Move over Rico. Have you heard about the new article out in Beh’l Processes about a BC named Chaser who has not only learned names for 1022 objects, but has shown that she distinguishes between verbs and nouns? There’s more to this study, but let me start with the noun/verb issue. This is an especially interesting issue: one of the criticisms about the research on the dog, Rico, was that there was no proof he understood a label given to an object as a noun versus a verb. In other words, if you say “Go get your ball,” does your dog understand that “ball” refers to an object, or that the entire string of sounds means “go get something and bring it back”.
This is not a idle question. You may recall a post I wrote about Willie’s difficulties discriminating between objects, “What Do Words Mean to Dogs?”, in which I described Willie’s inability to attach words to different objects. I concluded that he understood the words I used as verbs, and had little or no comprehension of them as labels of objects.
The authors of this study, John Pilley and Alliston Reid, not only taught Chaser to label over a thousand objects, they taught her actions as well as nouns (“nose” meaning touch with your nose, “paw” meaning touch with your paw, etc.) and combined them to test if she distinguished between actions and objects (“paw lamb,” “nose lips”). She had no problem with that test, scoring 100% in what she was asked to do.
In a third study, they trained Chaser to label certain objects as belonging to different categories. For example, after teaching her the names of 26 disc-like objects, each of which had a unique name, they subsequently taught her that all 26 objects could also be labeled in a category called “frisbees,” whereas all round objects could also be labeled in as “balls.” She had no problem with this task either, and it’s a particularly interesting one for me. Here’s why: a category (or common noun versus a proper one), like “ball” or “frisbee” is an abstract concept. Although there might be a “ball” in your home, the category of ballness–anything that is perfectly round, no matter what it is made of, what it smells like or how big or small it is–can not be picked up, handled, sniffed or licked. It is a concept, an intellectual abstraction that only exists in one’s mind. (Other examples of abstract categories are “big versus small,” different versus same.”)
The ability to form a “mental abstraction” is one definition of “thinking,” and “thinking” or using abstract concepts within the mind to inform future behavior is something that science has been hesitant to ascribe to non-human animals. First the data that some animals could understand abstractions came in from other apes, like chimps, then parrots, like Alex, and from marine mammals, and many scientists and philosophers have no problem agreeing that certain mammals and birds are able to form abstractions . . . but dogs? As we know, dogs are not the most brilliant of problem solvers (a fact for which we should all be grateful; just ask the owner of a parrot.), but I find it fascinating, and important, that we are 1) including dogs in more and more studies and 2) doing the work to find out what really does go on “Inside of a Dog.”
So here’s the question to all of us: How do our dogs distinguish our spoken words, cues and commands? How many as verbs? How many as nouns? I am sure that Willie now categorizes “Jim, Trisha, Sushi and Sheep” as nouns, but I’m not sure about anything else. Indeed, it took some careful training to change “Where’s Jim” from ‘run to the window and get excited’ –even when Jim is standing beside you — to looking immediately at Jim no matter where he is. I suspect he (Willie, not Jim) may now understand that “toy” is any object that he is allowed to play with, and “Where’s Your…” is a verb that means to go look for a toy. Most of his other cues are all verbs (Sit, Down, Wait, Get Back, Give me Kiss, Come Bye, Look Back, etc etc….). But now I’m motivated to find out more. This week I’m going to experiment, should be fun. What about your dog? Have you thought about whether your cues are nouns versus verbs?
MEANWHILE, back at the farm: The ewes with lambs are integrated into the flock and the lambs seem to be doing well. Poor little white boy was shivering Saturday morning when it was only 2 degrees F, and we tried to put his dog coat back on but he’s grown out of it. But the sun warmed him up and he’s getting grain now in the creep feeder, and he looks like he is doing okay. Hans Solo and white boy’s sister are fat as ticks, not sure why the little guy doesn’t gain as well, but we’re working on it.
Willie and I got to work a friend’s sheep this Sunday, working on cross driving at a distance, and had a great time. We just got back from working on it in my little pasture; not the same, but still worthwhile. Lordy we love working sheep!
Time to go feed the critters, it’s been dark now for quite a while and we’re all getting hungry. I’m keeping Willie slim to avoid unnecessary stress on any of his joints… wish someone would restrict my caloric intake. No, I take that back. Never mind. I did not say that.
Here’s another photo from our farm sitters, with Willie and the lovely Harper. Willie and Harper got along famously… size matters deeply to Willie, and he and Harper got along great. They didn’t play much, but tended to hang out together, just being dogs, probably pondering why we care whether a noise is a sound or a verb, as long as they get some food out of it . . .
jackied says
I will experiment with this one, but I think my dog generalises ‘duck’ to other fluffy toys if he can’t find his toy duck. I also think he can generalise ‘ball’. Which surprises me, since he’s generally rubbish about generalising anything at all.
However I am well aware how easy it is to misinterpret their responses. I realised that though I thought I had trained him to go into the kitchen on command, _he_ thought I’d trained him to spin in a circle twice, and then for some mysterious human reason would always throw the reward into the kitchen…
Splash's mom says
I wonder about this a lot. My young BC seems to be very “verbal” (for lack of a better term). He understands verbs like “go”, “find”, and “get”, and he understands nouns like “tennis bone”, “football”, “Michelle”, “dinner”. He has recently figured out place names like “office”, “garage”, and “kitchen”, in addition to the obvious “car”. For example, I can say “go kitchen get football”, and he completely understands. He likes that football.
Jan says
You should give a spew alert for this sentence, “Indeed, it took some careful training to change
Beth says
Hmmm. I would say that Jack understands nouns, but then I’m not so sure. He easily learned the names of all his toys, and when we bring a new toy home we just have to say the name twice for him to remember it. Once he got the concept that things have names, he quickly added new names to the list.
He knows that all fuzzy balls of a certain size are “tennis ball” and he will quickly understand that a new one is still a tennis ball. Sometimes though if I say “get tennis ball” he’ll walk right past one and go looking for another. Could it be he has a specific one in mind? Or in his doggie near-sighted way, does he literally not see the one in front of him and so is just on a hunt?
But here’s what puzzles me: He had a ball called Knobbly Wobbly and when you send him to get that toy he gets it. But I taught him to play catch using that toy, and now when I say “Do you want to play catch?” he also gets that toy. So, does he understand that “catch” is the game and that particular ball is the one we play it with? OR does he think that toy just has two names?
