In 2013 I was blessed with welcoming into my family an amazing Border Collie I named Shenanigan.
Shenanigan excelled and loved the dog bonding pastime or sport known as Agility which we spent a lot of happy times learning together or rather her teaching me.
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Sadly I became rather ill with a deteriorating heart condition and my agility days were brought to a sad end. Knowing the importance of keeping such a highly intelligent ‘persona’ fulfilled I started exploring ways to further the possibilities of her intelligence and keep her entertained. .
I had read about chimpanzees’ abilities to read flash cards and one day after a visit to the cardiologist bought a book by Bonnie Bergin. Dr Bonnie Bergin is the creator of the concept of the service dog and has devoted her life to teaching and training service dogs she started training dogs to read signs to help assistance dogs for the visually impaired. Obviously it is extremely valuable for a dog for the blind to learn LADIES and GENTS and many other words.
I printed cards with various cue words SIT, DOWN, PAW, ROLLY, WAVE, BOW etc and was amazed at how effortlessly Shenanigan learnt. In the first 5 minutes she could recognise and distinguish SIT and DOWN. I then added ROLLY for roll over. The fascinating thing was that she would occasionally get the words DOWN and BOW confused. I gather it was the OW that confused her but it shows the ability to understand the symbolic nature of object/ iconic signs, understand the concepts of images and replicas.
My respect rocketed even further for this amazing species, breed and example of the scope of intelligence. Many dogs can learn to read 3 words and line drawings.
Shenanigan learnt 11 words and as long as I had Woolworth’s roast chicken as treats she demonstrated her reading skills at many demos. Her ultimate test came when a Doctor of Evolutionary Studies at the Max Planck Institute visited and impressed him with her ability to read the flashcards even when the flashcards were shown upside down.
Dr Bergin has shown dogs can to read up to 20 written words of three to five letters and sentences like ‘Get the shoe’. Who know what they will be reading next!
Susan Henderson©( Accredited Animal Behaviourist)
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