Customer Reviews

Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As an experimental psychologist who has closely examined claims of the paranormal (see "The Conscious Universe" here on Amazon.com), I wasn't sure what to think of Sheldrake's experiments with telepathic dogs. Then I had an opportunity to review and analyze the raw data in some of his controlled experiments. I was astonished with the results. There is basically no doubt that some dogs do indeed anticipate when their owners are about to return home, even at randomly selected times, and without benefit of any explicit or subliminal cues. For me, this significantly raises the credibility of some of the other "powers" of animals that Sheldrake discusses so clearly. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has ever gazed at their dog and wondered what was going on in that furry little head.

First let me say, parts of the book are rather dry. Perhaps that's the scientist doing his best to provide adequate proof. I found myself wanting to say, come on already... I accept your arguent, give me some more stories.

With that said, I did enjoy the book and find Sheldrake's proof more than adequate. Many animals are sensitive in ways we don't understand.

There was a story, from the book, of someone who was going to commit suicide by overdose. When they went to open the bottle, their springer spaniel jumped in their lap, bearing it's teeth and growling fiercly. The person was so shaken that they put the pills away, at which point, the springer jumped back in the lap and happily lapped at their owners face.

I knew of a young girl who was walking home, down a deserted street, when a sedan approached with a man demanding that she get in the car. She began to walk faster... the car sped up... the demands became angrier... The car stopped, and a man got out and came towards her... She said the only preyer she could think of at the time. "God, please help me." Suddenly two dogs appeared and began barking at the man. Shaken, but not disuaded, he reached for the girl, and a beagle juped up and bit his wrist. That was enough, the man got back into the car and it sped off.

It has been over 6 years since that incident and the girl still goes to the farmhouse near where this happened to visit Molly and Dolly.

By the way, that was not their names when all of this happened... You see, no one had ever seen these two dogs before... before that fateful night when a young girls prayer was answered... by two dogs who appeared from nowhere.

This story was related by Paul Harvey on his program *The Rest of the Story* December 8, 1999

Have you ever found yourself staring at someone and they turn and look directly at you. How do they do that? How do pigeons find their way home from hundreds of miles away? How do some dogs react when their owner merely has the thought of coming home?

Good questions.

This book doesn't provide all the answers, but it establishes the reality which is a significant step.

Sheldrake has spent a lifetime studying animals but looks outside the box of conventional wisdom in this engaging book about family pets. He suggests that the animals we know best, the cats and dogs who live in our homes, can teach us the most. He looks closely at several categories of oft-reported -but sometimes disregarded- types of animal behavior: predicting when their owners will return home, empathy, telepathy, sense of direction, and premonitions. Using replicable and rigorous experimental methods he demonstrates that something indeed is going on here, something they can not be easily described by conventional explanations. Sheldrake posits psychic connections that he calls "morphic bonds" exist among some creatures, including bees in a hive and schools of fish, and may well exist between some animals and the humans closest to them. Sheldrake clearly explains that such bonds do not occur among all pets or even among the same pets in all situations, but they definitely do seem to exist.

This is a fun book for animal-lovers, full of engaging anecdotes about dogs, cats, horses, and birds who enjoy strong emotional bonds with their owners that allow them to accomplish seemingly-unbelievable feats. But it is also an eye-opening book, for Sheldrake has applied some scientific techniques to both debunk fraudulent claims and to confirm those that have no conventional explanation. His "morphic bonds" are persuasive, especially to those who have lived closely with animals and observed their behavior in close quarters.

This book is a must for all of you who have "always marveled at your pet's unexplained powers, but have never dared inquired about them." Indeed, there was no one to consult. Institutional science dismisses these many instances as chancy, or explains them away in a mechanistic fashion; and the only other explanations were thus far provided by folk legends and superstitions. Unfailingly picturesque, but more often than not whimsical. DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME, an elaboration of the author's groundbreaking SEVEN EXPERIMENTS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD, addresses just such questions, after years of painstaking research and the accumulation of convincing evidence.

This is far and away Dr. Sheldrake's most accessible book to date, which is not to say it is a vulgarization. Far from it. In his characteristically sober yet charming prose, he has miraculously dodged the danger of compiling a list, but has rather presented the world with an anthology of mind-expanding instances of powers of animals. Some ideas are particularly compelling, such as "an animal-based earthquake warning system". Once more, he deals a blow to institutional science by beating it on its own turf, and that is, by piling up impressive evidence, a database, etc., so as to substantiate his claims. In all likelihood, many more "cases" will be added to his database after the general public has read this book. Perhaps tens of thousands. If institutional science will continue to ignore these phenomena, rather than join the author in the research, it will have de facto discredited itself in the eyes of the world. The Appendices are also valuable, C in particular, in which the author provides the Cliff's Notes to his own books. The concepts he summarizes are so fascinating that they should prompt the unfamiliar reader to read all his books, where the ideas are given the space they deserve.