The other thing I don’t understand is if I say, off-handedly, “Where is xxx” and use a word he does not know, he goes on a hunt for… well, for what I don’t know. What is he looking for? Does he think that he’ll know it if he sees it? In other words, when he knows the name of an object and you say that object, does he hold a picture in his head and go looking? Or, does he walk around with the sound of the word in his head and then when he sees the object it belongs to does it trigger his idea that he has found the correct object? Because if it’s not the latter, what on earth is he looking for if I give him a strange word? He looks very thoroughly, too: behind the door, in his toy basket, under a table. I will get him off the hunt by sending him for something else.
One day I will bring in a new toy and not name it, and then after a few days send him looking and see if he brings back that toy. Perhaps when I send him for a name he’s never heard, he thinks there must be something new there for him to find? Not sure, and I wish I could ask him what he’s thinking!
My girl… well, she is tougher to train and so I’ve not really tried object recognition with her, but perhaps that will be a fun winter task.
Frances says
Neither of mine are really in to words – they are not very toy motivated, so that motivation is missing. They do know a lot of words for food, though, and have picked up that the word “dogs” is worth listening out for – I have never taught it, but it must use it almost unconsciously when I am talking to both of them. I suspect that I would be able to communicate with them a lot more clearly if I could think of a way of using smells rather than words …
AnneJ says
I have no problem seeing dogs with the ability to form categories in their minds. One category that features large in my dogs’ life is “things that can be herded”. It’s interesting to watch them as different things move into and out of this category. Some dogs when they first see a cow may think it is not a thing to be herded, then they see a little movement, or get a good view of the hocks (which can be nipped) and then all of a sudden all cows are in the “herdable” category.
It goes the other way too- Hank once thought the wheel on the gate was to be herded- then after he bit it and it crashed into his head he changed his mind- now it has no more interest for him than the rest of the gate.
JJ says
I think it is obvious that just like the human world, the dog world is made up of different levels of intelligence. S, while it is a really neat first step to find out if *any* dog can do the kinds of things these studies looked into, what I think would be even more interesting is to figure out how the bell curve works for dogs in general.
In other words, assuming that we are not talking about a dog with mental disabilities and assuming that we take out the training/communication factor (we can’t judge a dog’s abilities if we are not communicating properly), then what percentage of dogs *can* distinguish nouns from verbs? Can they all do it to some extent or is it really the realm of the super-bright dogs? What percentage of dogs can generalize nouns/(do that abstract noun thinking you were talking about)?
I also want to know to what extent our training increases their abilities. Again, I’m not talking about finding the right way to communicate. I’m talking about the same concept in humans where if you exercise your brain, you actually make it smarter. If you get humans thinking and using their brains, especially at certain young ages, their mental abilities are better than if you didn’t mentally stimulate them. So, for dogs, with all our attempts to try to figure out what they can do mentally, we are in the process mentally stimulating them. Especially for young dogs, how much of what we are doing in the study is actually changing the dog’s abilities? To what extent does it matter?
I’m just sharing the kinds of questions that popped into my head in reading Trisha’s post. These things totally fascinate me. But they also frustrate. The more we learn, the more I want MORE! 🙂
Rita Arntzen says
I stand in our kitchen, dog toys in the living room, ask my dog to “go get your BONE”, a squeaky bone, and “go get your ball” and cannot get over that she’ll bring me the right toy. They are both yellow and of the exact same material.
Kat says
Ranger knows some nouns and some verbs but I really don’t know how many (never kept track) or if he knows a category of noun (person, place or thing) and a category of verb (do something). It may be that he has a concept of verb/noun which is the action requested done to the thing named. One of the games we play on those days when indoor activities are better is a game in which Ranger is asked to distinguish between objects by touching the named object. He will correctly identify the named object more than 90% of the time (but not 100%) so he distinguishes between book, boot, bottle and bag for example when asked to touch one of them. I use whatever happens to be sitting nearby so the specific objects he’s asked to touch aren’t always the same. A book for example could be the big Animal-Assisted Therapy tome (thanks for the recommendation it’s fascinating) or the small paperback novel or anything in between. He must have a concept of bookness because it doesn’t matter which book I’m using. The same is true for the other things we use. A bag can be paper, plastic, cloth; boots might be fleece, rubber, neoprene, etc.; and bottles are glass or plastic, clear or opaque and of varying sizes. So I’d have to say that he knows some categories and generalizes some things.
I picked up Sean Scennsals (although clearly I don’t remember how to spell her last name) and we’ve been playing with K9 sign. Most of the time Ranger will correctly assign an item to the toy or food category although the other day he was simply signing food for everything and not looking at the item I was holding so that may just have been him trying to tell me the game held no interest for him that he was hungry. It’s a little trickier there since food is very much a noun and verb and means “that is food” “I want food” and “give me food” depending on context. Toy could also be a noun and verb but my sense is that he uses it more as a noun category meaning this thing I play with. After all food is tightly controlled but toys are to be had quite easily so the need for “toy” as a verb is less. By the way thanks for mentioning this book. It has been very interesting trying out K9 sign. Ranger has always been a very effective communicator but giving him specific movements that identify specific things (so far just toy and food) has made it even easier for him to communicate. He’s even created his own sign for chest scratches. When he wants a chest scratch he sits and paws the air twice with his right paw. It’s a very effective sign since even strangers understand that he’s soliciting some kind of petting and oblige allowing him to shift until they scratch his chest. Of course I could be completely off base about the category toy it might simply refer to all things not food. Although the time I asked him to identify the cat he first turned his head away and when I simply waited he looked back and made a gesture that was not food, toy or want chest scratches.
I don’t know that Ranger understands nouns and verbs the same way I do he probably doesn’t but there is definitely a thought process of some sort going on. And it is fascinating trying to find a window into that process.
Roberta Beach says
I wish my Louie were still alive as well as Penney. Both, to me, had above average intelligence. I noticed, one day when driving into the driveway and opening the garage door, all the dogs but Louie were watching the car in the driveway – Louie was looking into the garage where the car would be….He also played games at the expense of other dogs. He would take his chewy, leave it in a doorway and back up, hidden from view. When an innocent dog came along to munch the “apparently” abandoned chewy, Louie would spring on them, fending them off his chew. I do miss him. It would have been fun to work some of these puzzles with them…I may now try with Justus, a Dobie mix.
Teri says
Fascinating stuff but I must confess that one of my first thoughts was “thank god my dog isn’t that smart!”. My lab R is actually quite clever and I very much enjoy working with him but I do like that he is a dog and has an “off switch”. The switch doesn’t always work the way we want it to (grin) but it still is there! My personal experience has always been that the smarter the dog the more intense the dog seems to be. My brother has a lab as well that we all like to smile at and remark how “pretty” he is, definately not the smartest dog but very sweet and super easy to live with. Hmmmmmm, now as I type this I find myself wondering if maybe it would be easier to live with a dog like Chaser because there is a large ability to communicate? I also wonder if Chaser has good dog skills (ability to read both other dog and human body language)?
