Awesome!
My family used to have a lot of dogs. A
lot of dogs and many were kind of small, runty dogs but they were all very smart. One that we had, named "Dog" could even speak some words in english! Maybe it was because his parents were brother and sister
I'm not joking they were. But Dog knew how to say some words. I'll never forget the first time we discovered it.
We were moving to a new trailer and had our dogs in little cages to move them around. They were cool and calm and relaxed all the way there but then we sat the sat the cage down that held Dog and Freeway (A cute little black mutt dog that looked identical to Toto from The Wizard of Oz, I swear to god)
Anyway mom and I were moving stuff in and Dog wanted out of the cage, I feel it's important to note we treat our dogs like people; like human beings wearing fur, and we talk to them as though they understand everything we say.
Mom and I looked and saw Dog scratching furiously at the cage, wanting out. Mom held a hand up and said "Hey, we'll let you out in a minute just wait."
Then it happened.
Dog let out this long whine, this shrill, high pitched whine and opened his mouth and in a strange mix of howling, whine and growling at once he let out this wail that sounded like scooby doo after taking a kick to the...you get my meaning. The words were clear. "I want out."
or more like "Rye ruhun ow"
Mom and I heard him wail this repeatedly and we looked at each other like we'd seen a ghost.
"Did he just say he wants out?" My mother asked.
"I'm glad you heard it that way too." I replied.
Dog continued scraping his claws against the cage, desperately trying to dig his way through.
We stepped up.
"What did you say?" Mom asked.
Dog paused and looked at her, then ducked his head down and dug at the floor of the cage and once more wailed "Rye ruhun ow" with Freeway laying beside him like nothing was wrong.
What else could we do? We let him out. An animal screams in your own language what they want how can you refuse?
And Dog was able to speak a few other words. Whenever our big Border collie/lab mix dog Milo disturbed his sleeping Dog would get up, let out a series of growls and when we listened He'd say "Milo" within those growls. And only when Milo did it. If someone else bothered him we would't hear it. We tested it out by waking him up from naps and while he'd do the various low growls like someone grumbling under their breath he wouldn't say "Milo".
And as for Milo, he was very intelligent. My dad trained Milo to fetch his harness for walkies, his leash/lead, to hand dad the proper end with the clasp and also to fetch dad's mud boots (Wellies) for when it was muddy out.
Sorry this went on kinda long. I just have a massive love of how intelligent dogs can be when people treat them the same as people. Obviously you still have to maintain the pecking order of the pack, but you need to do that in human social groups as well so we're not that dissimilar from each other.