Do Dogs Listen

:)

:D border collie of course :D
Jacqueline :)

"The researchers found that Rico knows the names of dozens of play toys and can find the one called for by his owner. That is a vocabulary size about the same as apes, dolphins and parrots trained to understand words, the researchers say."

Is it any surprise to anyone that owns a dog that they have a large vocabulary?  Most of us don't even teach our dogs a lot of words .. they just pick them up themselves 'cause most of us repeat ourselves more often than we'd like to admit.

There was a border collie on the Pets Test program done by the BBC that was supposed to know a large number of words as well, picking out the correct letter from a pile of toy letters ("A", "B", "C", etc.) his owner had "taught" him to distinguish for the program.  However, the owner was giving the dog so many verbal cues when he was searching for the correct letter than the test was not legitimate.  I was annoyed that the so-called experts on the program did not point it out, but then I guess it would not have made for good TV.

Stacey

I'm glad I am not the only one who spotted this.  I can get my BC to pick up anything I want.  Just chuck a load of items on the floor, tell him to fetch, he wanders around and when he sniffs the one I want I tell him he is a good boy, this is his cue to retrieve the item and bring it back to me.  Just what the chap on the TV was doing!  God I could have been on TV, oh no my 5 minutes of fame missed......