So What Does The Research Say?
Dogs can’t just tell us if they know how long we’ve been gone, so researchers have to run experiments to see if dogs can really tell time.
There are surprisingly few actual studies of whether dogs can differentiate between lengths of time, but one experiment in 2011 conducted by Swedish researchers placed hidden cameras that recorded how dogs reacted when their humans were away for a half hour, two hours, and four hours.
The experiment showed that dogs reacted more enthusiastically when their humans left them two hours versus a half hour, which suggests that dogs can, indeed, tell the difference between these times.
However, dogs did not react differently when their humans were gone for two hours versus four hours. So is there a limit to how long dogs can tell time?
This is a question for further research.
Right now, it seems that there aren’t many scientific measurements of whether dogs can tell the difference between us being gone for, say, a day versus a week or a month versus a year.
All we can conclusively say from the studies we have is that dogs can tell the difference between some lengths of time.
But we may be able to use our own experiences as dog parents, as well as the experiences of others, to form some guesses that we can test in the future with new science and research.
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Sense of time is connected to memory. This is why it’s common for humans with memory loss (such as amnesia) to have a distorted perception of time. Animal memory is thought to be much more simplistic than human memory, and dogs have episodic memories, which means they are only able to remember certain events in their life. While your dog will remember you leaving the house, they most likely won’t understand how long you were away. When dogs are left alone, sometimes they become stressed (stemming from their separation anxiety), indicating that they have an awareness of the passage of time.
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