Brilliant Corgi Understands Sign Language So Well She Even Knows How to Spell
I think animals are much smarter than we give them credit for. I’m almost positive my cats understand every word we utter, they just choose to ignore it. And even dogs pick up on far more than we think they do. My dog not only learned the words “walk” and “park” but she also learned what we meant when we spelled them out to keep her from understanding us. We were relegated to using ever more obscure vocabulary in an attempt to talk over her head. “Has the canine been perambulated this evening?”
Apparently the same holds true for non-spoken language. The Corgi in this video has learned the finger spelling of some of her least-favorite words, and she makes no bones about speaking out against them.
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In this clip, a man explains exactly how good his Corgi has gotten when it comes to understanding sign language. Apparently, she deeply dislikes the sign for “fail” and will bark at it. To get around this, the man and his wife, who is deaf, tried finger-spelling the word, but the Corgi began to understand the meaning of these signs as well. And she’s not happy about it.
Related: Corgi Has the Most Adorable Way of Letting Her Humans Know She’s Hungry
Dogs and Sign Language
Sign language is actually very easy for dogs to pick up, and many dogs all over the world are trained primarily and even exclusively in sign language. Benefits of training your dog using hand signals and other sign language include:
* Being able to command your dog from a distance.
* Making sure your dog understands you in noisy or crowded environments.
* Training your dog to keep their attention and focus on you so they can catch your signals.
* Training for deaf or hard-of-hearing dogs.
* Training for many activities such as showing, canine sports like agility, obedience, and working events like security and herding.
Most dog training courses now advocate to teach your dog using spoken commands like “sit” or “Stay” as well as matching hand motions.
It’s little wonder, then, that a dog trained to understand signs will soon pick up on the variations that her owners have been using. Though she hasn’t really learned to spell, she certainly knows that those four letter hand signals in that order, are the same as the sign for “fail.”
Body Language
Though our animals do learn some English, just as we learn the difference between the noises they make, the main way humans and pets actually communicate with each other is through body language. Our animals are incredibly attuned to the body language of other animals as well as to people. Just as we can easily interpret a wagging tail or raised hackles, so can they understand if we’re pleased, sad, or angry by minute changes in our posture or facial expressions. Just as a dog can differentiate between one type of tail wag and another, they actually might find it easier to understand different hand motions, rather than spoken words.
When I was training my dog, I learned that dogs may actually be listening more to the tone that we are saying the command in rather than the actual words being spoken, and that was why they might pick up on hand signals more easily.
Properly trained, dogs can learn hundreds of distinct signs and gestures, so the alphabet is pretty easy by comparison.
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