21-05-2025
Woman Tells Cockapoo He's in Charge of Other Pets, Then She Checks Dog Cam
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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A South Carolina cockapoo named Ollie has earned praise on social media after taking it upon himself to keep order in the house when his mom is out.
In a viral TikTok video shared on Sunday under the username @ Ollie can be seen sitting up on the couch, attentively watching over his two Bernese mountain dog friends, ensuring that they don't break any rules while mom is gone.
"Every time we leave the dogs together I say 'Ollie you're in charge," and I just found out he takes that very seriously," reads layover text in the clip. A caption says: "Keeping the big dogs in line."
Judging by this clip, Ollie definitely understood what his owner asked of him, and did his best to not disappoint her. But how much human language can dogs actually understand?
The American Kennel Club said that, while dogs are able to learn words and distinguish them, they don't really focus on the phonetic details the same way humans do, and so similar-sounding words may sound the same to them.
A study by Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary observed dogs' cognitive responses to familiar words, similar sounding words, and nonsense words, and found that while they were able to distinguish between familiar words and nonsense words, similar words didn't seem to make much of a difference to them.
For example words like "sit," and "sid" tend to get the same reaction. However, just because they don't make this distinction, it doesn't mean that they can't, it's probably because they don't think it's important.
Some dogs, especially Border collies, are able to learn more complex words, that don't necessarily need to be commands, like names of specific toys.
A screenshot of the viral video shows Ollie watching over his bigger brothers.
A screenshot of the viral video shows Ollie watching over his bigger brothers.
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The video quickly went viral on social media and has so far received over 665,500 views and more than 220,200 likes on the platform.
One user, Kylie, said in the comments: "I love seeing how deeply dogs understand what we're saying."
Caroline Valade wrote: "Doing the lifeguard scanning method and everything."
Another user, Maggieandmartha added: "When I worked in dog day care, I'd do this with some dogs and they'd always do something like this lol. Dogs love a job."
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