Dr. Sheldrake's overall aim to resacralize the world is well-served by this book. Most pet owners have always felt there was something "more" or "other" to their pets than mere companions. This book will confirm their hunch, and prompt further investigations. Indeed, as the author says, "We have a great deal to learn from our companion animals."

This is a delightful, readable book that combines a love for animals with real research into psychic connections between humans and animals. Pet owners have always felt this connection, but Rupert Sheldrake provides a conceptual framework along with solid evidence for an actual bond. When my daughter was younger, the cat we had then used to wait by the front window for my daughter. We all noticed this behavior and thought the cat just had good timing, but the stories in this book tell me this is a common happening and represents some kind of communication mechanism. I hope Dr. Sheldrake's research can continue to provide insight into this behavior. I have read of such behavior in people as well -- check into a book called Faces in the Smoke by Douchan Gersi. It's unfortunately out of print, but has stories about people in Haiti and in Africa who routinely sent each other psychic messages. There is so much more we need to know about this kind of communication.

In "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home" Rupert Sheldrake continues his quest for acknowledgement of phenomena neglected, forgotten or brushed aside by modern science. This time he focuses on the unexplained powers of animals.
Starting with the observations of pets, through behavior of wild animals, to humans, Sheldrake examines the connections and bonds between living creatures, which lead them to feel each other's emotional and physical state.

Probably all pet owners and people fond of animals have observed that some animals demonstrate behaviors that cannot be explained by genes or instinct (or, that would be too much simplified by such explanation). Wondering, how the pets know, when their owners are coming home, when some accident or death occurred, how to find a way home from an unfamiliar place even far away, when the owner intends to give them food or go for a walk, or how to recognize an attack of an illness such as diabetic coma or epileptic seizure, or even the natural disasters, like storm or earthquake, probably happened to all pet owners some time or another - and most of the time these thoughts were probably bagatelized and quickly forgotten in the face of more important everyday events.

The book is very well ordered and organized, very much like a scientific publication. After a short, introductory chapter, summarizing the history of animal domestication, Rupert Sheldrake presents the data gathered during his systematic studies, mostly through surveys in different parts of United States and Europe. The data consists of examples of pets, which exhibited behaviors described above, collected and analyzed in impressive amounts (even with statistics). Not only does he report accounts from the owners of dogs and cats, but also gives examples of horses, rabbits, birds and fish, and negative examples of pet reptiles and insects. He proceeds from these examples to the flocking and migratory behaviors of the wild animals (the linking behavior is the return home) and compares the findings to the human abilities, which, in the contemporary, civilized world, seem ridiculously meager.

The main body of the book consists of these examples and this is its strength (as a scientific argument) and weakness (as a popular book, because the lengthy lists of examples can be boring). The conclusions, however, are not very strong. Sheldrake applies here his famous hypothesis of morphic fields, which, in analogy to magnetic and electrical fields, are created by forces - yet undescribed -which are, in turn, created by social influence between individuals. The existence of morphic fields is an interesting hypothesis, but only a hypothesis. Luckily, Sheldrake admits it himself and does not push his hypothesis as a theory or as a universal truth, like some gurus of fashionable, popular "science" books. I have to give him great credit for being a scientist even though what he does is beyond the scope of contemporary science. The same goes for his explanations of animal behaviors by their ability to precognize certain events or by telepathy. Telepathy, or mind-to-mind-communication, seems especially plausible as an explanation of pets knowing their owners intentions before the owner can communicate them in any other way (body language, any sensory signal). Although telepathy is obviously his favorite explanation of communication between pets and owners, between animals in the group, and, almost lost, between humans, Sheldrake does not give it as the only explanation. He always tries to show other ones and, giving arguments for and against each one (sometimes, admittedly, not very strong) dismisses them or not. His approach reminds me very strongly of the approach of psychologists, which very often are vague as well. That is perhaps why I liked the chapters on the migratory birds most, maybe, because, as a biologist, I see most of the ecological and "harder science" in it?

At the end of the book, the methods for investigation of pet behavior are presented, so that the interested readers can try their own experiments, which are very simple and do not require much skill - only perseverance.

I like Sheldrake for pursuing his goal of presenting to the non-scientific crowd of readers the alternative or once studies, but today neglected, scientific questions, without cheap trick or want for fame. He is doing his job and I admire his work, even though I have my doubts about it. I don't think this book was supposed to convince anybody of anything (as some previous reviews suggest), it rather intends to puzzle and ask questions, making the reader realize they cannot be unequivocally answered with the current state of knowledge. This book is not his best (some are really great), mainly because of endless lists of examples, but it is good and solid.

