Paleontologists have proven that humans and dogs have lived together for at least 140 centuries, and humans and scientists are still arguing about the workings of a dog’s mind.

I’ve met hundreds, if not thousands, of dog owners who are quick to tell me they know exactly what their dog is thinking.  And they are not shy about telling me.

I always walk away smiling at the hubris of people who don’t know what they are talking about. When it comes to dogs and their thinking, my favorite words are “I don’t know.”

The world seems divided at times between those who see dogs as an instinctive biological machine and others who see them as furbabies with four legs.

I am a dog owner who believes that dogs have an animal version of real intelligence and consciousness. But I’m not convinced – neither are many biologists – that dogs have a mind as we know it at all.

The scientists tell us that 14,000 years ago, a Stone Age man sat next to a fire looking at an animal we would instantly recognize as a dog if we were to see it now. He tossed the animal a bone, and one of the most beautiful human-animal partnerships on the planet began.

This animal was not a pet, but a sentinel, a protector, a hunting partner, a helper who could sometimes spell the difference between life and death.

As the animals we call dogs evolved, wrote Stanley Coren in his excellent book The Mind Of A Dog, they became, among other things, shepherds, comrades in war, first responders, law enforcement aides, lifeguards, guides for the blond, herders, assistants to the disabled, and increasingly, family members, companions, emotional supporters,  jogging partners, and housemates.

The Stone Age man probably wondered what went on in the minds of the first domesticated dog,  but he couldn’t have known. Researchers tell us we still know precious little about a dog’s mind or how it works.

Plato called dogs to nobility and said they were lovers of learning. Diogenes believed they were more moral than humans; to Descartes, granting dogs any degree of intelligence was tantamount to admitting that they had a consciousness, which was heresy since anything that had consciousness had a soul.

And anything that had a soul could earn admission to heaven.

Coren talked to scores of researchers and came up with a list of canine mental abilities. Regardless of how much of a consciousness people grant their dogs, there are, found Coren, certain things that can be agreed upon as scientific facts when it comes to what dogs think:

• Dogs sense the world and take in information from it.
• Dogs learn and modify their behavior to fit circumstances.
• Dogs have memories and can solve specific problems.
• Early experiences as a puppy can shape the behaviors of the adult.
• Dogs have emotions.
• Individual dogs seem to have distinct personalities, and different breeds seem to have different temperaments.
• Social interactions, including play, are significant to dogs.
• Dogs communicate with each other and with humans.

But there is so much we don’t know about how they think.

Do they see the world in the same way we do? Since they can’t know what death is,  how conscious can they be of life? Could they possibly feel jealousy as so many people believe? Do they have a conscience and know right from wrong, or do they fear our anger?

Do dogs really have ESP, as many believe? Can they really sense all kinds of illnesses and impending death? Do they understand time, music, culture, math?

Does a therapy dog know he is helping an elderly person to feel the warmth and memory of their own dogs, or does he simply do what he is told to do and trained to do? The therapy dogs who worked with me in hospice always abandoned the sick when they were close to dying, they refused to go near them when they began to withdraw into themselves.

Biologists say they can’t yet determine whether dogs have the right thought and consciousness or whether they function as fur-covered computers. I tend not to listen to people who tell me they know what their dogs are thinking?

My favorite trainers say dogs have no idea what right or wrong is, they know to get concerned when their humans are yelling at them and to look worried because they are.

We know that dogs handle people. They are rewarded for jumping up and down when people come home, they are alarmed when the people who feed them and walk them are angry with them.

But what we don’t know is so much larger than what we do now.

I tend to favor people who can admit what they don’t know as well as what they do. There are very few of them on social media.

Why do so many people claim to know what their dogs are thinking?

Because dogs’ role has changed so radically since the Stone Age.

Dogs are no longer helping to live in the background of our lives. They have moved into the center of our lives. We focus as much on what we need them to be as what we know them to be.

We give them human names, invite them to sleep in our beds and bedrooms, spend billions of dollars on their health care, food and amusement. We mourn for months, even years when they die.

We suffer piercing guilt when we put them down.

Their new work is increasingly our emotional support, no longer just guarding us, and helping us hunt or fending off predators.

We slaughter thousands of animal species daily; we rescue thousands of dogs every day.

I know a writer who moved to the Caribbean to create poignant rescue stories for Caribbean dogs so that Americans who don’t want a “normal” dog can have one with a strong rescue story.

He gets $400 a story, especially if it involves the abuse and torture of dogs by drug dealers. Few Americans want to pay much for happy and healthy dogs who haven’t been mistreated.

This says a lot about dogs, but it also says a lot about us. I always remember when I consider what my dogs might be thinking? I look hard for happy, healthy, grounded dogs.

Dogs have no vocabulary; at least they don’t have one in our language. They can’t really be grieving our death when we die because there is absolutely no evidence that they know what death is or have any words for it since they don’t think in our language.

They might well be frightened, depressed, or confused by our absence, since we feed and care for them and attach to them.

But it’s not the same as human grief; it can’t be.

We know what dogs are thinking suggests our own hubris rather than their consciousness. I don’t know is a good place to start. They say that the scientists are getting closer and closer to figuring out what dogs really think, that is the next frontier for them.

They want to know how they think, and in what way, not our way. They love us, I think, but they are not us.