Discussion

48 German Dog Commands

justinator: Humorous or not, there was a video of a dog trainer that trained his (you guess it: German Shepherd) in German commands, partly so that when he worked with client's dogs, he could use English, and his German-speaking dog who would be in close proximity (useful for reactive training) wouldn't compete with the client's dog.

sudb: I think this is a great idea in general - security through obfuscation, kinda.

rambambram: Haha nice one. As a kid I had these friends in the neighborhood (Netherlands) whose dad trained Malinois shepherds and sold them worldwide to security services and police units.In my city are four day marches in the summer where also international military participate. Before dawn, all these soldiers walk from the forest - where they sleep - to the starting point. It was customary for us as kids to wave to the soldiers and wish them good luck and ask for some souvenirs/stickers.One day my friends had their dog with them and we learned the command 'luid' (loud in English, laut im Deutsch) so the dog would bark. Early in the morning, exhausted soldiers that did not even had their morning coffee, very quiet outside, and then the dog would bark them to shock with our little whispers of 'luid'. Good times.

kazinator: [delayed]

badc0ffee: I think if I said sitz to my English-trained dog, she would sit.

codethief: > 2. Drop it / Let go — Aus. In German, aus is a preposition meaning “out of.”It also means "off" and – in sports – "offside", which I think is much closer to what "aus" means in this context.

daft_pink: Do they have other languages? My dog is an immigrant and it would be nice to use his native language.

NoiseBert69: Teach him RustOh wait, wrong Thread!

GuB-42: My dog doesn't know Rust, but he is fluent in Ruff!

BoredPositron: We do it with our herding dogs so you can give the different dogs different commands.

mrjoe3332: I've never seen a GSD actually obey the drop/aus command without you having something to trade for

whalesalad: This tool is incredibly effective. ive zapped myself with it to test. feels like a very very strong static shock. Our dog Solo has been zapped only a handful of times. When he wears the collar now we don't even really turn it on or use it - just knowing it exists is enough for him to drop his frisbee/ball/etc. https://www.ecollar.com/product/ez-900-easy-educator-1-2-mil...

system2: I have an ultra-trained GSD, and I find German commands cringe and pretentious.

dole: Used in Schutzhund, German dog sport/training: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzhund

whalesalad: I have one of these lol (a dog with competitive parents). Get a load of our breeder's website, its a trip back in time. https://www.glaurungkennel.com/Our little buddy is the silver collar here, https://www.glaurungkennel.com/LitterK.html

dole: Definitely a trip back in time, I did a website almost exactly the same for Bernese mountain dogs except without the flame background.

SirFatty: TIL: Phooey is actually a german word, Pfui.

kuerbel: Not really, offside is Abseits.In this case Aus means out like in spit it out or out with it, "raus damit".

jancsika: The evil of global mutable state strikes again.This is why I only train my dogs in a pure functional language.

croes: "Aus" means the dog should let go what’s in his mouth.It means something like "Spuck es aus", "Spit it out"

frankus: I grew up speaking German and still use "zu!" with my (otherwise English-trained) dogs for "get out of the way!".

grasbergerm: "Aus" in a sports context means out.

weinzierl: The most important one is missing:Fass!You better know what it means when a dog owner points at you and says "Fass!".There is a hilarious episode by German comedian Gerhard Polt about this word where he plays the owner of a Kampfhund (the genuine grandson of the great-uncle of the dog of Adolf Hitler) who goofs around alternating between "Fass!" and "Nicht Fass!" not realizing that the dog is not capable of distinguishing between the two.https://youtube.com/watch?v=I5sFagE-zqw(In German, obviously - the Bavarian kind)

rolph: [delayed]

torginus: I've never even taught it to my dog, as she just drops toys at my feet after fetching them. She just enjoys the though of the stick being thrown too much to waste time on holding on to it.

stephbook: "Es ist aus" can also be translated as "It is over" (a game)The meaning in dog schools is "Spit it out", but given aus's versatility within human language, it's often used as a general "stop" command. As in "aus", stop playing.