One Amazon reviewer of DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME wrote "Budiansky's THE TRUTH ABOUT DOGS states that other researchers were unable to replicate Sheldrake's amazing results. I like pets just as much as anyone else, though I don't feel the need to glorify them with powers that their small brains are incapable of possessing."

First of all, Stephen Budiansky--whom I admire--thinks dogs are social parasites (though that's not why I admire him; I like his unique approach to the subject matter). And the truth is, at least one other researcher, who was furiously attempting to discredit Sheldrake's theory (hardly an objective approach), actually ended up replicating his results exactly.

And having a small brain has absolutely nothing to do with what Sheldrake posits to be a common biological function of all social animals. He theorizes that it's a fairly ordinary form of communication that pre-dates human language and which doesn't require any kind of highly developed cognitive architecture.

Granted, Sheldrake focused on the dogs who'd been reported to already show this behavior, but the thrust of the research detailed in this book was not to provide definitive proof that dogs are "telepathic", but to start people thinking in that direction. And some of the data is quite remarkable.

By the way, my dog could care less when I'm coming home. He's always asleep when I get there (though he's always happy to see me). But I've had other experiences that show Sheldrake is on the mark. For instance, I found that if I'm walking my dog and thinking about going into a store up the block and picturing the possible behavior in my mind, he'll give up his usual path and pull me toward that store, even if I've changed my mind in the meantime.

I've also found that when teaching the down/stay at a distance, followed by the recall, if I imagine the dog coming toward me before I give him the release and the recall signal, he'll almost inevitably break the stay and come running.

I'm not a complete moron, so when I first noticed this happening I figured that I must have been doing something with my body language to cause this behavior. So I very carefully monitored and controlled my posture, my facial expressions (even though I was fifty yards away), etc. Nope. It wasn't my body language.

Huh, I thought, could it be these mental pictures I'm creating in my mind? So I trained myself not to create those mental images and whenever I kept my mind blank the dogs inevitably stopped breaking the stay until the release signal was given.

These experiences are far from being scientific proof but they do make you think.

I also recommend THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST for Sheldrake's theories on morphic fields.

Rupert Sheldrake is renowned for his theory of morphogenetic fields. These fields are species-specific collections of experiences individuals have, which are available to all members of the species. These fields provide information on knowledge and behaviors that are helpful to the species, such as migration routes and other learned behaviors. For instance, mice have learned paths through laboratory mazes, and members of the same species who were not direct descendents of the original lab animals subsequently learned the same mazes much more quickly.

In this book, Sheldrake has gathered several hundred reports of dogs, cats and other pets that evidence telepathic and precognitive communications with humans. These occur most often with the animal's primary caretaker, but may also occur with other people who have close bonds with them.

The evidence is presented engagingly, with many examples from the very broad spectrum of phenomena reported in Sheldrake's survey. Pet owners describe not only dogs and cats who show clear alerting behaviors prior to their owners returning home, but also intuitive anticipations and acknowledgments of death of someone close to them; intuitive homing behaviors; and applied/ trained assistance to owners who are blind or have epilepsy or diabetes.

Sheldrake's hypothess that morphogenetic fields explain all of these phenomena is an interesting variation on the themes of intuitive/psychic awareness, collective consciousness, and spiritual dimensions of reality.

Sheldrake's book is highly recommended to anyone interested in animal communications that extend beyond the ordinary physical world of visual and auditory channels.

This book is a follow up to the animal sections in Sheldrake previous book 'Seven Experiments that Could Change the World'. It focuses on various kinds of animals, but especially pets such as cats and dogs. In the scientific world there is something of a taboo against taking pets seriously, perhaps due to the subjective nature of experiences with them...but as Sheldrake points out, they are also the animals we know best, and are therefore easiest to test.

Book contains some great anecdotes, one of my favourite concerning some bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees):

"One bonobo had a long bamboo cane, which she was poking members of the public with, so we wanted it off her. I had a bag of four cakes which we were going to have for our tea, and I thought I would give her a cake if she gave me the stick. But she saw I had four cakes and she broke the bamboo stick into four pieces, one piece for each cake."

Another fascinating historical anecdote concerns the dogs of Scottish drovers. When they drove their cattle into northern England and stayed to work on the harvest, they sent their dogs back into Scotland. The dogs would make the epic return journey alone, stopping in the same inns their masters stopped at on the way down!

Anecdotes aside, the book examines three kinds of unexplained powers: telepathy, sense of direction, and premonition.

TELEPATHY:

Sheldrake gives many examples from his extensive database of pets who know their owners are returning, even when the rest of the family doesn't know it (and therefore can't provide unconscious cues). In these cases, smell and hearing have been ruled out as factors (see the book for the arguments and proof).

Sceptics counter this by pointing out that pet owners' accounts may be unreliable. While Sheldrake thinks it wise to hold a degree of scepticism until things can be verifed by experiment, in reality most of these so-called 'sceptics' adhere to what he calls "compulsive scepticism, which stems from the dogma that telepathy is impossible." This, of course, is not a scientific attitude. It is actively anti-scientific.

