Bilingual Education for Dogs

I had a secretary whose father was German. She majored in German, acquired a second husband and a rottweiler. It seems that she and her husband (who isn't German) decided to train the dog in German. Fearsome but affectionate, the hound helped raise innumerable very cute daughters whom she cranked out at regular intervals.

I decided to learn some German a few years ago, probably because I dropped it in college, or my parents spoke it when they didn't want us to understand, or something. Anyway, I got hold of Pimsleur method German CD's and learned enough to fake it, and read Grimm's Märchen or Bernhard Schlink novels with a dictionary.

So, in my old age, I acquired a rat terrier named Charlie, or "Karl Heinrich" in German. Took der Hund to obedience classes, and soon realized that if a dog could learn a few dozen words of English, he could learn the equivalent few dozen words in German. So we have a bilingual dog. "Sitz, mein Hund!" and "Das is nicht für dem Hunden" are as easy for a smart dog like himself to understand as "Sit!" and "Don't eat that!"

I highly recommend bilingual education for dogs. Maybe even trilingual. Does anyone out there have a polyglot basset hound?