The Last Show with David Cooper
Dr. Cliff Redford: Dogs Picking Up Words Like Children - January 22, 2026
23 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We work hard to strike the right amount of intelligence and ignorance. The Last Show with David Cooper.
We've all seen videos online of dogs that know hundreds of words, but how do they learn them? Do they learn those words like little kids? Well, I'm here with Dr. Cliff Redford. It is vet talk. It is pet talk. Cliff is a veterinarian, definitely. And we are going to chat this science story. Cliff, welcome to the show.
Kind of a science story. Thanks for having me as usual. How do kids learn words? Do they learn words the same as dogs?
Chapter 2: How do dogs learn words like children?
Like if they get it wrong, you bite their ear and rub their nose in their poop?
Like isn't that how you do it? I think if the authorities knew you were doing that, you wouldn't have your kids long enough to know.
Well, my kids don't make mistakes because they know what happens if they do. Oh, boy. All right.
Great parent, veterinarian. He's even better with your pets, people.
I am. I'm just I'm just joshing you guys. Yeah, this was a this was a interesting article. I've always heard that dogs have the intelligence of two to like kids that are aged two to three. Depending on the dog and I guess technically depending on the kid. Depending on the kid, yeah. As well, right?
I don't buy it, but I'll accept it as a thing people say to keep listening to you.
Well, I guess the thing is, is what is intelligence, right? Like, you know, a three-year-old child can probably read a little bit and they can have conversations to a certain point. You can't get that with your dog. No. But... that is as much an issue of the difference between dogs and people.
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Chapter 3: What similarities exist between child and dog language acquisition?
It's not, you know, I can't say rough, rough, rough properly.
Like if you could have some AI program to read the dog's face and understand the bark, and then you could have an AI video of a dog responding to them in a bark, maybe you could do that. I don't know. Probably not.
Yeah. I'm not sure how it works. So that's the problem is we, we think of intelligence as like, you know, our intelligence, right? Like we build nuclear bombs, which probably shows that we're dumb. Well, I don't. But we're, as a society, we have planes and cars and we talk to each other on podcasts or is it a radio show? Both, baby. Both, baby. But there are other forms of intelligence.
But this article became sort of, The big news. Way back in 2004, there was a reported case of a border collie named Rico. And Rico knew the names of more than 200 different toys. So big ball, little ball, teddy bear, whatever, kitty cat, whatever the toy is, he could pick out all these 200 toys. And so researchers started to look into, well, how is that possible?
Is it possible that he's picking up on some sort of signal from his owners or his handler that maybe even they don't know they're giving a signal to? And what they ended up doing was they found, first of all, that there are types of sort of highly intelligent dogs. Border Collies are one of them.
But then they found a lot of other breeds, including Pugs, that were these dogs known as label learner dogs. And what they were able to show...
is if the dog knows the word for ball teddy bear and bone and you have those three objects in a room but then you have a fourth object which could be uh uh whatever a mouse a little toy mouse and you say hey david david's the dog in this case hey david get me the mouse and I can do that. Oh, no, you're talking about the dog. Got it. That's right.
The dogs in these categories, these super intelligent dogs, were able to say, well, I know what those three things are. I don't know what mouse is. There's the only object I don't know. Let me get him that object.
And the scientists studying it think, oh, the dog understands mouse.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the Rico case in dog intelligence research?
Wow. And it's like sharks can smell a single drop of blood in like a hectare of the ocean, you know. And and the reason dogs can smell so well is one, they have a lot more sense receptors in their nostrils. Something like we have three million and they have three hundred million. So, you know, a hundred times more, but also their brain.
is not set out so much for language and learning language like we just discussed in the previous segment, but they have larger sections of their brain that are dedicated to processing odors. Now, what I didn't realize as I was doing research on this story, there are dogs called biodetection dogs, and they've been trained to detect certain diseases in humans, specifically chronic wasting disease,
PTSD has an odor, which kind of makes sense because it'll change your cortisol levels and some of your hormones.
