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Comment by bongodongobob | Hacker News Reader

I adopted an Australian Shepherd from a friend a year ago and I'm absolutely blown away by how smart he is. He even knows the neighbor dogs' names. I can say "go get spot!" and he'll run after the right dog. He knows all my family members names. He knows that "you've arrived" on Google maps means we are there. He knows that "power on" coming from my Bluetooth headphones means we are going for a walk. He gets the concept for new tricks in about a half hour. I do have to practice them daily, but he gets the gist almost immediately.

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.

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I did this with my Aussie as well. I'd hide all of her toys throughout the house then instruct her "go get your hamburger!" and in a few minutes, she'd come back with her hamburger. It was wild that she'd remember what toy she was looking for during that time. More impressive still, was she would be able to learn new toy names through inference. I'd come home with a new toy turtle, hide all her toys, say "go get your Turtle!", and she'd come back with the new toy. And from then on she'd know which one was Turtle. She had an insatiable appetite for training and learning!

I have a 3 year old pug. He'll run through the house searching for the right family member if you count down from 10 and say "Go find X! Where is he?!"

That's too cute! I like to imagine that you have hardwood floors in this house, and he skitters around in a frantic panic Tokyo-drifting his way to that family member

WE ACTUALLY DO THOUGH!! And he does slide around. That's too funny

> More impressive still, was she would be able to learn new toy names through inference. I'd come home with a new toy turtle, hide all her toys, say "go get your Turtle!", and she'd come back with the new toy.

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.

clap

Good grief.

Well played.

In this context, I'd argue it's more likely a logo program.

I can tell my dog to get your “new toy” and she’ll come back with the new toy. She’s a terrier and chihuahua mix. Before her, I hadn’t ever really considered that dogs are so capable. She’s learned words and phrases that are relevant to her consistently. If I’m on a walk with her and want to bribe her to go home I’ll say “Turkey?” and she’ll start pulling on her leash. The funny part is she normally gets a treat after taking a dump, but if I say “turkey” she will drop her treat and wait for me to give her Turkey. If I say “chicken” she will wait, with an unholy focus, until I give her chicken. She makes me keep my promise and knows what it is.

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.

> 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).

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.

I trained a cat to ignore all my commands.

Including the one instructing the cat to ignore all of your commands? :) sounds paradoxical, but I guess if anyone a cat will be able to pull it off.

A good friend of mine had an Aussie who was really smart. My friend was a dog trainer, and she once told me "the secret is Grace (the dog) does most of it - the puppies learn better by watching her demonstrate, and she keeps them in line".

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!

I believe it. Apparently that's how herding dogs train on farms. You just buy a puppy and it literally shadows the adult. They train themselves.

I have two koolies (an Australian herding breed that is very closely related to Australian shepherds, border collies, and kelpies). I got my older dog during the lockdowns when I had a lot of free time to train him, and I got my younger dog a couple years later, when I had much less time to train her.

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.

Herding is a self rewarding behavior for herding breeds.

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

Transfer learning on (cute) biological neural nets!

I had a dumb labrador that was hard to train. Now I have a kokoni who knows 20 commands & words, and she is super easy to train. We haven't tried to test the limit of her abilities, we just ran out of things to teach her (that we cared about, at least). She never cared for toys though.

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.

> she would sneeze a lot

Btw dogs often do this to indicate they're playing/mean no harm :)

I have had greyhounds and lurchers, and every one of them does it. It's not a full sneeze, I call it a "snit" because that's what it sounds like. They're large dogs, so when they're being playful, jumping around and play fighting, we sometimes tell them "no!" is they're about to knock something over. This always gets us a "snit".

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.

(Human) Kids shake too! You can try it yourself, it does work.

I've only ever seen dogs yawn on purpose as submissive/appeasing behavior. Kind of a nervous "I'm not trying to cause trouble." I'll get it from dogs if I've asked them to do too many behaviors in a row and they think it's because they haven't given me the correct one. Kind of an apology that they don't know what I want.

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.

Dogs facing a strange human can react in the same way to humans deliberately yawning.

She sounds like my dog, who has sneezing fits a lot. The shelter said she was a shepherd/boxer mix when I adopted her, but I believe she's a mountain cur.

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.

> who has sneezing fits a lot

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/...

That makes sense, because it is indeed when she's excited. We play a little game where I pretend I don't know what she wants, and she gets very excited when I figure out she wants to go outside, and has a few sneezes to celebrate.

I had a dog that yawned to say "no".

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.

I think that yawning is also something dogs do when they are frustrated. My dog does it a good bit, and that’s when I know to give her a break. Or maybe I’m just being trained too…

It's a known anxiety response for dogs.

The hard part is most humans can't connect their own angst with their environmental conditions!

I also have a Kokoni. He has a doll that looks just like him since he was born. Sometimes he will pose it to be doing things you tell him to do that he doesn't want to do. So wild to see.

Do you have photos of your dog doing that?

I have a Shiba Inu and he's very much the same. If I say "look there's your friend Bella!" He goes nuts because that's his favorite friend to play with. He can even recognize the sound of their owner from multiple apartment buildings away. Not kidding at all. He'll go frantic begging to go outside and as soon as we're out he'll perk his ears, figure out the direction to go, and take off. And then after five or so mins heading that way he finds his best bud.

Cool! Mine can hear my neighbors garage door open when they get home from work and goes nuts because his bestie is about to be let outside. Took me a while to figure that one out, haha. "How the hell are you predicting when the neighbors dog gets let out??"

My Shiba has learned the days of the week. I have a family member that visits every Thursday, and he sits by the door waiting for them (only on Thursdays).

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 :)

That's amazing. Have you looked up whether this ability has been observed in other dogs? Do you think your Shiba is counting the days, or maybe there is something different about Thursdays (besides your family member visiting) that's giving him a hint?

Can maybe be something like a garbage truck.

Lucky guess! I take the garbage out on Thursdays :)

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.

My Shiba knows his "spots" where he meets friends of his and what times we usually run into them. And when they miss those times he will lead us to their apartment because he knows which door they live behind. It's crazy.

It's almost certainly something he does subtly different. The timing of making breakfast is different, or he cleans up more conscienciously, etc.

Not that dogs can't figure out weekly rythms, but they're much better at spotting subtle precursor behaviors

I had a Samoyed when I was a child that knew Sunday. We had a specific routine for him while we went to church. He’d stay in the backyard in his large kennel while we were gone. After not too long we’d wake up Sunday morning and he’d go straight to his kennel. :)

In our case it was probably him sensing other things that only happened on Sundays.

My dog occasionally forgets our house has an upstairs. He's still a good boy though.

Nice to meet you, fellow labrador owner!

Our shetland sheepdog as kids was super smart (and funny as a consequence) in this huge vocabulary way too. Our current feral ancestry central american dog (dna tests call them village dogs, meaning not of a breeder created subset of the gene pool) is scary smart too. She’s probably got a HN account come to think of it.

I know a cocker spaniel who knows lots of such things - except tricks. Doesn't care much for tricks. But the little rascal observes and listenes keenly on everyone and everything around ...

Sheepdogs are insanely bright. I have a border collie and she learns names by observation and deduction. My partner asked her where I was and she came running to me, despite never having put effort into teaching her my name. A couple of months later, a friend was at my door. I asked her “where’s Lucas?” to which she responded by looking at me and my partner before running to him.

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!

We got our 3/4 poodle mix during Covid and remote work.

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).

I had a toy poodle growing up that would often know what I was going to do before I did.

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.

Dogs have a keen sense of smell.

I can't even learn the names of 10 people I met at a party:)

Good dog

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