Do Dogs Know Their Name?

As a dog, I often hear my owner talking about me. They might not realize that I know, but as soon as I hear my name being mentioned I’m on high alert waiting to hear what my lovely owner has to say about me.

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My owners are amazing, they’re my best friends, and all I want to do is give them big sloppy licks and kisses, but sometimes I hear them speaking about me and one thing they often talk about makes me sad.

Sometimes I hear them talking about me, and I don’t even think they know I’m listening because I sometimes hear them discussing whether or not I know my name. And it makes me sad because I do my name. I love my name. My name is amazing!

So seen as my lovely owners don’t even understand that we dogs do know our names, it seems only right that I tell you more about what we do and don’t understand.

Do Dogs Understand what we Say?

One thing I often hear my beautiful owners ask is ‘does the dog understand what we say?’. I think they say this to each other under the impression that I don’t understand what they are saying, but in this case, they are wrong, because I do!

Okay, so maybe I don’t understand every single word that comes out of their mouths, but I do understand a lot of it.

I might not be great at understanding full sentences, and sometimes when they say big words I get confused, but I try. I think my owners think I only know the words that they have taught me, like ‘beg’, ‘sit’, ‘stand’, and ‘stay’. But I’m a lot more intelligent than that.

Sometimes I struggle to understand the words that my lovely owners say, but that’s okay because I understand something a lot more important than that. I understand body language.

I don’t think my humans realize this, but I’m very in tune with the information that they are giving off. If my Mommy is upset or stressed, I know. If my big sister is excited about something, I know. If anyone is feeling anything, I know.

So yes, we dogs do understand a lot of what our humans say. We don’t understand everything, but you have to give us credit for what we do understand as you speak a completely different language to us dogs. We are very smart.

Do Dogs know their Name?

Another thing I hear my humans ask, which as I have said makes me sad, is ‘does the dog understand their name?’.

Every time that they ask this, I just want to scream ‘YES’, but I can’t do this because while I understand human talk, I cannot speak it. Instead, I just bark at them, but I don’t think they understand my point.

It’s not just my owners who I’ve heard discussing this, I’ve also heard them talking about this with some of their other friends who are dog owners. It seems to be quite a debate and something that a lot of people are uncertain about. But I don’t understand why because we dogs clearly do know our names.

As soon as my human says my name I immediately come running, well most of the time, sometimes I’d prefer to be chewing my favorite toy or eating my lunch. I don’t understand why my humans don’t understand if I know my name or not because they were the ones who gave it to me and they were the ones who taught me what it meant.

I can remember the days when I was a little puppy, and I first heard my name being mentioned. At first, I didn’t understand what it meant, but my Mommy taught me that that word was my name through something called positive reinforcement and classical conditioning.

I don’t really understand what these processes are, apparently, they are something to do with classical psychology, but all I know is that they worked and I now know my name.

Some nasty people will try to argue that we dogs don’t fully understand what our names are and that we simply just respond to the word, but isn’t that what everyone does with their names? Humans included.

Do Dogs know their Owner’s Names?

Sometimes I hear my big sister ask my Mommy if I know what her name is, and it is such a silly question because of course, I do.

I have lived in my home for almost my entire life and I can remember my big sister when she was a lot smaller than she is now, so it is simply stupid for them to ask if I know their names.

I know the names of every single human who lives in my home, and unlike with the tricks that they taught me, I learned these names all by myself.

Of course, names are used every single day so learning them wasn’t that hard, but I’m still very proud that I did it. We dogs are often underestimated, but we are a lot more intelligent than we might seem.

Even though I taught myself my family’s names, some dogs aren’t as smart as me and they need a little help. It is possible to help us dogs learn names in the same way that we are taught tricks. As I have told you multiple times, we dogs are very smart, and if you tell us something enough we will learn it.

Sometimes it can take time for us to learn our owner’s names, especially if they are not our first family or if our family is very large.

But give us time, and we will always learn everybody’s names. It would be rude not to. After all, we love our owners, they are our family, and names are very important. Especially to humans.

Summary

So in case, you were wondering, yes we dogs do know our names.

From the moment our owners assign them to us we are constantly being taught that that word means us, and while it does take a little while, we do understand them.

Our names are a lot more important to us than some humans might think.