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My First "Person" Vardoger

nicnac168 said:
Hi GNC, I should have responded sooner. Yes there was a study about pets and owners, I have been trying to find it to link to this. My dogs normal response to real (or imagined) threats outside the back door is to bounce up and down barking in a high pitched tone*, it's rare for him to greet in a low key fashion unless he is really sure who it is.

My mother had a siamese cat who always knew when she was coming home, she worked for district nurse so could be any time. Cat would always dissapear upstairs to sit in window and 10 minutes later she would come home

* Jack russell Chiuaha cross- possibly the campest dog in the village.
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nic, I thought you were describing my dog for a minute. And she's a JRT/staffy cross. Bark as loud as the staffy's but as yappy and often as a jack russell...

She knows when her dad is coming home from work - she stands by an air vent in the living room, which is her conduit to all things Outside. And not just when he's coming home from work at a predictable time as the other day he went out for the whole day on a non work day, and about half an hour before he came back, she was stood waiting, at the air vent... I'd say they can hear a familiar car from a couple of miles off but this was about half an hour before he came in, which is also about the time she goes to the air vent before he comes back from work.

Whatever idiot thought it was a good idea to cross an SBT and a JRT wasn't thinking straight...
 
There's Rupert Sheldrake's infamous studies of pet telepathy:
http://www.sheldrake.org/research/a...-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations

I for one don't doubt it, I've seen enough examples personally. With dogs I've always thought it might come down to scent - I once read that a dog can smell a teaspoon of a substance in an area as big as Washington state, and if that's true, then surely your dog could pick up the scent of you making your way across town.
 
Ulalume said:
With dogs I've always thought it might come down to scent - I once read that a dog can smell a teaspoon of a substance in an area as big as Washington state, and if that's true, then surely your dog could pick up the scent of you making your way across town.
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Yup, and there's also the nature of the scent. I wonder if a dog could smell its owner from a long way off, and be able to pick up on a change that meant 'Hoo, home time!'
 
escargot1 said:
Yup, and there's also the nature of the scent. I wonder if a dog could smell its owner from a long way off, and be able to pick up on a change that meant 'Hoo, home time!'
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Importantly, of course, dogs don't know that their sense of smell has any physical distance limitations at all.

I've always thought that absolute ignorance can be a greatly-empowering thing. If I've just walked a tightrope over Niagra Falls, but did it in the dark (and one end of the rope was tied to my bed) maybe I could nearly do it.

The earliest ancients must originally have never known that their senses had limits....tell a man he cannot do something, and that lack of belief helps erode a physical capability.

Animals can't possibly navigate over vast distances, find missing owners that've moved away to the next continent, know when their owners have taken off in an aircraft hundreds of miles away....but, the absolute unawareness of a limitation may be enough to facilitate abilities that are way beyond the mere physical.
 
CarlosTheDJ said:
I'm sure they have a body clock like we do...my cat is always waiting for me when I get home. I do usually tweet him to let him know I'm leaving the office though.
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I bet the cat's body clock works on food digestion ;)
When I read "I tweet my cat" I had a moment of high confusion, because nowadays it sounds almost plausible. Visions of cat iPhones and feline tweets ...
 
Sheldrake, IIRC, varied the times of the humans' returns so that the responses of the pets could not be merely due to the time or state of the natural light.

The smell theory is tempting but I think the animal is supposed to have reacted at the moment the human decided - or was instructed - to return.

I have to admit to relying on my memories of synopses here, never having read the whole book. :rolleyes:
 
Forgot about this as it was around the time of putting the old cat to sleep.

Heard a very sharp, loud knock at the front door as did Littlelun the cat. Investigated and nobody there. It's impossible for anyone to do that and run away without me seeing them.

I'd assumed it was the wife coming home early from work.

The weird thing was when she did come home 15 minutes later she did knock on the front door. She'd walked to the station that morning and didn't have her keys on her - which is pretty rare for her.
 
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Naughty_Felid said:
Forgot about this as it was around the time of putting the old cat to sleep.

Heard a very sharp, loud knock at the front door as did Littlelun the cat. Investigated and nobody there. It's impossible for anyone to do that and run away without me seeing them.

I'd assumed it was the wife coming home early from work.

The weird thing was when she did come home 15 minutes later she did knock on the front door as she'd walked to the station that morning and didn't have her keys on her - which is pretty rare for her.
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Glad you've come back Felid, how was NZ? Apart from the earthquakes.
 
A bit like staying at home in Britain then. Without the paranoia and guilt but a bit more seismic action. You could have gone to Cromer, a lot cheaper.
 
davidplankton said:
A bit like staying at home in Britain then. Without the paranoia and guilt but a bit more seismic action. You could have gone to Cromer, a lot cheaper.
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What and bump into Swifty?? :eek::p:mad:

Mind you I'd like to go to that shop that he works in. It would be like entering an episode of Shameless.
 
GNC said:
This is interesting, because the sceptic would say the pet knows what time the owner will be home because they arrive at the same point every day, but if the pet still manages the feat at random, there may be more to it.
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My cats and dogs were ready at the door for me every day no matter what time I came home, on various unsociable shifts. They looked like geniuses!

On a rare day off I was sprawled on my bed watching TV with both dogs and several cats present, when someone rode past the house on a squeaky bicycle. All the pets jumped up and ran down the stairs. Mystery solved, game on.

I unsportingly oiled my bike and was thereafter able to sneak up on them. Can't let them beat me, what.
 
McAvennie said:
...he looked at me puzzled and said he had been in the computer room all afternoon and had not left. A classmate also in the computer room verified his story. :eek:
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We can get a verification from one end, but wouldn't it be interesting to get a verification from both.
 
