Certain dogs are capable of learning the names for more than 100 different toys
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I knew Aussies were smart and I'm not sure where he is on the bell curve, but yeah, some dogs really have a knack for language.
One day a mutual friend of ours died in a car wreck. I went to see my friend and we were sitting there telling stories and grieving... Grace read the room and brought my friend her favorite movie on dvd - something she watched when she was feeling blue. Grace wasn't quite sure what to do for me, but she brought me the cup I usually drank from when I was visiting.
I don't know how much of that to attribute to smarts, training, and/or natural empathy, but that was an impressive dog, and its an impressive breed for sure!
The younger one has taught herself almost everything the older one knows, mostly by observing him, but sometimes by him actively trying to teach her. When she doesn't know something, he shows obvious signs of frustration and urging: I give a command, he does the thing I'm asking for, she doesn't react because she doesn't know the command, and then he starts growling and harumphing (and sometimes even air snaps near her face to get her attention) until she follows his lead.
You can train herding by simply stopping the herding when he messes up (negative punishment). As long as he does it correctly he keeps doing it (positive reinforcement).
For my border collie it's similar in agility. He doesn't care about treats and barely needs toys - doing the agility is the reward for learning it for him
And god forbid I work a weekend or do something off schedule, he gets stressed out thinking something is wrong.
I often joke he would be a more normal dog if he had a lobotomy. Sometimes I wish he were a bit dumber :)
I doubt the dog is actually keeping track of the days. Definitely picks up cues from my own behavior based on the day/schedule, like taking the garbage out.
Not that dogs can't figure out weekly rythms, but they're much better at spotting subtle precursor behaviors
In our case it was probably him sensing other things that only happened on Sundays.
I noticed while teaching her to "speak" that she would sneeze a lot, I guess it's kind of a reflex for her when she tries to speak. So I wondered, can I teach a dog to sneeze? And sure enough, after a bit of training, she will now sneeze on command.
Btw dogs often do this to indicate they're playing/mean no harm :)
The yawn thing that someone else mentioned is also common. If they are displeased with you, you get a yawn. Like if you ask them to do something (sit, paw etc) too many times and they're bored of you, you'll get an exaggerated vocal yawn.
And the last one I'll mention, because it's so common in all dogs I've seen, is the shake. Directly after a tense situation, they shake, like they do when they're drying themselves. For example, if you're walking your dog and they encounter another dog that is larger, or a breed that they don't know or don't trust, they'll sometimes do a quick shake a few seconds after the encounter. I always reward the shake with a treat, to tell them "good dog, you kept your shit together in a stressful situation". A trainer told me to do that when I had a grey who had very bad social anxiety, and it really worked.
I see it occasionally between dogs when one is being stiff/dominant and the other yawns to kind of apologize and diffuse the situation.
Then again, I haven't worked much with sighthounds and they're basically a different species from other dogs, haha.
Either way, she's wonderful, and learned every trick I taught her in the first couple of months. She still knows them all 9 years later. She's learned a lot about me without my instruction, we just fit like a glove.
I don't have an exact count, but she knows at least 30 commands (some are for the same thing, like "wait for me" and "slow down"). I use natural language. I'm not sure how many other things she's picked up. I always tell her "be right back" if it's true, but I'm not sure if she understands it or not, because she's not an anxious dog.
She's never been that interested in food or toys. She's a farm dog. The best.
I wish they'd speed up that research on dog longevity. She's 9.
Sneezing is a way dogs say they want to play. That's adorable that she loves sneezing for you. [1]
[1] https://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/health-and-dog-care/health/...
I don't know if she trained us or I trained her, but she associated stopping doing something with a yawn.
Don't like petting? yawn and the human will stop.
Don't like that food? yawn and we will change it.
Don't like going to the veterinary? yawn - but that never worked.
I loved that dog.
The hard part is most humans can't connect their own angst with their environmental conditions!
Is it possible that she already knew about turtles before, though?
In that case, she might just be running a rehearsed routine. You know, a shell script.
Well played.
Her being small has sort of caused me to be more nurturing and closer than I had been with dogs growing up. As a result, I think it’s enabled her to express herself because I’m able to perceive it. It's a positive feedback loop. It’s also led me to believe there’s a lot of division between “us” (humans) and other animals is only because we can’t directly talk to them or lack the patience. We’ve tried to make our existence special, and we just aren’t (even if the amalgamation of our traits makes us unique).
