Now THIS is really interesting

[summer_jackel]

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.

Comments

[tailypo.livejournal.com]

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.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Hee! Chainsaw is a great name for a cat.