Liz says
Yeehee, exciting stuff. Proving dogs have some capacity for abstractions seems powerful enough to sharpen our ethos, or what I think of as cultural understanding, of dogs. The limitations or over-attributions we
trisha says
Liz: Good point about “nose” and “paw” also being nouns! Sorry.. I’ll clear up in the post! And Beth: man, those are some gooood questions. Sure wish we could ask our dogs!
Amy W. says
This post reminds me of training dogs to my version of “where’s Jim?”. I thought it would be cute to say “where’s Dad?” and have my dogs run over to my husband. To get started, I asked my husband to sit on the couch, so we could practice. After we began, it dawned on me that I had never labeled my husband as “dad,” so I asked my husband to move to the other side of the room, and then tested the dogs to see what they were understanding “where’s dad” to mean. You guessed it, they thought “dad” referred to corner of couch, not my husband. Needless to say, we had to spend a little time labeling my husband as “dad,” before we go any further.
To join in on the noun/verb conversation, both my dogs are quite responsive to the word go. As it turns out, I have used the word as catch-all to mean all sorts of things, but in general it translates: “you, dog, come with me in this direction.” I don’t know how much of what I say they understand before and after the word go, but the definitely understand go to mean follow Mom.
Catherine says
Reading the descriptions of teaching categories in Trisha’s original post and Kat’s comment, I wonder if the dogs are able to correctly associate a completely new item (not identical to a familiar item, i.e. one for which a label was taught) with the appropriate category (which to me would suggest the ability to abstract) versus having learned the 26 items and the category association by rote, and then correctly matching them. I would think the ability to distill the “ballness” and extrapolate to a completely new and untaught example of a ball would be necessary to demonstrate abstraction. I can’t tell from Kat’s comment whether her dog was able to understand that each new book was a book right away, or whether some trial and error may have resulted in the ability to understand that “book” applied to books of various sizes and shapes.
Either way, it’s very impressive – my dog shows a fair amount of problem-solving when we do shaping exercises, but I haven’t been able to teach him names of objects with any real reliability. We’ll work on that this winter too…
Beth says
I just wanted to clear up something about Jack looking for random objects that he does not know. I am not intentionally trying to confuse him, but if I am alone with my dogs and I misplace something, I might without thinking say “Jack, where are my keys?” or “Jack, where is Boo? (the cat).” And off he goes, even though he doesn’t know what “keys” are and I haven’t taught him the name of the cat. Now, if you asked me to look for something I’d never heard of, I would look at you funny and say “What, again?” Is the dog confused by my request, or is the trust level so great that he figures it must be something he knows?
And Teri, I have one of each: A very clever dog, and a “Oh, isn’t she pretty?” dog. I can say, honestly, that the “isn’t she pretty” slightly air-headed girl is in fact easier to live with, while the clever one is more rewarding to work with.
The clever one, though, does not miss a trick and so we have to be careful. He reminds us of routines (It’s past bedtime, say), barks if we forget to turn off a light when we go upstairs, lets me know if there is a new sign across the street or a truck parked in a strange place, and clearly reacts to any changes of routine around the house. He also learns words so quickly that we need to spell a lot. Such dogs are a joy in some homes, and a beast in others. If we had a busy, chaotic home with a lot of people who had different routines and behavior patterns, I think that he would be a terribly frustrated dog. The “isn’t she pretty” girl, on the other hand, would be quite content with anyone who gave her a kind word and a belly rub (and regular meals, of course!)
Melanie S says
What a gorgeous photo of Willie and Harper! Harper looks like the lap dog version of a BC – the BC you have when you don’t really have a BC (does that make sense?).
Haven’t had time yet to read all the posts above, will have to get back to that when I have some time later, but will just quickly say that I’ve been teaching my whippet Slipstream “Where’s Teddy?”, “Where’s your Kong?” etc. when he’s inside, and “Go get your gumboot!” and “Go get your frisbee!” when we’re outside. I make a point of holding the object – teddy, gumboot, frisbee, etc. – in front of him and naming it, and then adding the ‘direction’ part of the phrase in later. He seems pretty good at distinguishing his nouns and understanding that “Where’s…?” or “Go get your…” means to go find the noun (so to speak).
Julie Hecht says
Great post! Let’s retest Rico : )
jackied says
Interesting point about whether sound early training makes a dog more ‘intelligent’ (as we term it). My gut feeling is… not neccessarily. I know a lot of people with rescue dogs with poor training histories that end up with amazingly talented and responsive animals.
My own knew _nothing_ when I got him at 12 months – not even how to pull on a lead 🙂 – and even with a very inexperienced trainer he was responsive right from the beginning and very quick to learn new things. He is however more responsive to hand signals than voice – is that a feature of unsocialised/untrained adult dogs, or just his nature?
Liz says
Oh, so much of language makes me cross-eyed, but in a good, fun way! The nose/paw example speaks to how important context is to determine meaning. I wonder how much dogs use context, if at all? I think, as a visual person, I struggle with “nose” as a verb because upon hearing the word, oodles of nose pictures cycle through my head. I have to use the context to force my brain to drop the nose-as-a-thing images. Is determining whether or not dogs use a concept of context possibly the next frontier in research? I think of homonyms, like deer and dear, and how much I must confuse my dogs with these words. (I label animals, but I also use dear as a pet name- I have actually caught myself and tried to say, “Sorry Nala, that’s dear with an “a,” even though she made no effort to spot the deer in the living room as she would outside.) I also think of this study in terms of using one sound for two meanings, like could Chaser learn “nose nose”= touch a nose with your nose? Or “paw paw”?
Any way, I look forward to what we find out next! How about synonyms?
Alexandra says
I think virtually all of Copper’s commands are verbs. For the ones that could be nouns, they could very well be verbs for him, too. If I ask, “Where’s Kitty?” Copper will get this crazy-eyed look and start sniffing for a cat. If there’s one nearby he’ll find it. This started with my cat in the house (great when I need to find her to take her to the vet) and got generalized to searching for any cat outside with very little training on my part. We found a neighbor’s escaped housecat that way once. While he could understand that a kitty is a particular animal, the word, for him, may also mean the act of searching out a cat. I applaud the scientific research with Chaser to figure out the difference!
