In all honesty I just speak full sentences to my dog. Sure, she doesn't understand it all, but she knows my daughters' nicknames, mommy, cat, pigs ear, bed, upstairs.
Pretty good vocabulary really.
Pretty good vocabulary really.
My current dog is practically a genius by comparison. She understands complex instructions (“go outside and go potty and then let’s go to bed” - and off she goes!)
Amazing the breadth of comprehension and intelligence from dog to dog.
My current dog (the smart one) appears to be a miniature pincher / Chihuahua mix. Hard to say for sure since we rescued her off the street.
The mom is not great with coming when asked, never has been. Her kids though, as soon as I whistle a certain way they show up and sit in front of me. Generally they are really good at following instructions, perhaps it's because the father is a working dog.
While this video is long, it explains the controversy very well: https://youtu.be/e7wFotDKEF4
And then it would still suffer from potential human over-interpretation, finding meaning where there isn't, as described in the Koko video you linked.
But look at more of Bunny's videos. Some of the interpretations are fanciful (a pet peeve of mine is the "love you" interactions where there's little reason to think the "love you" means more than "I want attention"), but there are enough of fairly complex interactions that I think it's unreasonable to dismiss it entirely.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BorderCollie/comments/rrgckg/bowie_...