Do dogs have accents?

I am writing this from a comfy chair sat in the shade on a warm Sunday morning in Sydney. I know, life’s a bitch sometimes and this is going to be a very short post as I feel a snooze coming on!

We have just come back from a walk on the beach with the gorgeous Bentley (pictured above doing some crazy moves to catch his ball). And we got wondering.. do dogs have accents? We pretty quickly dismissed it as a stupid idea, but jet lag does some crazy things to your mind and I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I did some research!

It turns out that scientists have carried out a new study which suggests that dogs will develop a bark that is very similar to their owner’s regional accent. So, apparently dogs in Liverpool will bark with a higher pitch than other dogs, while in Scotland, dogs will have a lighter tone to their bark. It sounds silly, but when comparing pitch, tone and volume, it turns out that dogs will copy their owner. And not just in speech, but also in behaviour. Dogs who are brought up with young children can be a little crazy, while dogs who live with the elderly are much more sedate.

All sounds a bit crazy to me, but that didn’t stop me trying to hear if Bentley’s bark went up in tone at the end in an Australian fashion. Can’t say I noticed it, but he is certainly living the surfer dude lifestyle!