torginus: As someone who speaks German, it feels puzzling to me why I would teach my dog German commands (even though I have a GSD), these are just the regular words/phrases for things but in a different language.

tomcam: But with the batwings I hope

tomcam: I totally want a batwinged attack dog now

tomcam: Now I’m dying to know what kind of herding you do that requires this separation of powers

advisedwang: I'm told (but have no direct knowledge) that many police dogs in the US are trained to german commands. This is because previously (and in some cases still) police departments used dogs trained in Germany and they have continued so that there is continuity of commands (ie you don't have to know which dogs speaks which language).

edwhitesell: Sometimes it's Dutch instead, but that's true.Many agencies, especially those new to having K-9 or small departments that may not be able to spend time dedicated to training from puppies, get dogs from Europe that are partially or fully trained. The lineage of the working dog breeds is much better in Europe because many breeds have bloodlines that haven't been bred for generations to be pets (like here in the US).It's also why agencies pay so much for the dogs. Last I heard (I used to be more involved volunteering with my local PD) a fully trained dog was around $25k, USD, a partially trained was something like $8k - $10. It sounds like a lot until you realize a fully trained dog is 18—24 months old when acquired and has been training every day during that time.

whalesalad: Yes, this is true. Many personal protection dogs as well.

9dev: What do you do when she picks up some food on the street? There are people who place meat interlaced with poison where I live; so having a surefire way to make mine spit out whatever he’s got in his mouth is essential

torginus: Dunno, I just yell at her, and she drops it and looks at me :) I haven't heard about poison meat, but she sure loves to find and eat the most disgusting stuff, up to, and including, poop.

dole: Nah, those were a classy touch. IIRC it was some Thomas Kinkade-lookin' bullshit.

EdwardDiego: It's better with dogs to use commands that sound harder for hard commands - stop, down, wait, etc. Which German's love of crisply pronounced consonants tends to lend itself to.

whalesalad: ah man I can totally picture that. very on brand for a big ass BMD living in like maine or vermont

schoen: Reginald Foster, a great Latin expert whom I once got to study with, emphasized that Latin isn't inherently difficult as a spoken language, as evidenced by the fact that it used to be lots of people's native language and used for all kinds of ordinary daily purposes.One of his slogans for this was "in Roma antiqua, etiam canes Latine locuti sunt" ('in ancient Rome, even the dogs spoke Latin').

jjtheblunt: "latine" with an e on the end is ablative, first declension?

amelung: This ‑e is an adverb ending. The belonging adjective is «latinus» ‹Latin›.

jjtheblunt: that makes more sense to me, because i asked thinking it was a typo on ablative with implicit lingua

schoen: Yes, one way of referring to Latin is "lingua Latina" or just "Latina", but there's an old custom of using adverbs to refer to use of languages. So Latine is "in Latin" or "Latinly" (and there are similar adverbs available for other languages).Interestingly, the language adverbs are also used in a construction with scire (to know) or intellegere: "Latine scit" (he or she knows Latin), "Graece intellegit" (he or she understands Greek). In English we would definitely think of this as needing a direct object, but Latin allows it as an adverb, to understand "in a Greek way" (perhaps it would make sense to think of it as something like "in a Greek manner" or "from a Greek perspective").

BoredPositron: Just sheeps and it's a small herd we have for fun next to our vineyards. One dog could probably handle thm alone but it's more fun with two ;)

chrisandchris: So we're doing the opposite. As we're in the German spesking part of europe, our dog listens to English to not interfere with daily talk. It's IMHO one of the best choices to take a foreign language for your dog. You can also use different languages for different setups (e.g. to differentiate fun, working). Dogs anyway don't speak the language, they just listen to the voice, but as an owner it's easier to set context by moving to a different language.

mckirk: Just don't be confused if they then follow the commands side-effect free.

coldtea: All German sounds like dog commands