Some Dogs Learn Words by Eavesdropping. Probably Not Yours, and That's OK

Some dogs really can learn the names of new toys just by overhearing their owners talk about them, much like 18-month-old children, according to a study published in Science in January 2026. But the dogs in the study were a rare group of “Gifted Word Learners,” mostly Border Collies, and the researchers are clear that most dogs don’t learn this way. As the lead author, Shany Dror, told Popular Science: “But we do not suggest that all dogs learn in this way—far from it.”

What the study did

The team, from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, worked with 10 Gifted Word Learner dogs that already knew the names of many toys. Over short sessions totaling just 8 minutes, each owner introduced two new toys in one of two ways:

• Directly: playing with the dog and naming the toy, the usual way.
• By overhearing: talking about the toy with another person, while the dog only listened.

Then, in a different room, the dogs were asked to fetch each toy by name. Seven of the 10 dogs learned the new names in each condition, overheard or taught. That matches what children start doing at around a year and a half, which is why the paper’s title compares them to “1.5-year-old infants.”

The researchers also made it harder: the owner named a toy only after hiding it in a bucket, glancing toward the bucket. Most of the gifted dogs still learned the name, according to NPR’s report.

The part the headlines skip

“Dogs learn words by eavesdropping” isn’t quite right. The striking results come from a handful of exceptional dogs that the team spent years searching for. Most are working breeds, especially Border Collies, though the group includes a Pekingese and some mixed breeds. When typical pet dogs were tested in a similar study, a language researcher told NPR, the team “didn’t find anything there.” And even when the gifted dogs were “overhearing,” the speech still sounded like the way people talk to dogs.

Two more findings from the same field

They sort toys by what they’re for. In a 2025 study in Current Biology, the same group had owners teach gifted dogs action labels like “pull” and “fetch” on a mix of toys. The dogs then applied the labels to brand-new toys based on how those toys had been played with, not on how they looked. And it happened through about a week of natural play: in the words of the lead researcher, Claudia Fugazza, “This was done in a natural setup, with no extensive training.”

Word learners are measurably different. A 2025 citizen-science study in Scientific Reports, across five countries, compared 11 label-learning dogs with 11 other dogs. The label learners differed in their interest in new objects, how focused they were on objects, and their self-control, which the authors suggest may help explain the ability.

What it means for your dog

For most owners, the takeaway is reassuring rather than competitive: if your dog doesn’t learn words by listening in, it’s in the vast majority. What the research does support is simple. Dogs learn best through play and consistency, so name toys the same way every time you play, and teach cues with short, rewarded practice. My free dog commands chart lists 20 everyday cues with the word to say for each, so everyone at home uses the same one, and the body-language decoder helps with the other half of the conversation: understanding what your dog is telling you.