Dogs Can Learn Words Indirectly Through Eavesdropping, Like Small Children. We Must Protect Them With Stronger Laws!

We already knew that dogs are sentient beings who feel love, pain, joy, and hope. Now we know they can also be capable of a complex language skill called "label learning." In fact, a new study shows that some dogs have language abilities comparable to 18-month-old human children!

This new research just highlights the urgent need to protect dogs and ensure animals are treated well! Yet many states in the U.S. still have abysmal animal protection laws.

Sign the petition to demand that the 5 states with the worst laws - North Dakota, Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, and Mississippi - pass and enforce stronger animal welfare laws now!

While "label learning" is a rare talent, it still showcases the incredible abilities our pets can have. This latest research, published in early January 2026, suggests that dogs can build large human vocabularies, including learning the name of specific items which the animals can recognize and retrieve on command.

But that's not all. The most surprising part of this research wasn't just how smart dogs can be. It was also incredible to see how dogs learned these objects' labels. Their understanding didn't only come from direct, explicit, one-on-one training. Dogs also learned the names of objects from eavesdropping on humans, picking up context clues, and indirectly inferring which objects were which.

Yet in many places, dogs are still treated as property or furniture, "things" that are expendable and not worthy of adequate consideration. That's why we must demand robust laws that properly emphasize pets' sentience and need for proper treatment. Sign the petition to demand that the U.S. states that are the furthest behind catch up! North Dakota, Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, and Mississippi must create stronger animal protection laws!