There’s always a silver lining, and that was true of our endless winter here in Wisconsin. Given the high snow depth and the low temperatures, I couldn’t always get myself out for a long walk every day, and so Willie and I played a lot of games indoors and we both ended up learning something interesting. I decided in December that it was time to try, again, to teach Willie the names of some of his toys. If you’ve been reading the blog awhile you may recall my writing in Feb of 2010 about Willie’s inability to understand words as nouns in What do words mean to dogs? and in January of 2011 in Could You Learn 1022 Nouns? As I mentioned in those articles, Willie appeared to see most verbal cues as verbs, with a few exceptions of living things like “sheep” and “Jim.” But every time I tried to teach him names associated with his toys, like “ball” versus “frisbee,” he became confused. So much that, if I didn’t drop it right away, he appeared to be truly distressed about it.
Willie’s injury and subsequent surgery in 2o11 meant no play for over 14 months, and so it wasn’t until this winter that I started trying again to see if Willie could learn to associate names with objects. The answer is yes, he can. Sort of. Maybe.
I’m glad I’ve cleared that up. I’ll describe what is happening and leave it to you to decipher what is going on. First, let me explain where we are now. Willie associates three different words with three different toys. If we say “ball,” over 95% of the time he will go and get the object we designated as “ball” and bring it to us. (“95%” of the time is an estimate, I am far too lazy at night to take actual data here. But I can’t remember him not retrieving the ball when asked in the last 2 months, so I’m going with 95%.) This, I should note, is one of his absolutely favorite toys, which is partly why I chose it. It was also the first toy we began consciously naming this winter. The next toy we taught him to name we called the “fris,” and it is another one of his favorites. (And it is incredibly sturdy, which is one of the reasons we sell it on the website, it’s call a JR ring.) He got very good at fetching the “fris” or the “ball” until we lost the “fris” and can’t find the #&^% thing anywhere. Sigh. I’m tearing the house apart this weekend because I really, really want to see how he will react to it. (If I can’t find it I’ll bring home a new one. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly he learn to associate the word with a new version of the same object.)
I thought that teaching a third toy would be most difficult (it’s one thing to distinguish between two things, another altogether to switch from “this or that?” to “there are multiple things with names…”. For that reason I was extremely cautious about adding in the third toy, which we now call “red red.” We’ve worked with it for about 5 or 6 weeks, I’d say he is about 85% accurate when asked to get it. I’ll explain how I’ve been working with Willie on this in a minute, but here is a pictorial from this morning:
First I asked him to sit and stay while I got ready with the camera, a completely different context than our usual way of playing the game. You can tell by Willie’s face that he looks a bit… what? Unsure
Then I said “Ball” and he went right for it immediately. He picked it up and brought it to me.
Then I said “red red,” which is the bone-shaped, red toy on the left. (Of course it is only red to us, not to red-green color-blind dogs.) He did not go to the correct toy at first, he first focused on the blue vase-shaped one.
I stayed still, and after hovering over the blue one, he corrected himself and picked up the correct toy.
This all looks really good, except began again and said “red red” and he looked completely confused and went immediately to the blue toy. I suspect his response was a of function of 1) everything about our routine was different (different room, me with a camera (the shutter noise seemed got his attention every time), much less play after getting the right toy) and 2) Willie is ridiculously hyper-sensitive to virtually everything in his environment, and is easily thrown by anything that confuses or bothers him and 3) he is not as sure about “red red” as he is “ball.”
Reasons aside, it is clear that Willie still struggles a bit with “naming” objects. (Or does he still think of them as verbs, as in “go get your ball”?) But he has made huge progress, and we have great fun every night now playing our “object” game. Here’s how I’ve been working on it, for those of you whose dogs have struggled like Willie. (I know that lots of dogs catch on this easily, but not my Willie boy, and not lots of other dogs as I understand it.)
First, years ago, I tried doing an operant conditioning paradigm in which two toys sat between me and Willie and I clicked and gave him a treat if he touched or picked up the toy I was naming. It was disastrous, in that Willie never could figure it out, even when I switched to playing with the toy as reinforcement. Willie just could never figure it out; he seemed to run through one hypothesis after another: “It’s the last one she touched!” “It’s the one on her left!” but none were right and he looked so miserable I dropped it altogether after a few weeks.
