Ashleygrove Gundogs

this text came from another gundog forum and as the writer's research was so good I thought you may like to see what he found out about how our dogs see the world.:

When I'm training and handling a dog at distance (usually too far to get to the dog quick enough for a correction to be effective) I sometimes find myself wondering:

a. is my dog truly taking the p and ignoring me

b. am I confusing the dog by giving it an unclear hand signal

c. have I mismarked the dummy myself

d. can my dog actually see (and hear me) well enough at that distance

Usually its a combination of all four ! but it really pays to take a close look at the situation before blaming the dog. Of course reducing the variables and repeating the same exercise close up and building up the distances makes things much clearer for all concerned. Videoing yourself can also help critique any "woolly" handling techniques too.

But being pretty short sighted myself and having partially sighted friends/family members, (d.) has had me really interested in the whole issue of what dogs can see and how it relates to training for some time now... sadly I'm not of the medical persuasion so its all been a new topic to me (apologies for any inaccuracies in advance) but I wanted to share some interesting general information about canine vision which I've summarised below. I've found it a very interesting topic and try to keep it all in mind when I'm out with the dogs:

Field of Vision - Dogs eyes being set further apart gives them a wider field of vision than humans (250deg) but this is at the expense of binocular/overlap which relates to depth and distance perception, and could be said to be related to marking and sending for retrieves. This means the ability to see accurately in 3D is best when a dog is looking straight ahead, plus at certain angles it can be blocked by their snoz.

Visual Acuity/Focus - A dog's retina has fewer cone cells than rods and they don't have the central concentrated cone area that we do which gives us the ability to focus on an object and high resolution detail at distance. Perfect vision is 20/20 but most dogs have 20/75 or 20/90 vision so whilst we can see an object clearly 75ft away, a dog needs to be 20ft away to get the same level of detail. Some breeds apparently have better eyesight than others such as the 'sight hound' dogs (greyhound, afghan) but I haven't found any info on the gundog breeds.

Colour - Cones also relate to colour reception. It used to be thought that dogs could only see in B&W but whilst they do have fewer colour receptors than us, dogs are in fact dichromatic and can see blues and yellows but are red/green colour-blind. They can also differentiate well between shades of grey.

Night Vision - The upside is that more rods, responsible for low resolution and night vision, means in low light a dog can see 3x better than us. The reflective structure behind the dog's eye called tapetum lucideum, aka eyeshine (green-eye seen in photos) reportedly enables dogs to see objects in low light as if they were 'lit by an eerie glow'...

Peripheral Vision & Sensitivity to Movement - Now this for me was the most interesting part and I relate most to handling at distance and the importance of teaching youngsters with exaggerated movement. Rod cells sit on the edge of the retina and amplify light and because of the higher number, compared to ours, a dogs peripheral vision is highly sensitive to movement. This means that while dogs do lack detail vision, they can see moving objects (e.g. body, hand signals, spaniels easily distracted by bolting bunnies) considerably better than stationary ones. This is also why a dog can lose you across the other side of a field even if you (especially if you) haven't moved.

Fascinating post Avis.  Very interesting to read and helpful in understanding what our dogs see.