Chaser The Border Collie-1022 Proper Nouns And Counting!

There's a fascinating article in the Science Section of today's Times about the latest wonder dog, Chaser, a Border Collie living in South Carolina, who has the "largest vocabulary of any known dog." That's 1022 proper nouns and counting, folks. Chaser's owner, an 82 year old psychologist and retired college professor says that she's so full of energy and diligent about her drills and tests that "he has to go to bed to get away from her."

He purchased Chaser form a local breeder in 2004, and promptly began training her four to five hours a day, using a technique he had developed for teaching dogs-his findings are described in the current issue of the journal, Behavioural Processes. Interestingly, the article describes how the process by which Chaser learns words can shed light on how children learn language. It seems that Chaser not only understands proper nouns (in this case, words that represent a specific object, like a toy) she also appears to understand that the verbs that proceed these nouns are seperate words with different meanings.

But her owner has grown tired of just teaching Chaser words-he's moved on to more interesting topics, like grammar. Subject-verb agreement anyone?

We have only one question for Chaser: Can she type?

Enjoy the full article here: www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html?_r=1&hpw

Not that I feel stupid by comparison to Chaser or anything, but here I am still trying to figure out my Kyjen Paw Hide puzzzle...

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