Is it cruel to change the known name of a dog you adopt/rescue?

1 Answer

Answer :

No. They don’t know the concept of “name”. Animals learn like the Pavlovian model says they learn i.e., when a bell was rung, the animal salivated because food soon followed. That bell could be replaced by a horn, or a light, etc. and they still learned to salivate. They learn that when you make a certain sound (in this case, say their name) and they come to you, they get a reward. They look at their name as any other COMMAND and, as you know, dogs can learn MANY commands.

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