How come dogs and cats can understand us?

Answer

Dear Mathias,

Can dogs/cats or in general animals understand exactly what someone is telling them? This is, of course, a question that has puzzled many people for a long time. This makes it impossible for me to give you a completely correct answer. What I can tell you is why dogs or cats react to certain words you call out to them. Everyone knows the well-known command ‘sit’. Why a dog will sit down when you call him the sit command is because the dog is learning to associate this command you give him with a certain reward. I mean that every time you shout ‘sit’, the dog thinks to itself … mmm I will sit down for a while because then I get a reward from my owner … this does not always have to be a treat or something like that This might as well be a pat on the back. I can also tell you that dogs and cats mainly react to vowels such as the letters a, i, o, e and so on. For example, you can just as well yell PIT or THIS to a dog instead of SIT. You just have to try it once. He will normally sit down then.
So much for what I can give you about understanding human language by our animals!

regards