Dogs that know when their owners are coming home experiment

Avi Solomon says: "Amazing videos of experiments that test whether dogs can know telepathically when their owners have decided to come home."

The Dogs That Know Phenomena
We're looking for dogs and owners willing to participate in a research project looking at the special bond that we share with our animals.

You may be wondering if you've heard of this somewhere before. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist, and former Fellow of Cambridge University investigated this phenomena in the mid-90s. He even wrote a book titled, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. While many dog owners, trainers and other experts have witnessed this behavior some scientists remain unconvinced. This research project aims to resolve this question. We invite you to help.

Rupert Sheldrake's original research on this is here.

Link

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soupisgoodfood

For any living being to have telepathic abilities must be such an enormous advantage that it is indeed *very* hard to believe that it hasn’t been exploited by evolution to such a degree that it would be clearly recognizable to even the most untrained observer.

Now, I’m certainly not saying I believe in telepathy, but your argument makes no sense and is based on many assumptions. Otherwise why wouldn’t all animals have evolved the best of everything they have?

Is there anything worse than an unscientific scientist?
Sorcerer Mickey

When I read the headline,
“Dogs that know when their owners are coming home experiment”
I thought it was saying that if your dog knows when you are coming home, he will perform experiments (with your slippers, in the kitchen, in the garden) because he knows he has plenty of time and you won’t be home in time to catch him!
orangeorangutan

Somehow when I read that headline, the last two words came together forming a single modified noun, which made it sound like it was a home experiment about, well, the first part.

There is something very wrong with me.
Kevin

It’s reasonable to believe a dog can identify the unique sound of a particular car (engine, whatever), and can tell people apart by their footsteps, smell, etc.

Control for all of these factors and the “telepathy” theory should be trivial to disprove.
nihilarian

“Now, I’m certainly not saying I believe in telepathy, but your argument makes no sense and is based on many assumptions.”

it makes more sense than your reply, says it’s wrong, but doesn’t say why. postulating that telepathy would have evolutionary advantages is valid enough.

“Otherwise why wouldn’t all animals have evolved the best of everything they have?”

the examples of animals finely evolutionarily tuned into complex systems are countless. if they haven’t evolved something, they haven’t needed it.

and why do dogs’ telepathic powers limit themselves to proximity, or near future actions? a fairly limited range of events wouldn’t you agree?
arkizzle

Iunnrais, sorry, but your post is a little confusing.. you disagree that it isn’t hearing or schedule, but also that it isn’t esp.. so what are you saying?

That dogs don’t get perky when they become aware of their owner coming home (usually somewhat before the other human occupants are aware) at all?

Or maybe, that all the people who have observed (to the point of it being a family joke etc) this in their pets, have in fact observed nothing but random movements and falsely attributed it to “knowing the owner is coming home” (every night for years)?

* To be clear, I’m not interested in what you think of the experimenter, you were quite clear on that. I’m more asking about the start of your post, your tone is unclear *
Porori

We have cats that know when we`re getting home.
I figure they hear the car from quite a distance away.

We have a movement sensor light in the foyer, and it is always on when I am close enough to see it. Which means that the cats haven`t just been hanging out there for all that long, as it automatically turns off after about 5 minutes if you don`t hit a switch to keep it on. They don`t really like that area to begin with and I never see them there except when we come home.

My guess is that they somehow pick up on the engine sound as I approach.

The interesting thing is, they`re NEVER waiting when I have someone unfamiliar with me. They hate strangers. If I enter with someone else, they`re always ready to bolt, growling at the end of the hall. The light isn`t on, so they were never by the door.

An unfamiliar voice or footsteps is an easy explanation for the growling and running, but not for why they knew while I was still in the car down the street.
buddy66

@56: “…you don’t remember when it doesn’t because there’s no event to remember…”

That’s what I told the wife: she just didn’t (or wouldn’t) remember all those times I didn;t stop at Rudy’s for a few beers before coming home.
noen

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

This is typical of “New Atheist” scientism. There is no such thing as extraordinary evidence. There is only evidence and the experiment is either well structured or it isn’t.

Sokal even quoted him in his infamous hoax…

All that Sokal showed was that you can punk a journal whose articles are not subject to review. Just like you can falsify the data submitted to journals in the physical sciences. A baffling failure of peer review. Pot, meet kettle.
AGF

I love it! As a kid we would know when dad was coming home because the dog would get all silly and hang out by the door. I’m so happy someone is researching this. My cat occasional tells me when my husband is coming home – but nothing like the dog. Cool.
preakhan

It’s a shame this argument seems to be painted in black and white “either you believe in telepathy or you don’t”.

