Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire My daughters dog understands english.

My lab was so smart, she literally amazed me all the time. That dog would have me standing there scratching my head, wondering how in the heck did she know that??!


She could read my mind too. It was uncanny.

Thing that's sometimes humbling is when your dog starts laffin' at you.

We used to spell certain words in front of border collies so they wouldn't understand what we were talking about.

I grew up around two separate border collies, not in my home, but my grandparents. They were rescue dogs, and my grandparents had an attachment to the breed. They were house pets, but my great uncle had a dairy farm and had working border collies. I was too young to remember much about the farm, but I heard a lot of stories about those working dogs.

Apparently the cows didn't need much herding, as they'd come back to the barn in the evening on their own, but the dogs would be sent out to round up any stragglers. If my uncle saw a cow the dog missed, he'd say, "You forgot one." The dog would turn around, visually scan the pastures, and then run off to get the cow.

I remember "hunting" with one of my grandparents' border collies. I'd say, "Let's look for squirrels" and the dog would scan the trees looking for squirrels. If I said, "There's a rabbit", the dog would shift her attention to the ground.

After years of spelling in front of the dogs, we didn't think too much of it. The one thing we could never figure out was their impeccable timing. At the dinner table, they were never allowed to beg, whimper, or whine. However, they would get a few scraps after the family was done eating. Typically the dogs would be with us while we ate, but if they were in another room, they would always show up at the exact moment it was time to get their scraps.

Same with a small desert. For example, if you were eating a treat in a wrapper, the dog would show up at the very moment that there was a tiny morsel that was saved for her. We figured that they must have heard something different about how we handled the wrapper, but never could explain their perfect timing. On very rare occasions would you need to actually call the dog for its small treat.

I miss those dogs, and for being a working breed they really adapted well to being with an older couple and no livestock.

When Waylon[Lab] see's me dress a certain way he heads downstairs and sniffs the chainsaws, looks up at me as if to say "which one are we taking today", once outside he stands midway between the truck & Rhino and gives the same look. Should I pull the weedeater off the wall his whole demeanor suddenly changes to a depressed look.

Every dog I’ve ever had had a certain command of English. Always a list of words they know the meaning of via repeated pairing.

I once had a cat who was curled up in my lap. I said his name and his head came up. I said "Hop down, go the the garage and I'll get you some dinner" and he jumped off my lap and trotted over to the garage. Now, "hop down", "garage" and "dinner" were words he heard regularly.

Even better was another cat who we adopted as a stray. Since I didn't know her medical history, I decided to take her to the vet for a complete set of shots. I told her "Tomorrow we're going to the vet and getting your shots.". She immediately hopped off my lap and wanted to be let outside. She skipped breakfast the next day and didn't show up again until it was too late to go to the vet.