Can a dog understand
our language? If so,
how much of it? The question poses possibly as many answers
as there are dogs. Certainly the boundaries of a canine's lexicon
vary, according to his age, environment, training and inborn
intelligence. The average house dog is thought to develop a functional
vocabulary of close to a dozen -and-a-half different words by
the time he reaches five to six years of age. Additional phrases
containing up to three key words can boost this total to a potential
of about thirty.
While impressive, such a hefty vocabulary brings little to the
average dog's trainability. In fact, the more the dog's vocabulary
can be pruned, the better. Contradictory? Hardly. Our spoken
words, though meaningful to us, are simply sounds to the dog.
Heard initially, they express about as much to him as gobbledygook
would to us. Only by demonstration and constant repetition can
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he be made to understand
how each word applies to him, in terms of expected behavior response.
Some canine behaviorists compare that process to how a child
learns. To a limited extent, the similarity may hold true. Still,
there is scant valid basis for real comparison. True, a parent
commonly uses phrases and often whole sentences to convey ideas
and meaning to a baby. Yet, besides the meaning of words, the
infant must also learn the more complicated process of mimicking
their sounds for eventual speech. For the child then, speech
sound patterns, to be imitated, swiftly vie in importance with
word meanings. The dog, however, has neither the human intelligence
level nor our need or ability to speak. It follows, then, that
phrases and full sentences serve no purpose in enhancing the
dog's training. They should in fact, be considered excess baggage.
Really, in the early and middle stages of his education, they
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tend only to create confusion and dilute his
ability to absorb training.
Unfortunately, too many new owners tend to muddle up their dog's
tutoring with surplus verbiage. It's human nature for us to speak
in whole sentences, but "Come on now, King, big fella, be
a good boy and come right in here now when I call you,"
can't possibly pass muster as a good command to teach a young
dog to come to you. Bet you can't repeat that "command"
from memory. So, how can you expect a dog to respond to something
you can't even remember yourself? Then, when he fails to comply
or reacts erratically, the "command" often gets a few
angry words added to it, further compounding the poor animal's
bewilderment and slowing the learning process.
It's not impossible to train a dog using such excessively wordy
commands. After all, most dogs are amazingly adaptable. Sooner
or later, they will catch on to what's wanted. But, your goal
should be to speed the pace of training using the simplest, most
direct orders to teach the young dog what's expected of him.
This means using the basic commands so important to all his future
training. These are: his name, "No," "Here,"
"Sit," "Stay" and "Kennel." Equipped
with
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