The truth is most people who’ve owned and cared for dogs have observed this phenomenon in some way.

I highly recommend people read Jeffrey Masson’s book, “Dogs Never Lie About Love” for a look at this and lots of other doggy behaviour. The other one that seems to be related to this is dogs’ innate ability to sense your intent – for example, I can be sitting inside on the couch for hours, and the moment I in my mind make the decision to go for a walk, my dog starts going bananas outside. I’m not naive enough to believe this is ESP outright, but it sure seems like it. More likely is that dogs’ senses are much much more in tune to things we are not.

To outright deny that this happens, or it’s merely coincidence, is the kind of skepticism for fashion’s sake that is just as unscientific as just concluding that it’s telepathy.
Luc

“While many dog owners, trainers and other experts have witnessed this behavior some scientists remain unconvinced.”

Whohohooo, that’s a good one! The general consensus among doofuses is telepathy, but some scientists remain unconvinced!

My cat knows when my wife is arriving home before I do, too. I think I’ll go with ‘better ears than me’ instead of telepathy, though.
ROSSINDETROIT

Oh hell yeah. Even when we switch cars and keep irregular hours. NEVER greets me at the door and never fails to greet her. I’ll figure him out one of these days but right now it’s a complete mystery.
bardfinn

“Better Ears Than Me” is the reasonable explanation, unless they can do so from inside a carefully soundproofed room.
Davin

It’s almost like they can hear better.
PuzzledSheltieOwner

I found this site after having such an experience with my sheltie. He always seems to be at the window when I drive into our coul de sac. I just assumed that he a) either waited at the window or b) heard the car. But sometimes I can see him looking out the window right when I turn onto the street, when it seems I’m too far away from the house for him to have both heard the vehicle and run to the door. So he must be waiting the whole time right?

Tonight was different. I went on a long walk and as I was approaching the house I saw him stick his head through the drapes to look out the window and began to bark. I can understand if he heard my vehicle, but on foot I’m not making any noise. I inquired when I got inside with my family. Was he sitting by the window the whole time? Nope. He was in the other room the entire time, then left and ran to the window and started barking immediately.

This seemed to confirm what I suspected. That my dog does not sit by the window when I go out for 20 minutes to 3 hours. He simply has some ability to anticipate my return that defies our traditional notion of senses.
BubbleDragon

Our cat knows when one of us is home. It’s a combo of expected time of day and hearing a vehicle in the driveway, methinks. When I’m off on business, the cat apparently just sits by the door and meows at every car for days.

However, the wording of this experiment would seem to indicate that the dog would know when the owner was coming home before any sound could possibly be heard. Like, when I leave my desk at work. Hopefully they control for “expected time of day.”
yezzer

*Some* scientists remain unconvinced? I would hope that the vast majority, no, ALL scientists remain unconvinced!

Rememeber: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Thingamadad

Our cat hears our car on the street, and that’s enough.

Sitting with my daughter outside, I can recognize our car (or a same model station wagon owned by a neighbor) as it drives over a dip far out of sight at the end of our street.
nihilarian

Sheldrake! Morphic Resonance Man! Stay Away!

Sokal even quoted him in his infamous hoax…

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
Macawber

I once had a cat. I lent my car to a friend. The cat and I were chilling out on the sofa, when my friend came back in my car. The cat looked at the door, looked at me, did a double-take and then sulked for ages. Damn humans!
wylkyn

We had a collie when I was a kid who always knew when my father was coming home. His hours were irregular, too, but when Beorn would go stand by the door, we kids would yell “Daddy’s on his way home!” And sure enough, he would walk through the door within the half hour.

We now have a very old pug who also displays this trait, though it is spotty. I have opened the front door into her face a number of times, or I have come in through the garage to see her at the front door, waiting. The thing is…she is completely deaf. And she spends most of her time sleeping. When we are home, she barely gets up off her bed.

