Tuesday 1 May 2012

Understanding English

'Her Indoors' arranges Adult Education classes for a living and last week she was interviewing for a Dog Training Tutor.  She was tempted to take me along and make my obedience to any given command one of the success criteria, but she wasn't sure that was fair.  Anyway, one of the things that came out of the interview was that we dogs, apparently, don't understand English. 

Well I hate to contradict an expert, but I do.  I admit there are certain words that it may appear I don't understand: 'Come' - it depends on whether I've got anything better to do, 'No' - it depends on the tone ranging from the politely prohibitive to the 'if you do that I'll turn you into a bedside rug' kind of voice.  But there are some words I always show understanding of: 'Tea' - even if said very quietly and out of context, 'Walk' - ditto, 'Toy/ball' - quick, find one, they want to play, 'bed' - good idea, I could do with a lie down.

One thing I don't understand though is the plethora of names I'm called.  'Rolo' clearly is ok, although occasionally I have a little selective deafness when it's combined with one of my other words, 'Darling' and 'Sweetie' I totally get, but 'Furball', 'Muttley', often preceeded these days with 'you old', and,occasionally in moments of high stress, 'bl--dy dog', are completely incomprehensible to me.  Maybe that dog trainer had a point after all.

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