular box hanging from the ceiling but visually and sniff-wise it would not. So that also solves the mystery of him not wanting to be near me in the house. The house is where I make most high frequency sounds. That is also why he hangs closer with me outside away from the house but will only really let Niko get close to him in the house. The guy is a very very good little negotiator... pretty soon I'm going be living a super quiet mud hut in the woods with nothing but Macintosh computers, and wooden cooking utensils. My house right now has a huge high frequency component especially because it pops when heating and cooling and when people and dogs walk around for the first itme in the morning, which is always when Eddie has been most apprehensive.

The other day we were hanging out on the hill during a walk and Eddie was scratching his neck the way dogs do. He let out a Yelp, the way he would if he ran into something unexpectedly. There being branches around to accidentally run into, I think he may have scratched the wound on his ear by accident and not immediately associated the scratch with the pain perhaps. Eddie is adapting to an acoustic world which is so new and different, his brain must be changing in fundamental ways and perhaps he yelped because some circuits have been broken and not yet re-wired. If like most of my friends you probably think I'm completely out-to-lunch on this one. The wooden bowl experiment will be very interesting. And consider also that when he bangs a tooth or moves his bowl while eating he does not seem to realize that he caused the sound that scared him. His brain it seems has not yet correlated the cause and effect. Perhaps when he realizes that he also makes scary sounds he will be less afraid of me making scar sounds. It could be that he has no conceptual framework for the idea that he can make noise.

In addition, I happen to know that Niko has excellent eyesight. He can pick out a UPS truck coming at full speed in plenty of time to jump up and bark as it passes going the other direction. He is terrified of low frequency sounds like thunder and distant gun shots and blasting coming through the rocks from the local quarry several miles away, or as was the case yesterday, avalanche blasting at ski resorts several miles off, while Eddie did not seem to mind at all. So poor eyesight makes for a skittish dog, while good eyesight makes for fear of the distant and unseen gigantic monsters.