Service dogs don't understand that their owners are blind
From: Discover - 07/01/2014

Guide dogs help their blind owners in amazing ways, from navigating public
transportation to preventing them from crossing streets in traffic. It's
clear that the dogs know what they need to do, but do they know why they are
needed? To answer this question, a French anthropologist filmed guide dogs
and pet dogs "asking" their owners for food. Both groups of dogs used visual
cues to indicate their desire for food by looking back and forth between the
food dish and the owner. Because the guide dogs continued to use sight-based
communication, the author reasoned that they do not understand that their
owners cannot see them. However, the guide dogs did learn that sounds can
help them communicate with their owners, and they licked their chops more
frequently than the dogs of sighted owners (an auditory cue). We wonder if
they used their guilty look less often as well?

Read the entire article at:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/07/01/service-dogs-dont-understand-owners-blind/

Not related:
Behavioural responses of dogs to asymmetrical tail wagging of a robotic dog
  replica
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/12/09/ncbi-rofl-behavioural-responses-of-dogs-to-asymmetrical-tail-wagging-of-a-robotic-dog-replica/