Do we think dogs understand us?

Everyone who has dogs is used to talking to them, but can they really understand what you're saying? Even a single word? To examine people's perceptions of their dog's understanding Pongracz, Miklosi and Csanyi (2001) gave Hungarian dog-owners a questionnaire. It asked them to rate the types of utterances they thought their dogs could understand. Top of the list came questions, followed by permissions and information giving. It seems these dogs are regular little Lassies.

But what proof is there that they really understand? Well, we can only tell by how the dog responds. So, next the authors asked dog-owners how often their dogs demonstrated understanding by obeying a command. Our hardy Hungarian dog-owners reckoned:

• Dogs obeyed 31% of the time under all circumstances.
• Dogs obeyed 53% of the time when the context was right

Seems pretty high to me. Or perhaps Hungarian dogs are very smart.