Just a minute ago, on a whim, I decided to see if Novel would obey commands from a computer generated voice. I have heard that it can be a difficult concept for dogs because it is a strange/unnatural voice, my mouth is not moving, and there is no other person around that could be giving the command. Basically, dogs don't always have a natural capacity to understand electronics....like we do...ha. or don't ;)
"C'mere Novel!" I called.
He got up from where he was playing with his "baby" (a large, fluffy, stuffed dog) and stepped over to me, looking up expectantly, and sniffing for a treat.
"let's try something, ok?" I said while pulling up Google Translate on my internet browser. I chose "English" as the target language, typed in "Novel Sit," and then pressed the audio button.
Nothing.
Novel looked at me and wagged his tail slightly. "I though you said we were gonna try something mom!"
I waited a few seconds, then said "Try again" (our Negative marker) and hit the play button again. To my utter surprise, he sat! We tried "Down" and "Stand" as well, and within one or two tries, he got each of them. Once he got them right once or twice, he was flying through these three commands with his usual zest without any mistakes. Then I typed in "Novel Speak" expecting to have to try a few times for this one as well, but he immediately let out a nice "woof!" without any hesitation! Admittedly, I am easily amused, but I was thrilled :)
So, I'm curious to know if this is actually as difficult for dogs as I thought it was because Novel definitely surprised me by not really having trouble with it at all. I tried it with Abbi too, and she had a little more trouble than Novel, but got it pretty quickly as well. Has anyone else tried this with their dogs? How did they handle it?
A Handler in our area just rec'd a device made to communicate via computer generated voice. She is currently working on training her service dog to follow the commands. Some are easier than others for the dog. Her caretaker says the computer command if the dog does not respond with a leash correction to alert dog to pay attention to new voice. It is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting! I also just read somewhere (in my little flurry of trying to find info on this topic) that MWD's are sometimes trained to obey commands from a walkie talkie so they can do work out of earshot, for example, to clear a large field of land mines without the handler having to go with the dog.
DeleteNicely done, Novel! This is such a cool thing that I hadn't thought of. So I had to try it with Dante as soon as I read this. He couldn't gt "sit," but was able to do "stand," "down," and "speak" after a few tries :-)
ReplyDeleteMy dog (Tucker) is so stuborn. He won't even listen to my brother but he listen to me and my dad. But that might just be because we were the only people in th house for the first week of his life at are house. Funny to think that was four years ago!
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