Do they understand more than we think?

[RonandJan]

Dogs can understand up to 200 words, about the same as a human 2 year old. They do not understand structured sentences but they can string some words together and understand words within a sentence. So if you say "Fido go over there and pick up your ball" Fido will hear its name, may understand the word 'go' to take action and 'ball'. They also understand pointing so if you point to where 'over there' is Fido will probably 'go ball' in the direction you are pointing.


One shame though - how many of our dogs actually know our name? I have often wondered how to teach them my name. Most people I know use the word 'mum' when they talk to my dogs, or anyone elses so they probably think mum is a generic human name. They do know the name of most of their doggie friends though.

This is how I train. I have this list of words that I want my pups to understand and yes there are right about 200 of them and it takes about 3 years for me to train them all. You know, starting with sit, come, stay, quiet, and so forth. McKinley is right about 60 to 65 words or commands at the moment with about 40 of them planted strongly in his head. And when I mean planted, I mean that no matter what tone I say this word in and in what setting we are in, he KNOWS the meaning of it and does it. Right now the other 20 to 25 are very much tone and setting, but eventually he will know them regardless.

As far as names, I refer to Ron as Ron with MMM, "go get Ron and tell him to come here." Off MMM goes and finds Ron, barks at him once and the nips at his heals and Ron follows him then. Same goes with Ron calling me Jan to MMM. McKinley also very much knows Teddy's name. He does the same with Teddy. Go find Teddy and bring him here. A few minutes later, here come MMM chasing and nipping at Teddy's heals, ears and bum. And then MMM plops his bum down next to me and says, "I got him, now what do you want to do with him? " In later years after basic commands are taught, I will teach MMM different toy names and room names as well.

For me, not ever having been to a training class, I never knew how to teach a dog, so I thought, here is a list of words I want my pup to understand and then set out to figure out how do I go about teaching them.

Shelties have been the easiest dogs I have ever taught. Aren't they fun!

 

[Caro]

I tried to give my mum a list of the standard words my dogs know when she was looking after them. Of course she completely ignored it and when I got back told me all the things the dogs would not do or didn't understand! I think she just assumed my dogs would understand the same words has her dogs in the past (which were outside dogs).

WHen we go to the oval poor Deska gets very confused because people ask him to do tricks for treats - but everyone uses different words. ANd he tries real hard because he will do anything for a treat. People say 'drop it' to get the ball off him - so he goes into a drop. And yesterday one guy kept saying 'down' but down means get off the furniture. Hand signals as well are confusing - a young fellow was trying to make Deska beg but kept using the hand signal for sit.