Explaining a Hotel to a Dog

There's a new AI chatbot and one of the ways people are testing its results is to ask it to explain concepts to a 5-year-old, as well as other more intellectually advanced people. When I asked it about explaining things to a dog, it responded that dogs don't have the cognitive ability to understand difficult concepts.

Our dog stayed in a hotel for the first time and I found myself explaining a hotel to him. And he did understand it. When he heard noises in the hall or from other rooms, he barked. Because if we were home this would mean someone else was in the house. But he very quickly got used to us staying in one room.

He learned how to use an elevator. I called it the little room that took us somewhere else. We walked in, the door closed and it opened in another place. It could have been Narnia for all he knew. But he understood it was someplace different.

He learned where to stand to open the automatic doors to go outside.

And he learned that he loved running down the long carpeted hallways. He went left out of the elevator, left down the hallway and right around the corner and straight to our room. And waited for us.

We changed rooms and floors for the last night and he instantly learned that this room was to the right. And he went right to this room.

Maybe we don't have to explain things to him, but if he can create a smell map in his head, everything is very clear.

Jeffrey L Cohen

Jeffrey L Cohen