He’s a guide dog, so obviously very smart in some ways, but in other ways he’s very much still a dog. He’s still terrified of thunder and fireworks. While he’s normally aloof with occasional fits of cuddliness, when it’s loud outside he tries to climb into my skin.

I wish I could tell him “You’re fine, dude. The thunder is outside and you’re inside” in a way he understands.

But if you’ll permit me a linguistic tangent, you could take the concept of “talking dog” in a bunch of different directions.

  • Give him phonetically articulate human speech, but leave his mental faculties otherwise unchanged. He’d express his simple animal needs in a way that happens to correspond to words in a human language, and I would likewise be able to articulate simple concepts to him in a way he understands. Honestly not that far off from the array of push buttons thingy that we saw on YouTube a few years ago.

  • Make him fully sapient, but leave his vocal tract untouched, incapable of articulating human speech, but with the mental faculties to link symbols to meanings and form recursive ideas. A bunch of my constructed languages use this as a premise, talking dogs (or doglike aliens) that still sound like dogs.

  • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
    231·
    5 hours ago

    He knows by your voice and demeanor. He 100% knows when you’re panicked and bases his response from it if you’re bonded enough. If you’re chill, he’s chill and will learn. Dogs are amazing.

    Give him yummy treats like yak cheese sticks when it’s crazy so he can associate loud noises with snacks and time with you.

    • kungen@feddit.nu
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Exactly. So many people get worried - about their dog being worried - and it just makes a bad cycle. The best thing is to behave as normal, but positive reinforcement helps otherwise.

    • toomanypancakes@crazypeople.onlineEnglish
      41·
      4 hours ago

      Be very careful with those yak milk cheese sticks. My old lady (who recently passed, poor sweetie) swallowed a massive chunk once as a pup when I didn’t think it was quite time to take it away yet. She wound up with intestinal blockage and needed surgery to get it out.

      Kind of amusingly though, they gave us back the cheese remnant for some reason in a bag and the little monster lunged for it to try to eat it again.