The Netflix documentary “Inside the Mind of the Dog,” aired Aug. 9, features the Duke Canine Cognition Center and the Duke Puppy Kindergarten, highlighting the bonds between humans and dogs.
The documentary reached No. 6 on Netflix’s U.S. Top 10 Movies and top 10 in 25 other countries in its first week of release. The Netflix original documentary followed up on the success of its feline counterpart “Inside the Mind of a Cat,” which debuted in 2022.
The film offers new scientific insights into the world of man’s best friend, from examining how dogs evolved to become socially attuned to humans to exploring their abilities to communicate by tapping talking buttons.
Among the experts featured in the documentary were Brian Hare, professor of evolutionary anthropology and founder of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, and Vanessa Woods, research scientist in evolutionary anthropology and director of the Duke Puppy Kindergarten.
In March 2023, Producer Andy Mitchell reached out to Hare and Woods to discuss the possibility of working together. After the two suggested that the documentary follow the progress of companion dogs from their early development to graduation as service dogs, production was “off and running.”
The film crew took two trips to Duke to demonstrate the progression of the puppies’ abilities: one during the puppies’ arrival at the kindergarten in the fall and another for the interviews.
“I think the biggest challenge was trying to get the puppies not to chew and pee on their very expensive equipment. But otherwise they were amazing. I think the [production crew] had a really good time while they were here,” Woods said.
In the documentary, Hare traces the journey of dogs from wild wolves to domesticated pets, showing how dogs became close to humans by being friendly. Dogs have a special muscle that allows them to raise their inner eyebrows and reveal the sclera, the white part of the eye, much like how humans look into each other’s eyes while communicating, he explained.
Hare and Woods performed an array of tasks to develop a cognitive profile that predicts which puppies from the kindergarten are most likely to make the grade as service dogs. One had the puppies faced with the so-called “impossible task” of attempting to pull food out of a locked container.
While some dogs persisted in trying to solve the problem on their own, others attempted to make eye contact with a nearby human to ask for help. Hare and Woods found that the former tend to go into detection work and the latter tend to go into service work.
“Dogs are magnificent, and they're something to be in awe of, and … something … worth pausing to think about how lucky we are to have them in our lives,” Hare said of his main takeaway from the documentary.
Duke Canine Cognition Center
This is not the first time Hare has been featured in a documentary. As the host of the three-part television series “Is Your Dog a Genius?” which aired on National Geographic Wild in 2015, Hare ran a series of scientific tests and games to improve dog owners’ relationships with their beloved household pets.
According to Hare, what distinguishes “Inside the Mind of a Dog” is its focus on the work of Canine Companions and “what dogs can do to help other people.”
Founded in 1975, Canine Companions pairs service dogs across the nation with children, veterans and adults with disabilities at no cost to the clients.
The Canine Cognition Center and Puppy Kindergarten help raise puppies from Canine Companions from eight to 20 weeks old, after which they are sent to service dog training schools across the nation. The puppies undergo months of rigorous training and practice their problem-solving skills in real-life settings before they are matched with handlers with disabilities.
Such problem-solving skills include alerts to key sounds, such as doorbells and alarms, as well as detecting changes to medical indicators like oxygen levels, blood sugar and cancer-identifying odors. Service dogs can also provide mental health support to patients with autism and post-traumatic stress disorder and their families.
“There's been a cultural shift in how we think of our dogs in our lives,” Hare said. “They've gone from workers on the farm … to pets, to now companions and family members.”
Puppy Kindergarten
“Inside the Mind of a Dog” touches on several themes in Hare and Woods’ new book “Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog,” published Aug. 27.
The book builds on Hare and Woods’ 2013 New York Times Bestseller “The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think,” where they presented discoveries made at the Duke Canine Cognition Center, revealing how dogs think.
In their new book, Hare and Woods uncover new insights into canine cognitive development while reflecting on the hard-learned lessons from the daily operations of the kindergarten.
The kindergarten, which started in 2018 and is housed in the Duke Canine Cognition Center, is a longitudinal study funded by the National Institute of Health. Every semester, more than a hundred Duke undergraduates volunteer to help raise puppies and expose them to daily campus life, taking them to the dining hall, the library and even lectures.
At the time of publication, the kindergarten tracked the development of 101 puppies, who engage in cognitive games to enhance our understanding of how their brains function. About half of puppies in the sample were raised in a number of different classes at the kindergarten while the remaining puppies were cared for in family homes by Canine Companions volunteers.
For Hare and Woods, the kindergarten is a “momentous community project” that could only be realized with the help of Duke volunteers.
“We don't think of it as our book. This is really the book of Duke, the Duke community,” Woods said. “We're so grateful and so thankful that everybody came together and made the whole campus a home for the puppies.”
Another rationale for writing the book is to make insights into canine cognition accessible to all dog-lovers.
“A book like this is trying to share everything that taxpayers have paid for — funding all our research — and share it with everybody, and share it in a way that's fun and accessible and helpful and useful,” Hare said.
Currently, Hare and Woods are working on starting a Canine Companions puppy club, where a student or team of students can commit to raising a puppy from eight weeks to 18 months for service. Similar canine training programs already exist at other institutions, including Tulane University and University of Central Florida.
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Lucas Lin is a Trinity sophomore and a university news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.