Dogs are psychic.  I learned this back in the late 1970's.  I began training in a couple of martial arts and in yoga in 1978, figuring I'd decide which one to focus on after getting a taste of each.  I soon set aside Tai Chi for later, focusing on Kenpo, but I kept up the yoga practice with private instruction for about a year.  In hindsight, I wish I'd stayed with it longer; if I'd realized how popular it would become worldwide (especially with young women) that probably would have enticed me to stay. Regardless I did get a lot out of the principles, which I continued to use in my martial arts stretching over the years. 

So what does this have to do with dogs?  I had two malamutes living with me back then.  Every time I would start a routine, they'd immediately crowd around, making it impossible.  It wasn't that they were trying to stop me, it's that they loved the energy of what I was doing.  My solution was to put them in the back yard, and this is where I discovered their ability to sense things.  The spot where I would practice was not visible to them.  I could sit there for any length of time and they'd be content to lie on the porch.  The second I started a routine, however, they'd immediately begin howling and scratching at the back door to get in!  This wasn't random either; it was every time!  It took a lot of focus to ignore them; it wasn't easy, and perhaps one reason I abandoned that particular practice.  Instead I began doing the Tai Chi stretching routine I learned at the Wen Wu school.  These are standing stretches, so I could do them with the dogs in the house.  Being upright, I wasn't down on their level where I was vulnerable to their interference, and for whatever other reason, those didn't excite the same response.

In more recent years I've noted other times dogs take to act in response to what I'm doing.  In particular, they always seem to know when I'm going to the bathroom.  The dogs can be quietly out in the yard, but the instant I'm unable to run out to correct them, they begin barking at neighbors or fence fighting with their dogs!  Yelling from inside the house won't work when they know I can't come out, and how they know this is a mystery known only to them.

So what exactly is it to be psychic?  If nothing else, it's the ability to sense things unrecognized by others.  The first time I recognized this in dogs was the behavior of our miniature schnauzer in the  2-3 days before my father's death when I was 14.  It was odd, my mother noted, how the dog was slinking out of the room whenever my father walked in.  That was unusual, as they had a good relationship, and my father would often take the dog with him on long walks.  Suddenly the dog was nowhere to be found when dad got the leash. On the last day of my father's life, the dog was missing.  Eventually I found him quivering under the couch.  That night, after dinner, my father had a massive heart attack; I found him slouched in his chair when I went to play chess with him.  The ambulance arrived, and my mother, usually a slow and cautious driver, tailgated it across town to the hospital while I was left home alone.  That dog and I had never been close, but that night he crept into my room and joined me on my bed, the first time he'd sought me out in the five years he'd lived with us.  Though he and I never closely bonded (he was definitely my mother's dog) it was the turning point in our relationship.