Do you speak dog?

Communication is key to the success of any relationship, including the one we have with our dogs. We owe it to them to learn to speak their language

- Janet Menzies

HOW WELL do you speak dog? Have you mastered more than 100 common phrases used by your dog? If not, it's likely that he speaks human a lot better than you speak dog. A range of studies worldwide shows that our canine companions understand about 90 to 100 words and commands. This doubles in the gundog and working breeds, especially collies, who have a human vocabulary of around 200 words according to a study published by Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 2022.

However, this is put in the shade by Chaser, an especially brainy border collie who took three years to learn the human names of more than 1,000 objects. Chaser also got to grips with grammar and conversation so that he could understand sentences comprising command and object names. Shamingly, as humans we seem unable to communicate more than a few phrases of dog language – whether vocal or body – and are constantly misunderstanding what dogs are trying to tell us.