Miso, a six-year-old male Border collie from Canada, knows the names of about 200 toys and participated in a new study of how some dogs learn words. Eavesdropping on their owners seems to help some toy-crazy and talented pups learn more words. — Veronica Suen/The New York Times
BASKET the border collie seems to have a way with words.
The seven-year-old dog, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, knows the names of at least 150 toys – “froggy”, “crayon box” and “Pop-Tart”, among them – and can fetch them on command.
Basket built her vocabulary thanks to one of her owners, Elle Baumgartel-Austin, who began the language lessons when the dog was a puppy.
“I would play with her, say the name of the toy – say the name of the toy a lot of times,” Baumgartel-Austin said.
She started with 10 toys, adding more as Basket mastered them.
“There never seemed to be a limit,” she said. “It’s basically like, how many toys could I feasibly store in my tiny apartment?”
Now, a new study suggests that Basket, and other dogs with her rare gift, have a skill on par with 18-month-old children: they can learn the names of new toys not only through direct instruction but also by eavesdropping on their owners’ conversations.
Such sophisticated word learning is rare among dogs, and recognising labels is far from acquiring language. Still, the findings underscore how adept dogs are at reading human signals.
“They’re very good at picking up on these cues,” said Shany Dror, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, and an author of the study.
“They’re so good that they can pick up on them equally well when the cues are directed to the dog or to someone else.”
Dror conducted the research at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. The study was published recently in Science.
Although many dogs understand simple commands like “sit” or “stay”, label learning – linking a specific name to a specific object – is much tougher.
Over the past two decades, scientists have identified a handful of canine prodigies that know dozens or hundreds of toy names and remember them for years.
“They accumulate these huge vocabularies,” Dror said.
Herding dogs, especially border collies, seem particularly adept, perhaps because breeders once favoured animals that paid close attention to their owners.
Even among these breeds, however, label learning is rare.
Dogs usually acquire it through direct play or training, Dror said.
But some, like Basket, pick up on labels in overheard conversation.
Basket has been known to do this with the word “avocado”, which also names one of her favourite toys.
“When we casually talked about buying avocados for ourselves, she would bring over the avocado,” Baumgartel-Austin said. She adds that Basket does the same with other toys that share names with everyday items.
The researchers wondered whether dogs like Basket could not only recognise familiar labels in overheard conversation but also learn new ones.
Children can do this by around 18 months – a deceptively complex task involving gaze following, attention tracking and perspective taking.
In the study, Dror and colleagues tested 10 “gifted word learner” dogs: seven border collies, one Labrador retriever, one mini Australian shepherd and one Australian shepherd/blue heeler cross.
Owners had a family member present a new toy to the dog while using its name in simple sentences, like “This is a stingray,” and “Do you want the stingray?” The key: the dog was not addressed or looked at.
After several short sessions over multiple days, owners tested the dogs by asking them to fetch the new toys alongside nine familiar ones.
On average, the dogs retrieved the new toys about 80% of the time – comparable to direct instruction. Seven of the 10 dogs, including Basket, performed significantly above chance, while a control group of 10 ordinary border collies did not.
Juliane Kaminski, director of the Dog Cognition Centre at the University of Portsmouth, said the results were convincing but unsurprising.
Other studies have shown dogs can learn object labels indirectly.
In 2004, Kaminski and colleagues reported that Rico, a border collie, could infer names of new objects through elimination – assuming unfamiliar words referred to unfamiliar toys.
Dror’s team also ran experiments in which dogs saw a new toy placed inside a bucket before its label was introduced.
After several sessions, the dogs correctly retrieved the hidden toys nearly 80% of the time.
In a study published in Scientific Reports in November, Kaminski found that label learners are more interested in and attentive to novel objects and show greater self-control than typical dogs.
It is unclear which comes first: do these traits enable label learning, or does learning enhance them?
Label learning remains rare, limiting the number of subjects scientists can study.
“We’re always searching for more dogs,” Dror said. “We would be happy for any dog owner who thinks their dog knows toy names to reach out.” — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