I’m fairly skeptical, but I don’t have a good explanation for this. It is certainly worth closer study.
trimeta

Having read this paper, am I the only one concerned that for their random beep experiment, had the dog gone to the window anywhere near the 14th 10-minute block, that would be a “hit” for most of the tests? Also, I’m not a statistician, but I’m not sure if n=12 is sufficient to show significance here.
Narfmaster

My cats definitely know when someone’s coming because they know the distinctive sound of our cars. (Mercedes, so not that many around here) They always bound up to the front window as someone’s coming home…
Narfmaster

My cats definitely know when someone’s coming because they know the distinctive sound of our cars. (Mercedes, so not that many around here) They always bound up to the front window as someone’s coming home…
MarkM

Gee, Better-Dog-Hearing-Plus-You-Always-Come-Home-
At-The-Same-Time or Dog Telepathy…

Of course, a third alternative is,
Dog Surreptitiously Plants GPS Beacon on Human
Owner (Or, More Likely, Hacks the Cell Phone
Grid to Locate Human’s Cell) and Thus Always Knows
Human’s Location.
strathmeyer

So, what are these experimenters doing that is different than the hundreds of such failures before them?
AGF

Our dog would get excited about 10 to 15 min before my dad would get home. SO he would still be at the office – something like 10 kms away and across the river. (not much chance of hearing him there) My dad would not call before coming home. We noticed this because it often happened when my dad was coming home at an unusual time. I have no proof. That’s why I’m excited someone’s studying it.
Kaiser

I think there is a lot of confirmation bias going on here.

AAR, I don’t have a problem with the study being done – except that you can tell by the wording of the thing that they *want* it to be true. It’s biased from the outset and not likely to be good science.
romulusnr

Ahh, CSICOP, fun people.

The curious thing about CSICOP et al is that their anti-paranormal tests are just as flawed and/or inconclusive as the pro-paranormal tests they are designed to refute. This makes sense when you consider they are just as stubbornly preconvinced about anti-paranormality as their opponents are about paranormality.

Real science lies where there are no presumptions or expectations. Both CSICOP and their nemeses are guilty of the same crime: spinning dubious outcomes into desired conclusions.

The best side to play is no side at all.

Now, as for the topic of an animal showing prescience of their owner’s impending return, the question is a) is their an exclusive correlation — i.e., no false positives, and hit rate, and b) could it be triggered by things other than telepathy; perhaps simply knowing that Master comes home early on sunny days, or when it’s Friday and hasn’t been overworked recently, or etc.

It’s believable that you can predict behaviour without metaphysical mind-reading. At least, that’s what some of today’s law enforcement technology vendors think.
noen

No you’re not Trimeta. Sheldrake is a bit of a nutter and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if his methodology has numerous flaws.
Aneurysm

“My cat knows when my wife is arriving home before I do, too. I think I’ll go with ‘better ears than me’ instead of telepathy, though.”

Indeed, this is a factor to consider in planning the experiment. Does this effect occur when the person is within the pet’s hearing range, or not? Can sound proof conditions be created to eliminate this variable?

Incidentally, I want to prempt the posts I know are coming by saying that just because this is research might be considered outside of the norm, or not in agreement with one’s own biases, or just “weird”, that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be ridiculed out right. SRSLY.
holtt

Our pugs totally know when I’m thinking of heading out even minutes before I actually do things like put on my shoes or get a coat. I usually give them a treat before I go out so there’s definitely anticipation of my departure :^)
Anonymous

My dogs always tell me when my husband is coming home – he works shifts which sometimes overrun so he doesn’t return at the same time. He does ride a motorbike so I could accept that the dogs may be able to hear his approach…. BUT what is weird is that they seem to be able to detect his mood. If they dash upstairs before he opens the door then 9 out of 10 times he will enter in a grumpy mood. If they dance about or try to look out of the windows it is highly likely he will be in a happy frame of mind when he gets in.

Not sure that I believe in telepathy in the “woooo” sense of the word, but as dogs are highly intelligent, social creatures who do not rely on vocal communication it stands to reason that at some subtle level, there must be some else going on.
Anonymous

Many of the comments here assume Sheldrake used flawed methodology. He does present much anecdotal evidence, but his argument rests on his experimental evidence, which is good, methodologically. He controlled for sound (I think by using diff taxis, I forget), for owner’s patterns (because he randomly told the owner when to come home), for how often the dog goes to the door randomly during the day (by filming the dog with a timecode), for sense of smell b/c the dog he did these experiments with knew ahead of time, like when the owner decided to leave, so at that point the owner was out of smell range. Additionally, he does not claim all animals can do this–he says that like other senses, acuity varies between individuals of a species. My dog doesn’t anticipate me coming home.

Please read him before you assume–you cannot contribute to our proving or disproving his theory without even addressing the most persuasive and scientifically valid part of his book. It appears that many people writing have a bias against such studies, perhaps based on a long history of ones that are illegitimate. This experiment, however, is not so stupid as to not control for other explanations.

