TALK TO YOUR DOG

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3771, 19 June 1936, Page 9

TALK TO YOUR DOG

It is surprising how many words a well-educate ddog understands. By. “well-educated” in this sense one means a dog who is treated as one of the family and spoken to on every matter that concerns him. The unfortunate kind of domestic pet who is only spoken to when his master decides to give him what is termed “a good talking-to” cannot be expected to understand anything but the string of verbal “sanctions" with which he is frequently confronted. The dog who is the confidant of his master or mistress in everything affecting their mutual welfare gets to know the meaning of a great many words. His “vocabulary” in fact becomes almost as extensive as that of the unlettered peasant of the middle ages, who usually managed to “rub along” quite well with about three hundred words. A few years ago, as Mr Rowland Johns relates in one of his books, a Canadian dog-owner took the trouble to record the various words which produced, the appropriate reactions in his dog, and the total came to over two hundred. There were a number of Indian words among the number and also a number of words having the same meaning, which shows that the dog’s intelligence was of a high order, for as a rule the use of synonyms baffles a dog. It is al-, ways best when talking to a dog, to use the same word consistently to convey any given idea. An amusing instance of the extent to which a dog’s understanding can be developed by conversation came to the notice of the Canine Defence League the other day. A well-known tb.eatrical manager has a dog who has always been the recipient of the family confidences, and now, when it is considered desirable that he should be kept in the dark regarding any impending activity of the family, it has become customary to spell the words. And even then, the dog’s master avers, he is beginning to understand the spellings! Talk to your dog as much as you can. You will find him much more entertaining, and life will be more interesting for him too.