This winter I tried a completely different tack. First, even though we would often say “Go get your ball,” (or “Find your…”) I noticed that Willie attended to “Go get…” and little else. So we began picking up his favorite toy and saying its name whenever we handed it to him. After playing awhile, we would ask him to stay, then toss the toy and say “Ball!” and nothing else. When he went to get it we would clap and then play with it for a long time. We did this for at least six weeks before we even thought about adding the second toy (the “fris). At first when we’d toss the fris Willie hesitated and looked back at us. We’d encourage him, repeating the word in a happy voice, and within one evening Willie was enthusiastically going after the fris when we said the word. We played with it by itself for at least 3 weeks. (I should add that we’d play with many of his toys when we weren’t training or naming, but we were very careful to only use “ball” or “fris” as part of a structured training session.
After three weeks of that we began to say “ball” or “fris” when both objects were in plain sight. He absolutely made mistakes, but we responded with a quiet “uh uh” and repeated the object we wanted. The correct choice got a celebration and lots and lots of play. We added a third object in before we lost the “fris,” the “red red” bone-shaped toy that you see above. (I didn’t want to call it “bone” because bone and ball start with the same sound and my dissertation research found that dogs were responding to the first 200 milliseconds of a verbal signal.) We played with “red red” for at least two weeks before beginning to ask him to choose between it and “ball.”
Most importantly, we went INCREDIBLY SLOWLY. By that I mean I’d ask Willie twice in one night to make a choice, and then never again the entire night. We’d play with objects, but I wouldn’t use the name and ask him to make a choice. I might ask three times the next night, but not at all the night after that. We thought nothing of mistakes, but always made it fun and easy. I suspect that the key with Willie is to never put him into his state of “Oh no! That was wrong! But I don’t know why! Oh no! Now what do I do?” (And yes, I meant every exclamation point. I suspect that is how Willie thinks about everything.)
I’d love to hear from others who have hyper-sensitive dogs who have worked through similar issues. The whole ‘what do words mean to dogs?” issue continues to fascinate me, especially with dogs like Willie take being “right” so much to heart. Meanwhile, it is great fun to have a new game to play with Willie. We won’t be able to work sheep for awhile once all the lambs are born, so finding other ways to play feel extra important, especially after a long winter.
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Spring lambs have arrived! Here is one of Buttercup’s twins, out of the smaller pen for the first time yesterday and exploring something we call sunshine. There is still (!) ice and snow on the ground in places, including beside the barn where Willie runs and is in danger of slipping and re-injuring himself (can you feel me stop breathing?), but the days are warming and the ground is thawing out and there are bulbs emerging from the sponge-like soil.
I’m not going to write too much because one of the ewes is days and days over due and I’ve been pacing the barn about it. I’m off to there now, maybe there will be two more lambs in the barn? Cross your paws for us all (hooves?), one ewe down, six more to go.
Aliesha says
I am so very glad to hear that it’s not just my dog (who is very smart) that does this! I tried teaching her the same kinds of things, and she gets so excited and worked up it takes a very long time, and then when she starts getting it wrong, starts to get distressed and starts messing up on commands she knows like the back of her hand. She is an Aussie that leans very heavy on the Border Collie end of the spectrum. She learns functions better than she learns the names of things.
Dena Norton (Izzee's Mom) says
I love that little lambie-tongue reaching for the straw! (Can you say “oxytocin overload”?)
Jennifer says
Hi-
I’d love a post about working with dogs who “take being right so much to heart.”
My Aussie shep mix routinely puts himself in a sit or a place (he’ll sit for a treat without being asked to sit and then won’t move after eating the treat) and then won’t move because he so desperately wants to do everything right. He then also has trouble with “break” because he wants to make sure we really meant “you don’t need to sit any longer.”
We are working on making sure our cues are clearer than apparently they have been in the past 🙂
Thanks,
Jen
Ravana says
It looks to me like Red Red and the blue vase thing are both Kong-type hard rubber toys. If so, I would suspect that that is causing his confusion. You are looking at shapes and he is judging by texture or taste or squishability. My guy knows that a tennis ball is a “ball”, but to him his green hard rubber ball and a basketball are not. A soft furry toy is a “guy” while to him canvas stuffed animals are not.
