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A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Returning: Preliminary Investigations
by Rupert Sheldrake and Pamela Smart
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 62, 220-232 (1998)

Abstract: In 1991, Pamela Smart's (PS) parents first noticed that her dog, Jaytee, seemed to anticipate her return, apparently waiting for her at the window, beginning around the time she was setting off to come home. In May 1994, PS and her parents began to keep notes on her journeys and Jaytee's reactions. In this paper we describe the results of 96 such sets of observations made between May 1994 and February 1995, on which she went up to 51 kms away from home. Jaytee reacted 10 minutes or more in advance of PS's return on 82 occasions, and showed no anticipatory reaction on 14. There was a highly significant correlation between the time at which the dog reacted and the time at which PS set off homewards. Jaytee's reactions did not seem to be attenuated by PS's distance. In some additional experiments, his reactions occurred on 4 out of 5 occasions when PS travelled by unfamiliar means, for example in taxis. He also reacted on 4 out of 4 occasions when she set off home at randomly selected times. In one of these experiments, both Jaytee's reactions and PS's movements were recorded on videotape, and showed that the dog reacted 11 seconds after PS was told to go home at a randomly selected time previously unknown to her. The evidence suggests that Jaytee's reactions depended on an influence from his owner detected by the dog in a manner currently unknown to science.

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