That’s not to say she’s gonna be doing calculus (1) or philosophizing with me, but she’s much more capable than I had ever assumed the other “animals” are. And it’s made me acutely aware that we get what we give when it comes to our understanding of other species (or our lack thereof).
1) she’s able to “count” to three (or understand quantities at some level), and while, it is unlikely to impress a mathematician unless they have a love of dogs dogs. It certainly impresses me.
This is truth. My dog isn’t going to do calculus, but - really - what does doing calculus get you in the end. We’re born, we live, we , we get old if we’re lucky, and we die. We are no different than animals in this regard. I would go so far to say that dogs have evolved to mirror almost many of the best traits of humans while leaving the worst.
I used to think it was crazy people would talk to their pets. But then I realize most of my human conversations drop off the memory map after a week or two anyways. And my dog is a better listener than most of my coworkers.
To this day, he strongly associates me putting on jeans with "we're about to go for a walk" (which isn't entirely wrong, for sure).
He also growled at my girlfriend for the only time around when she started cheating on me. Maybe coincidental, but it was the only time I ever recall him growling at anyone and he had known her for 2 years.
This behaviour has been observed, where a collie identified a new toy name by reasoning it was the only “new” thing so must be the thing being asked for!
0 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1129264#:~:text=showing%20relat....
I feel like it's a linguistic subtlety that us adults are struggling with conveying the exact concept.
Will be interesting how my future kids will be as they will be pretty much exactly 50:50.
(EDIT I see the other comment says something similar and you have replied)
My daughter had a solid grasp of it definitely around 16-18 months. She could easily talk about books or toys, cars, food, drinks etc.
Not sure if this is unusual but 7-8 as the other poster mentioned sounds crazy late for that kind of conceptual understanding to appear.
For instance my pup picked up pretty early on that it’s big fun to chase birds. Where we lived at the time there were few crows (I honestly don’t recall seeing any), and when we moved to Seattle where crows are many she of course wanted to chase them too. But since I know that it’s better not to make crow enemies, I taught her not to chase them specifically. She now recognizes (usually) that crows are off limits, but still understands that other birds are generally fair game. (I don’t know if she’s also picked up on the fact that the crows recognize her too, but they definitely do.)
He has some favorite houses because the person who lives there gives him treats. Several times, we'll see that person on the street and then pass their house, and Ernie still gets excited.
I tell him, "Ernie, we just saw Jan. She can't possibly be in the house."
He never listens.
On the other end of the intelligence scale, I've got a buddy with a pup who I once told to get a stick, which he dutifully did and when I said, "no, not that stick, the one by the ball" he quickly dropped it and went and got the one by the ball. You can also tell him which color ball to get and he will.
Well, the causality's misattributed, but humans do that all the time.
Definitely seen articles about yawning in unison with dogs and that’s exactly me and her. She’s basically my shadow. I’m convinced she can hear my heart beat and listens to my breathing. It’s always funny to reach for the tv remote and she’s getting up because that’s become a cue. Dogs have a lot of those.
My dog learned on her own that me holding keys + wearing glasses = car ride, while keys + no glasses = walk. It took me a while to learn how she knew what we were going to do.
It probably helps that we're the only prius on the block, but still impressive!
They also take her to a local pub that is dog friendly and she has friends there. She knows when she is going there as she starts getting excited when the car turns right at a certain roundabout. Go left or straight on, nothing, but turn right and she's right up all excited!
To prove the theory, someone went to the owner's work at noon-time, and gave him a new shirt, collecting the one he'd been wearing for half a day. They took that worn shirt, and swirled it through the air back at the house; recharging the owner's scent in the air. The dog was asleep and away from the front door, and surprised when its owner arrived home at the normal time.
Maybe a sealed box that opens to vent the scent. You'd need to have the same box do the same, with no scent too.
Our SPCA-special (shepherd / husky / other?) learned after _one_ event that the tub running with the bathroom door open means that it's bath-time, and time to head out through the pet flap to the safety of the outdoors.
"Yet almost all gifted word learners are working breeds. Those include the obvious breeds such as … but also less obvious ones such as poodles"
poodles have stigma of circus/show dog. few people know that poodles are actually water retrievers and rated as second smartest dog.
Whenever I talk to e.g. coworkers about an impressive ML demo that was sped up and pre-recorded, I point to Bunny the dog to show how impressive a talking dog is.
Another dog, while its owner is blowdrying her hair, presses the "wet" and then "dry" buttons.
