Sit, stay, speak: a dog gets a rare chance to talk about what's on, and in, his mind

Science News, Dec 18, 2004 by Bruce Bower

Look at that silver Frisbee hanging up there in the black sky. I can see it through the big square in the wall. I need to grab that thing and bury it in the backyard right now. Then, I'll dig it up tomorrow and chew it into tiny, slobbery pieces. Oh geez, I'm starting to quiver with excitement. What's the best way to snatch that delectable disk? Let's see, I'll walk to the end of the hall, right about here, run hard at the big square, take a flying leap, and ... Oof! That hurt almost as much as the time I mistook the neighbor's eat for a chew toy. It was just after he'd gotten his hair shaved off to treat a skin infection. Curled up asleep on our front porch, Mr. Bojangles was as smooth as a gob of vanilla pudding hanging off a baby's bib. That cat wakes up nasty, though. They should have clipped his claws, not his fur.

While I regain my bearings, let me introduce myself. I'm Larry the Labrador. I'm talking, that's right. No thought balloons for me; those are for Snoopy and those other comic strip poseurs. No demeaning speech impediments, either--I don't blurt out "ruh roh!" like Scooby Doo. I'm the real deal, a linguistically gifted Labradorator. I thought that one up myself--sweet, huh? This gift for gab appeared last summer while I and a few other dogs participated in a genetic engineering experiment. Knock out a piece of DNA here, cure a disease there, it was that kind of a gig.

An unexpected genetic tweak rendered me as talkative as Oprah Winfrey with a double-mocha-espresso buzz.

In that same fateful experiment, I met my friend Brutus, the English bulldog sitting over there and drooling on himself. Brutus can talk, too, but there seems to be a reserve clause in bulldog DNA. He limits his conversation to catchphrases he's heard as his owners constantly watch reruns of the television series Seinfeld.

I'm out there, Larry, and I'm loving it!

You and me both, buddy. At any rate, I have something to get off my chest. I've noticed lately that scientists are showing a lot of interest in deciphering the inner workings of dogs' minds. It's about time one of us gave you the straight poop on this issue. It may come as a surprise to many dog owners that we can think at all. Hey, we think so hard that our heads hurt--like what just happened in my ingenious Frisbee-grabbing plan. OK, I got bopped in the noggin and didn't catch the Frisbee. Big deal. I'll get it tomorrow.

Even in this wobbly state, it's easy to keep up with the latest research findings. An old New Yorker cartoon put it best. A dog sits in front of a computer and says to another dog: "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." I stay away from chat rooms, though. I'm strictly a Google retriever.

The search engines revved up earlier this year, when scientists reported that a photogenic border collie named Rico had learned the meanings of 200 words. Over about 9 years, Rico's owners taught him names for a slew of small toys and other items by rewarding him with food or play when he fetched what they asked for. Rico picks the correct object out of arrays of 10 different items. If asked to fetch something that he's never heard of, Rico picks the one object he's never seen out of a group of familiar objects.

OK, first of all, I don't trust this canine con artist. Those unblinking eyes, the upturned mouth on the verge of smiling, the high forehead--he looks like a Botox collie to me. A nip here, a tuck there--our boy Rico is just a little too eager to please. Has he been tested for stimulants?

Second, the big scientific argument revolves around whether Rico is the mental equal of a 1-to 2-year-old child. At that age, kids learn words for specific objects and people as well as for categories of things and creatures.

I have a different take on dog mental maturity. Look, when one of my owners tells me to fetch the newspaper and my response is to roll over for a belly scratch, or when he scolds me for begging for food and I crawl under the table to shove my muzzle into his crumb-covered lap, I'm clueless on the outside and cunning on the inside. I know what he wants. I know what I want. They're rarely the same thing, so I have to take matters into my own paws. If feigned ignorance gets me the goods, I'm willing to go there. As far as I can tell, that makes me the mental equivalent of the average teenager.

You are still master of your domain.

You have to master your own domain before you can master your master's domain. There's no substitute for paying attention to what people do, not what they say.

Maybe we've been bred for it. The curiously named scientist Brian Hare recently reported that domesticated dogs read peoples' glances and gestures far more skillfully than chimpanzees, wolves, or wild dogs do. In one of his studies, animals watched an experimenter look or point at a sealed bowl containing food. Only domesticated dogs were more likely to approach the food container than a sealed but empty one next to it. Even puppies that hadn't been around people much gravitated to the grub by watching the experimenter.