teaching a smart "critter" tricks, or instead actually communicating feelings

[Magnum Man]

Ok, fish forum... I've never been able to train fish, any more than basics, like turn on the light, food falls from the sky, and a big ugly creature watches us eat...

but we have had house dogs, that spend a lot of time with us... so really they just know more tricks... right now, we have an 8 year old Shitzu / Bichon cross... he's exceptionally smart, but with that comes stubborness... for example he is house trained, but doesn't like to stay home alone, so he purposely does "business" in the house, to punish us, if we leave him home... over time, he has trained us... he recognizes quite a few words, and even asked for, by name, a hamburger, one time when we went thru a drive through... Mrs. trained him, to poke his head into the heart shape people do with their hands, and give you a smoochie on the nose, it's quite cute... so how to communicate that he did something you didn't like ( we don't physically punish him) ??? I've been working on a phrase...

he was a runt, and his tummy gets upset easy... when he's feeling ill, we say "Teddy don't feel so good", ( in baby talk ) that's our way of acknowledging that we know he doesn't feel good... if he disappoints me by something he does, I've started to say "you make poppa not feel so good" ( also in baby talk ), and he seems to be connecting the phrase with that feeling...

trouble is, by the time he has us fully trained, he'll be at the end of his life... anyone else experimenting with deeper animal communication???

Teddy, watching me work..

 

[gwand]

I taught my dog to say the word Bark in English but I couldn’t get him to say Bark in French.

 

[Magnum Man]

that time at the Wendy's drive thru, I rolled the window down, and all of a sudden Teddy said "I'mawanumhamburger"... well we were shocked, and even more so, when the voice out of the speaker box answered "you want a hamburger?"... well he got his hamburger that day... now, he won't usually eat the dog treats everyone try's to give him... he must be spoiled...

 

[GaryE]

My dog is a genius, and I must be very sharp myself because I'm the only one who recognizes she's so smart.

 

[davros]

It can be disturbing how much they know, more than just tricks. Some of the better known dogs ("bunny" for example)that can communicate by pushing buttons are a bit creepy. I know another girl that sent her button set back as the dog was getting too pushy ...

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I taught my dog to say the word Bark in English but I couldn’t get him to say Bark in French.

Get a poodle, they speak french.....

I have tried, unsuccessfully, for years to teach my fish to poop next to filter intakes.

I do not have a dog. I have not since as a young boy in the 1950 when I witnessed my dog get killed by a police motorcycle. The dog had a bad habit of chasing anything with two wheels- mostly bicycles. But that day he went after a motorcycle cop who lost control and hit the dog. My family was lucky because the motorcycle crashed and the cop went flying. We could have been sued.

 

[Oldspartan]

Our Buster and precious are far smarter than us. their dinner is served, poop is attended to, he sleeps when he wants, has his own extensive play yard that is treated for vermin, gets free taxi service, free medical. and free room and board. Yep, much smarter.

 

[Oldspartan]

That Shitz is a doll. Scooter was our dog before the current two. Also, a Shitz. Left this mortal coil i month before his 23d birthday. We inherited him at his age 12.

 

[GaryE]

We're not the only only intelligent animals out there, and the rate learning is expanding on how intelligence works is pretty exciting. We've been moaning about being alone in the Universe while we've been surrounded by different but functional intelligences the whole time. Go figure.

My fish are too busy doing fish whatever to need to learn tricks. There's nothing in it for them, and their brains don't need to work that way. My dog though, my fellow mammal companion does have a skills overlap with me, and we can communicate some things reasonably well. Sometimes one or the other of us understands something and I'm in awe of how two different species can read each other. We're so different, but we can read each other sometimes.