How Do Dogs Know When You're Coming Home?

If you're a dog parent, you’ve seen this happen. You arrive home to find your pet already waiting by the door or window before your key even turns the lock. This begs the question: Are our pets psychic? The short answer is, probably not. But the real science is perhaps even more impressive. Let’s take a close look at the three theories on how your pet knows when you’re coming home.

Can your dog smell when it's time for you to return?

Humans perceive time through clocks or the position of the sun, but there’s a theory that suggests dogs perceive time through changes in scent. Specifically, the concentration of scent particles remaining in an enclosed space.

When you leave your house, your unique scent remains present. Over the course of the day, that scent gradually fades. Your dog learns to associate a specific concentration of scent, for example, 20% of the level from when you left the house, with your typical return time. So when the scent in your house reaches a low enough level, your dog starts to anticipate your arrival.

Can dogs hear you before you arrive?

Your pets’ hearing is two to three times better than your own, which means they can hear you long before you walk in the door. But what makes dogs unique is not just hearing faraway sounds but recognizing that these sounds come from you, specifically. There are two key ways that they do this:

●    Vehicle sounds: Every vehicle has a unique sound, and over time, your pet learns the specific sounds of your car versus others on the street.

●    Walking cadence: Everyone has their own unique walking cadence, and your pet quickly learns to differentiate your cadence from that of other people passing by the house.

Knowing how strong your pets’ hearing is, it makes perfect sense that they’ve already identified your approach long before you reach the door.

Do pets learn your daily routine?

Your pet's knack for learning routines also impacts their ability to predict your return. Every day, your pet picks up on repeating cues around the house – such as when the mail arrives, when a neighbor arrives home, or when the streetlights turn on – and learns to connect those with the time of your arrival home.

If you come home at roughly the same time every day, your pet's predictions will become incredibly accurate. But if your schedule is all over the place, don't be surprised if they don’t predict your arrival correctly every day. This system of routine learning only works when there's a pattern to follow.

It’s safe to say that your pet’s ability to predict when you’re coming home isn’t magic, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive. While there are three separate theories as to how your pet knows when you’re coming home, we have a hunch that they all might be playing a role. Their keen sense of hearing and smell, paired with their ability to learn routines, has allowed them to develop a system to pinpoint your arrival with great accuracy.