low thresholds = poor nerves??? - Page 11

Hans:
    Re: your pig story, yes pigs can recognize a slaughter house is not good for health..smell of death etc. Infact, in a prior life I was working with mice in a research lab, which required guillotining them. The first mouse was always easy, it would put its head in the guillotine nonchalantly, but after that the subsequent mice and even rats did not want to be anywhere near the guillotine. So yes, they can smell death.

But the courage that is being discussed is eg in the face of gun fire, or even someone just holding a gun. Unless the dog has been shot, the dog is unlikely to associate the gun with a lethal weapon and so IMHO is not showing courage under the circumstances. So bottomline, dogs may show courage, but we need to know that the dog acts in the presence of mortal danger.

Guddu , Or in presence of  any other serious danger.I agree. 

Hans,
I was agreeing with you about the mongoose, just reiterating the point.  I have agreed with you on some topics and I have had a different opinion on others.  That's all there is to it.  Sorry haven't read anything else that was posted but that statement got my attention.  I will say that I have been very civil in my responses to you and others.

Ok, I have read the other posts and well........Going back the beginning of this thread:  "You say Tomatoe....I say Tomahhhto, you say Poetatoooeee I say Pohtahto, let's call the whole thing off."  Call it what you want, I rarely use courage to describe dogs because in order to do that I would have to be certain that the dog knows it is in mortal danger, may die and understand that concept.  I'm not saying that dogs are not courageous by "human" standards, just that it is not a regular event for dogs to operate under.  Can a dog be courageous?  Sure, it can.  Does it understand that what it did was courageous... I doubt it.  Call it what ever you want.  On this forum we can not even agree what is "civil, defense, sharp" or most other terms to describe a dog's behavior.  It seems when ever a term can be used for a person and has a different meaning for an animal people are easily confused.  I realize terms or definitions mean different things to each of us there fore arguing abut them is pointless and futile.  

Forgive me if I refrain from commenting any further.  I have to be up in a couple of hours for a SWAT hit and I hope my dog will be courageous or just do what I tell him and have trained him to do.  Either way it all works out and the job will get done.

 

Hans

"...dogs are just flat, mindless, strictly instinctual creatures  with one or at most two dimensional thinking, who work out of hypothalamus based instincts and drives which are then manipulated by  their trainers to perform according to their wishes?    Kind of a robots  in dog skin performing according to their hardware of DNA and software installed by trainer through training?..."


above perfect description of schuts/ipo training, trainers and their dogs.....




i was always told that the line between humans and evry other living being is "being" aware of yr own mortality - a trait all living things except humans lack. i not sure who even told me but it was like common knowledge??


so if dogs possess courage in the true sense of the word it would folow they would also possess altruisim, empathy......feel pushed into a logical corner yet, will make it even harder for you, if dogs are aware of their own mortality and possess courage etc do they also possess spiritual awareness or a senseof  spirituality???


riddle me that you anthropomorphists

If a dog understands if if faces a mortal fear or not is irrelevant, what´s important is that whatever the dog feels fear of it is able to overcome without to much trouble and support from the handler. A dog don´t understand what terms like softness, nerves or hardness means either, yet that is something that we as humans use to describe a certain aspect of the dog. If someone want to make it complicated they can use a long word like "the ability to overcome fear in a situation of conflict" or similiar, this quality is still close to what we normally says when we talk about courage or being brave in humans, the only difference is that humans know a slick floor is not dangerous, a dog doesn´t have that ability it just reacts on things it thinks is scary.

Interesting comments, Johan.

The dog who helped get Osama Bin Laden was not "patriotic" though, so we should be careful to not use the same term when we KNOW the difference exists.

Jim, point well taken. 
 One point to make is that discussion on forum are not necessarily to convince different people that they are wrong and we are right.  That is not possible since we have different point of view and each of us is shining light on the sphere of the subject from different directions and under different angles. The point of forum, in my opinion is to present and  clarify opinions  of different individuals so that reader can then make up his own.
As the Chinese proverb said. Ask thousand people then make up your mind. 
As far as your point  that dog does not understand that he is courageous, I would say ; neither do true heroes of human species.
-:) 
Prager Hans 

Peepers, excellent post

Psychopathic humans are said to not register fear in the same way as 'normal' people. Believed to be a result of different brain structure/function.

Perhaps courageous dogs are psychopaths?

Major difference between human and animal is; human fullfills his instincts in a civilized manner while animal fullfills his instincts on spot without a second thought, in most other aspects human and animal have similarities to varying degrees.
In my language the word animal is derived from the word life which is better expressed in English as a living creature, a human is also a living creature. Another major difference between animal and human is; human has the best shape amongst living creatures and all other animals were created to serve the human. There are animals known for their courage like the lion for example and here I am talking culture and history, in ancient poetry lion was always associated with bravery, so to generalize that none of the animals have courage as a trait isn't totally correct.
I tend to agree with Prager that some dogs have courage and some don't. Our elders here associate the fight drive, which some dogs have and others lack, with courage trait and it is a common saying here when a dog does not rise up to a fight "that dog is either too smart or a coward (lacks courage).

Ibrahim