Does my dog need a night light?
While dogs can see better at night, that doesn't mean they want to
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My dog and I had been having an ongoing battle about food. This Hound mix would constantly place a random pebble of dry food near the open doorway, a rug near my couch, or grab a bunch of it and eat it in her crate. On one hand, I understood. In her mind, if she’d been eating treats in the living room all this time, why couldn’t she eat an entire meal there too? The problem was that she was leaving the kibble there instead of eating it. Just keeping it there for later use.
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I first suspected she was doing this as a hiding spot because she knew at a certain time in the evening, all water and food was poured out or emptied. Then I got a little curious about her night vision. I left a treat under a cabinet in the dark that I figured she could smell even if she didn’t see it. She ignored it. So I dropped another one in front of her and turned the light on. She snatched it up immediately. I pointed to the other treat. She looked in the general direction but didn’t seem to know it was there.
That was confusing for me. According to the American Kennel Club, dogs are supposed to have very good night vision because of tapetum lucidum.
“The tapetum is a special layer of reflective cells behind the retina that acts as a mirror within the eye, reflecting the light that enters it, and giving the retina another opportunity to register that light, according to AKC. This magnifies and enhances visual sensitivity under low light conditions and increases the dog’s ability to detect objects. Human eyes don’t have the tapetum.”
So was my dog having trouble seeing these treats in the dark? Was this the reason she was constantly taking kibble out of her food dish and strategically placing it in well-lit areas of my home? Was this why she devoured food anytime I was in the kitchen but zoomed out when I turned the lights off?