Speaking A Different Language...

[MonElite]

My dogs are bilingual. They undersand several words both in English and Polish

[nickojoy]

My dog knows English, German and hand signals... and the odd swear word! hehe

[Lab_Rat]

My dogs are bilingual. They undersand several words both in English and Polish

A bit OT, but when I was a kid of about 8 we had a nieghbour who was Polish. He had about 4 dogs and I was amazed that they understood Polish....

I know of someone whos ridgy understands English and Spanish.

Im interested that there are a number of people who actually train using a language other than English! Ive never really considered it!

Rat

[nickojoy]

My dogs are bilingual. They undersand several words both in English and Polish

A bit OT, but when I was a kid of about 8 we had a nieghbour who was Polish. He had about 4 dogs and I was amazed that they understood Polish....

I know of someone whos ridgy understands English and Spanish.

Im interested that there are a number of people who actually train using a language other than English! Ive never really considered it!

Rat

The majority of the Schutzhund trained dogs are bilingual.

[Lab_Rat]

Thinking about it now, that would make alot of sense!

Rat

[nickojoy]

My dogs are bilingual. They undersand several words both in English and Polish

Your dogs are pretty smart though, they understand complete sentences.

[angelsun]

The ANKC rule book states:

Commands:

Where the word “command” appears in specific exercises, it will mean “command and/or

signal” unless otherwise specified.

All verbal commands must be in the English Language unless approved otherwise by the

Judge.

the thing simply is....dogs don't 'speak' languages, they understand tones and sounds (which we call words) and are conditioned to respond to patterns of these (which we call language) to behave certain ways.

We can use the word 'apple' and teach the dog to place its bum on the ground.....what we humans know as 'sit'. The dog does not understand our language of the word sit, it only hears the sounds and tones and after teaching him, he knows those sounds mean he puts his bum on the ground.

We know this is true, because we have dogs being rehomed to different languages all the time. Like any learning curve, it takes a little for them to realize these new sounds and tones mean a physical action. It doesn't matter what word you use, as long as it's consistant. I know dogs trained to 'sounds' only...that is a tongue clik means sit, two clicks means lay down. A pursed lip rasberry means roll over etc.

I have a dog that was rehomed at three to Sweden....it took her about a week to learn the tones needed to do all her trained actions that were keyed by english. The same with the dog I sent to Spain (to a non english speaking home) I will say however, that some dogs have a problem with accents as I've found here....my Canadian accent did confuse some of the dogs here for a time as I enunciate words very differently than they were used to. Now I"m happy to say, they understand Canadian as well as Australian!!

[luvsablue]

I think the main thing here is the context within which we teach the dogs, and how this is really an extension of the words we use as commands.

When we are teaching the dogs we wrap the words up with many different body-language cues, and they learn these too.

If you keep your actions consistent, the word may not matter as much, particularly when accompanied by a hand signal.

The dogs observe all our body language, some of it barely noticed by other people, eg slight hesitations, tense muscles etc.

So inter changing words when a signal goes with them shouldn't be too hard for the dog, although I don't know why you'd do it.

I mean unless you forgot and used German at home and English out on the training ground?

luvsablue