All About Chaser: The World's Smartest Dog

Chaser, a border collie who has learned over 1000 words, is often dubbed as "the world's smartest dog." Chaser has the largest vocabulary of any non human animal. She has been taught to find and retrieve hundreds of different toys by name, even from a giant pile of toys. She can also learn to retrieve a brand new toy from a pile just by hearing the new name and associating it with the new item.

Her owner John Pilley is a retired psychology professor who has been teaching Chaser new words since 2004, when she was just a puppy. Together they have appeared on countless television broadcasts, on the news, radio, and in countless articles across the internet.

After learning countless individual words, Chaser also began to learn short sequences with nouns and verbs. She can take one toy to the porch and bring another back to her owner, as well as pair several other commands with nouns she already knows.

She even understands categories of words (ie. she learned that "toy" refers to all the objects she was allowed to play with, "ball" refers to round bouncy objects, and "frisbees" as any kind of round, flat toys.)

John Pilley has been recording his research findings about Chaser and even wrote a book about Chaser and their training experiences together. Everything Chaser has learned has been through praise and play, especially with her favorite toy, a little blue raquet ball. Although Chaser has been Pilley's research partner since she was 2 months old, she is first and foremost a beloved member of the family.

For more information about Chaser, you can check out her website, ChaserTheBorderCollie.com, or follow her on Chaser's official YouTube channel, Facebook page, or on Instagram. You can also pick up a copy of her book, Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words on Amazon.