How to tell if your dog secretly understands English

The average trained dog understands about 160 words, enough to outfox a small human child! No wonder we treat them like people sometimes. Like in those dark moments, when you disclose shameful secrets in your dog’s presence.

Since dogs’ linguistic abilities follow a bell curve, your dog could well know and understand everything about you, judging you from behind those intelligent brown eyes. Can you be sure that she (or he) doesn’t understand? Yes! By following this guide.

Step 1: Try not to alert the dog. A dog fluent in human speech knows it must keep this secret or risk becoming a fairground curiosity. Insult the dog to its face as you normally would, but don’t go overboard. As a guide, an insult like ‘stupid dog’ is okay, but ‘degenerate worm’ is probably too much. Be absolutely certain that the dog does not see you reading this guide. Don’t turn your head quickly, but is it behind you now? Act natural. Did you see it? If yes, close this window now.

Step 2: Buy several bags of fertiliser (one bag each from several different outlets) Pay cash. Bring your dog along for the purchases. Store the fertiliser in a place that only you and your dog know about. Look up “how-to build pipe bombs using fertiliser” (guide not available from ThermoCow) and get to work. Make sure only your dog knows what you are doing, and even then, be a bit cryptic about it.

Step 3: Confide in your dog, and only your dog, that you are going to spend the weekend planting the pipe bombs in kindergartens around the city and detonate them at 9.15am the following Monday.

Step 4: If your dog understands English and has any moral fibre whatsoever, he now has no choice but to contact the authorities. In case your dog is also a sadistic criminal, you should add that you will sell him to a fairground and/or vivisect him after you detonate the bombs.

Step 5: You will know from your dog’s reaction whether or not it speaks English. If it does, congratulations! You now hold the power. If your dog does not understand English, try not to be disappointed. If it did, you would need to do a lot of explaining about those pipe bombs.

Things you’ll need: A dog, some fertiliser, pipes and wires and timers and fuses and stuff I guess

WARNING: Pipe bombs are dangerous! You should only build them if you really need to know whether your dog secretly understands English.