# Dogs, and their wonderful vocabulary **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 2, 2010, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167 "2010-11-02T03:10:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167/21 "2010-11-04T01:28:08Z")
I don’t own a dog, but this story really impressed me. > [@My dog is the smartest dog ever!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-dog-is-the-smartest-dog-ever/193024/17): > > Flash, the World’s Best Dog ™ can be _scarily_ intelligent. A few years ago, I told him to go find his ball. He looked all over the room (excited 'cause he knew we were going to play fetch), but couldn’t find it. > > I said, “Well, don’t look at me. Maybe you left it in the computer room?” > > He jumped up and shot into the computer room, and came out a few seconds later, ball in mouth. > > The thing is, _I never trained him to know that the first bedroom is the computer room!_ ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167/22 "2010-11-07T08:39:07Z")
Take a look at this pooch, > **[BBC News - 'Smartest' dog recognises more than 340 words](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8441974.stm)** > > A dog in Austria amazes scientists by being able to understand more than 340 words. ---
**Author:** ![FrancisCastle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b4bc9f/32.png) [@FrancisCastle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FrancisCastle)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167/23 "2010-11-07T08:57:36Z")
Our smaller dog likes to play catch with the cap from a soda bottle. He’ll throw it into the air and then jump and try to catch it on the way down. The other dog is a big scaredy cat. My boyfriend always yells at the TV when a football game is on. Now whenever you change the channel to football, the dog runs into the other room immediately. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167/24 "2010-11-07T20:01:18Z")
I’ve heard that some police dogs are trained in German, on the theory that you average criminal may get away by trying to get the dog to “sit,” while he probably doesn’t know to say “sitzen” (or whatever the imperative is…). We never explicitly trained him, but the dog taught himself that “go to bed” means “go into your crate.” Interestingly, the cats also learned that “go to bed” means “food might be coming now that the dog isn’t here to gobble it up.” B rarely follows A, but they still keep trying. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167/25 "2010-11-08T18:11:49Z")
My husband’s family are immigrants. When I met him they had what was represented as a German shepherd, but was probably a half-breed. It took commands only in Ukrainian, which is close to Russian. I called him (the dog, not my husband) an East German shepherd. ---
**Author:** ![FallenAngel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@FallenAngel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FallenAngel)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167/26 "2010-11-08T23:42:39Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I’ve heard that some police dogs are trained in German, on the theory that you average criminal may get away by trying to get the dog to “sit,” while he probably doesn’t know to say “sitzen” (or whatever the imperative is…). > > We never explicitly trained him, but the dog taught himself that “go to bed” means “go into your crate.” Interestingly, the cats also learned that “go to bed” means “food might be coming now that the dog isn’t here to gobble it up.” B rarely follows A, but they still keep trying. I trained my Italian mastiff/bullmastiff mix in French for this very reason. Here in AZ you’d expect English or Spanish, but just about nobody knows French. I also mixed up her commands, like “jump” for “sit”, etc., again, all in French. Mala the mastiff is ridiculously smart. A few months ago, I bought her one of the softball-sized indestructible (yeah, right) tennis balls to play fetch with in the back yard. At first I’d throw it, she’d race it, then it would bounce off the back fence and she’d snap change directions to go after it. By the third night, I’d throw it, she’d stand there, notice where it was going to hit the wall and then _race over to where it was going to end up after the bounce_. I knew she was smart but I didn’t think she was smart enough to calculate vectors on the fly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dogs-and-their-wonderful-vocabulary/559167.md?page=1)