Introduction
Can you teach a dog to count? Yes! You absolutely can. If you think about it, for a mum with her litter, NOT having a concept of number would be dangerous as you could lose pups! Research indicates that dogs have a concept of number that may reach to about 4 or 5 or more which is roughly in line with this. You can try repeating a daily search for, say, four sprats and, over time, you will see that when they’ve found the fourth they stop searching. If they can understand numbers then they can most definitely count. In fact, they can do simple arithmetic too! The hard part, though, is that they don’t speak English! So, in order for us to understand their counting, we need to teach them a way to demonstrate or evidence their counting i.e. indicating the number to us.
How a dog can show us that they can count
We could teach our dogs to:
- bark a specific number of times, or
- retrieve a certain number of objects, or
- push a button, or
- tap a marker
For most of us, it is these behaviours that are new and needs teaching first. I suggest you start with a behaviour your dog is already well versed in. It could be that your dog is good at going and sitting on different markers or mats so you could used numbered mats. For Annie I used her nose bumping of a target as my starting behaviour and created a target for the number 1 and a target for the number 2. The first stage then is your dog learning what to do in response to a cue of ‘1’ i.e. bark once or press the ‘1’ target or fetch one ball. In response to the cue ‘2’ they’d need to bark twice or press a ‘2’ target. All of these are quite sophisticated and might benefit from some 121 tricks training on there own. I suggest just starting with the numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’ until you and your dog are really confident working with these indications.
Changing the cue
The next step is start to change the cue from ‘1’ and ‘2’ to a number of objects or treats. I found that treats worked well as she was rewarded by eating the treats – what’s not to love. I later found that tennis balls were even better!
Next steps
Gradually increase the numbers but be prepared to go back and re-teach the early numbers. Once I added 3 she forgot 2! I’ve also tried a bit of basic arithmetic which she seems to manage!