Does anyone have any explanation as to how animals, dogs in particular, are somehow able to tell when their owners are on their way home?
This is something which I regularly dismissed as nonsense - until I got a dog of my own!
On fairly regular occassions I leave my dog with my mother while I go to work and she tells me that every day without fail he will go and fetch his lead and run to the door with tail wagging a full 5 mins before I arrive to pick him up. I work quite erratic hours, anything between 3 and 9 hours a day so it is not possible that he can somehow " time " how long I have bn away. On days when he has bn left at home, my neighbours have also told me that they can tell when am on the way home because he starts barking again about 5 mins before I get there.
I certainly do not want to suggest that I have some form of psychic connection to my dog but I would love to hear if anyone has any good theories about this.

Ok I'll suggest it then, Dr Rupert Sheldrake, has in his research come up with some theories on this, he said that animals, Dog's in particular make a bond between themselves and thier owners, this allows them to be able to sense when people are coming home.

Do you drive home? My dog recognizes my mom's car somehow and always runs to the door.

siphis........ no, I always walk

Is the neighborhood quiet? Maybe your dog listens for footsteps.

The Matse, a small semi-nomadic tribe from the Peru/Brazil border, have in their pharmacopaedia a drug called Nu-nu which their hunters use to induce visions of the future movement of animals. They see the animal in a particular location and from the vision estimate the time of day. Armed with this information, they lie in wait.

Peter Gorman may be the only westerner to experience Nu-nu, administered through a hollow reed up the nostrils:
"When the Nu-nu hit, it seemed to explode inside my face. It burnt may nose and I choked up wretched green phlegm....Out of the blackness I began to have visions of animals...Then suddenly boars began to stampede in front of me."
From his vision the Matse deduced the correct time and place. As They neared the site, Gorman was astounded to hear the thunderous sound of stampeding boars.

Gorman took another Matse drug, Sapo. This came from the secretions of a frog. Horrendous physical effects ensued, but Gorman thought this worth it all as his senses sharpened considerably and he felt it put him in tune with the rhythm of the jungle. The Matse used huge amounts of Sapo to 'project their animas, their spirits, into the form of an animal'. This strategy was used to lure prey into a trap. Peter Gorman saw this in action too.

Is it possible that there is a part of an animal's brain which can achieve similar feats by monitoring their human companions without artificial stimulation?

Wow, do you have anymore information on those drugs? particularly the consequences of using them, and how I may get them?

Maybe animals, as a survival mechnism generate this drug in them or something... just a thought

Can you sense if he is nearby but if you don't see your dog like if he outside if your inside?

I would say it is most likely the animals are hearing their owner's approach. Animal's increased sensitivity to their environment, simply because some of their senses are better than ours, are often misinterpreted as psychic phenomenon.



Did that guy write a book about that?

I don't think a dogs mind can be compared to a humans mind, so using the term "psychic" may be totally wrong for them. Animals have very keen sense. Much more keen that humans. Dog are only lacking in the eyesight department, however, their hearing is much better than a humans, and their sense of smell is completely unparralelled to a humans. Dogs are able to detect detect a scent particle in parts per million about 100-1000 times better then people. Dogs can smell fear. How do we know this? Well, I watched a study on TV about certain "pheremones" humans emite during certain emotional states. It is within the realm of possibility that dogs are actually able to "smell" when their owners decide to head home. I have also seen a scientiffic study done on the exact phenomena of dogs being able to sense when their owners are coming home. They showed a split screen in real time of the dog and the owener. When the owner would even begin to start heading home (IR by saying goodbye to the person they were visiting) the dog would get up and stand in front of the window in anticipation. They did the study with about 30 different dogs and owners who seemed to exhibit this phenomena, and they discovered on average that the dogs were right about their owners coming home about 65% of the time. Somtimes as high as 75% or higher in speciffic cases.

Basically, this concludes that dogs indeed have a sense about things that humans do not have. Whether that sense is a "sixth" one, or whether it is made up of a combination of highly keen senses, is still up for debate. Perhaps the dogs actrually form an emotional bond with the person, and the energy of such functions on a wavelength in which distance is not a factor, however, this theory is a little far out.

There seems to be different senses in the animal kingdom that do not appear in humans, such as a sharks ability to sense electricity. Infact, and shark can sense a 9 volt battery up to a kilometer away, and sometimes ever farther. Perhaps dogs have a sense which humans have not yet discovered, because we do not know what we are looking for exactly.

Most likely however, Dogs somehow manage to use their incredibly keen sense of hearing and smell to be able to preform what almost seems to be a psychic feat.

Anybody have any information on that drug?

How odd, I just started reading one of his books.

Drugs are cursed chemicals. They open the mind up to an uncontrollable plain . Stepping out into the unknown like this is extremely dangerous, because one can never ever be prepared for what is to come. It says in scripture that "God shall supply all our needs". I would much rather trust a divinely loving God to take care of me, then to use mind altering drugs to sharpen my perceptions in order for me to become more powerful and in order for that gained power to allow me to fufill what I percieved as my need.

Whenever my sister goes to places the dog will just act normal but then the dog seems to get all excited (wag its tail and that kind of thing) whenever she's on her way home.
It's like their got a sense that tells them when their owner is coming home....