The conscious mind entails the things you are aware you’re doing and are meaningfully thinking about.
Your self-awareness and the World around you all have a place in your consciousness. Thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting are the four aspects that entangle one another to make up our conscious mind.
Imagine how amazing being able to read your dog’s mind would be. Wouldn’t that make things much easier? But, unfortunately, the invention to help us do that has yet to be created, so in the meantime, let’s address what we now know about a dog’s conscious mind.
Do Dogs Have Thoughts In Their Head?
We all want to know what dogs are thinking. Are they happy or sad? Do they like this dog toy? Do they enjoy having their ears rubbed? The questions are endless, and dogs do absolutely have thoughts. We just struggle to understand them.
A dog’s brain is around the size of a lemon, and it is more likely that they think with their senses, such as smell (most likely and noticeably the strongest one), rather than words like humans.
They may also think in images and possibly sounds too.
How Do Dogs Process Information?
The frontal lobes in the brain are used for problem-solving, memory, impulse control, and other functions. However, in dogs, the frontal lobes only account for around 10 percent of their brain, in comparison to it being the largest part of a human’s brain.
Whilst the exact science behind how a dog processes information has not yet been fulfilled, we do know that dogs respond to emotions and can learn a vast amount of things, like sensing seizures or sniffing out drugs. They are incredibly intelligent animals.
Can Dogs Feel Self Conscious?
Did you know that dogs can’t look and identify themselves in a mirror? However, they do have some degree of self-awareness and have been known to pass other self-recognition tests with flying colors.
Dogs can identify several things about themselves, like their own body odor; this doesn’t necessarily mean they feel self-conscious about it.
It is believed that a dog could possibly feel secondary emotions such as embarrassment. Of course, the dog wouldn’t be able to tell you this, but you could see signs in its behaviors, like a tail between its legs.
Do Dogs Know We Aren’t Dogs?
Being an intelligent breed, dogs understand that humans are in fact that and not canines. They know humans smell differently, look different, and have a variety of behaviors.
Although your dog may want you laid in its bed or rolling around in the muddiest of puddles, they still think that we are not the same. That is why they run to other dogs to get a whiff of a familiar scent.
However, some may believe that dogs do understand that humans are not dogs but do not necessarily categorize us as humans.
Do Dogs Think Or Just Feel?
Dogs definitely think as well as feel. Trying to figure out what they are feeling can be the fun or, in some cases, the hard part.
Research has shown that dogs’ limited range of emotions is similar to that of a toddler. Whilst they lack the more complex emotions like pride or guilt, they still have a sense of and respond to them.
You can observe and learn over time what a dog could be thinking and feeling by the way they interact and carry themselves. For example, the way they wag their tails, walk, sit, and other behaviors are all indicators of what a dog is thinking and feeling.
Final Thoughts on Do Dogs Have a Conscious Mind
Overall, it is clear that dogs do, in fact, have a conscious mind. Dogs think and feel.
They can be taught behaviors and also learn emotions from when they are just a pup. How they respond to something comes from how they feel about what they sense and see.
Amazingly, even though they have small lemon-sized brains, your furry companion sees images, smells, and sounds because they do not know how to read or write.
These incredible animals are said to have the minds of toddlers. Perhaps that is also part of what makes them such loveable companions.