My sister in law wanted to adopt a cat from the local shelter. My wife and I tagged along. Long story short, the wife and I came home with a Lab-Doberman-Grayhound mongrel puppy, our 1st dog. We named him “Caesar”.
Piece of Cake. Learned his name by day 2. House trained by day 7. As the months went by, he learned our names, the names of specific toys, the names of the 2 cats and could process simple sentences, such as “Get the rope Toy and take it to Debbie.”
He understood gestures, such as pointing, to direct his attention.
Mind you, I never had a dog before, so I thought this was typical.
We loved that dog for 13 years, and after the passed, it took several year before I could consider
Having another dog.
24 months ago, my wife came home with two rescue dogs, pit-bull mix sisters.
They are as dumb as a box of rocks.
The rest ranged from trainable to "do not leave out in rain".
All of them however were good natured dogs, even the two that we were told were "mean".
When Odin was 3 months old, he learned to sit, down, give paw/give other paw in 15 minutes including memorizing the hand signals for each, as well.
Don’t even need to give verbal commands.
The hand signals then morphed into such sutble, nearly invisible motions that it freaks people out because they think he’s reading my mind.
:)
Apparently dogs are the only animals that understand what pointing means. Not even chimps get it.
And they don't need to be taught it, know it instinctively.
We've obviously been together for a long long time.