r/BeAmazed • u/Separate_Finance_183 • 17h ago

Miscellaneous / Others Dog-sitter in Luxembourg tests which language the dog understands

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u/pierogi_waystation 11h ago

My schnauzer is bilingual. He is immersed in English and that’s his basic commands/praise language. However, as a fail-safe to ensure that a rando doesn’t command him to do something forbidden, his advanced commands are strictly in German.

It shouldn’t matter because I’m his handler and (theoretically) I’m the only one he should obey for any advanced commands, but it seemed reckless to bet bystanders’ safety on that.

Btw, for some reason, about half of everyone who finds out he’s trained in bitework immediately turns on the spot, picks out a person, and commands him to attack that person. I don’t understand why they do this. They seem delighted, like they’re going to see something amazing they’ve never seen before and like, yeah, I assume you’ve never seen every bone in someone’s arm turned into gravel by 110 lbs of snarling black nightmare.

Luckily he has no idea what the words “attack”, “bite” or “restrain” mean. Thankfully, I’ve never had occasion to use the advanced commands anywhere other than the training grounds and in competition.

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u/Lightofmine 10h ago

Couldn’t they just know the German word for bite?

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u/pierogi_waystation 10h ago

They absolutely could, but there’s a specific German nonsense command phrase that I trained him to associate with the advanced commands. I’ve never seen him posture up without that phrase, even in training when I say the German commands. He becomes a very different animal when he’s in work-mode.

But all of that is really supposed to be fail-safes, and most people who have bite-trained dogs don’t bother with alternate commands. My schnauzer is an excellent dog, but he’s eager to please. Very eager. He loves to show new people how good of a boy he is. I couldn’t be confident that he wouldn’t immediately obey a violent command just to show off how smart he is. That was never an issue in training, but I just couldn’t shake the anxiety that it might be different in the real world.

He has never had a problem, knock on wood. But he does perk up if someone is speaking German, like he’s listening more intently.

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u/CheGueyMaje 4h ago

Ich find das toll, dass du so vorsichtig bist.