When one of Sheldrake's experiments with a dog called Jaytee was repeated by a noted sceptic of the paranormal, Dr. Richard Wiseman, Wiseman's findings corroborated those of Sheldrake.

Sheldrake acknowledges with regard to some species that more research needs to be done in the wild with their close relatives, to see how these anticipatory abilities evolved. He knows of no instances of such behaviour in pet fish, reptiles, amphibians or insects, so it may be limited to warm blooded animals.

It is exhibited by some humans, too, especially those who live in a close relationship to the natural world, such as Kalahari bushmen. Even in modern Western cities it is not unknown among babies. And there is a phenomenon the Norwegians call 'vardøger', where someone's unexpected arrival is preceded by a 'phantom' arrival, who makes identical noises (footsteps in the hall etc.)

SENSE OF DIRECTION:

Despite much research, it is still unknown how birds such as pigeons home. Landmarks and memory and sun position play no part, as experiments have shown, and nor does the earth's magnetic field.

Tribal peoples possess a similar directional ability, one famous example being the Raiatean chieftain Captain Cook took with him on his travels, who was always able to point the direction in which his home lay. This homing sense has atrophied in modern people, but it still exists (in some more than others).

Migration, too, is not fully explained, and Sheldrake argues that theories of genetic programming can't adequately account for it. If you want his arguments in detail you'll have to buy the book, but in summary (1) such a rigid system wouldn't allow for being blown off course etc. (2) the nature of genetic evolution wouldn't allow for sudden adaption, and (3) it would have to be magnetic, and the magnetic field constantly shifts. Furthermore the poles completely reverse every 250,000 years or so: "Since all migratory animals today are the descendants of ancestors that have survived some 80 magnetic reversals, all must have had ancestors capable of reaching their goals in spite of reversals in the earth's magnetic polarity."

If the genetic theory was true, changes in migratory habits would only take place over many generations, but in reality new races can emerge very rapidly. This fits better with Sheldrake 'morphic fields' hypothesis than with the genetic determinist view.

PREMONITIONS:

Sheldrake admits the morphic field hypothesis does not prove so useful in cases of premonition. He himself he finds the idea of telepathy easier to accept than that of precognition, which he finds philosophically disturbing.

Animal premonitions seem to challenge our 'traditional' ideas on causality, hence many people are sceptical. But the Chinese have adopted a more pragmatic approach, and many lives have saved there by taking heed of animal earthquake warnings.

Sheldrake advocates a similar system for earthquake prone places like California. Pet owners would phone a hotline if their pets were behaving strangely, and if a significant number of calls were registered in one area, evacuation plans could be considered. Obviously it would have to be tested first, to avoid false alarms which could set back research on the subject, but overall the idea is a good one, and a typical example of Sheldrake's pragmatic approach to science.

Sheldrake provides a helpful section at the end containing tips on how to conduct research and experiment with your own pets.

He also gives references to successful experiments in human telepathy, which have been independently replicated. When Richard Dawkins conducted a discussion with Sheldrake for a TV show, and claimed there is no substantive evidence for telepathy, Sheldrake proceeded to point out that there is...and Dawkins turned the camera off! The interview was then dropped from the finished program (an internet search on 'Dawkins Sheldrake' will give the full story behind this incident).

The book also contains an appendix summarising briefly Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields (treated in greater depth in his books 'A New Science of Life' and 'The Presence of the Past'). Some of this is updated material not found in the previous books, including the assertion that morphic resonance better explains the findings of Chomsky and Pinker than the theory that language structure is genetically determined.

Alot of "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home" reads as if the author did not speak and write English as a first language. Alot of this book reads like a medical journal. That being said, alot of this book will astound and delight anyone who has even a slight fondness for animals...not just dogs, mind you, but all animals.

Most of the stories in the book are about dogs, but as a cat owner and lover, I was pleased to find enough anecdotes about felines who knew the exact time when their owners were going to come home, who knew the person on the other end of a telephone and who knew that their owners were in some kind of grave physical or emotional trouble. There are pets in this book who, we are told, knew that a human diabetic or epileptic fit was on the horizon and we even read of pets who could sniff out cancerous lesions. There are tales of horses, fish, termites, monkeys and more with telepathic powers.

Pet owners from all over the world were obviously eager to relate their stories to Rupert Sheldrake, even those whose stories are terribly sad in the extreme: animals who, through their own mysterious telepathy, knew of the deaths of people close to them or even of the owners, themselves, who knew, from very far distances, that their pets were in harm's way.

True, some of the stories are weird enough to have been written by the folks living on Planet Xerbo, but enough are them are stimulating and just shocking enough to make believers of us all.