Jessica says
My dogs have learned abstract words like Ball and Frisbee and Toy. When I taught Sadie to clean up her toys, she first did it with a ball. Then we added more balls and when I’d say get the ball, she got each one. Then we added more toys and called them toys, and now if I ever tell her to get a toy, she can pick out any of her toys. To her toy means stuffed toy and if no stuffed toys are around she’ll pick up a ball 🙂
Kat says
@Catherine; excellent question. In the very beginning I was just teaching him names for things. I’d hold a book, say book and ask him to touch the book and reward him when he did. Then I’d pick up something else, a mug for example and say mug, touch mug and reward him for touching the mug (or whatever) After about a month this got really boring and I started asking him to differentiate. Still for the first year of playing this game I would pick up a book and hold it in front of Ranger and ask him to touch the book then I would pick up the bottle hold it in front of him and ask him to touch the bottle. After that I’d set them in front of him and ask him to touch the named item. Throughout the game I’d swap them around and sometimes add in a third unlabeled thing and ask Ranger to touch the named item (never asked for the item that I hadn’t labeled I should try that). I think that having experienced all the different types of book labeled as book (or boot, bag, bottle, whatever) he’s now developed a category of book–items with a certain bookness and when we play the name game today I no longer label the items as I put them down unless it is a new category of item that hasn’t previously been named. I foresee some interesting thinking games in Ranger’s future. There would come a point in their development when my children could tell the difference between a book and a magazine. I wonder if Ranger can. Magazines have a certain bookness about them so my guess is he’ll identify a magazine as a book.
I’m not sure if this helps put things in a context or not but in case it does I tend to use the same philosophy for child rearing and dog rearing. I want to raise independent thinkers who make good choices and behave appropriately in society (whichever society they happen to find themselves in–so able to read social cues). Ranger usually sleeps outside by his choice. He has a roughly 700 square foot enclosure with gates at either end. One gate opens into the fenced yard. The other gate opens onto the driveway and freedom/unfenced access to the neighborhood. When I put him to bed the other night I came and went by the yard gate and didn’t notice that the driveway gate was open. Rather than taking advantage of this unexpected freedom to explore all the places he doesn’t get to go or to visit his friends Ranger came up the driveway to the gate into the yard and barked his attention bark until my husband went out and let him back inside. No one trained him to do that but we have done our best to teach him to make good decisions. Part of that in my opinion is giving him chances to use his brain. He’s a very smart dog so I like to find mental challenges for him. Fortunately, he’s also a pretty easy going dog–just don’t let him get really bored or you’ll be sorry.
Ellen Pepin says
I’m a little skeptical about dogs being able to put things in categories. Our Shepherd/Rottweiler mix has a ball that you stuff with food. After we eat dinner, he gets his ball. He loves it and whines for us to fill it. We can say “where is your ball” and he runs to it. Joe sometimes says “where is it” and he runs to the ball. At other times of the day, if I say “Where is your ball?” he doesn’t always run to get it. Does he know that “it” means the ball? I don’t think so. After dinner, he is anticipating his ball and food, so “Where is?” means go get something and he wants his ball. He isn’t very good with other nouns except “food”
Our other dog, a collie, understands certain verbs, such as “Go get –” , but she doesn’t seem to understand nouns, except “food or treat”. When she hears either, she runs to the kitchen counter where the treats are.
Donna in VA says
Well, I am pretty sure we drive my dog crazy because my husband won’t call things by the same name I give them. For example, I call Kong “Kong” and yet hubby calls it “ball”. In fact, hubby calls pretty much everything “ball”. “Up” and “Down” are verbs as in “jump up”, “get down from there”, and “go in” and “go out” mean what they say. He understands “move” means “move out of my way”. He probably understands more verbs than nouns because I haven’t focused on nouns. He actually responded to “stick out” when he brought a stick inside and I wanted him to take it back outside – which he did! So that makes me believe he knows “stick” as a noun.
Now, I would like him to understand “my” meaning I am not going to give him the object. When I am picking up sticks for firewood he expects each one to be for him and barks at me demanding the stick. I tell him “my stick” but so far that’s not helping.
em says
Jackied….I have no basis for a broad generalization, but I can say that I had exactly that experience with Otis, who was also completely untrained/unsocialized as an eighteen-month-old. It took him a loooong time to understand any words at all and he’s still not terribly verbal, but once he began learning (his name, basic verbs like sit, come; important nouns like food, dinner, ball) he began picking things up exponentially faster). I’d guestimate that he actually, truly understands perhaps two dozen words, mostly nouns. Most verbs, even basic commands like “wait”, “sit”, “stay” etc. I suspect that he deduces from context and body language most of the time.
He’s really good at guessing, a very smooth operator, and people who don’t know him well are often agog at his incredible “training”. In fact, he’s really only learned that the “command tone” means ‘I want some action…figure out what’. Not a bad interpretation, practically speaking. 🙂
Steve Shaffer says
Of course (in hindsight) dogs categorize things. Food, threat, male dog, female dog, in heat female dog, toy thingie, chew thingie, known noise, unknown noise, etc. The amazing thing is that they can associate human words to the categories.
To cross your eyes even more on the subject of thinking and understanding language (incidentally Stanley Cohen mentioned that dogs can routinely learn about 800-840 different words) Karen Pryor was clicker training a grey parrot (African Grey I think, smaller variety in any event) and would sometimes give it a new cage object/toy as rewards. Well the parrot knew several color words and knew the word bird (the colors are adjectives or categories if you like, applying a single word to many objects possessing the quality of the specific color, which is mind boggling to me enough thank you). One day she gave the bird a mirror for its cage. The parrot investigates and Karen asks “What is it?” which the bird also knew meant to use the word for the object. Now the parrot not only understood Karen using these words but could also say them. The parrot looks at the mirror and says: “Grey bird”. It had never put those two words together before. I may have a detail or two off (I heard this from Karen over 10 years ago, but the gist is correct.
We have a Belgian Sheepdog that does agility (amongst other things) and we found the simplest thing for him was to use verbs for the obstacles instead of individual names with one or two exceptions. The jumps and the tire are both “jump”. The A-frame and dog walk are both “climb”. We had started with individual names and later changed. He actually seems to do better with the verb than the noun. We tried this as we found he understood “table” as jump up on (and stay there) the indicated object be it a grooming table, agility table, picnic table, rock, stair landing or whatever.
Beth says
I wanted to tell a funny story and it seems to fit best here. Jack had a set of interlocking rubber rings that we called “rings.’ One night we were out on the deck with a telescope. It was really clear, Saturn was high in the sky, and you could clearly see Saturn’s rings. My husband and I were looking and mentioned the word “rings” a few times.
Never did we say “get”.
Jack was out with us and started to bark. I thought maybe he had to pee (the deck is totally enclosed), so I opened the door and we went inside to get his leash. While I was gathering his leash, Jack trotted off and came back around the corner with (drum roll…..) he rings in his mouth! Eyes sparkling, clearly he did it with intent and thought he’d done what we asked!
