Woman’s dog knows many words

#Middlebury #Dogs

DEAR PAW’S CORNER: Can dogs really understand what we’re saying? Well, my little rat terrier, Adam, understands many words, such as “hot” when he gets too close to my coffee. He backs away quickly. He also picks up many words from our conversations, such as “cook” or “hungry.” I always tell him a person’s name when they meet him for the first time. Once, the woman he met was named Laura, so that’s what I told him. He looked at her, then at me, then back to her. He knows that my daughter’s name is Laura, and this wasn’t “his” Laura! – Anita T., Chicopee, Mass.

DEAR ANITA: You’ve got one smart dog there! Some dogs do seem to understand new words, names or associations faster or better than other dogs.

And a research study published last year seems to back that up. An evaluation of 12 dogs of different breeds found that they could tell the difference between words they had previously heard and words that they hadn’t. The words they “knew” were the ones used when training them to distinguish between two objects.

What was interesting is that when the dogs heard unfamiliar words or even “gibberish,” their neural centers for auditory processing were more active than when they heard familiar words. This is the opposite of the way our auditory processing activates. The researchers said it’s likely because the dogs were trying hard to understand what their humans were saying to them.

It’s really cool that Adam can associate a familiar person with her name, Laura, and it seems clear that he noticed a difference. Now, will he identify “new Laura” and “old Laura” in the future? That’s definitely something to watch for.

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© 2019 King Features Synd., Inc.