Dog parents and their family members have learned to communicate with each other in countless ways. From learning to play, teaching commands, and the simple loving conversations that are commonly shared, there might be even more we can teach and learn our dogs.
New studies have suggested that certain breeds have the capacity to learn what certain objects are called, and associating these objects with the proper names. One case in particular really stands out. A few weeks ago, it has come to the world’s attention that a border collie named Rico has reportedly learned the names of over 200 items, while his brother Chaser has knowledge of 1,000 objects.
All this was done through play and has been linked to how children first learn a language. Once scientists confirmed that dogs are in fact able to select toys based on the proper name, countless experiments were carried out to study this further.
In one experiment, one subject was presented with an object and other familiar toys. Each dog parent instructed their counterpart to retrieve the specific item and was done so four separate times. The conclusion of the first study was that these animals chose the toy based on excluding the names of those toys they did in fact know, which still proves high intelligence levels.
These findings might now be able to cast doubts that the ability to learn words and sounds are solely linked to humans. For loving dog parents, this was made clear long ago!