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This is Gemma. She’s a rescue dog from Texas who will only listen to her human if they speak in a southern accent. 13/10 a true southern belle (TT: shortlegs4u)

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My mom who passed away in 2020 (RIP Mom) left behind her little Chihuahua aka Scooby...turns out Scooby listens to commands in Spanish only. We love the little guy and so do my other dogs. ~ its a petting zoo every day! Along with my 🐈 and my cocktail 🐦

That’s great. I once did an experiment to see if my dog understood actual words, so I used different accents. Well, I may have overdid it, and there was about a month where I had to say, “Come dog, let’s go to the outside,” in a THICK Russian accent.

I lived in Mass/Boston in '78 and remember the Warrrtaah, often having to repeat myself with different wording cos they couldnt understand. I never knew what a bagel was so asked!! got given 4 for free, then were flabberghasted, and how to take a ticket!!! [NZ accent got stifled fast]

My dogs respond to Appalachian English, standard American English, Lakota, French and Greek. I like languages and we're together 85% of the time. Oh, and they have two commands in German for their safety (wanted experienced K9 handlers to be able to stop them and drop them verbally on a dime)

There is real science under the joke. Andics et al. (Science, 2016) put dogs in an fMRI and found they process word meaning and intonation in separate hemispheres. Gemma is not ignoring the words. She is waiting for the tune she first learned them in.

Play her the movie "Laura"(1944) and tell her that Vincent Price did mainstream roles, too! (His Shelby Carpenter character is a Southern masterpiece. On Archive org or YT.)

There is a sweet little sway-backed, pot-bellied donkey down our road and whenever I see him out, I shout (lovingly) at him à la Shrek… “DONKEY!!”

My son adopted a shelter dog and it took him a few days to realize that the dog only understood commands in Spanish. When he said “sientate” for the first time the dog sat like the good boy that he truly was!

It is entirely possible Gemma literally doesn't understand without the accent. Dogs don't process language like we do. "I'm sorry human but I don't know your language yet, please use the sounds I know."

My doggo, who’s Florida-raised, knows it’s serious when I call her to come a few times and then I switch to “git!”