DOGS KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYING

A new study (from last week, actually, but I was busy, remember?) in the journal Science has found that dogs understand human language better than expected, knocking out another brick in the wall between us and "dumb animals." A German border collie named Rico has learned at least 200 words. In a surprising test, Rico, 9 years old, was given the names of 40 toys - once - and correctly retrieved 37 out of 40 toys by name. That's probably as well as, if not better than, most of us could do hearing German words for the first time.