Dog "talks" though soundboard

She should try adding "YOU'RE A CUNT" and see how often its pawed.

I'm super suspicious of this, because they have included emotions like 'happy' and I don't know how you could ever train a dog to associate a word with a feeling. I can believe that you can train them to associate a word with an object or activity as that's just a normal part of training, and once the dog learns the sound of a word means a particular thing, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to accept that they could initiate the word when they want something. After all, my dog does express that he wants certain things and I have to interpret his body language and expressions, but if he could press a button that he knew would instantly tell me what he wanted I think he would.

It's just the emotion side of things I'm dubious about, I find it hard to believe a dog would understand the concept of 'happy' and know to press the button when it was feeling happy. Not that a dog can't experience emotions - they absolutely can and do, but I don't know how they could ever associate the emotion with a particular word. Unless every time the dog was happy, the owner constantly said the word - but even then, how would they know it was referring to what they were feeling and not what was actually making them happy?

For eons animals know what they have to do to manipulate us (well, the ones who are kind and benevolent) by pushing the right buttons.

Op, the horse you were thinking of was called Clever Hans, and he couldn’t do math when he was blinkered. He was picking up non-verbal cues from his owner.

Jeez dogs are so needy and demanding, it would be torture if my manipulative dog could talk. Doggy's first words "Do what I want asshole, right now".

Dogs are smart, but they aren’t that smart. They respond to sounds, not words. My housemate’s dog responds to her name, but also responds to anagrams of her name.

[Quote] "Do what I want asshole, right now".

I guess they have that in common with cats.

I wuff you. Now give me food or I'll eat you when you are asleep!

I don't see what is impressive about this at all. As r2 said, he may know which button is happy but it's not like he knows what happy means, so how is that communicating?

I believe this. My cat could count. I would take a handful of treats and two cups; pile the treats one-by-one in the cups, which would obscure the treats so you couldn't just look at the pile and see which was bigger. He would then walk up to the cup with the most treats and knock it over, even if it was just one more treat in one than the other. He did this every time. To remove confirmation bias or non-verbal cues, I'd get friends and relatives to perform this experiment when I wasn't in the room, and he still went to the fuller cup every time.

But yes, I also believe that he would have eaten me when I was asleep if given the opportunity. He was a good cat, and I still miss him more than a decade after he died.

Cha Cha tells me she loves me!