The dog did occasionally come to the door at other times, but not enough to make the times he went at just the right time likely to be random. I wish I had the book here so I could give better explanation.

Personally, I think the experiment is fairly convincing, assuming he did not fake the results. That’s what I’m concerned about. Someone wrote that four scientists did similar experiments and the results were published in British Journal of Psychology. Please include the title! Because that’s a good point–good experiements should be reproducible by others, including skeptics.

Just because it’s not been found before doesn’t mean there isn’t a scientifically verifiable phenomenon here.
hotpants

Posts like this cause a siren to go off in CSICOP headquarters. They should be piling in here en masse momentarily to let everyone know that it is not acceptable to give even the slightest consideration to such possibilities. Science will explode and we will all immediately revert to testing for witchcraft by drowning if such things are publicly discussed.
tomic

Yezzer, #7 said, /Rememeber: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence./

Actually, plain old evidence will do.

Sheesh, why do so many people desire magic when ‘ordinary’ dog-hearing and intelligence will do? Dogs aren’t all Einsteins, but their humans are their primary lifetime study object; we’re observed with mammallian intelligences equipped with built-in sensitive sound equipment, chemical spectrographs, and dog watches (they always seem to know the time; what other explanation is there?). They probably know more about our habits than we do. They observe, plot, plan; their hearing is of course insanely good. They like us (most of us, anyways). Duh, whatsa mystery?

My mantra is: “I’ll believe anything, with sufficient evidence.”
adamrice

Rupert Sheldrake, the “hundred monkeys” guy? The one who faked his results? Yeah. Pass.
Talia

The video on the linked project site is very cool. It fails to say whether she was getting home at her normal time or not, though.
arkizzle

#26 article quoted by MikeLotus:

“However, we should not assume that every event in the universe can be explained. … Maybe an event can’t be explained because there is nothing to explain.”

I disagree. Potentially, everything can be explained (not necessarily by us, at this moment in time), every event can be looked at in terms of mechanisms and cause/effect/interplay. It all depends on what semantic definition of “explanation” you use. If you need the workings of the universe to confirm the validity of your existence and the decisions you have made in life, there is, probably, no explanations. However, if you look at it linearly, as how/why things occur.. there is no end of explanation, for everything. Defining the players and their relationships is the point here. Every phenomena has causes and effects, and a cast of some sort.

#37 Noen:

I don’t know how, but you managed to drag atheism into this. What is the connection? Who (relevantly) is professing “typical … New Atheism” in the context of the quote you replied to? I would have said the quote was more post-enlightenment mumbo-jumbo, and would have meant it to be as derisive as you are, every time you mention the “a” word.

#51 Preakan:

“To outright deny that this happens, or it’s merely coincidence, is the kind of skepticism for fashion’s sake that is just as unscientific as just concluding that it’s telepathy.”

I don’t think anyone is “outright deny[ing]” anything. Most here are offering reasonable explanations to what they see as a valid phenomenon (that it happens, rather than it’s telepathic nature). The people who flatly disbelieve the ESP link are still engaging in the discussion of what actually might occur, and not denying the notion that dogs and cats appear to “know” their owners are on the way home before they should.

#58 Kaiser:

I agree totally. It sounds like he is going to do his best to prove the thing is true, intead of hypothesizing and disproving.
stratosfyr

I’m pretty sure my dogs just guess when someone’s coming home based on the time of day. They always get excited at the same time, as long as someone’s been missing for a while, and it doesn’t matter if someone’s actually coming or not. They get impatient if someone they expect doesn’t show up. They can read certain signals. They’ve learned that packed suitcases = someone’s leaving for more than a day.

They can also recognized the sound of our car, or see and hear someone coming to the door.

I don’t believe they’re psychic because they’re often wrong. They definitely expect people at certain times, though.
ROSSINDETROIT

Of COURSE dogs are frakkin’ psychic. I’m amazed that there was ever any doubt. What else could possibly account for their cushy position? Free room and board, free medical and dental, no job duties, somebody else takes care of their offspring. It’s the plum job of all time, and all they had to do was evolve mind control over humans. It would be more surprising if some species HADN’T learned how to do that to us.
elNico

@Narfmaster

Mercedes drivers outside of Germany are always convinced that anyone and anything will pay special attention to their vehicles, cats or otherwise…maybe even more so around there.
palindromic

