One of my Corgis is a liar. Really, she is.
She lies to us. If I say "ah-ah", she will put her ears back and apologize and swear she'll never do it again..... until the second I turn my back and then she's right back at it.
And she lies to Jack. Huge, whopping lies. I don't have a lot of rules with my dogs, but Jack does not like being crowded by man nor beast, and moreover is not at all a lap dog; if he comes up next to me on the couch for cuddles once a week, that is a lot. Combine those two factors and I do have one rule: if Jack is on my lap, Maddie must stay on the floor (or at the other end of the couch). Since Maddie gets more lap time in a typical hour than Jack gets in a week, it seems fair enough.
Maddie knows we have this rule. She knows there is no point in arguing. So what does she do? She lies right to Jack's face.
She looks up at him from the floor. She play-bows. She says "Harf harf harf!!" in an endearing way.
Jack lays there. He looks at her. He says "You are lying to me. I know it. I am staying here."
She does it again. She bows. She barks. Jack has no will-power when it comes to games. The dog was born to play. He hops down. He trots over to her....
...and she promptly jumps into my lap. Smug. Self-assured. Jack looks at me like "Did you see what she did?"
She does it if he has a bone she wants, too. She lays next to him on the floor. She gives him the sad eyes. Then she rolls onto her back. She wriggles around. She makes little huffing noises. Jack perks right up. Time to play! His eyes sparkle. He goes over to her....
...and she flips over and grabs his bone.
I can't be the only one with a dog who is a certified liar. I know that behaviorists will try to say that dogs are not that complex. They react. Or they follow their instinct, and their nose. But I saw that study with the Border Collie, the one who knew the names of 200 toys. They put him in a room with 2 known toys and a 3rd that he did not know, and said a name he never heard before. He looked at the 3 toys, figured if he knew the names of 2 and he hadn't heard it, then the handler must want the 3rd toy and the never-heard name must belong to the new one, and got the correct one every time.
Surely if a dog can use deductive reasoning like that, they are capable of lying.
What do you think?