Otter, Bunny's brother dog, learns the context of words from her, and they use words to each other, with clear, contextual meaning. They express humor, sadness, anger, frustration, empathy, caring, happiness, apathy, excitement, and more.
Their grammar is limited, the processing they can do is slower and on a smaller scope than humans. They definitely lack the breadth and depth of human cognition, but I can't understand how, given the overwhelming evidence of deliberate use of language in complex, nuanced, abstract, emotional, contextually relevant ways, people insist that "well that's not what they're doing!"
I think it's very likely that any and every mammal with a brain above a certain size will be able to use language, given the appropriate tools for it.
People are quick to point out the story of Clever Hans, but I think that story is worth revisiting. There's a very powerful bias for people to hold humans above other animals as somehow intrinsically special, fundamentally different from all other creatures, and language use being somehow unique to humanity seems to be one of the most stubbornly held beliefs.
I think we have language because we have vocal cords, complex mouths, opposable thumbs, fingers, and very large primate brains with a proportionally massive neocortex.
Take away the hands and we lose tool use, and probably can't develop culture, and so never develop language or complex vocalization, and never garner the benefits of those things. Take away culture and you have humans living in feral conditions. Modern studies of language deprivation, children raised in feral conditions, and other situations show us that it looks like some humans lose the ability to learn language past a certain age under those conditions.
Take away the effective mouth and vocal cords of human biology, and we may never have developed spoken language, but would likely have developed signing and nonvocal audible communication methods, and then developed culture around that.
So knowing that, when you take another look at the talking dogs with buttons, it's worth considering that up until a few years ago, people had essentially raised their pets in the absence of culture. No efforts were made to teach them language in the context they'd be able to handle. They didn't have tools that served as vocalization, limiting their effective vocabulary to bark, howl, sneeze, and whimper. Some dogs, through care and exposure, were seen as exceptional if they picked up words through context and repetition, like toy names and so forth.
If a standardized vocabulary was made available, with a repeatable training framework for dogs and cats, we give them what amounts to a culture prosthetic, and buttons give them a replacement for mouths and vocal cords.
It shouldn't be unreasonable or even particularly shocking to consider animals with brains similar to our own being capable of language use.
Imagine the conversations you could have with an orca trained to use buttons, or a pig, cow, bear, lion, or whatever your favorite mammal is.
I think we need to be much more open minded, not overly skeptical, and stop trying to find ways of insisting on human exceptionalism. It might help us learn more about how language and cognition work, and what it is about human brains that gives us such an apparent edge. Or maybe that edge isn't as significant as we think?
Youtube, Mishka, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtDFxm4Wupo&t=84s
I think it would do us all good to remind ourselves of this more. It’s not humans vs. animals. We’ve all survived billions of years of evolution / natural selection. Even in “dumb” animals there is a bar present that got them this far.
And you know, there are individual humans vastly smarter than us so I figure there gotta be the same in the animal kingdom too.
It's my observation that lots of people have dogs who are smarter than the person appreciates. People don't listen to their dogs, they just talk at them.
There are lots of things people are able to learn today that they "couldn't" a few years ago (programming, math, reading). How are the researchers able to tell that the limitation lies with the dog and not with the trainer/household?
But it doesn't say anything scientific about whether this is an inherent trait rather than a contextual outcome, what the frequency of any such trait might be, whether the dogs that failed the tests were incapable rather than indifferent, etc. Of course, the exact same pattern of ovverstatement shows up in human behavioral and psychological research, so we shouldn't be surprised to see it here :)
I've seen my wife teach our kelpie a new "trick" in just a minute or two. A few repetitions to attach a command to the action, and done. We can't even keep track of it all, but the dog will remember, even months later.
N.B. Please realize that these dogs are not just pets. They need a job, or to be kept busy. Otherwise, they will invent a job, like dismantling your house.
When kennel clubs formed in the late 19th century to standardize breeds, the border collie stood apart by only testing for herding ability and not selecting on anything else. Other breeds were selected mainly for looking like what that breed looks like.
Turns out border collies are consistently classed the smartest dogs. They also have less of the typical genetic issues other breeds have
They can easily pick up what you're training them to do, but when you want them to actually do it the results can be far more mixed. This is because they're so smart that they seem to know whether doing the thing they were trained to do is worth it to them.
Source: I have a Shiba Inu, which is simultaneously one of the smartest and most primitive of dog breeds. From the beginning he picked up tricks and other training extremely quickly, usually within a handful of repetitions. But he can be very independent and stubborn. He seems to know whether something is worth doing or not. Almost.....too smart.
