Literacy dog training

Dog training doesn’t usually include teaching them literacy, this isn’t considered important, it isn’t taught at dog training schools, it isn’t part of dog obedience training and there are probably no dog training collars that teach dogs how to read

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Why is this? Is it because dog owners can’t be bothered to teach their pets to read, because it’s so much easier to just take them for a walk, instead? But really, who can blame them? Who wants to spend hours teaching a dog to read when they can just take it easy. 
You know, that’s a really selfish attitude. What about your dog? What’s he or she   expected to do when you’re just taking it easy? Just lie there, wishing you would teach it to read? 
A (relatively) recent experiment seems to prove that it is possible to teach dogs to read. Or at least some dogs. Is yours a gifted dog? Will graduation day at dog obedience schools ever be the same again?  
The article about how to teach a dog to read was originally published in a newspaper in 1887:
`….he first began with a small terrier, but as these dogs were not accustomed, to fetch and carry, and as fetching and carrying was part of the treatment, he found it better to find a dog that was accustomed to such work, and he selected a black poodle called `Van.’ First he took two pieces of cardboard, about ten inches by three inches, and had printed on the one the word `food’, leaving the other blank. The card bearing the word `food’ he placed over a saucer containing bread and milk, and put the blank card over an empty saucer.
Van’s attention was called to the saucers over and over again. In about ten days Van began to distinguish between tho two cards. Then he put the two cards upon the floor, and signalled to Van to bring one of them, which he readily did. When he brought the blank card he (the lecturer) threw it back with a gesture of impatience; but when he brought the one with the word upon it he was given some bread and milk, and in a few days he distinguished between the two cards.
Then he had some cards printed with the words `out’, `tea’, `bone’, `water’, upon them — others having other words placed upon them, to which he did not attach any importance, merely putting them in that he might have a certain number. Soon Van distinguished between the white and the printed cards, but it took him a long time to recognise the words `out’, `bone’, `tea’” and so on; but at last, if asked if he would (like to) go out, he fished out the card with that word (out) upon it from the lot.