Do dogs understand?? Light hearted - maybe.....!

[Excitedannie]

I have just spent 4 whole minutes telling my dog why she isn't allowed to jump around or climb stairs, and why it's short lead walks for a few days until her hip feels better. I'm sure she listened and understood ever word! I also spent another good few moments explaining what the loud bang was next door that made her bark!

My daughter thinks I'm bonkers but I literally chat to my dog alllll the time - I love to think that they understand ever word and their brains are saying "ah OK mum - I understand now"!!!!!!

Mind you, she doesn't seem to understand "SSTTTTOOOPPPP" when she sees a squirrel........

I love watching Bunny! She shows clearly that dogs understand a lot more than we think.

My dogs don't have a set dinner time so they can't tell the time 😄

I talk to the blackbird in my garden. He cocks his head to one side and definitely seems to listen and like it if I talk to him. I often wonder what’s going on in his little brain, which must be about the size of a small pea. Dogs probably understand more than we realise.

Yep - the dinner thing resonates with me too - she literally finds me and sits there side-eyeing me when it hits 4pm. People I work with see her in the background on online meetings spot her in the background and very often say "oooh, it's dinner time"!

I used to Free Run guide dogs. One particular dog would be in the hallway, sitting by the front door, from about 9am on the day I was coming to take him out.

His owner never got anything ready in advance so that didn't give him signals.
And I didn't have a regular day that I took him out; it was very random.

So how did he know?

The only possible way we could think of was that he heard the phone read out the text message that I would send the day before saying " I'll come and collect Harvey at 10 am tomorrow for a walk". It was a special phone for partially sighted people; it wasn't my voice that spoke the message. So he would literally have to be understanding the vocabulary.

Mine too!

I tell them grandad is coming to look after them and they race to the window and 100% recognise his car!

My cats certainly understand when I apologise to them. Usually when they get underfoot. I definitely understand them when they suggest that the apologies ought to come with Dreamies.

Aren't dogs meant to have the equivalent understanding of vocabulary as a two year old? Certainly they understand body language.

My dog also sits by the door every afternoon 20-30 minutes before my dh comes back from work. I read that it’s both routine but also something to do with smell?

Oh yes something to do with smell i read that too, it might have been in the puppy class hand outs , my dog will also pace from 30 -40 minutes till Dh (dogs favourite) comes in

Mine aren’t the bright bulbs in the box could there canine friends explain why sometimes when when we’re about to go for a walk I frantically and repeatedly mutter car keys and run around like a headless chicken? They’d really like to help if they understood what the problem was.😀

Ah dogs wanting to help.but are of no use they just like to be included 😀

My friend has taught her dog 'find my keys' through scent work training. So it can be done.

I have podencos - Spanish hunting dogs, all rescues. Three out of the four are very smart. One, bless him, is not, lol. They absolutely know command words, etc, they just don’t always want to do them, lol. They also know when it’s tea time, when one of us is due home, etc. I talk to them all the time. They are wonderful if I am ill, one in particular won’t leave my side.

I've taught mine to find my shoes and their leads. I wish I could post a video on here..it's absolutely awesome 👌

Surely it's just Pavlovian type association rather than the dog understanding the words. The dog hears that noise (the text message being read out) and then he gets the walk soon after. The message could be a bell ringing three times or whatever, not spoken words, but the dog would learn to make the association. Same goes for some other examples here.

Bunny the dog on Instagram, one of those dogs who has been taught to use buttons to communicate, is pretty amazing.

She has a level of questioning/thought process that seems to be about the level of preschool child. I assumed it was a bit of a hoax when I saw the videos first but it seems to be real. She's not the only dog doing this either.

It's emotional and humbling to think of some of our past pets who may have understood more than we realised.

I suspect it depends on individual breed and intelligence level, too, though. I'm not sure my current lovely-but-dim lurcher has the same level of intellect going on. Or maybe she just doesn't care to show us (ha!)

Our dog sometimes gets stuck in the utility room because the door opens inwards, but he likes to come and check we’re putting our shoes on etc.

The other day I looked at him and barely twitched my finger instead of saying the usual “out you come”.
Call it force of habit or positive reinforcement but the immediate response was uncanny.
He’s also bilingual for things he wants (teddy/orsetto, biscuit/biscotto etc)!