We laughed and laughed (and praised the dog upside down and backwards, or course). We never gave a command, never said “Jack” to get his attention, never used the command word “get”. Clearly he heard us discussing a word he knew and barked so he could go inside to find it (it was a direct beeline to the object when I opened the door and let him in, and no he didn’t need to pee).
It made me realize that our dogs must hear us the way the Charlie Brown kids hear adults speaking “Waa, waa-waaa-waaa-waaa” and every now and then a word they recognize pops into the conversation.
trisha says
Great story about Alex, but just a quick, friendly correction: The trainer was Dr. Irene Pepperberg, not Karen P.
Love the story from Beth about “rings” and it reminds me of one of my own that I mentioned in Other End of the Leash (I think. . . or was it For the Love of a Dog? Argh!). My cat had been missing for days, and after searching yet again I sat down in the barn, crying, and said to one of my dogs, “Oh Pippy, where’s Ayla?” I was just expressing emotion, not asking her to do anything. It never occurred to me that she would put any of those words together as a verb and a noun. Those of you who read the story know that Pippy went on to save Ayla’s life: she searched the barn, began whining and pawing on top of a stack of 400 hay bales. I found Ayla, almost dead, at the bottom of a barn full of a couple of tons of hay, got her to a vet who said she had another 30-60 minutes before she died of dehydration and infection (abcessed wounds, probably from a feral cat). Yeah Pippy Tay (I miss you honey, along with Lassie who died this month last year. Do we ever get over missing these special dogs? Rhetorical question, obviously . . . but here’s to Luke and Lassie and Pippy Tay and Tulip and my first BC, Drift. Oh yea, and to Bo Peep, my first Gr Pyr. I love you all.)
em says
It’s so interesting to me that so many people report that their dogs only or mostly understand verbs when Otis, for whom verbal comprehension seems difficult, almost exclusively knows nouns. Admittedly, a full dozen of the two dozen words he seems to know are directly related to food (he knows food, dinner, treat, breakfast, cookie, chicken, hungry?, yum-yum, delicious, liver, pizza, and cheese, for certain…probably a few more that I can’t think of) He also knows ‘eat’ which is technically a verb but he seems to respond to it and the other non-nouns above as though they were all nouns meaning “imminently available food”.
His reaction to hearing the word “dinner” is not observably different than when he picks “hungry?” out of a conversation. “Chicken” and “cookie” get about the same response, so I don’t really know if he knows what specific type of food is being referred to, but his reaction differs from his reaction to a word like “dinner” because he looks expectantly at my pockets, anticipating that I will have this type of imminently available food WITH me. With words like ‘dinner’ or ‘delicious’, he prances around, looking from me to the kitchen if we’re inside, generally around the area if we’re outside. So I would guess that these words mean slightly different things to Otis. He reacts to the first category as though it means ‘imminently available food on my person’ and the other as if it means ‘imminently available food nearby’ . He picks up all of these words out of context, in conversations about other things and reacts in a noticable way. (Ear pricking, lip licking, eye contact and dancing around, typically. Running to the kitchen occasionally).
Most of the rest of the words he knows are either beloved objects (ball, ducky), animals (dog, kitty, squirrel) or people (daddy, grandma) He does seem to understand synonyms to the extent that he seems to realize that several different words (or gestures) can mean the same thing.
As far as generalizing meaning and complex parts of speech go, the word “no!” springs instantly to my mind. For Otis, it means ‘don’t continue to do what you are doing’, or ‘don’t do what you are THINKING about doing'(it can be paired with a noun or verb in this case i.e. “NO SQUIRREL!” to mean, do not lunge at the squirrel you are staring at) or ‘you can’t touch/approach/have that thing’ These meanings overlap, but they are very, very broad. It strikes me that even though it is often one of the first words a dog learns, responding to the word ‘no’ in a generalized way requires some pretty complex thinking.
Jennifer Hamilton says
It is clear my dog not only understands, but finds it more fun and easier, to learn verbs over nouns. I have tried numerous times to teach her to discriminate objects. Not only does she improve only slightly over guessing, but she gets frustrated and wants to quit the training session. With verbs, she learns them quickly and with enthusiasm. She learns them so fast, it’s almost like I am just having a conversation with her and she’s reacting to my requests on the fly.
As a Portuguese Water Dog, I wonder if there was human selection for the dogs who understood actions/verbs quickly. After all, “set the buoy” and “herd the fish” were likely so specific and context rich commands that you never had to ask the dog to discriminate between “set the buoy” vs “set the fish” or “herd the buoy” vs “herd the fish”. I suspect that to be the case with many of the specialized working breeds that were bred to perform important actions. Come to think of it, were there any breeds that were bred to discriminate objects? Smells, yes…but objects?
Since birds don’t have the long history of human selection for specific traits, I wonder if a parrot’s brain is in a more natural state…where nouns and verbs both come easier than for dogs who were bred to perform tasks.
Kat says
This is a fascinating subject and it has made me very curious to try to find out what Ranger does and does not understand. Last night I decided to experiment. When Ranger hopped up on the couch next to me I took a mug in one hand and a book in the other and asked him to touch the mug. He did. I replaced the mug with a plate and asked him to touch the plate. He did even though to the best of my recollection I’ve never taught him the noun ‘plate.’ I stood the plate on end with the bottom facing Ranger and holding the plate on one side and a book on the other asked him to touch plate. He looked frantically between the two and began whining and barking his frustration. As soon as I returned the plate to a flat position he touched the plate. He’s learned a general category of bookness but at this point only one configuration of the object is the plate. No general category of plateness.
Out of curiosity I held up two books one hardback and one paperback and asked him to touch book. Without hesitation he selected the one in my left hand. Wondering if perhaps he thinks paperbacks are more bookish I switched the books and now held the paperback in my right hand and the hardback in the left. Asked to touch book Ranger again selected the book in my left hand. No matter what kind of book I held on the left he always selected it when asked to touch book. Thinking he might be just targeting the left hand I picked the mug up in the left and the book in the right. He correctly chose the book.
In case you are wondering why so much emphasis on books. I am an avid reader with a very bad habit of putting my current read down and forgetting where. I started teaching book with the idea that someday we’ll advance to the point where he can “find my book.” Although I have to admit that picking out the current read from the huge number of books in my house will be some trick. I’m hoping he’ll be able to distinguish the book with the largest amount of fresh me scent and identify the current read that way.
