Reply #13: Inside of a Dog

[KurtNYC]

which is meta analysis of recent studies on canines -- their abilities, biology, etc. Some really interesting stuff in there but I have to skip all the chapter intros with their cutesy stuff about the author's dog. It goes a long way toward answering 'are they really color blind?' 'how much do they use their hearing (if they have any)?'

The answer on hearing is 'not much' -- I had a deaf dog for years and now use mostly hand signals with my dogs that can hear bc it is so much clearer to the dog. Saddens me to think how many dogs get beaten and abused bc their owners think that the dog 1) can understand language and 2) is just being willful, etc. Ugh. Dogs recognize certain words, although they don't hear certain consonants so many words sound the same. Recognizing a word is very different from understanding language.