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Good Any Dog Park in any city at any time of the day or night, and you'll find people happy to talk

about their animals. He's a very handsome boy. He's a very handsome boy, doesn't he? He's adorable,

right? They'll talk nicknames. He's boo, he's schmoo, he's schmoo magoo. Their dog's character. He's

the weird kid on the playground. He's a bit of a drama queen. These people know their animals,

and they have specific theories about what they like and what they don't like. We usually leave

classical music playing for them. And yet, if you dig deeper, you get the sense that there are

fundamental things about their animals. They just don't get. Do you ever think about how she sees

life? No. Like, what do you think is going through his head right now?

Stick? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, you have no idea.

Even though we spend a lot of time thinking about dogs as dog owners,

I'm not sure that we really often are looking at them very carefully.

This is Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor at Barnard who studies animal cognition.

Her lifelong ambition has been to somehow escape the confines of her human existence

and truly understand dogs. This began when Alexandra was a kid. She had a dog,

Aster, a much she loved the way most children love their pets. And thought of the way most

children think of their dogs. He was a warm and steady presence, totally reliable,

and no more mysterious than rice. And then one day, that changed. Their family lived in a suburb

of a suburb in Colorado, and they used to let Aster out in the evenings. At night, you know,

...