summer_jackel | Now THIS is really interesting

Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, S.C., has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 nouns, a record that displays unexpected depths of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language.

I am utterly fascinated. I am also really pleased that the article discussed how Chaser's human trained her to have such a large vocabulary. I don't know that it would be worth the time to train my dogs to put words to many different objects, but I agree that most dogs, especially herding breeds, could be taught to do something like this if the trainer wanted to put in the time. It might be fun to train some of mine to name some items (Rogue has known what her "duck" is for years).

Naming the item might help me teach Coba to retrieve a dumbbell, something he will have to learn eventually for obedience showing. I'm afraid he's not going to like it and am not looking forward to training this at all, so I'm trying to devise ways to make it more interesting for him before I start. Teaching him a name for at least a couple different toys (including the retrieve dummy) could be a useful angle.

Science is neat. So is training dogs to do stuff.

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Have you seen this before? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcV8hMX_npA

I'd read about the dog, but never seen her in action. That's just phenomenal.

Do housefoxes not approve of retrieving heavy objects?

Housefoxes will sully their delicate muzzles with very few things! Coba doesn't even like to retrieve in play; he will tug on a toy quite fiercely and happily if _I_ get it, but if I throw it, he will wait for another dog (or myself) to retrieve it for him.

The retrieve dummy we'll be using is very small and light, and I suspect that keeping it very clean...and perhaps flavoring it with something nice to begin with...will help. Who knows---when I actually get one (which I should soon), maybe he will love the thing and have no problem with it.

Housefoxes can be very odd little canines.

What a curious (and adorable) little beast. I'd love to hear how he gets along with the dummy. Good dog training is a pleasure to read about.

He's a fascinating animal to work with---a really odd combination of shy reserve and unmitigated shirtiness. I'm pretty certain that he is trying to train me to do things, too.

My first dog picked up words extremely quickly. I never set out to teach her specific words for different toys, but in the course of playing she picked them up. She knew the names of all her toys, and would fetch the ones you told her to get. Overall she knew more than 100 words, I spent a lot of time teaching her silly tricks, like fetching a tissue if I sneezed, or turning lights on and off. Ha. Isis (who was my dog, then my mom commandeered her, and now she's my dad's) picked up the names of a couple of her favorites.

Morgan, on the other hand, has no interest in the difference between Proto-Bowr, Cow, or Squirrel, so despite talking to him the same as I have my other dogs, he still just grabs the one closest to him. Hahaha. I'm sure he could get it with a short training session, but *I* am not motivated to do so at this time.

Our house is full of plushies (as I am sure you can imagine) and he knows the difference between his, the cat's, and ours. He only likes stuffed toys. He won't even touch a stuffed toy unless it's been given to him explicitly. The odd thing is, despite having a house full of plush creatures, this never struck me as a big deal until a week or so ago when our five-year-old nephew came over for babysitting. He'd packed a bunch of My Little Ponies, a book, and some colored pencils. When Honah asked if he'd packed anything else, he said he didn't pack any stuffed animals because "Morgan would chew them." (He's played with Morgan a lot, with Morgan's stuffed animals, so that's where he got the idea.)

Both Honah and I could assure him that Morgan wouldn't touch his toys, and it was only then it occurred to me that he may not know the names, but he definitely knows "his" and "not his". Another thing taught unintentionally. Heh.

Oh, how neat!

My dogs are also very aware of the difference between their plush and mine, which none of them have ever touched. The shelties in particular strongly prefer plush toys, though I've gotten them to tug rope toys as well. Once, I bought the dogs a new toy, but because I was in a hurry, just tossed it on the bedroom floor. I realized three days later that the dog plush was exactly where I'd left it. As soon as I picked it up, called them and started playing with it, they were totally delighted.

Chainsaw, one of our cats, on the other hand, once stole one of Zlato's fox plushes. It was as big as her and she ran through the house with it, leaping over barriers. Hahaha.

Hee! Chainsaw is a great name for a cat.

Now THIS is really interesting

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