One day in particular, when the puppy was whining at the front door and Christina assumed she wanted to go outside, Stella was able to prevent any further confusion when she walked right up to her device and stepped on the words: ‘Want’, ‘Jake’, and ‘Come’.
She then stood in front of the door until Christina’s fiancé, Jake, came home a few minutes later. After his arrival, the dog went over to the soundboard and pressed ‘happy,’ before rolling over for a belly rub.
It's adorable but of course I wonder how much selective reporting and confirmation bias is going on.
The Instagram is hunger4words, Stella does seem more articulate and literate than some users of the platform.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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That's really interesting. I taught my dog to read a couple of words - basically I would hold up a sign with a command on it like "sit" and she would do it. She could "read" four commands like this and got it right most of the time, even when somebody else other than me held up the signs. It was hard to tell whether she was really "reading" or if she was responding to body language, but it was a good trick.
While I was researching how to teach her to read I came across this video of dogs playing music which I think is pretty impressive. There's more on the channel of the dogs playing different tunes and even reading notes.
Dogs do respond to body language and motion, step towards them with a finger raised and they'll naturally fall into a sitting position (head leans back as they watch the finger, stepping forward sharpens the angle)
There's a good Infinite Monkey Cage from a few weeks ago called Clever Creatures which looks into animal intelligence, which is well worth a listen. Availible as a podcast on Apple, if you want to avoid using the BBC Sounds app.
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