Also have a Shiba and 100% observe the same. I recently thought that he forgot certain commands, until I went on a trip and boarded him (which he hates), and the day I get back he's super excited and suddenly "remembers" how to do everything I thought he forgot how to do.
Quirks like this is why I definitely don't recommend them as a first dog. They are great dogs but aren't the easiest breed to train.
So we had to build loads of trust with it. Now it trusts me and my partner that if we ask it to do stuff we mean it and there is some reason for the behavior like watch out for a stranger or other dog or it something interesting will follow.
Some dogs (and indeed most cats) will only use their intelligence to get what they want. Biddable dogs actually care what you want and try to please you, independently of whether it will directly benefit them. You could say their reward is seeing you happy (that’s not to say treats don’t also help!).
The most trainable dogs are both intelligent and biddable.
That said I doubt we’ll be able to breed canine buddhists for at least another millennium. We may (probably) leave aside such qualms until then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGlUZWNjxPA
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/science/chaser-border-col...
https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/news/remembering-chaser-th...
edit: Added another link to the AKC article on Chaser.
that's putting it mildly. It's hard to believe SciAm could even publish this.
Neil deGrasse Tyson went on TV with Chaser and his owner. He tested Chaser by putting an unnamed toy in the pile, and then said "go get Darwin." ("Darwin" being an unused name)
Chaser successfully figured out it must be the toy whose name he didn't know.
All my dogs have understood a lot of words, some more than others, but all way more than 20.
The aspects that promote this, I believe, are this:
1. They are treated as companion animals. They live in the house with the humans and generally have full access thru the house.
2. No crating. Maybe if it is some kind of working dog, but a companion animal is a companion, and would you put a companion in a crate 22 hours a day? I don't care if you think that a dog comes to like the crate, I would say don't confuse familiarity with liking it. In what evolutionary precept is crating a thing that ever had any parallel in the wild?
3. You talk to the dog, like it is a human that can't speak. You tell it what you are doing using consistent language. Example, when leaving the house, we tell the dogs what we are doing and how long we will be. eg I am taking J to school, I'll be back soon. Or, I am going to work. Very quickly they learn and know what to expect and anxiety is reduced. I can tell because if I say I'm going to work, they immediately head to their favourite long term day resting spots.if I say I am going to the shops, they know I will be 30-90 minutes and there is a chance I will be returning with treats and hang around the door. Also just a few times now and then, especially early on, the dog will come with me to, say, drop the child at school, or visit work, so they can see where we go and understand a little better what goes on.
Having the dogs live with as part of the family means sometimes there are problems, eg our pup is currently teething and just can't help himself with items of certain texture. We keep important things out of reach, close bedroom doors when not home and use mistakes a chance to teach. The older dog has never once got into the bin or any other such misdemeanours when unsupervised at home.
I see a lot of people ignore their dogs most of the time, I wouldn't expect such dogs to have strong language skills, but try might. If they are around and a wake, ours are constantly talked to, just telling them what we are doing or what is going on. They learn to associate, often quite quickly.
Also many owners seem to make little effort for language consistency, outside of obedience commands like sit etc.
Living in the house, it's important the dogs are consistently treated in accordance with their position in the pack. What many people think is being kind, is people kind and dog mean. A dog is happiest when it knows its place. The happiness is not related to the level of that place, more the consistency of treatment. A dog confused about its place might instinctively feel the need to challenge for leadership of the pack, that's when people get eaten.
If your dog is looking stressed and uncertain of its place, by challenging you in little ways, you need to do the little things to reinforce its position eg it does not go thru the door before you, it does not eat before you. Maybe you eat and leave a very small amount if food on your plate, which you then give the dog.you admonish any challenge for control, not meanly, but firmly.grasping the muzzle with your hand, not hard, can be enough. When just weeks old, that is what the mother does with her mouth, it is a powerful gesture ingrained almost instinctively.
Pampering a dog is being mean to a dog, treats should be earned not given randomly, that is just confusing.
Just like people, dogs behave the way you treat them.
I learned from an ex military dog trainer who went way further in his work training, but those were special animals trained to cope with crowds etc and in that environment might be called upon to save someone's life one day. But many of the techniques used would shock most people, but make perfect sense when considered in the context of training a pack animal to be a working animal.
He is a good boy.
