Living With a Dog Who Speaks English
Mar 6th, 2007 by Karen
Kiera has a vocabulary of a hundred or so individual words and a couple dozen expressions — last time I counted. On the one hand it makes life much easier for me. For instance, I can just tell her to go get Cait for dinner, instead of me yelling upstairs. Or I can ask her to help me find my other shoe that Graidy has hidden somewhere. The “helpful” list goes on and on. There are also those times when it can be a real pain in the butt. This is one of those instances:
Kiera is lying quietly in her favorite “cool” spot by the sliding doors in the living room. I walk into the family room to see what Cait’s up to.
“Cait, do you want to come for a ‘W’ with me?”
As with a young child, when we don’t want Kiera to understand what we’re saying, we revert to spelling or just using the first letter of the word.
Cait asks, “Are you going to take ‘K’?”
I know if I say yes, she won’t want to come because Kiera likes to go fast, and Cait likes to saunter. And I want Cait to get some fresh air.
“Um, I think Dad’s taking her for an ‘R’ later,” I answer.
Andrew walks into the hallway upstairs and looks down to see what we’re up to.
“Are you guys taking Kiera for a walk?” he asks.
Kiera looks up, hearing the ‘K’ and ‘W’ words spoken in one sentence.
“Shhhh,” I practically spit. But not in time.
“Because I was going to take her for a run later.”
Oh great. And now the ‘R’ word. Kiera is doing leaping spins in the air as she runs over to us. Wiggling butt. Happy dog dance. Joyous jumps. You get the idea. Nobody’s going to get out of the house without her now.
“Thanks,” I say to Andrew with mild annoyance.
Andrew leans over to see why I’m miffed.
“Oh,” he says, seeing Kiera’s happy, expectant face. “Sorry. I didn’t realize she was right there; I thought she was outside.”
The cat’s out of the bag now, so I say, “Kiera, do you want to go for a walk or a run?”
Kiera looks from Andrew’s running shoes by the door to Andrew to the shoes to Andrew…
Andrew and I both look at each other and chuckle.
“Looks like you’re on deck,” I say.
And away they go…
Finn always likes to be right where the action is. Graidy, on the other hand, prefers to get as far away from the front door as he can. He’s not interested in going anywhere. He’s my home boy.
This story was too cute for words. Thanks for the pictures of your “fur children”. The story was complete with them.
Ha that’s hilarious. we’re trying to teach the doggies to find their ball or elephant but not getting very far with it. I think BooBoo recognises the names of the humans.
I love this. We have to keep changing initials from time to time as Misty the alpha dog figures out what they stand for and tells the other dogs.
Great story! Loved the pictures too!
What a great story! Such a smart dog. Our dog is obsessed with riding in our SUV. This morning we could barely get out of the house because she kept running out into the garage every time we opened the door. There was no fooling her. I love seeing the pics of your dogs and cat!
There are a lot of smart dogs with extensive vocabularies out there! With smart owners who’re paying attention. : )
It’s amazing how smart dogs are. I bet they understand a lot more than we realize.
BWAAHHHAHAHAH!!! We have “W”s in our house too!