Business Insider spoke with John Bradshaw, anthrozoologist and author of "The Animals Among Us," about how much dogs understand when you communicate with them.
Mr Bradshaw said; "Dogs are very responsive to the way that we talk to them and it tricks many owners into thinking they literally understand every word."
"The science suggests that dogs don’t really understand the words, they understand sounds and so you can train them to do all sorts of things based on things you say."
"But what they don’t really seem to understand is syntax, sentences, grammar, the way that we put words together in different orders to mean different things. To dogs, it’s just a string of sounds."
"We don’t believe that these animals are actually understanding every word. What they are doing and particularly what dogs are very good at is responding to emotion through the tone of voice that we’re using and they learn to respond in very specific ways to their owners so the owners really can believe and it’s almost true that the dog is responding to every word they say."
You can find out more about John Bradshaw's book here.
Produced and filmed by Jasper Pickering. Research by Fraser Moore.