Family anecdote time: My great uncle was a rancher, and had a border collie named “Rowdy.” Rowdy followed along for all the day’s chores and activities on the ranch. The last chore of the day was going down to the stock tank and driving the cattle back up to the barn. After one particularly tiring day, Uncle Fritzi (yes, Fritzi, cental Texas Germans) said jokingly to the dog “Rowdy, I sure am tired. Why don’t you go down to the tank and drive those cows up into the barn for me?” To his surprise, the dog took off like a shot, and ten minutes later the cattle came up from the pasture towards the barn with Rowdy at their heels. He’d never made any deliberate attmept to teach the dog. Rowdy figured it out by being talked to casually and overhearing conversations.
this is hard to believe. The dog would have to know that “you” means him, and that he wasn’t just being invited to go along, but delegated, as it were , to do the job.This is where I’d want to bring in scent information for a little help–ie, do we not smeel different when tired, does our dog not perhaps, know from scent when we are enthusiastic, etc.
border collies seem to be cropping up as frequent conversationalists–not to hijack my own thread, but is there anything particular about them? I’ve always had Great Pyrenees, and none of them did much of an imitation of a bon vivant & raconteur.
I’d be surprised but not shocked to see a border collie do that. It’s in character.
Lovely book, The Intelligence of Dogs. Among other things noted, as far as breed goes, Border Collies are the smartest… Poodles come in second.
It’s not as rigorous as I like, but it’s a good book on thinking about thinking.
There is a vast, yawning chasm between “dogs are smart” and “dogs understand language.” I just dropped a penny in it and I still haven’t heard it hit the bottom. But by all means continue to anthropomorphize your pets. I myself talk to my cats.
My Border Collie is so smart, She’s got her own web site.
I should’ve remembered - a friend’s border collie / labrador cross has made his own website! 
http://www.maxdog.co.uk/
No, you DO NOT want a cat that can open doors. My cat could open the bathroom cabinet doors, and we had to install new latches that she CAN’T open in order to keep her out of that area, as we keep poisons in there. Cats can get into quite enough mischief as it is, thankyouverymuch, or at least my little Siamese girl can. The tabby boy isn’t nearly as smart (he has been known to run into closed doors at top speed, repeatedly). I have seen the Siamese inspect a new piece of furniture or other addition to our home…and then, after clearly calculating the effects, she’ll jump on this furniture to reach something she couldn’t reach before.
She’s quite a manipulative little thing, too, and learns quickly. One time she made a vocalization that sounded exactly like the word “Mama” and I made a big fuss over her. She did it again, and I fussed over her again. Now when she wants attention or some of whatever we’re eating, she’ll say “Mama!” until she gets what she wants. She says it to anyone, though mostly to me, as I will respond most often.
Sometimes she’s pretty scary. Fortunately for the world, she only weighs about 10 pounds and she doesn’t have opposable digits.
This is, I think, the key point here. The main hole in their argument for the dog “Knowing Language”. Let me explain:
While it’s true that dogs and humans communicate (nobody’s denying that I don’t think) the claim is made specifically regarding language, and the dog’s understanding it.
Dogs understand much more than spoken language. They also understand body language, and ‘smell’ language. A deaf or mute person may have a dog that understands sign language. There are any number of ways to communicate with a dog… if you spend time with it.
Anecdote: there was once a famous counting horse. People were amazed that this horse’s owner could ask it “What’s two plus two?” and the horse would tap it’s hoof four times. “What’s three plus three?” and the horse would tap six times. And so on. Was the horse counting? Was it adding? Was it understanding the words? Nope. It was reading it’s owner’s body language. When he stood just SO it meant “tap hoof”. When the proper number of taps was reached, the owner would turn to the audience “See, isn’t the horse smart?”. The horse would see the owner turn away and that meant “Stop tapping”.
Dogs do the same thing.
The test should be repeated with the following controls added:
First, try the test with nonsense words substituted for the name of the unknown toy. If you say “Rover fetch the dillywacker” and the dogs comes back with the one item it’s never seen before 3 out of 6, you do not have what you think you have. You have a dog.
Secondly, have people other than the owner issue it commands. Probably have the owner introduce the animal, so it will respond, but the new person will definitely have different mannerisms. If the dog is responding to the actual language, there will be little difference in its behavior compared to the owner.
All this said, yeah, dogs are smart. Amazingly so sometimes.
The big question is, why aren’t most humans? q;}
I don’t think the experiment is saying anything about the dog understanding language, since a dog associating a name with a toy, and understanding words, is nothing new. The experiment showed that the dog could reason about the toys, and understand that if asked to get X, and all but one toy was not X, then the one remaining toy was X. I believe all humans were in another room so there could be no cues.
My dog is half border collie, half cocker spaniel, but he got the border collie brains. We have a treat machine with a handle, which he figured out for himself in fifteen seconds - which didn’t impress me until we had Labs as guide dog trainees, who never figured it out. But he’s done two impressive things.
First, when we got him, we taught him to sit before crossing at a corner. A month later he figured out to sit to show us he wanted to cross the street.
Second, my wife heard him barking at the barn where we keep our horse. She found him picking up plastic pipes from a pile in his mouth, and moving them. To show him that he was being silly, she picked up one in the pile and shook it - and a mouse ran out. He was methodically removing the pipes to get at the mouse - he was not scratching.
Just to add little balance…
I had a border collie and it was the dumbest dog I’ve ever seen in my life. I ended up having to give it to a friend, who has trained dogs all his life and even did it professionally for awhile. The dog is now a little over 4 years old and he still can’t so much as sit and he’s still not potty trained. They’re not all natural Einsteins.