I’m not sure if this is the proper thread, but I will share my story.

In July of 2010 I met my mom and grandma at a restaurant for lunch. They still had errands to run after lunch and I drove straight home. I was in my bedroom for about a half an hour when I could of swore that I heard the front door open and close. I thought they changed their minds about the errands and my mom dropped Grandma at her house and came home. Some time passed and I decided to go downstairs to get something to drink. I didn’t see my mom anywhere but I shrugged it off as I thought she went out into the garage. About an hour after that, my mom came through the front door. I thought it was odd, but I just assumed I imagined the door opening the first time.

It doesn’t end there. Later on that evening when I was in my room, I heard the front door open, and I heard my dad come it. I heard him talking to our dog and setting his laptop down. Probably about an hour later my mom called me down for dinner. As I was dishing up my dad came through the front door. I asked where he went because I thought he went somewhere after he got home from work. Both of my parents stared at me like I had three heads.

So I had not one, but two of these strange encounters in one day.
 
Apparently my young dog leaps up from her comfortable sleep and goes to stand near the door at about the time I am leaving work. She is unusually bonded to me though (for which read needy, persistent and annoyingly always right behind me every time I turn round). Has any work been done on animals which are very attached to their owners predicting their return versus animals that could take or leave people? We could start with my cat...
 
Vardoger said:
Sound vardoger happens very often. Vision vardoger not so often. Sound vardoger when you think you hear from the sound that a family member has entered the house is quite common. Typically 10-30 minutes later you hear the exact same noise again and this time the family member arrives for real.
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This happened to me two weeks ago but I forgot to post it.

I was cooking dinner and expecting my wife to come home. We usually (but not always) keep our front door locked and the first sign of her arrival is hearing her try the door handle. So that day, the door was locked and I was cooking dinner, I heard the front door handle rattle and then after a few seconds I heard her key in the door and the front door open. I shouted to the kids "Mum's home" and they both ran into the hallway to say Hi. But she wasn't there. They came into the kitchen and asked "Where is she?" I realised that I hadn't heard the front door close again.

After about 5 minutes, I heard the same noises again and in she came. I even said to her that I'd heard her Vardoger.
 
I wonder if the Vardoger phenomenon is like a waking version of the sounds one sometimes hears in a hypnopompic/hypnogogic state. I have never had a Vardoger experience but I have been periodically startled by very real sounds while half asleep. Perhaps those that occur while we are fully conscious are more complex and contextual.
 
"Vardøgr is a Norwegian word defined as ‘‘premonitory sound or sight of a person before he arrives’’.

Seems to more accurately describe the sighting I had a few years ago that I described as an 'apparition'.
 
SkepticalX said:
I wonder if the Vardoger phenomenon is like a waking version of the sounds one sometimes hears in a hypnopompic/hypnogogic state. I have never had a Vardoger experience but I have been periodically startled by very real sounds while half asleep. Perhaps those that occur while we are fully conscious are more complex and contextual.
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As I posted before both myself and my cat clearly heard the sounds of footsteps and the sound at the door. I was washing up and Juna waiting for me to finish the washing up so I could feed her.

I've never been anywhere near sleepiness when I've heard it. Juna was certainly not even remotely sleeping as she was focused on getting fed.

That's what makes it so strange both of us reacted to it. She's a cat and I'm an old dude.
 
escargot said:
My cats and dogs were ready at the door for me every day no matter what time I came home, on various unsociable shifts. They looked like geniuses!

On a rare day off I was sprawled on my bed watching TV with both dogs and several cats present, when someone rode past the house on a squeaky bicycle. All the pets jumped up and ran down the stairs. Mystery solved, game on.

I unsportingly oiled my bike and was thereafter able to sneak up on them. Can't let them beat me, what.
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When we got our first dog shortly after getting married, (the one I mentioned earlier tonight in relation to Scarborough on another thread), we lived in a house which had a path right in front of the living room window, which we had to pass to get to the front door. Whenever we got home, we would glance in the window as we passed, and without fail there was the dog, curled up bold as you like on the settee.

But when we opened the front door she would always be sitting in the hallway, facing the door, in true "I've been waiting here all the time for my owners" fashion.

She never seemed to twig that we always knew she'd been on the settee up until the moment she heard the key in the lock, and that her 'butter-wouldn't-melt' act was fooling neither of us!
 
Schrodinger's Zebra said:
When we got our first dog shortly after getting married, (the one I mentioned earlier tonight in relation to Scarborough on another thread), we lived in a house which had a path right in front of the living room window, which we had to pass to get to the front door. Whenever we got home, we would glance in the window as we passed, and without fail there was the dog, curled up bold as you like on the settee.

But when we opened the front door she would always be sitting in the hallway, facing the door, in true "I've been waiting here all the time for my owners" fashion.

She never seemed to twig that we always knew she'd been on the settee up until the moment she heard the key in the lock, and that her 'butter-wouldn't-melt' act was fooling neither of us!
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My big dog Rocky wasn't allowed on my bed but would sneak on there when he thought I wasn't looking. Tried creeping up to catch him at it but he seemed to sense me, no matter how quiet I was.

I eventually sussed that he could see me approaching in the mirror on the wall opposite the bed, the sly creature!
 
A mate was concerned that her rescue Staffie was distressed when she went out, so she recorded him from her webcam on her laptop and went out to see what would happen.

Ozzy is never allowed on her chair, he knows that.

When she got home, she replayed the recording. When the front door clicks shut, Ozzy looks around for a bit and then jumps onto her chair and falls asleep.

Upon hearing the key in the front door later, Ozzy jumps off the chair and lies on the floor, acting as if he had never moved. :)
 
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