SOME DOGS BLESSED WITH A SENSE OF HUMOUR SIMILAR TO CHILDREN’S, SAYS EXPERT

Have you ever felt your dog has played a practical joke on you, particularly when it’s displaying a grin that doesn’t look like it’s just panting?

You’re not alone.

According to dog expert and psychology professor Stanley Coren, certain breeds do indeed have a sense of humour and it is often at their owner’s expense.

“This was suggested way back in 1872 by none other than Charles Darwin, who wrote a book on the emotions of animals and man,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

“He suggested there are things that dogs add to their play that seem to be the doggy equivalent of practical jokes.

“The most typical one is their game of keep away, where if you toss something to a dog, he’ll grab it, run a distance away, then drop it on the ground and wait there until you come close, then grab it and run away.”

The 14-year war

The Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia recalled how a “war” went on for 14 years between his cairn terrier, Flint, a playful breed, and his school teacher wife, Joan, who prized “order, quiet and predictability”.

“One day she had a group of her friends over for an afternoon coffee and Flint was doing his usual thing by hovering under the table hoping that somebody would bend down and pat him or something edible would fall on the floor,” Professor Coren said.

“My wife thought he was going to bother people so she shooed him out of the room and basically said something in the vicinity of: ‘Go find something interesting to do’.

“He dashed out of the room with a definite sense of purpose and a few minutes later reappeared carrying one of Joan’s undergarments, which he blatantly snapped from side to side with a lot of joy, to the amusement of her company.”

The poodle strikes back

Professor Coren also recalled a day his friend brought over a standard poodle and another friend visited with a Pomeranian.

“The Pomeranian was just being a pest, running around and banging at the poodle, who had been at my house many times,” Professor Coren said.

“At the time we had one of those big old-fashioned, oversized bathtubs with the lion-paw feet and at one point Brandy, the poodle, became very annoyed and suddenly grabbed the pom by the scruff of her neck like a mother might.

“The poodle carried the little pom into my bathroom, dropped it into the bathtub where the walls were too high for the pom to get out, and all of sudden began to twirl around with her tail banging back and forth as if to say, ‘Look at that. Haven’t I cracked the greatest joke in the world?'”

Not all dogs laugh

But not all dog breeds have a sense of humour.

Professor Coren pointed to a study undertaken by Benjamin Hart and Lynnette Hart at the University of California-Davis, in which a group of experts ranked 56 breeds in terms of playfulness, such as their willingness to chase balls or frisbees and play games like hide-and-seek.

That study found that Irish setters, English springer spaniels, cairn and Airedale terriers, golden retrievers and standard poodles were among the most playful, while at the opposite end, chihuahuas, rottweilers, bulldogs and bloodhounds were the least playful.

“They are much more staid, stick-in-the-mud kind of dogs,” Professor Coren said.

But he added it was about more than a dog acting playful, pointing out that there was a very high correlation between humans who had a strong sense of humour and who were also playful.

“We can’t crawl into a dog’s head and ask, ‘Did you do that because you thought it was a prank?'” he said.

“But when their behaviour is very much like the dog is trying to provoke a response in you, that’s very much like a sense of humour and certain dogs have it to the nines.”

‘You don’t tell jokes to walls’

Professor Coren also responded to questions about whether it was just a dog seeking attention.

“The same personality type that has the strongest sense of humour in people is also the same personality type which creates a lot of attention,” Professor Coren said.

He said the key to understanding dog behaviour was to consider their mind was equivalent to a two to three-year-old human, claiming dogs had the same sense of humour you would get from a child.

“Certain clusters of dogs have an incredible sense of humour and, for them, their motto is ‘Nothing is worth doing unless it creates a furore,'” Professor Coren said.