I'm very interested in the question of dogs learning by observation. The "decisive" paper that proved that dogs don't learn by observation was a very limited study, I believe, involving two dogs with no particular reinforcement history, in which the observer dog failed to learn some task. And somehow it went into the zeitgeist as a firm conclusion, one I was totally prepared to believe in myself, at one time. I thought that dolphins do learn by observation, and dogs don't. Then I started giving seminars, and seeing all kinds of observational learning going on.
Clicker trained dogs, at least, certainly do learn by observation of other dogs: the click tells the watcher-dog what the behaver-dog got paid for, so they try it. On one of my early websites there was a wonderful account of an Afghan learning obedience skills from its crate. While waiting for its turn at conformation training, it watched what its housemate golden, an obedience dog, was learning. It agitated in its crate, during the obedience class, until it was finally let out early, whereupon it grabbed a dumbbell and carried it over a jump. The owner then threw a little clicker training at it and got its CD in three weeks.
I often see my young poodle watch the old dog to see what she does, and then do the same. I now occasionally deliberately train one dog by tethering it to watch the other dog doing something new.
and observing the humans?
my second dog is a very observan creature that will look at every single move you make... and sometimes I even expect to see her in the morning making coffee...
although that have never happened before, she does learn, from my other dog, and from us, the humans of the family.
my favourite anectode is Reeva and the door knob. At my house, we have the nromal door knobs you press and the door open. While I had to train my first dog to do that, Reeva picked it up from brix and mastered it perfectly. She gets up on her hind legs, puts her front paws on the dor know and presses down. depending on whether door open forwards or backwards, she will pull or push. A door opening master I say. And I've put it on cue and it's really handy, although we have to lock our doors even when we're in the house.
The interesting thing happened when we went to our house on this nice river one summer and we were taking things from the car top the house opening and closing the doors. The front door was different that those at home, though, and had a door knob that you had to turn to the left and then push to open the door. Reeva as usually looked at everything around her, and when I, hands full of stuff, told her to open the door, forgeting that the door knob is different, she went to the door, stood up onh her hind legs, embraced the door knob with her front paws, and turned it. the door opened. I was amazed. maybe it was a lucky guess, but I am convinced she immitated our hand movements and opened the door. She learned to open the oven in a similar fashion I would say :-)
Sanja Miklin
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LPC UWC, Hong Kong