#27 posted by Takuan , June 11, 2008 2:08 PM

count all the times the dog gets excited when no one is there

—

Someone hasn’t heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.
garyb50

Our dog, who just happens to be the most wonderful dog in the entire world, does this all the time. She goes to the door, I call my wife and ask her what she’s doing & she tells me she’s getting ready to leave work or on her way home.
garyb50

LOL ROSSINDETROIT

So true. Katy rules me in every way ! ! !
Wafflecone

The The Dogs That Know Phenomena was used as an example on the final for a philosophy class on science and the occult I just took. We were supposed to find the fallacious arguments, one of which was anecdotal evidence.
arkizzle

Talia, it would be cooler if it had a split screen with a cam on the woman and matched timecode. And, as you said, if it noted whether it is her regular coming-home time, and perhaps, having different runs of the experiment with different intervals of time.
erx

My take on this as a working scientist is that the correct way to view these types of experiments is that dogs receive a large number of cues that their owner is coming home. For example, there are visual cues if the dog can see out the window, auditory cues if the dog can hear the car coming, or even olfactory cues if the dog can smell the person coming. There are also temporal cues (e.g. same time every day). Sheldrake believes that there are telepathic cues as well. The way that he tries to demonstrate this is by attempting to block ALL of the other cues the animal could be using. If the animal’s performance is statistically above chance, he concludes there is another cue that the animal must be using, and that cue must be telepathic. However, this type of experimental paradigm is extremely tricky because there is no way to verify that he was successfully able to eliminate all of the non-telepathic cues. In fact, doing that is notoriously difficult in any behavioral experiments because animals are incredibly good at reading the most subtle cues. Any experienced behavioral experimentalist looking at this would say that it’s most likely that Sheldrake was simply unable to isolate all of the other cues.

The way that he could do this experiment properly would be if there were a way to provide “psychic” interference that would remove the telepathic cue as well, thus bringing the animal’s performance all the way down to chance. For example, if “psychic rays” can’t penetrate lead, or if he could have some “psychic” stand in a distant place and provide mental interference to the dog. If the dog’s performance dropped to chance, this would demonstrate that all other cues had been eliminated, and it really is the telepathic cue explaining the dog’s performance. However, in the absence of this, any experiment of this type is not very convincing.

Finally, just to give an idea of how unsophisticated these experiments are relative to dog behavioral experiments even in the late 1800s, Pavlov’s famous bell-food conditioning experiment involved constructing a concrete cylinder several stories high with the dog suspended from springs inside a soundproofed box, with a cannula surgically implanted inside the salivary gland and hooked up to a pressure transducer outside. There was also an elaborate system for transmitting the sound of the bell, food odor, etc. into the experimental chamber from outside.
Takuan

Heisenberg’s dacschund was famously excitable
phas3d

I also have a Pug and can validate the other posters’ comments who are Pug owners too.

My pug always knows when someone is coming home but since we come home from work at the same times each day I wonder if she is just anticipating homecoming because of her own judgment of time.

It’s my belief that dog’s “feel” time and she “feels” when its the time we are supposed to come home.
PeerB

For any living being to have telepathic abilities must be such an enormous advantage that it is indeed *very* hard to believe that it hasn’t been exploited by evolution to such a degree that it would be clearly recognizable to even the most untrained observer.
mikelotus

“NORWICH (Reuters) – Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them — now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy.

Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails. Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone.

“The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected,” he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. “The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one.”

He said he found the same result with people being asked to name one of four people sending them an e-mail before it had landed.

However, his sample was small on both trials — just 63 people for the controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email — and only four subjects were actually filmed in the phone study and five in the email, prompting some scepticism.

Undeterred, Sheldrake — who believes in the interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping — said that he was extending his experiments to see if the phenomenon also worked for mobile phone text messages.”
erx

A second comment on Sheldrake and his experiments. If psychic phenomena exist, and they can range from knowing when someone’s calling you to dogs knowing when their owner is coming home, there would be lots of other, better ways to test for their existence. If one were to be a serious scientist about it, one would carefully design an experimental paradigm that tested for these phenomena in an experimentally favorable way, by which I mean a way that would allow one to collect large amounts of data in short periods of time (thus allowing useful statistics to be obtained), with few additional variables that are difficult to control for. It wouldn’t resemble events that happen in normal life.

