Whisky knows her toys

to bring “a ball” or “a rope.”

She was successful about 50% of the time when she was given a chance to play with the new toys before the test. Given that she was choosing from four different items, that is much better than chance, Fugazza said.

Her achievement meant not only that she could group objects in categories in her mind but also that she knew the words for those categories. While Fugazza suggested that all dogs had the ability to think in categories, only a select few, either because of training or natural ability, actually knew words for categories. And she had learned all that “naturally, in a way that is actually a little bit similar to what happens to human children,” Fugazza said.

Monique Udell, who studies dog behavior and cognition at Oregon State University and was not involved in the study, said that it’s hard to draw general conclusions from one dog. But, she said, “this study is an important reminder that animals are often learning from us even outside of formal training sessions.”

She said the work suggested that scientists should keep in mind the whole learning history of a dog when they use canines as test subjects. And dog owners might remember that “our animals may be learning more from us than we think.”

As a side note, no animals were harmed in this experiment. Fugazza said that Whisky quickly got the idea that if Fugazza showed up, it was time to play her favorite game over and over again, something that border collies like to do.

“If we wanted to give Whisky a break,” she said, “we had to go out of the house because otherwise she wanted to keep playing.”