Do dogs understand what people tell them?

“She understands every word!” dog owners often exclaim. And seriously sure that dogs understand them. However, such confidence often leads to misunderstandings and even problems. Do dogs understand what people tell them? Let’s figure it out.

Do dogs understand human speech?

Dogs can actually understand single words. And there can be many such words. For example, it has been proven that a dog named Chaser understood 1000 words: the names of toys, actions with them, and also could build the correct sequence of actions from the sequence of words. But this ability did not develop by itself. The owner worked hard with the pet and spent a lot of time on training.

If you do not train the dog specifically, he will still understand certain words. As a rule, those that are significant to her. For example, almost all dogs understand the words “Walk” and “Eat” (and in different variations) without targeted training. And the more you talk to the dog in different situations, the more you train it, the more words it understands.

But, unfortunately, it is impossible to say that dogs understand our speech literally. And sometimes the owners are very “pierced” on this. For example, they can reinforce unwanted behavior.

Let’s say a dog barks at another dog. And you say to her: “Well, what are you doing? It’s a good dog, don’t bark at it!” You are convinced that the dog understands you, and should be ashamed of his actions and never repeat them again. And the dog hears: “Blablabla, good dog! Blah blah blah!” And I’m sure you appreciate her. And with renewed vigor continues to bark at another dog.

Should we consider dogs fools because of this? Of course not. After all, if you go to Beijing without knowing Chinese, you are unlikely to understand what they are saying to you. But in the case of dogs, we are not talking about a different nationality, but about a different kind of creatures! See, we are not even related. Absolutely not sharpened by our speech. And to expect that they will understand us literally is somewhat naive.

But why do we think that dogs understand everything we tell them?

Yes, because dogs are truly geniuses in communication with us! Yes, they cannot understand our speech, but they perfectly compensate for this with other talents.

For example, dogs are guided by what objects you can see and what you cannot. Are your eyes open or closed? That is, they are able to put themselves in your place. And they purposefully seek to communicate with us, very intelligibly explaining, for example, what they need from us. I already wrote about this in the article “The intelligence of dogs in communication with people.”

Not understanding most of the words, the dogs, nevertheless, perfectly learned to “read” us. They are perfectly guided by our gestures and know where we are looking. Moreover, even puppies with minimal experience of communicating with people have this amazing ability. You can read more about this in the articles How dogs learned to understand people. and “How a dog understands a person.”

I even tested my dogs for the ability to communicate, you can also read about the results of my Airedale Terrier Ajax in the corresponding article on the site.

And dogs are well aware of what emotions we experience. And it is impossible to deceive them. Moreover, after a few seconds, they themselves begin to experience the same emotions as a person! That is, they can “synchronize” with us.

So dogs are amazing creatures. Even despite the fact that they do not understand your lengthy tirades. You just need to take into account the peculiarities of their perception of the world (and us) when communicating with our best friends.