Beth says
Very interesting! Jack was a dog who learned nouns easily. I will say I started with just ONE toy (no choices), and started with his favorite toy (it was the Nylabone puppy key-ring, so clearly he was young enough to still not destroy puppy toys; I’d say somewhere between 5 and 9 months).
I simply put the toy on the ground, and said “Where are KEYS? Get KEYS”. I used shaping to reward him for first looking at, then touching, then mouthing the keys. After just a few days, I could say “Go get keys!” and he’d get them.
I then introduced a second toy, can’t remember which, let’s say “ball”. Said the name of the toy, threw it, said “get ball” and played that game. Then, at another time, when toy was not present, I said “Get ball.” Predictably, he got keys.
I said “No, those are KEYS. Get BALL” and showed it to him.
As far as I recall, that was that. The light bulb went off But we played “Get keys” for quite a long time before adding the second toy.
I must say that after he learned two, everything after that was cake, because he had the concept. Now when I bring in a new toy, I will say the name twice, throw it for him to chase, and now he knows the new toy.
Sometimes he openly resists, getting the toy he wants to play with instead of the one I ask for, but if I refuse to play he grumbles a few times and trudges off to get the one I asked for. After that I play with that toy briefly and then reward him by playing with the toy he chose. He seems to have a longer memory than most dogs I’ve had, and I do think he has come to realize “If I get the one she asks for, eventually we will play with my choice.”
I have yet to try with Maddie, mainly because I can’t figure out how to train her on this without driving Jack up the wall with frustration. He sits in his crate, raising his hand and going “Oooh, oooh, oooh, I know the answer, I KNOW IT!!!” or the doggie equivalent of that.
Beth says
Oh, I have also found that if Jack is being pushy to play and I am otherwise occupied, I will send him to find a toy that I have not seen in weeks. It’s interesting to watch him set off, looking under furniture, behind doors, in the bottom of his toybox, behind crates.
Funnily enough, he always uses his eyes to search inside. But when we recently lost a frisbee that got buried in the snow outside in a large field, I said “Where’s frisbee? Get frisbee” and he immediately started casting using his nose, not his eyes; he seemed to just understand that he would not see it under the snow. He did find it, by the way. He’s very motivated.
Mary K. says
Love, love, love the picture of that gorgeous new little one!
Lumi says
I also tried to teach my dog the names of his toys but after some time I had to give up. He’s not a hypersensitive dog but no matter how slowly we went he just didn’t get the whole thing, and I could see he started to stress about it too much. However, while I was reading your post I realised one could probably teach a dog nouns by using signs instead of spoken words. That might work better.
pat M says
At one time, Tess was able to differentiate several toys, but with age seems to be down to “frisbee” “rope”, “ball” and “squeak” (any toy that squeaks or used to squeak)
It took lot of repetitions and a high early error rate. I found that several trials that were just a minute or two each on 3 or 4 occasions every day or two seemed to work best.
Now she’s learned to put her toys away. she gets them, and puts them back in her toy basket.(herding dog that she is “There’s a place for everything and everything in its place”
Barbara C says
Our Aussie, who knows all kinds of tricks cannot seem to catch the idea of something with a name……other than Jen (her person) and Justin (her person’s brother). And yet my son’s shepherd mix at 6 months is starting to distinguish between “ball” and “tug toy”. I think Lumi’s idea of teaching nouns using signs might be a good try. Think I’ll try it with our Aussie girl 🙂
Beth with the Corgis says
Ravana makes a good point about the texture. Jack has many different sizes and materials for ball-like-object, but all fuzzy balls no matter their color (or how squished they have become) are “tennis ball.”
He has not been able to differentiate between “bone” and “antler.”
On the other hand, I will ask him to find “ultra ball” (the orange rubber balls from the Chuck-it launcher) and we have more than one. I have seen him look right at one, even pick it up, then drop it and continue the search for the other one. Does he not know they are the same? Or did he just think “Well, there are two and where has that other one got to?”