I have a crate for my dog. The door stays open all the time, it has a comfy mat on its floor, and sometimes he goes there to take a nap. He's only ever shut in it when there's a reason -- a contractor in the house, or I need to keep the front door propped open for a while, or similar. (When he was a puppy it was incredibly useful, though, because it was a way to teach him to settle down.)
Developing the genetics of additional intelligent beings on this planet is entirely within our capability if we want to invest lives. The advent of dogs from wolves in, iirc, about 50 years is a testament to Darwinian ideas.
Reducing our planet to a desert wasteland is also an option.
I'm a huge dog lover but it would be fantastic if we could find ways to coexist with more species in the long term as well. Given our own, still somewhat precarious existence, bringing up other species is of limited priority.
Take care of your pets and buy your zoo memberships at least
She also knows how to open windows in a car and looks for the buttons before pressing them with her paw.
I'd like to see more testing out of it but the cats seem to be rather expressive. They pick the same button, so at least they are consistent in their wants. They have a few verbs in the mix, it seems, not just nouns.
I wonder how dogs would do on these buttons.
Buttons for "food", "water", "pet me", "play with me", "outside" almost definitely work. Before I lived with a cat again, I was skeptical of those as "well, duh, any of those buttons get a reward, they don't care what it is", but our cats ask for those specific things without buttons.
Once she then has your attention, she'll give you a look, as if it say "water, let's go."
I dare say she trained us — after all, we didn't teach her to do that. And sure, it's simple … but she's still purposefully communicating a desire/intent.
(She's a good girl, too.)
And sadly, of course, the selective breeding has also caused systematic weaknesses in some breeds (prone to bad hips, knee injuries, relatively short life span, etc).
The genie is out of the bottle but I wish we could breed healthier animals.
That being said, there is an enormous community of extremely passionate breeders around the world who are absolutely dedicated to breeding HEALTHIER dogs, especially in breeds that are known to have issues due to poor breeding.
We have a Boston Terrier we got from one such breeder after spending over two years looking for someone we trusted to do the process right, and we are so happy we did. Not only do we have an amazing pet, but we know we are activity contributing to the process of improving the overall health of the breed, even though it did cost us more to do.
A few things to look for in order to pick a "good" breeder.
1. How many litters do each of their female dogs have over their lives. If a breeder is expecting them to produce more than two (three at the most) litters, that's a red flag.
2. Do the mums deliver naturally, or via C-section. We only learned through extensive research that some breeds (often including Boston's) almost all have to give birth via C-section because they've been so extremely bread. We specifically looked for a breeder who's dogs a born naturally. If the pups are so extreme in your they've been bread that the mum can't get them out naturally... Something has gone too far.
3. Is the breeder a "purist" when it comes to the breed. Now this is going to be the opposite of what most people expect, but you WANT a breeder who is 1930's levels eugenicist when it comes to their breed. Fundamentally, most of the issues from breeding come about through mongrelisation of the breed. Low quality breeders cross-breed dogs to introduce "cool" or "fashionable" new traits, without caring about the million other genetic inconsistencies they're bringing into the mix at the same time.
A great example is with Boston Terriers we learned. The breed spec for them is VERY clear, they have a white base coat with a black or extremely dark brown "tuxedo" style coat covering their lower body and a portion of their front-legs.
ANYTHING that has colours other than those three, is a cross-breed for fashion purposes. There is no such thing as an "albino Boston", or a "patterned Boston" etc etc, these are marketing names people came up with for mongrelised versions of the breed which will almost always have major health issues.
Especially a species that we've been selectively breeding for specific traits, some of which include independence and the ability to problem-solve?
That said I swear it figured out all of that stuff on its own because I'm pretty no one in the house invested 5 minutes trying to train that dog to do anything. I honestly think it just wanted to be a good dog. I would almost say the dog was mistreated because benign neglect is almost cruel to a dog but it wasn't that bad, the dog wasn't ignored, it just didn't get a chance to really shine.
Poor muffin.
I have manuals for disability support dog training (opening doors, getting medications, helping to dress, etc) but maybe we could teach them to: - clean or arrange rooms or outdoor spaces
- find and pile firewood
- collect litter
- convey messages to named people
What else?
And yea, I agree that it's hard to know if the dog is just dumb, or independent and lacking any ambition to please us by learning "silly" games.
One thing one trainer I listened to said was that some dogs are actually more like cats.
That stuck with me, and I have kind of accepted that she will probably never be the kind of dog that follows my hints and commands blindly. The important thing is after all that she doesn't have any "dangerous" traits like aggression or being over protective.