The fact that Sheldrake uses these experimentally unfavorable paradigms that closely match personal experience reflects the fact that he isn’t being scientifically serious about testing these phenomena, but instead trying to convince nonscientific laypeople of the existence of them. It’s simple to explain that dogs know when their owner is coming home because they have really good hearing, and it’s also simple to explain the knowing-when-someone-is-calling-you thing by a recall bias (i.e. you remember when it happens, but you don’t remember when it doesn’t because there’s no event to remember), but these phenomena that we’ve all experienced are superficially somewhat mysterious. Therefore, he claims that they are based on psychic phenomena, which resonates with an untrained person who hasn’t thought deeply about these issues. However, he stops short of taking it to the next level and testing these things rigorously. I don’t think this is an accident on his part.
MsKrys

Confirmation bias anyone?
mikelotus

“The following case is typical of those cited as proof of ESP. It is unusual only in that it involves belief in a psychic dog, rather than a psychic human. The dog in question is a terrier who has achieved fame as having ESP as exhibited by his ability to know when his owner, Pam Smart, is deciding to come home when she is away shopping or on some other business. The dog’s name is Jaytee. He has been featured on several television programs in Australia, the United States and England, where he resides with Pam and her parents, who were the first to perceive the dog’s psychic abilities. They observed that the dog would run to the window facing the street at precisely the moment Pam was deciding to come home from several miles away. (How the parents knew the precise moment Pam was deciding to come home is unclear.) Parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake investigated and declared the dog is truly psychic. Two scientists, Dr Richard Wiseman and Matthew Smith of the University of Hertfordshire, tested the dog under controlled conditions. The scientists synchronized their watches and set video cameras on both the dog and its owner. Alas, several experimental tries later, they had to conclude that the dog wasn’t doing what had been alleged. He went to the window and did so quite frequently, but only once did he do so near the exact time his master was preparing to come home and that case was dismissed because the dog was clearly going to the window after hearing a car pull up outside his domicile. Four experiments were conducted and the results were published in the British Journal of Psychology (89:453, 1998).

Much of the belief in ESP is based upon apparently unusual events that seem inexplicable. However, we should not assume that every event in the universe can be explained. Nor should we assume that what is inexplicable requires a paranormal (or supernatural) explanation. Maybe an event can’t be explained because there is nothing to explain.”
Takuan

count all the times the dog gets excited when no one is there
noen

ROSSINDETROIT, there is that bit about getting neutered though.
Iunnrais

#26, thank you for your paper demonstrating that the experiment was -not- repeatable, as claimed by the original paper. Previous to that, I was getting annoyed by the other posters claiming things like “it’s just hearing” or “it’s just schedule” or “it’s cues from the people around them” or “it’s just confirmation bias”.

I believe that the experiment as described in the paper linked was a valid experiment, taking these factors into account. It describes the dog being interested well outside of hearing range. It describes deliberately upsetting the routine schedule, having someone randomly page the guy to come home from another location not privy to the dog. It uses statistical analysis on the location of the dog.

These are all things that look like a valid experiment. He then claims that they were verified independently by Richard Wiseman and Matthew Smith…

Except that the article you quoted above says that yes, they were called in to verify, but THEIR FINDINGS WERE THAT THE DOG RANDOMLY WENT TO THE WINDOW, in complete contrariness to what his paper said.

This leads me to believe that the guy is a liar.

The experiment as described seemed to take all the problems listed into account. The only trouble it seems to me, is that the researcher is a HOAXER.

IF, and ONLY IF the experiment could be repeated by others, who are not liars, I’d believe it.
buddy66

I had a wife could do this. She always knew when I was leaving work to come home, and if I didn’t get home within an hour she always knew where I was; and she would call Rudy’s and say, “Tell him to get the hell home!”
Miss Cellania

My husband observed this so many times he started timing it. Tuesday would always get up to greet me 45 seconds before my husband heard the car door slam. We figured my car would be about a block away at that time, which would be in her hearing range. She could distinguish the sound of my vehicle from another of the same make and year in the neighborhood.
w000t

My bulldog would definitely fail this experiment. Most of the time when I come home he’s sleeping on the couch. He often doesn’t even hear me come in, much less sense my imminent arrival. He does have an uncanny sense of time, though. He’ll usually come up and stare at me when it’s time for his dinner. I think he might have learned to read the clock on the DVR…
MarlboroTestMonkey7

Had a dog that knew mom was coming from half a kilometer away. I don’t need scientific validation, it’s strangeness and that can’t be measured directly. It’s just what it is, that’s all.
Church

If I’m walking home I can sneak up on the dog. Of course, she’s not so bright otherwise, so maybe she’s just a real “slow” telepath.
PeerB

All these dogs and cats turning to windows and doors at the same moment their owners decide to come home from far, far away, aren’t they a little stupid? Why not wait until they actually are home?