Ranger knows “Find Mom.” “Go to Mom” and “Where’s Mom” so I wondered if Mom was a noun in the same sense that book is a noun. I laid my hand on one side (he’s used to touching my hand as that was the foundation of the touch command) and a book on the other and asked him to “touch Mom.” Whining and frustrated barking ensued. Anything Mom apparently means leave where you are and go to where Mom is. In this context where he was already with me “touch Mom” was confusing. By the way we’ve played “Find book” at my mother-in-law’s house and he understands to hunt for the book and signal when he has found it. We haven’t played it at our house because with literally thousands of books around I’m afraid it would be too confusing.
Fred says
(Firstly I’m a new fan of yours and just finished For the Love of a Dog which got me teary eyed several times, as well as being informative. Thank you!)
Miku knows mostly verbs, but she can differentiate between bone/ball/toy, which at first I thought of as nouns, but the more I think of it, I think she may interpret as verbs as well. When we tell her to get a bone, what we mean is get a toy that we will not throw for you and lie down to play with it. Toy means to get a plastic toy with a squeaker to perform tricks with, and ball means get something you are allowed to play fetch in the house with. I will have to continue testing out what her definitions for our words really are, but so far it’s been fun.
jackied says
…. hmm getting confused here.
My dog can target ‘where’s duck’ , ‘where’s ball’, where’s toy and ‘where’s Chris’, appropriately. If asked for ‘where’s X’ rushes around in a confused fashion looking at random things.
Does he have to also do a second activity in relation to duck/ball/toy/Chris for the phrase to count as verb+noun rather than just verb?
Steve Shaffer says
Re the parrot story: I heard this *from* Karen P., and as I hedged, it was a long time back so I did not guarantee the details! :))
JJ says
To Kat: You story about your dog always picking the book on the left reminded me of a recent experiment that I did with my dog.
I wanted to switch dog food brands, but I wanted my dog to tell me if he liked his old brand better or the new one. I did a *bunch* of tests where I would say “off”, put a kibble side by side in front of him and then say “OK”. I varied the test many ways. For example, I would switch which side the brands of kibble was on. I would let him sniff my hands before putting the kibble down so that he would know for sure which kibble was on which size. I changed up the quantity of kibbles placed in front of him (though it was always the same number on each side. Etc. No matter what I did, Duke always ate whatever was on his left side first. Then he would eat what was on his right side. Every time no matter which brand was on the left or right.
I decided to conclude that he liked each equally and is left-pawed. But I don’t really know what it meant. I was probably doing something wrong.
trisha says
JJ I can’t see that you are doing anything wrong! Your dog is just exhibiting the ‘side bias’ that other researchers have found to be extremely strong in some individuals. Perhaps there is something besides left or right, but I wouldn’t be surprised if not. But, still… one never knows: did you vary which you put down first, or did you always put the left hand treat down first? (you could check off order if the answer is no). Any environmental reasons for the left side bias? Perhaps you could try it in other areas of the house. Just for fun, try it with real meat versus kibble, and see what you get. I’m betting on chicken over left side every time, but who knows!
JJ says
Trisha: Thanks for your thoughts.
I definitely varied which side I put down first. I made a big production over putting one side down and then a few moments later the other side. I even tried putting the right side down slightly closer to Duke’s nose. I even tried staring hard at the right side before I said “OK”. None of that mattered.
I just wondered if there was something about my posture or something that made Duke think that he was suppose to go to one side first.
I like your ideas of other experiments to try. I did all my experiments in the living room and only with kibble. I’m sure you are right that real chicken or maybe cheese will get quite the different response. If so, I think that might tell me that he really didn’t have a strong preference for one kibble over the other, and I can rest at ease on that score. Thanks!
Rose says
I have a cattledog x who learns new things fairly quickly/picks up on subtle cues/fairly good at figuring out puzzle type games (we do a lot of mental training exercizes)but she knows very few words(other than cues like sit, down etc). She knows that the clink of her food scoop, the tricky treats ball, bob a lot etc all= food.Even when I brush by/accidently touch any of these items she comes running. She knows that after I turn my coffee machine(as soon as the “on” button is clicked she visibly perks up and runs into the kitchen. But if I said “dinner” or “food” etc she would have no idea. Same with walks…she perks up when a bag is wrinkled,my jacket put on, or her leash picked up but is completely blank if you say the word “walk.” The only sentence I think truly excites her (and maybe just because of my tone of voice) is “wanna….”(followed by anything)…she also seems to maybe understand “treat”
I have never made a conscious effort to teach her any of these nouns etc but I am fairly consistent with her toy names “ball” “pig” “cuz” etc and she does not know any of them. Interesting.
Lee Charles Kelley says
First of all, thank you for discussing my recent blog article for PsychologyToday.com. Someone I know just told me about it, via Facebook, and I’m in the process of framing my response, which won’t be a rebuttal, but an attempt at clarification.
In response to this post, about Chaser, I thought I’d offer a similar, though less extensive “research project” I did with my Dalmatian Freddie years ago: I taught him to differentiate between a ball, a bone, and a bottle (the last object being an empty soda bottle, which was one of his favorite chew toys). In a very short time he was able to distinguish between balls of different sizes, bones of different shapes and/or made of different materials, as well as bottles of different sizes (though they were all made of plastic).
I did this very simply by laying three objects on the floor, asking him “Where’s the bone?” (or bottle or ball). I praised him when he went for the requested object. If he went for the wrong object I simply took it away, while petting him, and I put it back on the floor. Then we started over. It took about a half an hour for him to be able to reliably pick out the bone, ball, or bottle whenever asked. But at no time was I under the impression that this had anything to do with an understanding of language.
In my most recent blog article at PsychologyToday.com Unified Dog Theory IX: Language, Representational Thinking, and Object Relations in Dogs, I discuss the study done with Chaser, but also bring two other recent studies into the discussion.
One is about how babies who haven’t learned to talk yet still seem to process language in ways that are consonant with adult comprehension. One of the tasks was to show a picture of an object, then pair that object with a spoken word (or audio cue) that either matched the object, or didn’t. When the objects did match the word, the baby’s brains lit up in the same areas as in adult humans, and these areas weren’t the usual suspects when it comes to language — Broca’s, Wernicke’s, etc. This task registered in other parts of the cortex, but also in the cerebellum, which controls muscle movements and attentional behaviors.
The final study I cite in my recent article is how by making printed homework harder to read (by printing it using fonts like Comic Sans or Bodoni/Italic, at 60% gray scale), college students actually retain more information than those whose homework is easier to read (because it was printed in pure black, using Arial).
The researchers at Princeton write, “”It is not the difficulty, per se, that leads to [learning] improvements but rather the fact that the intervention engages processes that support learning.” They also say that “pinning down the precise mechanism [is] quite challenging.”
