[natesmom14]

"My dog knows he's in trouble for pooping in the hallway!"...
errrrrrrrrr... no! The dog sees a subtle change in master's demeanor, and knows the roof is about to fall on him, as he's been punished before when he has seen this change, so he cowers... soliciting for master to take it easy on him.

My whole point of the post was saying that the dog is NOT only reacting in response to the master's change in demeanor- impossible if the master hasn't even seen the mess yet- that it CAN react/remember based on past incidences.

It's so hard to put in to a post exactly what you want to express- I wasn't trying to get in to a true breakdown of what a dog "thinks" as far as right and wrong (maybe I should have worded my title "She does know when she has done wrong based on previous scoldings and not just by our current response" or something to that effect)- I was just trying to basically point out that, as was stated in the last post, dogs are trainable, they remember and bond with us, etc. yet I HAVE heard NUMEROUS times that dogs ONLY respond "guiltily" to a misdeed based on the owner's current reaction of the misdeed- making it sound as though even though they have memory for training and such and many learn and remember even very complicated commands, they somehow only react to our mood as an indicator that they messed up and have no memory of what an "undesirable behavior" is. Yes, that may have been the case initially- they don't know the first time that dragging your shoe out of the closet and chewing it up is something you don't like until you teach them- but the next time they drag the shoe out of the closet and chew it up, they can remember that you didn't like that last time (though they might not have the impulse control to NOT do it)- they don't need to see your change in demeanor this time to know you won't be pleased. They may not understand WHY you won't be pleased, after all, chewing a shoe is great fun- but they know you don't like them doing it for some reason...