Yeah I find that with Holly and Byron... there's the words you teach them on purpose and then there's the incredible amount of other things they pick up. Holly worked out what 'nom' means, so I ended up incorporating it into a command (it's her cue when I'm about to throw a treat, now). She also worked out 'do you want?' and now I use it to get her alert/excited poses when I want to photograph them... I always treat her for it of course.
Holly is a neurotic fool so has a large repertoire of barks, whines and growl/grumbles... and I can probably say I understand the vast majority of them. Body language helps a lot though - where her ears are, what her tail's doing, how tense her body is and in what way, what angle her head is at, how wide her eyes are, if the corners of her mouth are tense, and so much other stuff I don't even realise I'm picking up on. I've done a lot of dog body language research and I know Holly so well, I rind it just sort of becomes par of how I interact with her naturally and I don't even know how I know what she's saying half the time. Like, she sometimes wants to go under the covers... I always know when that's what she's whining for and I don't know HOW I know it, lol.
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Holly is a neurotic fool so has a large repertoire of barks, whines and growl/grumbles... and I can probably say I understand the vast majority of them. Body language helps a lot though - where her ears are, what her tail's doing, how tense her body is and in what way, what angle her head is at, how wide her eyes are, if the corners of her mouth are tense, and so much other stuff I don't even realise I'm picking up on. I've done a lot of dog body language research and I know Holly so well, I rind it just sort of becomes par of how I interact with her naturally and I don't even know how I know what she's saying half the time. Like, she sometimes wants to go under the covers... I always know when that's what she's whining for and I don't know HOW I know it, lol.