My dogs are every bit as excited to see me after I put the trash out on the curb as when I come home after a full day's work. However, that's about a tenth of the excitement they show when we've been gone at least overnight. And that's with a stay-in-the-house dog sitter that they adore.

So what I'm trying to suggest is that I believe they DO have a sense of time, it's just not particularly refined.

Mine have a total sense of time and a routine and if it changes they sulk. Every morning at 6:45 or so it's time to get up and they come whuffling around my bed and then they wait to see if by wonderful chance I'm going to put on my sneakers, which action means it's Walk Time. When we get back from the walk it's Breakfast Time, a very serious time indeed (they ignored a squirrel on the back porch this morning because it was Waiting for Breakfast Time and they refused to leave the kitchen) and then they have Mysterious Doggie Errand Time after breakfast which slowly morphs through the day to Arguing Over The Couch Time. Also, Theo, my collie mix, has a very strict sense of etiquette and if parties go on too long (he feels that around 12:30 is late enough) he starts barking and herding people towards the door.

Thx. Here's the belated "more inside":

I've house-sat all week for some friends who have a particularly smart mutt -- there's some pointer or shepherd to her, I think -- and agonized over whether to go dancing on Mon nites, two of which I've missed in order to give her adequate face-time.

I could get to the house, let the dog out to pee, get her out for a walk and some ball-chasing subsequently, then feed her, then park her butt back in the bedroom all within, say, 90 minutes if I try not to communicate that I'm rushing through the evolutions, but I worry that she'll be aware that she just spent 10 hours waiting for some human contact, got a little over an hour with me, and then will wait all night for me to get home. A couple of my peeps tell me I'm worrying about, basically, nothing.

Am I stressing the dog -- or me -- overmuch? I'd hate to miss a 3rd Mon nite dance in a row -- it's practically the only chance I have to get out in front of wimmenfolk, and like our friend hajiboy, I'm looking to maximize my potential even though dancing is more like friendly coed PE class for adults than a singles-bar atmosphere. (How to meet women more effectively than I've managed thru church and volunteering...that could be a whole other exercise in self-absorption here in MeCha.)

On preview: Wow, if I ever get a dog of my own, I hope it's like Theo...I like when dogs herd people; the latter rarely appreciate that they often need it.

I would love to hear more about this "Mysterious Doggie Errand Time." That sounds like so much fun.

"Arguing Over the Couch Time" could warrant some explanation as well.

Pax, just my animal-loving opinion, but you'll have plenty more Mondays in life to go dancing. My vote is to chill with the pup. Not what you wanted to hear, and I'm probably not exactly unbiased . . . so take it with a grain.

tr33 -- Once I started bouncing her squeaky toys off Lucy's nose back at the friends' house, I mostly got over the fact that I was missing out yet again on double handsful of sweaty enthusiastic middle-aged women. It would've been a fair bit of driving each way, too.

is there anywhere nice and full of women where you could take the dog for a walk? That might kill several birds with one stone, so to speak.

Alto has an awesome idea there. In my experience, women do love the doggies! Great conversation starter!

double handsful of sweaty enthusiastic middle-aged women

ACK! The goggles, they do nothing!

What my mutt lacks in raw intelligence, he makes up for in enthusiasm for routine. He's too stupid to know what time it is, but he's hungry at 6:30 p.m. everyday. And he wants to go outside every morning at 6:30 a.m. He gets whiney excited any time any body stands up around 5:30 p.m., as that's Walk Time.

The schedule we have is mainly for my benefit, as keeping to regular hours keeps him from peeing on the carpet, or throwing up inside. He came from a family that fed him at all hours, and ignored him most of the rest of the time, so it took awhile to establish any kind of routine, but once he was getting food on time, and excercise on time, he started sleeping at night, and generally not being as much of a dope as he was when I got him. He's still, by far, the stupidest animal I've ever fed, but he's at least predictable.

Of course they have a sense of time! Maybe a goldfish doesn't, but dogs can be pretty damn smart...

She'll be lonely if you go out dancing, but if you're there the other six nights of the week, she can probably handle it. Just watch for changes in behavior that may indicate stress/unhappiness.

alto (and tr33),

Huh. There are dog-friendly parks all over this town and it might help socialize her if she's hip-deep in other doggies and their owners for a short while. I volunteer handling big, rowdy, hard-to-control dogs at a shelter, so I'm pretty diligent about leash work. And the wx and lengthening daylight hours militate in favor...wow, that's a hell of an idea.

I don't think I'd take her off-leash though...she's a little too protective/aggressive. I had to stop her from "saving" me from the neighbor's chow already.

