If you have ever said a word or phrase like “let’s go outside” or “do you want a treat” only to watch your dog tremble with excitement, wag his tail or leap in the air with joy then you might think that your dog can understand English. Some people are so convinced that their dog understands English that they begin to spell words like treat and potty when using them out loud to prevent over excitement in their dogs. Often, your dog will even begin to get excited when they hear the spelled out words further reinforcing people’s belief that dogs do understand English.
While most dogs do understand certain words, it is likely that they do because of word association. If you hold up an object like a bone, ball or treat and identify the object in front of your dog before giving it to him enough times; he will learn those words. Some owners have taken this word association to another level by teaching dogs the names for a variety of objects by giving a specific name to each of his toys. These dogs can be told to go get their red ball and they will leave the room and come back with just that. This works very similarly to teaching commands.
If dogs can understand sit, come, lie down, heel and stay then it stands to reason that they can understand English. This is not a good indicator of their verbal comprehension because these commands are repetitive and consistently rewarded. Dogs learn to sit because we say sit, place them in a sit and then praise them by saying good sit or by giving them a treat. Dogs can tell the difference between short, one syllable command words by their context as well. The heel command is given when walking and we will often tug the leash signaling a heal request. Some people might disagree with this assessment because their dog has been taught more complicated demands that almost certainly require English comprehension to complete.
If your dog can follow complex commands like go and get my slippers or go, get into your crate or a variety of others then you might argue that your dog can understand whole phrases and therefore is not using word association to understand what you say. While your dog might respond to these phrases, you might be inadvertently giving him clues without realizing it. If you tell him to go get your slippers you might look towards your room for a split second without realizing it. Your dog will pick up on those non-verbal cues more quickly than he will the words you say. Say his crate is in one room and your slippers are in the other. Try glancing at the room with the crate, but telling him to get something in the room with your closet and see what happens. Dogs will often go retrieve something in the direction you look or point to rather than where you tell him to go.
Some studies have concluded that certain dogs have a vocabulary of between 200 and 250 words, but have not proven that they understand the meaning of the English language. They are basically able to pick out the words they recognize while the rest is just noise. Dogs have sophisticated social cognition skills and can associate human or animal behavioral cues with abstract meanings. It is this ability combined with reward and encouragement that elicits a desired response from our dogs. While it might be disappointing to some that dogs don’t understand English they can rest assured knowing that dogs have their own form of ESP based on the unconscious cues we provide!
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