Personally, I think the mechanism is quite clear. It’s pattern recognition. When a student’s brain has to expend more energy to detect the patterns inherent in the letters he’s trying to read, his actions release more dopamine, which is associated with learning. Less energy spent on pattern recognition means less retention. (That’s my view.)
And I hold that view because of recent research showing that animals (and humans) don’t necessarily learn via the law of consequences. In fact, there is clear evidence that dopamine is not always released in connection with rewards, in fact it’s sometimes released in the absence of rewards. This shows that pattern recognition is actually what reinforces behavior, not external rewards.
Dopamine isn’t necessarily released just when we experience something pleasurable, like eating a scoop of ice cream. It’s also released when we eat or drink something disgusting, like milk that’s gone bad.
As I wrote in Toward a Unified Dog Theory: Understanding Pattern Recognition, my first article in my recent series at PsychologyToday.com: Which is more adaptive, being able to learn a new behavior on the fly, in the heat of the moment, or waiting for more and more repetitions of the exact same experience to set a new behavior in place?
In Thorndike’s model, the main focus is on targeting which events in a stream seem to create changes in behavior. But according to information theory, the intervals between events, when nothing is happening, also carry information, sometimes even more than is carried during the US (unconditioned stimulus). This would explain why the monkey’s brains were producing dopamine when the animals detected a big change in the pattern of reward, i.e., no reward at all!
We’re now discovering that the real purpose of dopamine is to help motivate us to gather new information about the outside world quickly and efficiently. In fact dopamine is released during negative experiences as well as positive ones. …
This adds further importance to the idea that learning is not as much about pairing behaviors with their consequences as it is about paying close attention to salient changes in our environment: the bigger the changes, the more dopamine is released, and, therefore, the deeper the learning.
What does all this have to do with Chaser or Ricoh? That’s quite simple. Which is the more likely adaptive skill for dogs, understanding language or detecting patterns?
Maybe, when they actually take a look at Chaser’s brain, we’ll know more.
MJ says
I think of the Gary Larson cartoon about what dogs hear (blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah) when I ask questions of my lad. He just sits there.
elizabeth says
thanks everyone. your stories have given me lots to think about. i’ve got a 9 year old BC that came into my life 2 years ago and was pretty much untrained and has dog-dog aggression issues. he is quite biddable and loves training but I’d kind of concluded that either I’m not a good trainer (I’m a novice) or he just doesn’t get words or maybe his age and lack of prior training were factors in learning verbal skills. He’s amazing in some ways – i never trained him that “this way” means “no you can’t run into the woods to find squirrels, i want you to stay on the path with me” – but he seems to get that (most of the time, sometimes squirrels are too irresistable…) On the other hand, we’ve spent months on “go to mat”. His understanding seems to be totally context related. e.g., when i ask him to get the kong in the back of his kennel, he gets it with a little encouragement; if i ask him to get the kong in the middle of the living room, he does a down or another default behavior.
but reading your stories reminded me that i used to say “uh oh” when we saw a dog on our walks (in a pleasant tone of voice and certainly without any intention of training the dog to that word). Well, duh, he learned that “uh-oh” means there’s a dog somewhere nearby which i realized when i used “uh-oh” in a different context and he went on high alert and would not relax because he couldn’t find the dog that I had “told” him was there. (obviously, i don’t say “uh oh” in any context any more). So, yeah, he totally gets words. so, i need to think more about what he understands and why and how i can tap into his obvious intelligence.
darn i wish i had more training experience!
Tim Reisinger says
For everyone who tried to test this with their dog. by using the sentence “Where is ‘X’?” and where is ball.
this just proves the dog know the term “Where” as an “action word”or verb, meaning to search. they know to look for something so they look. the verb is present the Object or noun is missing. once the object is known they can complete the action and Find it.
Jenn Michaelis says
My dog, Terra, knows the difference between verbs and nouns!! I’d never thought about the difference, but once I thought about it I was happy to realize that she does! She’s a just turned 2 year old Cane Corso, and she certainly has exceeded my expectations. Since I don’t have much experience training other corsos, I don’t know if it is a breed thing, or if it is just her and the fact that she’s my first puppy as a professional dog trainer. She’s always been phenomenal at really “listening” to words and I am able to fade prompts or hand signals very quickly.
The only “category” word I think she really knows is “toy”–which like you, Trish, means anything she is allowed to play with. But she knows distinct ones like “fish” (her nylabone), ball, and stick. She knows about 15 true nouns, (leash, keys, water bottle, saucer, blanket, stick, etc) including names of a few people and dogs she knows. I don’t even know how many verbs she knows, at least 30 at first count, not including the names for all her freestyle moves. We’ve tested her with asking her to fetch or go find different items or to touch the correct hand of a person in a “line up”. I’ve also been having fun hiding two different things she knows, and telling her to “go find the keys” or “go find your leash” and she will have to sniff out the correct one and bring it to me. It’s amazing to see them start to search when you say “go find” and to realize she has an idea of what the keys look like or smell like, or to know that she knows which person/dog you’re talking about.
What I was surprised about after reading your post, is that she really does know the difference between the label for a person or thing and the “go find …” or “go fetch ….” command, as a verb that proceeds the noun she knows. I’d never thought about that before! I would really like to teach her categories, but I’m not really sure how to. There always more labels to items to teach her–I’ve been working on “cell phone” because she has such a darn good nose and I lose that thing all the time!
I really really want to try the verb/noun test, like “nose lamb” etc. We might try it with ones she already knows, but most of the objects she knows lend themselves to one type of interaction. She can’t very easily “push” both the ball and a leash. Nor can she very easily “tug” the leash and water bottle. It will be fun to experiment. I may need to teach her the name of a couple objects that she can interact with in multiple ways. Maybe a pile of her objects, and we try, “push saucer” “tug leash” “pick up water bottle” I’m not sure if that really tests her ability to tell verbs from nouns.
Hmm…. fun things to think about!! I’ll let you know about any breakthroughs!
Bill says
A friend pointed me to your article here as I also have an old black and white dog name Willie. He’s a BC/Alaskan Husky (Scottish Husky) who my neighbor kids insisted he be named after William Wallace and I conceded just because I thought it was funny that they didn’t believe me that my name Bill was short for William. But for the most of his life, to most people, he’s Collie Boy the moniker my Uncle gave him to differentiate us in conversation.
Collie was three or five when I got him from a pal in exchange for some trucking work and is now at least 17, maybe 19. From day one in harness he’s a crack leader. Even when he was well past ten most people even dog people such as vets thought he was still a pup. Very virile, still has mostly good days even at this advance age.
