My mom asked me this past weekend, do you speak Portuguese with your dog?  It hits me, because no I usually don’t use a foreign language with my Gigi! We sing Portuguese and Spanish songs and dance, but no, my commands and interaction is in English….

After reading a few articles on this subject, I decided yesterday to use Portuguese all day long with my dog, contrary to some articles I read, she seemed disoriented and not knowing what to do, she did not follow my commands which changed when I switched to English.

Well, how can you explain French people say dogs bark Woa, Woa, Brazilian people say they bark auau, Spanish people: Jau Jau and American people : woof woof, those languages all perceive the bark in different languages, and different tones, I honestly believe it makes a difference in the dog’s ear when they hear a command in one language or another! I laughed so hard when I moved here and my husband gave me a dog for Christmas and he said the dog barked woof, woof…totally wrong in my Portuguese speaking ears!

I had a friend who owned Rotweilers, he told me he only gave them commands in German because he did not want other people giving the dogs commands and because German was a more forceful language, better for obedience! Wunderbar!

I looked for a dictionary where dog commands were given in different languages and I could not find one. I did find similarities, like Sit, is Sienta-te, Senta (sent-se), Setz dich, all meaning the same thing!

My experiment with Gigi proved she did not obey in Portuguese, have you tried that with your dog? Would love to hear what you think!