He also recognizes all disc-shaped objects as “frisbee” though probably if I had differentiated them early on he would have been able to sort them out (since he knows ultra-ball from tennis ball even though they are the same size and shape).
My father had a lot of linguistics courses in college and we used to discuss how children acquire language. They are capable both of over-specifying (Only their own dog is “dog” and if try to point out another dog as “dog” they start to cry or get confused) and over-generalizing (when I was learning to talk, apparently I thought every animal was a bow-wow [dog], the first animal I learned; my parents tell me that as a tiny girl I saw a moose on a camping trip and enthusiastically pointed to it as “Ooo, bow-wow!).
So if Willie has generalized “red-red” as “hard rubber cylindric object” in the way a child generalizes “dog” as “all furry animals”, the other toy might confuse him even though it’s obviously different to you, who has so mastered language.
I think it’s probably best to teach nouns to dogs the way we do to children; by repeatedly using the word when we (or they) manipulate the object. After all, that’s how dogs learn what “treat” and “dinner” and “leash” mean.
Kat says
The first thing that strikes me is that there is a difference between nouns and Proper Nouns. Ranger has a lot of nouns but not very many Proper Nouns. He knows book and assigns that noun to both paperbacks and hardbacks of varying thicknesses and sizes. He doesn’t know the Proper Noun, The Other End of the Leash, for example, assigned to a specific book. Interestingly he does not identify a magazine as a book–give him a magazine and a mug and ask him to touch the book and he’ll bark at you as if to say that there is not a book in the choice given. Give him a book and a mug and ask him to touch the book and I don’t remember him making a mistake since he figured out what a book is. Mug is obviously another noun that he knows. He seldom makes mistakes when asked to touch the noun named.
Ranger is not toy motivated. I think that might be part of why he doesn’t have many Proper Nouns, they’ve never been relevant beyond being able to name specific people or animals. Ask him to touch a squeaky toy and he has it down cold, ask him to touch the bear of squeakiness and he’s apt to be baffled yet if you lay out five squeaky toys and ask him to touch a squeaky toy he’ll always pick the bear of squeakiness–the only toy he’s ever really liked.
I was surprised recently to realize that Finna has Proper Nouns. I was hunting for her squeaky hedgehog toy because I hadn’t seen it in awhile. She was dogging my footsteps trying to figure out what I was doing. I said something like “I’m looking for your hedgehog. Can you find hedgehog?” She dove into her crate and came out with the hedgehog. I hadn’t really even been asking her to find it, I was just making conversation with her the way you do with a young child.
I haven’t made any effort to systematically teach Finna nouns. She came with such a huge deficit in learning that I’ve concentrated on teaching her how to do things–playing fetch for example; she had no idea that you could play with a ball. I’d toss it and she’d chase after it while it was moving and immediately lose interest when it stopped. Now she’s a fetch fiend and I’m grateful on a daily basis that I taught her “finished.” Any nouns that Finna knows she’s learned on her own simply by hearing them used repeatedly for the same object. Ball, to Finna is any tennis ball sized ball, unless it is that size it is not a ball. She doesn’t have a Proper Noun for the balls she chases but she does for her Chew balls–the rubber balls that she chews like gum to de-stress. Ask her to get a ball and she’ll bring you anything from a chuck-it ultra ball to a Kong air dog squeaky ball to a tennis ball to a glow in the dark ball to one of her chew balls. Remind her to get her chew ball and she goes right to it and never goes for one of the others.
Ranger I did set out specifically to teach nouns. It was our, Mom has a bad cold and it is miserable weather, game. He’d sit next to me on the couch and I’d ask him to touch whatever I had within reach beginning with the book I probably had in my hands and the mug that I’d just emptied of tea. I suspect that the repeated exposure to a variety of items with the same name such as ‘book’ eventually led to him having a noun ‘book’ encompassing the category of books.
