Pop Art Pet Unleashed

Obviously dogs have their own language, and they learn the words you teach them like “sit,” “wait,” etc.; but something we have noticed living with Kylie is that she knows lots of words we never taught her (at least not on purpose). For example, once during a casual conversation about actor/comedian Tom Green, we noticed Kylie was getting very excited about what we were saying. We were perplexed and asked her, “Do you like Tom Green?” and she went nuts! We were starting to think that we better stop leaving the tv on for Kylie while she’s home alone, when we figured out that she thought we were talking about her then favorite treats, “greenies”. We never taught her the word “greenie” she just knew what they were and assumed that “Green” was short for greenie – pretty smart! She associated the sound of the word with the object that she knew, even when it was completely out of context. This is how dogs often learn the name of their favorite toy or activity, you don’t have to teach them – they just get it.
So we found this article on Yahoo about how dogs learn the english language, and even body language on their own, very interesting and wanted to share part of it with you.:

As acute as a dog’s hearing is, we ought to give them a little more credit for understanding our language. We know we can teach our dogs verbal commands, but many dogs learn to understand words we haven’t purposely taught them. We may find ourselves saying, “Let’s go for a walk” as we pick up the leash. The dog first associates the leash with the promise of going for a walk. He may also pick up on the word “walk” without his owner making a move toward the door or picking up the leash.

Astute owners who notice their dog’s linguistic talent have tried to develop it further by teaching words rather than commands. Some dogs are able to find their ball when the owner says, “Where’s your ball?” Some dogs appear to have an extensive vocabulary and can follow detailed directions like, “go to my desk and bring me my pen.” While this ability astounds dog owners, and anyone watching, scientists have tested dogs who show such prowess, and the findings are less or more impressive, depending upon how you look at it.

Dogs can learn many words, without a doubt, especially names of objects or commands. But to follow more complex directions, dogs rely on other skills. According to Stanley Coren in How to Speak Dog, a dog will listen to your words, and watch your subtle, even subconscious body language, and then add his most reasonable guess to figure out what you want him to do.

In the above command, for example, the dog may know what a pen is because his owner taught him that word-object association. The person giving the direction made a subconscious glance in the direction of the desk, which told the dog which way to go. Most dogs are masters at reading body language. The dog goes to the desk and sees the pen. The most reasonable and obvious thing for a good, well-trained dog to do with an object, is to retrieve it. This creates a very convincing illusion that the dog understood English well enough to follow a complex command.

In How to Speak Dog, to test the theory that dogs rely more on our body language than words, a dog was told to go to one place, but the person speaking glanced in a different direction. The dog always went to where the person was looking.

Dogs may never have a complete command of our spoken language, but their ability and interest in listening to our words and observing our body language in order to do what we ask of them, to ultimately please us, is really truly impressive.
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If they think that’s impressive they should meet Kylie, because she even knows how to spell! We realized years ago that it did no good to say “c-o-o-k-i-e,” she knew exactly what we were talking about. She also knows what “K-y-l-i-e” spells, and will respond just like you said her name, and we never used flashcards or anything!

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