Look at our memory for faces. It isn't all about eyesight. Our brains have specific circuitry for faces. Dogs have the same for smell. Sensitivity is one thing, how the brain is wired is another.
I think you are speculating cause.
Culturally we tend not to communicate much about smells - it could just as easily be that most of us have the ability but it is never trained because it isn't much use to us.
Anecdotally I know people with a wide range of different olfactory abilities.
It is interesting to try and think of how we could test for the ability. Perhaps not testing for my pencil, but something else - a child - a dog - shoes - urine.
I rememeber:
* how English Cadbury's smells
* how El Rey Cordoba milk chocolate (from Venezuela) smells
* how Hershey's smells
* how hot chocolate made with Swiss Miss mix smells
* how Toblerone smells
We're wired to be able to pull up those memories and imagine a smell, but not to be able to identify what we're smelling when it's right in front of us.
Dogs obviously have incredibly more advanced olfactory systems but I feel like you're downplaying humans here. I'm pretty sure there's hundreds of very specific smells I could identify pretty well. Smell of home, pencil rubbers, chalk clouds, rotten bananas, denim.. things do have quite specific smells and there's a lot of things.
I think it’s pretty established that humans are very good with smell. We just aren’t very sensitive compared to dogs
Those are classes of things, not specific objects. We all know the smell of erasers, but can we identify the smell of a specific eraser? Part of it is sensitivity but it is also largely that our brains are not designed to associate smells with individual objects. Think of how we handle faces, which we can spot even if at a different orientation than we have seen before. Or how we can hear a specific voice amongst a crowd. Dogs do that with scent profiles.
"According to McGann, our olfactory inferiority is nothing but a 150-year-old myth born of erroneous assumptions and faulty science."
The answer from the article is, essentially, because dogs are much better at odor detection than us. It weirdly seems to say because we have the ability to sense odors we are better than we think we are, which implies we think we can’t smell at all or something. But dogs are much much better than us.
“”” Besides having more olfactory receptor cells than humans, dogs also boast a specialized snout adapted to methods of breathing that deliver a steadier stream of information-rich scent. Dogs and some other animals even experience scent differently. Their olfactory system allows them to smell liquid phase chemicals that aren't airborne—think of layers of urine and other liquids on your neighborhood fire hydrant—by working like a pump to deliver them to a specialized nasal organ. “””
Which is pretty indicative that as everyone knows from daily experience with dogs, dogs are better at smelling things than humans. There may be a range over which that superiority falters at some chemicals but I saw nothing other than headlines and pop science supposition that indicates humans are superior at smelling than dogs.
```For example, Laska notes, the total number of odorants for which dogs have an established, lowest detectable threshold level is 15. Humans actually have a lower threshold for five of those. “Those five odorants are components of fruit or flower odors,” he says. “For a carnivore like a dog those odorants are behaviorally not as relevant, so there was no evolutionary pressure to make a dog's nose extremely sensitive to fruit and flower odors.”```
"2008, Betsy, a Border Collie, knew over 345 words by the retrieval test, and she was also able to connect an object with a photographic image of the object, despite having seen neither before."
(mentioned in article) "Rico initially knew the labels of over 200 items [and] inferred the names of novel items by exclusion"
"2013, a Border Collie, "Chaser", who had learned the names and could associate by verbal command over 1,000 words[...], and [was] capable of linking nouns to verbs"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence#Learning_and_...
Her favorite toy is this kevlar llama unicorn that my mother has resewn for her twice. If I tell her to bring me her lobster (also kevlar) sometimes she'll shake her head, bow, and then stare intently at me. She understands the prompt for, "What is it?" and will lead me to the thing she wants or fetch it. On multiple occasions she's brought me her llama instead. I thought this was a fluke for a while but if I argue with her enough she'll go get her lobster. She has a really big toy bin and she plays with a lot of toys, so selecting these two by name has always been curious.
She also has toys for different purposes. The remnants of a Lamb Chop long lost are her snuggle toy, she doesn't play tug of war with it anymore. If you try to she'll display the same expression for dissatisfaction.
>To minimize potential inadvertent cues from the owner, the instructions required the owners to place the dog's toys in a different room. Owners were instructed to ask for each of the toys while ensuring that at least three toys were available for the dog to choose from.
For the test they had a camera in the room with the owner and another in the room with the toys (so the owner couldn't cheat by removing the other toys).