I’ve dogsat for two different families, with two different breeds of dogs (Brown Lab & an Anatolian Shepherd) who both ‘moaned’ a LOT. The dogs were having whole conversations with me, but who knows what they tried to communicate. I tried and tried to teach the Lab to say ‘keine Ahnung’, which is (bad) German for ‘no idea’ *. I thought it would be hilarious to have a dog that could answer their owner when the owner was interrogating the dog:
Owner: “Who chewed up the paper?”
Dog: “Keine Ahnung.”
Owner: “Did you pee behind the couch?”
Dog: “Keine Ahnung.”
See how much fun that could be? The reason I chose that phrase is because both dogs already kinda sounded like they were saying it. Unfortunately, I was only around them for a week or so at a time, and was unable to refine their enunciation.
*Being a third generation American, the only other German I picked up from the superannuated relatives were ‘stinky cheese’, ‘snow’, and about 6 different words for ‘penis’.
