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10 days agoI think it’s more you as a person understand that the sentence is that, a sentence. You understand how the sentence is made, why it means what it means, not just what it means.
The dog only understands the what.
Doesn’t mean you still can’t help teach dogs to communicate. Even saw a segment recently on PBS about dogs learning to use buttons that produce words and using them to make short sentences to communicate with their owners.
I thought all dogs were smarter than people thought because my first one (Yorkie) was practically a little kid in how he could understand me. I could tell him to go somewhere and he’d do it. He let me know if he needed to pee outside or if he was hungry. Always surprised me how much a dog could understand!
Then I got a new one recently (Goldendoodle) and this little guy is a complete dumbass.
I suspect it may come down to experience though. Yorkie was already about 4 when we got him and only took about a year for me and him to really understand each other. The Doodle we got when he was only a little over a month old and we’ve had him close to a year but it has been a pain to train. Could also just be down to personality, because he has done some pretty intelligent things that surprised us.