A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations
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Plain English Summary
Can your dog tell when you're heading home? Over 100 videotaped experiments suggest one very good boy named Jaytee could. While his owner Pamela was at least 7 km away, cameras tracked how much time he spent waiting at the window. During her absence, Jaytee hung out by the window only about 4% of the time. But the moment she started heading home -- even when return times were randomly chosen and nobody at home knew -- he jumped to the window 55% of the time. That's a massive and statistically rock-solid difference. The results held up across different conditions: ordinary trips, random return signals sent from over 300 km away, and even when Jaytee was home alone. Remarkably, skeptic Richard Wiseman ran his own experiments, got the same behavioral pattern (4% vs 78%!), but called it a failure because he used different success criteria. On evenings when Pamela didn't come home at all, Jaytee showed no increased window visits -- ruling out simple routine. The researchers argue this points to a genuine telepathic bond between dog and owner.
Actual Paper Abstract
Many dog owners claim that their animals know when a member of the household is about to come home, showing their anticipation by waiting at a door or window. We have investigated such a dog, called Jaytee, in more than 100 videotaped experiments. His owner, Pam Smart (P.S.) traveled at least 7 km away from home while the place where the dog usually waited for her was filmed continuously. The time-coded videotapes were scored blind. In experiments in which P.S. returned at randomly selected times, Jaytee was at the window 47o of the time during the main period of her absence and 557o of the time when she was returning (p < .0001). Jaytee showed a similar pattern of behavior in experiments conducted independently by Wiseman, Smith, and Milton (1998). When P.S. returned at nonroutine times of her own choosing, Jaytee also spent very significantly more time at the window when she was on her way home. His anticipatory behavior usually began shortly before she set off. Jaytee also anticipated P.S.'s return when he was left at P.S.'s sister's house or alone in P.S.'s flat. In control experiments, when P.S. was not returning, Jaytee did not wait at the window more and more as time went on. Possible explanations for Jaytee's behavior are discussed. We conclude that the dog's anticipation may have depended on a telepathic influence from his owner.
Research Notes
Central to controversy #12 (animal telepathy) and a landmark case study in the Sheldrake-Wiseman interpretive dispute. Wiseman et al. obtained the same behavioral pattern but framed it as a negative result using different criteria. One of the few psi studies with continuous objective behavioral recording over 100+ trials.
Across more than 100 videotaped experiments, dog Jaytee's window-waiting behavior was recorded while owner Pamela Smart traveled at least 7 km away. In 12 formal experiments with randomly selected return times (signaled by pager from 300+ km away, unknown to anyone at home), Jaytee spent 4% of time at the window during the main absence versus 55% during the first 10 minutes of the return journey (repeated-measures ANOVA F(2,22)=20.46, p < .0001). Similar patterns appeared in 30 ordinary homecomings (11% vs 65%, p < .0001), when Jaytee was alone (p < .01), and in Wiseman et al.'s independent experiments (4% vs 78%, p=.02). Control evenings with no return showed no increasing window visits. The authors conclude the anticipation may depend on a telepathic influence from the owner.
Related Papers
Same Research Program
- Testing a Return-Anticipating Dog, Kane — Sheldrake, Rupert (2000)
- The Anticipation of Telephone Calls: A Survey in California — Brown, David Jay (2001)
- Can Morphic Fields Help Explain Telepathy and the Sense of Being Stared At? — Sheldrake, Rupert (2019)
- Perceptive Pets: A Survey in North-West California — Brown, David Jay (1998)
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Rethinking Communication and Consciousness: Lessons from The Telepathy Tapes Podcast
Taking the Mindfield Literally: Discovering Minds by Assuming Competence Among Nonspeakers
Who's Calling? Evaluating the Accuracy of Guessing Who Is on the Phone
A Comparison of Four New Automated Telephone Telepathy Tests
📋 Cite this paper
Sheldrake, Rupert, Smart, Pamela (2000). A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations. Journal of Scientific Exploration.
@article{sheldrake_2000_that,
title = {A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations},
author = {Sheldrake, Rupert and Smart, Pamela},
year = {2000},
journal = {Journal of Scientific Exploration},
}