Like many of you (great comments!) I've been playing this week with what words Willie defines the same as I. As suspected, most of the words I have used to communicate with him are verbs (to him), and that appears to be his "default" understanding. He HAS learned however, names for living things, me, Jim, Sushi, my other dogs when they were alive, etc. But all his toys are either "toy" or "ball," and as I think about it that's exactly how we used those words for several years. Go "up the hill" and "go to the barn" are effective and impressive cues, but I'd bet a lot of money that he has no idea what I mean by "barn" or "hill." This weekend we're going to work on labeling an object (his scorpion, Scorch, a favorite toy that is miraculously in great shape after 2 years) by holding it, Read More
Could you learn 1022 new nouns?
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 Read More
The Plays The Thing
Here's a video I'm going to show in New Zealand of Willie, Hope and friend Mico, from this summer. I'm not going to say much about it, because I am curious what words you would use to describe what you are seeing. Watch it a couple of times, and then if you are so inspired, describe the behavior of the two younger dogs. (Willie is the adult BC, Hope is the medium sized young BC, and the other black and white guy, the smallest dog, is what looks like a BC/Bully breed cross, but his genetics are unknown.) I'm especially curious how you describe a few of the things that Hope does..... Can't wait to hear your comments! MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Wheeeee... just a few more days before we go! Lots more to do, but we'll make it. Can't wait til the "drive away from the farm with Willie in Read More
“Dominance” Mythologies, Suzanne Hetts
I'm at the Best Friends Forever Conference in Pennsylvania, taking a quick break from the talks. I have to say that this is one of the best seminars I've attended: the quality of the talks is outstanding. Suzanne Hetts gave one today that was fantastic: absolutely the best organized and most informative talk on what dominance is and isn't that I've heard. I couldn't begin to summarize it all, but here is some especially useful information from it, based on common mythologies that people have about dominance. Common Underlying Assumptions about Dominance, from Suzanne Hetts: I. Most (all?) interactions between dogs are competitive (going out the door first, who gets the toy, etc.). Is this true? No, it's not. The fact is, many interactions between dogs are not competitive. A great Read More
Toy Story with a Twist
We're still all about toys at the office, given the boxes and boxes of them that arrived last week. And there's nothing like having a new puppy in the house to get you back to thinking about toys! A great happy surprise has been that the toy we were afraid would live on our shelves forever, Sherman the (Big) Sheep, has been a big hit. It's sold more than any of the other toys, and we are still smiling about it. (And so is Will, he adores it.) There are a few left, but we don't expect them to hang around for long. Just fyi, the loser of the new toy choices is the hapless Scorpion, undoubtedly an image most people don't want to see, and to make matters worse, it's covered in "nature's warning colors--red and black--just to make it more off putting. Poor little scorpions, I suspect Read More
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