We’ve also taught Ranger several words of K9 sign. I am constantly intrigued by how he uses his limited vocabulary in K9 sign to communicate. He knows the sign for food and the sign for toy. One day he identified one of his treat filled puzzles as food toy. I have no way of knowing if he was identifying the components separately, here is food in a toy, or making the compound word food toy meaning a toy that gives me food but was very stuck by his use of both to describe that object. I was also entertained the day he identified The Great Catsby as toy. He loves to play with Catsby and things you play with are toys.
Nicola says
I must try this again. 6 months ago I began seeing a vet behaviourist for my short haired bc, and with the drugs he is so much more confident, and learning faster and enjoying learning more – it may be time to go back to naming toys. He was always very anxious about getting things right, and couldn’t cope with any shaping at all. Within two weeks I have now shaped a handshake. This is really great both because he is enjoying the training, and because he is sensitive about his paws being touched. Nouns are also a good workout for my older dog. thanks for the idea!
Beth with the Corgis says
Kat, your very interesting post makes me think that many (or at least some) dogs are capable of acquiring language in the same way a very young child acquires language, given the opportunity to do so.
I have thought of teaching mine sign, but I’m honestly worried about Jack. He’s very demanding, he thinks people are pretty darned stupid to begin with, and I’m almost afraid of what might happen….
My Madison quickly learned that “good boy” was as likely to get her a treat as “good girl”. On a walk she will turn around if I say “Jack”. She learned to heel simply by watching Jack walk at heel (and she is much better at it than she is). She has learned a whole host of words that are in any way associated with her possibly getting a treat, for her own or someone else’s good behavior. Whether she actually knows what these individual words mean, or she just thinks “last time I heard that, someone got a treat!” I am not sure.
Nee says
I think differentiating objects is probably a huge brain-burner, at least for Kiyo. By shaping with the clicker, he learnt fairly quickly to touch rubber foam letters of his name. “K” and “O” are the easiest because they sound really different. “I” was easy until “Y” came along, then he faltered at times, until I changed to a different pronunciation of one letter – “I” became a short “ee”. He also managed to differentiate in Chinese, 2 different types of balls – tennis ball (wang chiu) and an elliptical ball (gan lang chiu). But one can see that while he cheerfully participates in these games, he was more of a bodily kinesthetic type of dog. So brain games have to be really really short and widely spaced out. He has also learnt a tiny application of the concept of left and right – “cross right”, means he crosses his right front paw over his left; and “cross left” is the opposite. He responds much better to this pair of cues than when I used the previous pair of cues, “cross your leg” to mean right over left, and “switch over” as left over right. In the previous pair, he actually is more accurate than I, because regardless of whether he did a right over left cross, or left over right cross, he will switch when I said ‘switch over’.
As a separate note – does anyone have first hand knowledge of Sean Senechal’s work on sign language for dogs?
Thanks :)!
liz says
Another possibility:
“Red red” is two syllables/repetitive, whereas “ball” and “fris” are one. I don’t think this would make all that big of difference (since process remains similar regardless of object), but it could be more reminiscent of an action cue if others tend to be repetitive.
The lamb photo is the most adorable thing I’ve seen in a while! Great shot.
Kat says
@Nee, Ranger and I have worked some on Senchal’s K9 sign. We regularly use the vocabulary we have but with the advent of Finna I stopped teaching new vocabulary. http://rangerandhiskat.blogspot.com/2010/09/first-language-lesson.html You’re welcome to follow our adventures in learning K9 sign as I posted them in myblog.
LarryC says
Words are just sounds to a dog. Their brains are not built for words. That’s why it is so much easier to train dogs to hand signals than spoken commands. Try singing the word, with a rising or falling voice inflection. I bet Willie learns the pitch patterns faster than he learns the names. I’m sure you know shepherds use whistle patterns with their dogs for just that reason.
Beth with the Corgis says
Larry, I would agree that dogs are not as hard-wired for language as we are. But every dog owner who has had to spell “v-e-t” or “w-a-l-k” will attest to the fact that dogs quite easily pick up language, at least language that is important to them.
Jack had a dangly set of inter-looped rings made from hard rubber that we simply called “rings.” It was one of his favorites, but unfortunately since we got Maddie we can’t have hard rubber toys (she eats them).
Anyway, one night my husband and I were out on the deck with the telescope. Saturn was in the night sky, and through the telescope you could clearly see its rings.
