Although all living creatures have the ability to perceive things in their environment whether through vision, hearing, touch or all three, there are various differences in the way humans perceive things when compared to how animals perceive things in the world. It fascinated me to learn that certain animals have the ability to hear frequencies and see certain wave lengths of light that humans cannot. Animals and humans, however, have a similarity in that they both use their senses to perceive things in their environment. They use an initial process of detecting and encoding environmental energy, known as sensation. Then this process leads to organizing and interpreting sensations into meaningful experiences, which is defined as perception.

I have noticed from my own experiences of having a dog that his hearing is tremendously better in comparison to mine and the rest of my family. For example, when my dad whistles across the house or when I play fetch with him, he will immediately come running no matter how far away he is. Even if he is in a closed room with me while my dad is calling his name from the kitchen, he will run down the stairs as if the sound is coming from the same room. Another example of perception differing in animals, specifically dogs, is whenever a person approaches the front door of my house and has not knocked or rang the doorbell yet, my dog will begin barking, because he can hear them coming before we can. I believe that he hears their car door close or their footsteps, which are sounds humans are incapable of hearing from inside a house. We hear prominent sounds such as knocking and ringing of a door bell, but as humans we can rarely hear footsteps, unless we are close and there is no noise around.

Another example is whenever my dog hears the bathtub water running, he will run upstairs and hide under a bed, because he has paired the sound of water to the unpleasant experience of taking a bath. His immediate response to sounds that are not very loud for most humans makes me believe that canine’s ability to hear is amplified in comparison to humans. The sound provides a negative response to my dog, which means he hears for this sound in preparation to get as far away as possible. Another example of my dog uses sound in response to negative and positive outcomes, is whenever a car pulls in the drive way, his hearing seems intensified, because he gets excited to see who is there. This also occurs when people walk towards the laundry room, because he is listening for someone to take him on a walk, so his hearing is heightened. However, these are sounds that humans would never have the capacity of hearing unless there was no other sound, and they were in a reasonable proximity to the sound.

In conclusion, from my experience of having a dog I have been able to use my knowledge from psychology class to interpret my dog’s responses and develop beliefs to support research done about increased hearing perception of dogs in relation to humans.