Will do whatever I asked as long as he understood what I was asking. But now he’s old enough to earn the right to tell me to feck off. He’s sharp as ever, smart enough to understand even when I wasn’t clear or relayed complex unique verbal instructions I knew he’d understand. He learns what is what right quick. He even proved himself an outstanding hunting dog with no encouragement or training. He’d just go out with me and be taking off in large circles only to come to me with a follow me gesture taking me to outstanding finds of blueberries, strawberries, rosehips moose antlers that only a dog nose could find. Whatever I was gathering, he’d be finding.
Even though we lived mostly in remote wilderness past the Boundary Waters, he adapted to trips to the city when I started school. Would always walk at my heal without a collar quiet and invisible. Wait hours for me in front on the sidewalk curled up when I’d go in to study.
And he learned right quick what Mc Donalds was as I’d given him a burger as a treat. He liked that and can spot them way up the road before I even see them and nudges me with his nose and points to tell me what he wants. But he’d never get greedy. I could leave my dinner plate on the floor with him alone in the room and he’d never touch it.
He can also herd cats. He’d love to sit under my trailer and watch the local cats when they’d enter the yard. He knew they were off limits unless they got near the bird feeder and then he’d launch after them like a missle before they had a chance to make it into a cat feeder. He’d take pride in scaring them off but would never hurt them. If a dog got loose in the yard and started a scrap with his mate, I’d just have to tell him to go get the fecker and he’d grab it by the scruff of its neck and bring it to me. He not only understands human language, he’s telekinetic. I can take no credit for his abilities.
And he’s one of many dogs in my life that have convinced me our human biases impede our abilities to recognize animal intelligence that most likely overshadows our nervous , overcompensating ape brains. Just look at how well most dogs have their owner’s trained and it’s pretty obvious who has the superior intelligence. And still we have to keep our pride and brag how we saved the poor thing. Right. Dogs save us, Dog Rescue is just another feather for our hat of indulgence in human superiority.
The Inuit, having studied dogs longer than pretty much anyone I am aware of, along with having one of the longest shared history (oral or written) of any human culture, they encompass a profound truth about dogs who are central to their creation myth. In their story, at the beginning of time there was a fissure opened up between humans and the animals and at the last minute the dog pitied us and jumped across to help us.
The designation between verb and noun is an insignificant and petty one. Dogs know the difference, but they’re also creatures of action so it’s only natural their language reflects their active life. In many ways it’s like Finnish which also has less differentiation between the parts of speech. They also don’t have a future tense. They have no way of saying I am going to do something, they just say they are doing it which very much reflects the way they way they are as a people. I don’t think dogs are much fanciers of a future tense, either and in no way is this an indication of an inability to abstract conceptually. Both Finns and dogs are a rather resourceful and resilient lot.
There’s a pretty convincing and long standing compendium of observations that conclusively illustrate that dogs communicate, do so effectively and I would argue have an outstanding ability to perform mental abstraction much more conclusively than the parlour games described here as scientific experiements. For an example, look at wolves and how quickly word spreads about the dangers of traps. Once one or two in the region are caught, the rest of the traps are just pissed on. Even a gap of generations without traps will greet the next smart chimp who mail ordered the latest and greatest from Gander Mountain with a curt pee mail message as to the known danger of the things.
This is something rats don’t pick up on let alone communicate. The second rat that gets the cheese one day is laying under the same trap the next unable to draw a connection as to why his pal just died all of a sudden leaving his new found wealth of cheese to him. Yeah, rats are dumb, but we humans are pretty slow at mental abstraction compared to canines too. Not much better than rats. This is the why we have casinos and lotteries. It’s humbling to contrast the wolf’s ability to perceive and communicate danger in comparison to our chimp brain’s slow ability to accept simple concepts such as seat belts or condoms despite massive advertising campaigns. I don’t wonder if dogs have cognition, although I do scratch my head on this question’ when studying humans.
Change your language, change your life. Maybe we’re the ones who are limited by our grammar which reflects our obsession with material objects over experience. I’ve come to believe that the only impediment dogs have with language is their vocal chords. But have had dogs who could speak with some clarity. One year, my leader Madge was so nuts to get down the trail at the start of the Beargrease her repeated screaming drown out all the other dogs to the point that even the announcer commented on the way she was yelling, “I want to run.” She was a sage dog and had a wide vocabulary. Taught me a lot.
It’s not the medium that indicates cognition but the message and dogs speak to us both in their language and ours whereas we rarely make any effort to speak their language which isn’t that hard to pick up.
Seems our biggest advancement is learning the “ALPHA ROLL” which is not even the intellectual equivalent of shouting and waving your hands when someone can’t understand your poor excuse for English and lack of understanding of their tongue. “duh, why did that dog growl at me when I was only smiling at him, I’ll show him. I picked this trick up on Animal Planet!”.
Thing is, it takes more than talking or words to have communication. It takes listening to have parity. Dogs listen better than most people. You pick up the harness inside the house and the whole yard goes nuts. They can tell when we have cancer better than an MRI. They read not just our words, which they understand, but our gestures, tone, rhythm. In comparison, most humans are out to lunch.
JJ says
An update on my side-by-side food tests with Duke: I have now tried this test in other rooms in the house and away from anything vertical. I also changed up which food got pitted against the kibble. Instead of kibble against kibble, I did other, more high-valued foods against kibble and then tried the side-by-side test to see if I could use the test to determine Duke’s food preference. I haven’t been able to test chicken, but I did some other foods that I know Duke adores.
The results: While going to Duke’s left side first seems to happen more often despite which treat is on which side, Duke no longer always goes to the left. However, I still do not think that I can use this method to determine Duke’s preference for one food over another. He seemed to vary which food he would go after first often enough that I was very confused about what he was doing.
One thing I felt but have no real evidence of is that Duke started to change his behavior somewhat because he started to understand the game better. Even though I haven’t changed the part where I have Duke carefully sniff each hand before I slowly put the food down with no switching sides after the sniffs, I don’t think Duke understood about which food would be on which side until after we played several days. It seemed like I saw a light bulb go on at some point. Then again, that light bulb didn’t seem to help me predict which food Duke liked any better in a 100% reliable way, so I could easily be imagining this part.
Rusty says
This is interesting stuff. My Sheltie knows, or seems to know, that “go” means we are leaving the house. When I let him out to use the yard I tell him to “hurry up.” Once he lifts his leg I tell him “that’s a good hurry!” I tend to lean toward the thought that a string of words means more to dogs than single words. However, I could give examples of comprehension of single words and strings. Does the dog think “go get it!” and “squirrel!” are the same thing as he launches off the deck to give chase? This is fascinating stuff.