Specklet, good point. (By the way...hi, lady!) Lucy's really great about "telling" me by just dropping a squeaky toy on my book when she wants attention, and if she's really neglected, she'll pee only on this one particular throw rug in this one bathroom. It's been a real bear to adjust my life to fit her routine, but the park idea might work OK. One of those parks is maybe 20 min away, a beautiful collection of flower and herb gardens -- ergo, something of a chick magnet on spring evenings...I hope I hope. :o)

(tr33 -- sorry about yer eyes there, bro. In lots of cases, though, they're surprisingly easy on the eyes; you just gotta like older women OK.)

I had a cat, Barry, who had no sense of time. He was the dimmest cat who ever lived.

He'd have his breakfast in the morning, then almost immediately after that he'd go back to bed and fall asleep. I'd leave for work, but if I'd forgotten something on my way out and came back in to get it, he'd wake up and think the whole day had passed and it was time for his dinner, even though it wasn't but ten minutes since he'd had breakfast.

I thought I was imagining it at first until I came back in deliberately a couple of times to make sure.

I can leave the room for twenty seconds and Lulu is almost as excited as when she first sees me in the morning. However, she has a really good sense of chow time and walk time.

Seriously, she can be in the same room with me for hours napping or chewing on a (um) chewie and then if I start talking to her she's all excited and like, "OHMYGOD, it's the lady what takes care of me!" and start jumping around and being silly about it. (She is chihuahua/pug.)

There are times when she's sitting next to me or even lying on me while I'm watching tv and if I start talking to her she gets super happy and starts jumping up and wiggling like she hasn't seen me in days.

Last week I had her over at my mom's house and I went out to check my mom's mail and mom said Lulu started frowning at the door and then when I came back half a minute later she was super excited to see me. hahaha.

Hmph, my hedgie only has three times: Leave Me Alone Time, Snuggle Time and Running Time

This reminds me of the George Carlin skit, where his dog is so happy to see him come in the front door.

The dog says:

OMGOMGOMG I'm happy to see you OMGOMG! I thought you never were gonna come back I thought you never were gonna come back! I was so scared you weren't gonna come back that do you know what I did? Do you know what I did? I was like, well, who's gonna feed me?! Who's gonna feed me?! So I went to get a can of dog food, but I was like, how am I gonna open it? How am I gonna open it? I can't work a can opener! So you know what I did? You know what I did? I took the can outside and put it in the street so a car would run over but none did and OMGOMGOMG I'm so glad to seeee youuuu!

And George Carlin says:

Jesus CHRIST, dog! I just came back to get my hat! I was here five minutes ago!!!

I haven't heard that dogs have no sense of time as much as I've heard that it sucks. This is why, when in training, it's important to catch them in the act when they're misbehaving, because they can't relate something they did a while ago to a punishment they are receiving now, so rewarding/scolding only works within a very finite period of time.
My ex-roommate, Duke, purveyor of the Tail of Destruction and Jaws of Toilet Paper Rending, was equally excited to see me 3.2 seconds after I left as 6 hours, except for the wanting to get outside and pee part (And the rending would begin 2.4 seconds after I left).

I'm not so sure that dogs understand the passing of time so much as they understand a routine.

When I was a kid, my mom's dogs would know the exact moment my sister and I would get off the bus and start the arduous (quarter mile) walk up the hill to the house. They would get all excited ten minutes before we got off the bus and sat at the window waiting to see us coming. On the occasions where we spent the night at a friends' house, the poor dogs would sit at the window for an hour before giving up and moping that we weren't coming home.

Copy all on the time vs. routine.

Back in my domesticated days, my wife's miniature Schnauzer knew that when we humans had finished policing up dinner, I'd get out my pipe and some tobacco, he'd go get his leash, and it'd be time for walkies. Which was great, except he generalized the sight/smell of my pipe smoking to be about him, so I had to be kinda cagey about smoking around him. He wasn't exactly a Rhodes scholar, but he was bright and personable as dogs go.

My Siamese cat would come running from 150 feet away when she'd see my truck pull up in the driveway -- I couldn't sit down without her wanting immediate lap time. I was the sun around which she orbited, apparently; she'd been abused as a kitten before I got her, and once she got used to me, she let other people in the house pet her, but she'd go looking for me first. Cats definitely understand routine, too, if not time, because when I was living alone except for her in an apartment, she learned to be waiting at the door when I got home each day.

Easy enough to test. Set up an operant conditioning scheme, such that a dog has to push a lever with its paw when a bell rings. Ring that bell at set intervals. Then remove the bell and see if the dog still tries the lever at the same intervals.