We commented, to each other in a normal speaking voice, that the rings were easily visible.
Jack, who was on the deck with us, went and barked at the door to go in. I let him in and followed him, commenting that he might need to go potty (our deck is entirely enclosed and our yard is not, so the dogs would think of the quickest access to the bathroom as being through the front door of our house, not off the deck).
Anyway, he barked at the door, I went inside with him and started to get his leash, wondering why he had gone into the living room. A few seconds later, he came trotting out with his rings in his mouth, eyes sparkling and a grin on his face.
He had very obviously picked out the word “rings” in our conversation (said in a normal tone while the dog was not especially attending to us) and went and got his, thinking we were asking for them.
I have come to the conclusion, after years of watching them, that to the dogs we must sound like the adults do to Charlie Brown, with the occasional word thrown in that they know.
Since dogs evolved with humans, I believe they do indeed have quite a hard-wiring for understanding simple words and phrases. All my dogs follow commands spoken in normal tones. They have picked up terms like “excuse me” and “time for bed” quite by accident. They have learned that when strangers say “Look, Corgis” they are going to get a fussing (but if they say other things it does not pertain to them). They learned, again by accident, that when I say the word “puppies” I am about to do something with them.
They respond to hand signals and body language quite well, but I’ve never had a dog that did not pick up a fair number of words just by hearing them around the house. In fact, we have to come up with an increasing variety of words for “treat” since they quickly learn any new one we try to use when we don’t want the dogs to think they are getting something. I think we are currently using “snacks” but they may pick that up soon too…
Mary K. says
Hmmmmm……I wonder if words are just sounds to dogs. I mean rudimentarily, words are sounds to humans as well. It is when we ascribe meaning to those sounds that they become language. A very young child would presumably hear his or her first words as sounds but because those same sounds are repeated innumerable times along with visual and contextual cues, they slowly acquire meaning.
I strongly believe my dog has the vocabulary understanding equivalent to that of a two year old. It was never something that I set out to teach but rather something he picked up (similar to a very young child) through many, many, many repetitions. He understands words as well as simple phrases. For example, he understands that “go do your job” means he should jump on my 15 year old son’s bed and shower him with kisses until he wakes up. He never spontaneously wakes my son up-it is something that he only does in response to the request. He only does it on school mornings and only when I ask him to. I truly don’t recall ever purposely trying to teach him this phrase. I would guess that initially he would exhibit this behavior spontaneously and I began calling it “his job” and slowly the behavior was shaped and became ingrained enough that he now understands what that specific combination of words mean and what action they require on his part.
The same is true of one of his favorite phrases “take yourself for walkies”. This means that he should put a piece of the leash that is closest to his collar in his mouth (while I am still loosely holding the other end in my hand) and prance merrily down the street. I remember very vividly that when he was a young pup, he would spontaneously exhibit this behavior enough that I named it and repeated it often. Again, a specific and yes somewhat silly 🙂 combination of words that he understands and puts into action.
Interestingly, I have never tried to teach him the names of his many toys. I don’t have the patience that I think it would require. I just tell him to go get a “guy” and he will pick out whatever toy it is that he wants to play with. I am always super impressed with any owner or trainer that has the ability to teach, and any dog who has the ablilty to learn, that daunting task!
Laceyh says
to Kat:
Many thanks for the link. I enjoyed both the Ranger and the Finna adventures very, very much.
To Patricia:
I think perhaps you should think again about only using the nouns in the lesson task context. Passive exposure in normal play shouldn’t be harmful and might help Willie.
Trisha says
A few comments: Words may be ‘just sounds’ to dogs, but sounds become extremely important to them and carry a lot of meaning. I agree with LarryC that dogs learn visual signals more easily, I’ve written about it extensively (see the Other End of the Leash, for example). However, that doesn’t mean that what we call words don’t become meaningful to them. Otherwise “up the hill” and “go to the barn” to Willie, and “wanna go on a walk?” to the dogs of the world wouldn’t elicit a response. The question I am most interested in is: What is the meaning of the word/sound to a dog, versus the meaning to a human? I’m curious whether Willie has just learned ‘red red’ as a verb (go get that bone-shaped, rubber thing), versus assigning the word/sound to the object itself.
