Topics Master Amparo chose proverbs for table topics. Mine was Dogs are a man's best friend.
I said:
How many of you have dogs, or know people who have dogs? Our club member Ruth is very fond of her dog and when we held a meeting at her house she kept talking to her dog, in fact she talked to the dog more than she talked to me.
I'd already researched dogs and animals helping humans when I wrote a book of poetry on animals for children. I discovered that Capuchin monkeys could help paraplegics, doing everything for them.
Dogs and chimpanzees and other apes could be taught to understand words and signs.
A famous case was a student who taught a monkey to speak about 300 sign words. The baby monkey learned the language too. About twenty years later the student went back to the baby monkey, now an adult, and the first thing it said was, Why did you leave? Why did you abandon me? Very sad. Shows the animal was not just saying words for objects and counting, but feeling friendship and emotions.
The latest news is that a dog has been taught about 1000 words. I was so fascinated by this, that I'm writing a children's book about a dog which goes for a walk with its owner around a safari park talking to all the animals. Yes, dogs are man's best friend.
Table Topics, Monday October 6th 2015 at Harrovians Speakers' Club.
Later that evening I gave my report as Grammarian. I commented that it was a pity I had not thought to add a pun on man being dog's best friend.
Angela Lansbury ACG.
I said:
How many of you have dogs, or know people who have dogs? Our club member Ruth is very fond of her dog and when we held a meeting at her house she kept talking to her dog, in fact she talked to the dog more than she talked to me.
I'd already researched dogs and animals helping humans when I wrote a book of poetry on animals for children. I discovered that Capuchin monkeys could help paraplegics, doing everything for them.
Dogs and chimpanzees and other apes could be taught to understand words and signs.
A famous case was a student who taught a monkey to speak about 300 sign words. The baby monkey learned the language too. About twenty years later the student went back to the baby monkey, now an adult, and the first thing it said was, Why did you leave? Why did you abandon me? Very sad. Shows the animal was not just saying words for objects and counting, but feeling friendship and emotions.
The latest news is that a dog has been taught about 1000 words. I was so fascinated by this, that I'm writing a children's book about a dog which goes for a walk with its owner around a safari park talking to all the animals. Yes, dogs are man's best friend.
Table Topics, Monday October 6th 2015 at Harrovians Speakers' Club.
Later that evening I gave my report as Grammarian. I commented that it was a pity I had not thought to add a pun on man being dog's best friend.
Angela Lansbury ACG.
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