If you talk to your dog, you’re really talking to yourself

Talking to your dog is fine. It is when you start to think the dog is answering that it could be a problem.

PS: so what if people talk to their dogs? How does it affect you?

What could go wrong?

Dogs speak Swedish.

Which song is this:

"Talking to myself

And nobodys hooooome"

Cue: my favorite band, abbreviated like a famous race in UK

Thank your ancestors for body odor too. They evolved that for more or less the same reason.

Notice how you can't smell your own BO, no matter how strong? People also get used to the BO of whoever they live with. But if someone from another tribe is near, you can instantly smell it. Even if they have been there and left, they leave a trail of BO.

When dogs joined the tribe, they took on the job of smeller and the humans changed their habits. They started showering and not smelling like anything. While this is pleasant, it is also unnatural.

And the constant barking is not pleasant. I'll take bad smells I don't notice over constant barking.

If you really want to earn your dog’s respect, get down in the grass and smell what they’re smelling. Then get up and mark the pee tree at a height no dog can possibly replicate. Words are overrated.

I can smell mine. Maybe I just have a good dog nose.

If you start threads about talking to dogs, you’re a crazy person.

R2 never really understood Luke Skywalker. Just made bleep sounds.

Nah, they'll know you're just sucking up and it will gain you nothing.

Talk to your dog. They like interaction and it's not important that they fathom the meaning. It's important that you play off each other, acknowledge each other, and recognize each other's existence in positive ways.

A little chatter followed by a pet or whatever is all they need to know.

Here is a dog with a 1,000 word vocabulary. If you think talking to a dog is talking to yourself then so it talking to a person. Dog are just less intelligent than humans but have the fundamentals of communication.

thedodo.com

World’s Smartest Dog Has 1,000-Word Vocabulary - The Dodo

Link:www.thedodo.com/amphtml/worlds-smartes...

They might not speak English but they can respond to commands so they do understand some language. We don't speak theirs so I wouldn't be too judgemental.

My labs are quite smart. Most of our communication is non verbal, but they literally have an understanding of about 20 words learned through repetition.They don't waste their time on me if I'm blabbing at them about things that don't concern them. But if they want something from me I have no problem interpreting their wishes and vice versa. It's almost like they have ESP.

"if you talk to your dog, you're really talking to yourself"

honestly, pretty much how i feel when posting on here

So by your logic, if we talk to ourselves we are crazy? That would make us all loco yeah?

Videos like this and others clearly show that dogs understand simple words as well as short phrases, and there are also YouTube videos showing a dog turning around when and only when the phrase “turn around” is uttered in Bonnie Tyler’s song on the radio.

What’s going on underneath is just signal processing, much like speech recognition technology has worked for decades now. The dogs ears pattern match incoming signals to patterns previously learned and stored in their memory. We humans are hardly any different in auditory processing, except that our language abilities allow us to do more accurate pattern matching by anticipating commonly used grammatical phrases and rejecting nonsensical word combinations.

As for OP’s claim, it’s hard to quantify ability to “speak English” or ability to understand spoken English, but I suppose most people would agree that dogs don’t appear to possess either, or not any more than a toddler.

Exactly. Most of us have a narrative to/with ourselves most of our waking hours. We often call it “thinking” but it generally isn’t at all. It’s (usually) just a circular ramble about whatever.

IMO it’s an extremely fine, and blurry line, as to what’s “talking to ourselves “and what is not.

Interesting information. If a dog spoke English it would be really frightening, can you imagine? "Hello"

My cats talk sh*t about dogs and their stupid intonation all the time. You are correct.

Nothing wrong with talking to yourself! A little intelligent conversation can be a pleasant change.

Besides, praying is just talking to yourself--yet we know that positive self-talk can have great benefits.

healthdirect.gov.au

Self-talk

Self-talk is your inner voice. It's part of your stream of consciousness, allowing you to process and understand what's going on around you.

Link:www.healthdirect.gov.au/self-talk