And to Laceyh: I agree with you completely, I just wasn’t clear enough when I said …”careful to use the words in a training context.” The ‘training context” was exactly what I think you mean by passive exposure in normal play; we played with Willie and the object and used the word often. The restriction was that one could never ask Willie to make a choice between it and other objects without being thoughtful about it–because being asked to make a choice was clearly stressful for him.That is why I limited how and when we did it. I don’t think that would be necessary with many other dogs, but it was critical for Willie. Thanks Laceyh for helping me clear that up, it’s an important point.
Beth with the Corgis says
Trisha, in response to your question regarding whether the dogs think of the word the same as we do (when we say “tennis ball” do they think of the ball itself, or the act of fetching and/or playing with the ball?), while we can never know for sure (and while not every dog will be the same) I do think dogs see a fundamental difference between verbs and nouns.
I will say to Jack “Where’s Jolly Ball?” and he will get a clearly questioning look on his face (I interpret this as “That’s a good question: Where IS Jolly Ball” but I could be off-base). When I say “Go get Jolly Ball” is when he trots off to find it.
When I ask him for frisbee, on the other hand, he never goes looking for it, because the frisbees are kept out of reach. But when we lost the frisbee outside in the snow and I said “Find frisbee” he DID go off looking for it.
So it seems (and again I’m just judging by facial expressions and reaction) that the name of the toy itself puts an idea/picture of some sort in his head, while the command “go get” or “find” sends him on a mission to find that toy.
Interestingly, when I was teaching him to catch a ball, I would say “Want to play catch?” and he would go find the ball we were learning with. But he quickly seemed to learn that catch was the ACTION itself and not the toy— in the beginning, since we always used the same toy, he might have been unclear whether “catch” was the game itself of the toy we played with, but now when I get his attention by saying “Jack, catch” he sits up in anticipation of the soon-to-be-tossed ball.
In other words, the fact that my dog reacts very differently to the name of the toy compared to the action assigned to it makes me think he sees some rudimentary difference between an action and an object. If I say “Go get….” and intentionally pause, he stays still and watches me until I give the name of the object, clearly on alert and ready to run off. So “getting” is the looking part, and the word that follows describes what he is getting.
It is hard to be objective, of course, since we see it through our own lens.
Jen says
Dog vocabularies are so very interesting to me, both sides of it. What a dog “says” to us in order to communicate, and also what we say to them. In general, I talk to Elka a lot, and she tries very hard to comprehend what I’m saying, from nouns to phrases. Some of it is body language and tone of voice, I know; that’s just the package. She’s rather good at named objects, though, and I think perhaps part of that has to do with how we reacted when she was a puppy and picked up inappropriate objects, but also when she played with her toys. If she had a sock, for instance, rather than chase her down for it (yeah right), I acted like she was the BEST and SMARTEST puppy in the world for having that sock, clapping and saying “What a good girl, you have a SOCK!” and then she would be very pleased with herself and bring it to me. Nowadays, she helps me find socks for laundry.
With her toys, we’ve played “find Gumby”, she knows her horse shoe, her Kong, her Monster (the Monster Mouth, a Kong like stuffable rubber toy), her rope, and….well, we just say “squeaky toy”, as none of them live very long. She also knows many people names, and can bring an object to the correctly named person (this is a great trick when people want sodas and nobody else wants to get up).
I’d attribute it most of it to reinforcement and repetition, but motivation is a definite lynchpin. If Elka doesn’t see what’s in it for her, be it fun or treats or snuggles with a favorite person, she’s far less interested, and you can watch her reach that decision.
Nic1 says
How do dogs differentiate between the type of balls I wonder? It must be scent and mouthing. For example, teaching to differentiate between a squishy tennis ball and a hard rubber ball would be fairly easy for the dog but how will a dog know that when you introduce a new tennis ball, it is the same item (noun) as the old tennis ball?
Mireille says
Oh, my poor dogs, I was trying to go way to fast in teaching naming objects :-). Phew, let’s try again but slower.