Yeah, your stress, your sweat, like little subtle body signals that you're dealing with PTSD.
Human ovarian cancer... Human pancreatic cancer. That's it. So those ones. And so they wanted to see, all right, what about in dogs? Can dogs detect cancer in other dogs? I mean, they're already sniffing their butts. So you might as well see what else they can find out, right? And they specifically went after a cancer called hemangiosarcoma.
So hemangiosarcoma is one of the most common cancers, unfortunately, especially in large breed dogs. And cancer is the number one reason dogs pass away, period, regardless of breed, regardless of anything. Now, the problem with hemangiosarcoma is it is a tumor that generally grows on the spleen. and grows undetected.
And we call it in the industry, the silent killer, because your dog is going to be feeling fine, nine, 10, 11 years old, sometimes younger, sometimes older. And then all of a sudden, unbeknownst to any of us, there's this tumor in the spleen that's been developing for months. And all of a sudden it ruptures.
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Chapter 5: How do researchers determine if dogs can learn new words?
And often, probably about half the time, the dog passes away right then and there due to blood loss in the abdomen. So by the time you discover it, even if they do survive, it's now already spread. You know, you got to remove the spleen so it doesn't rupture again. You need chemotherapy. And it's already spread to other organs, the liver and the heart being the key main ones that it spreads to.
So our ability to extend life is limited, maybe six months. Sounds pretty grim. You know, it's something you'd want.
And if you detect it early, can you do something about it?
Well, yes, absolutely. Because there is a point where if the spleen is the first location, which normally it is, if you can detect it before it becomes malignant and spreads elsewhere, you can remove the spleen. Dogs do very well without their spleen. They're less sensitive without it than, say, we are. It doesn't affect their immune system the same way.
And then you're not only avoiding the rupturing of the spleen, but you're avoiding this tumor from spreading. So, they needed to see, does hemangiosarcoma have an odor? And what they did was they took a series of 12 blood samples from dogs with known hemangiosarcoma and trained the dogs to, hey, if you sniff this, we're going to give you a treat kind of thing. And then they did a proper...
blinded, double-blinded placebo-controlled study. And they had, again, 12 samples of different hemangiosarcoma cases, 12 samples of non-cancerous but unhealthy dogs. They had some other illness. And then 12 samples from completely healthy dogs. And the groups of dogs that they were training ended up with 70% accuracy detected the blood from the dogs that had hemangiosarcoma.
And that 70% accuracy, which, I mean, that's not great, but it's good for an initial screening. That 70% accuracy is what these bio-detection dogs that discover PTSD and ovarian cancer and all the things we talked about, they have about the same accuracy. So they're thinking, all right, this means that hemangiosarcoma has a detectable notable odor.
Now, unfortunately, that means they're going to now try and find a machine that can detect that odor. So now these dogs are going to lose their jobs to AI. That seems to be the trend to all these things.
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Chapter 6: What are label learner dogs and why are they important?
But... It is hope. It is hope that we might be able to do something about this.
Taking a step back, high level, what I talked about at the beginning here, how soon are we going to go to the oncologist or even our GP or a primary care physician and there's going to be a dog in the office sniffing for various ailments? Go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to say, you're going to come in and they'll be like, okay, Mr. Cooper, it is time for your lab test.
Okay.
Oh, it's a lab. It's a lab.
That's a kind of dog.
Now, what happens if you need a CAT scan? Then what happens? Boom.
It's like cops use dogs. I remember this is a bit of a derail, but it just goes to show how good these dogs are at sniffing. I'm at the airport here in New York. I think it's JFK. I had just come and I cleared customs. I'm waiting for my bag. There's a young girl, like 23, next to me.
She gets her bag and then there's the cop with the dog or the customs agent with the dog and the dog alerts on her bag. And I'm thinking like, wow, I am currently witnessing this woman's life potentially being ruined. Why is she smuggling drugs? What's going on? I'm just sitting there in awe. Like I'm watching a very polite interaction, a cute little dog with his paw on this woman's suitcase.
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