Dogs Understand Emotions And They Even Understand Language! – Dave’s Diary

Whenever I was having a tough day as a kid I would often turn to my dog THOR for consolation and I was pretty sure he understood just what I was feeling.  Turns out maybe he did that and more.  New research demonstrates that man’s best friend comprehends more than just the emotion in its owner’s words, a dog can recognize the actual words. Now my dog was a Norwegian Elkhound and I never did try to speak his native dog tongue -Norwegian- with him but he seemed to have a pretty good grasp on farm English!

In fact, it was a  researcher in England who came to this discovery by giving commands to 250 dogs on either side of their heads. Some of the messages were stripped of emotion and others were spoken in gibberish. The researcher found that about 80 percent of dogs would turn to the right side when hearing commands containing actual words. But when hearing them in gibberish, they turned to the left, looking for emotional hints.

Somebody whisper in my left ear and tell me again how it was that this study actually

got funded?  Side tracked…SQUIRREL!  Sorry.

The study showed that dogs can make out real words and that a dog’s brain processes speech into two parts: Emotional signals are handled on the right and the meaning of words on the left. (UPI)

Now we know they know our secrets let’s hope they really don’t learn how to – “SPEAK”!