Shadow mightily suprised one day, we were playing fetch in tall grass, he was distracted by a bird, came to me when I called him. Wit absolutely no hope of him actually doing is, I asked him ‘go find your ball’ and he did ;-). I guess he picked up the word ball in regular play, and we did do some ‘hide and seek’ games in the house (hiding pluche toys, not squeaky balls) . Jeez, I was proud!
Mireille
jackied says
It must be incredibly difficult to control for unconcious non-verbal cues in this, though. Looking at the ‘right’ toy for example could be a cue to very sensitive dogs.
I find that I mainly use hand signals and body signals with my dogs, because they respond so much better. Of course it backfires when they aren’t looking at me! When I am trying to teach a word instead (one of the trainers I have been to classes with is an HTM person and keen not to use hand signals) I often find that I have accidentally trained some other physical cue, particularly with my sensitive dog. I thought I’d taught “Front” when actually I’d taught “One head nod +slight leaning over to look at the ground where I want him = Front”. At which point I gave up again and taught a hand signal!
Beth says
jackied, I think you nailed it when you said the downfall of hand signals is “it backfires when they aren’t looking at me.”
If a dog is running AWAY from you it is so important that they know a “stop” or “wait” command (or “sit” if they know that “sit” means “sit where you are” and not “come back to me and sit in front of me”— thanks to one of Trisha’s books for making me realize the importance of that one!)
And it’s not just in emergencies. How nice is it when the dogs are bugging my husband when he’s trying to change the garbage, and I can say “back up!” and get the response I want!
Personally I use both hands and verbal for commands, and I teach them simultaneously (I don’t start with one and introduce the other; I give the cue and the hand signal at the same time). But I just realized that I have no signals for any of the nouns. I only use the sound.
LisaH says
One of my BCs seemed to learn the names of toys w/o effort since puppyhood, one or two repetitions w/ new toys and he has it down solid in a minute. He remembers toys that are 4-5 years old, he will discriminate between old toys and a new one, indoor and outdoor, and the same toy in different colors. We have 3 Jolly balls of different colors w/different names and he does not confuse them ever, and loads of plush toys that are similar but still distinct to him. I’ve always wondered what his method is because he appears to use sight far more than smell when looking for something, but will also retrieve toys in the dark. Another idiosyncrasy of his is to distinguish size, or it seems like it. He will try to carry an enormous stick or a tiny twig and if I say “too big” or “too small” he drops it and picks up another that is smaller or larger. The other BC sometimes seems to know a toy by name, but thats only if a number of toys are out and we are actively playing with it or its nearest. She does not otherwise retrieve by name and generalizes a lot more, all balls are just balls for example. I agree with some of the other posters that many dogs probably have a large receptive vocabulary, similar to toddlers, in that they can’t express themselves but do understand words. (expressive vs. receptive speech)
Nick says
What a gorgeously cute little lamb, truly beautiful.
Sarah says
A great read!
My girl has also struggled with learning nouns, and I’d sort of given up on it–she too is very touchy about being “right.” She’s a lab husky mix, and her personality definitely has a streak of that husky stubbornness. If she doesn’t get the right answer she’ll grumble, lay down and refuse to move.
We started out with one object, but I think my mistake was introducing the second object too quickly–e.g. within the same training session. She picked up that the words were meant to distinguish the two, but couldn’t figure out how (I had a similar lay out to what you did above, her in a down stay and the toys in front of her. She’d get the answer right 100% of the time, and then I’d switch where the toys were, and all would train wreck. I realized that I had taught her “right” and “left” instead of the toys’ names!
After that we moved to just one toy at a time, and more within a play context. I’d say “Go get your…” and name the object, and she’d speed off to get it. We had just introduced that second object (and she was struggling to distinguish them), when she tore her CCL (we later found out she hadn’t actually torn it, but had Anaplasmosis and was just misdiagnosed), so she was stuck on strict bed rest and we had to put “running around” games on pause.
That being said–we’re staying in a hotel room right now, there are three or four of her toys scattered around, and I said “Go get dragon!” (one of the toys we had initially practiced with) and she immediately went and got it. So maybe she absorbed it more than I had realized.
Anyway, thanks for letting me dog-nerd out for a bit!