Does your dog understand pointing ?

Mountainsandh

I was chuffed that my Gizmo, nearly 3 years old now, understands that when I'm pointing my finger at something, he needs to look in that direction, and not at my finger.
I remembered reading about the significance of pointing in terms of intelligence and evolution, so I thought I'd read about it again, and just came across this interesting blog about it, with an interesting video experiment (scroll down, it's a great snippet to watch !).
According to this, dogs have evolved to understand human pointing gestures better than chimps !
http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/theotherendoftheleash/do-dogs-inherently-understand-pointing-gestures

I thought I'd share this here, and check out if many boardsies dogs understand pointing... or if my Gizmo is a genius (which he is, anyways )

So, do your doggies understand pointing, and what breed(s) if any are they ?

edit : my "genius" is a shih tzu x bichon frise

VonVix

It depends on what I'm pointing at. If I point randomly somewhere I get a "huh?" look, but if I point upstairs, or point to the backdoor, they get it. You just need to build an association in order for a dog to know what you're pointing at. And I've two Shetland sheepdogs.

mymo

Similar to vonvix, if I point at doors, upstairs, sofa etc, they get it.
Also jump up command can include me pointing to a chair, wall etc and they get it.
When asking where is something, pointing and saying over there works most times.

Cats however just stare at me when I point, unless it's at food, then they love me!

Zapperzy

mymo wrote: »

Cats however just stare at me when I point, unless it's at food, then they love me!

My cat understands when I point to the utility room it means go to bed, she obediently saunters in thrashing her tail around and croaking.

Not too sure if the dog understands pointing or just general body language. If I point at his ball and say get your ball he'l go get it but I don't think it's the actual pointing he's understanding. Similar thing when I point my foot at a crumb on the floor he knows to lick that spot.

mymo

Well two of the cats understand when they are bawling at the kitchen window in the rain, that the sideways pointing means I'll open the door if they run round the corner.
Toby however just gives the death stare and wills me to weaken, or die!

bluejelly

I had a lab who passed away this summer & she understood when i pointed at something. She was walked off lead & she might stop at junctions & I would point in one direction & she would go where I pointed. If she decided herself i would call her, point & she would turn around & take the right turn. It didn't just apply to walks she would always look at where I pointed. My 2 yr old lab is understanding pointing now on walks but that's about it.

DBB

Ahh, but the pointing that mountainsandh is talking about is not a learned behaviour! The pointing M&H is referring to is "understood" by naive, untrained dogs, and puppies , although it's almost certain that dogs trained to a high level in any discipline are better at pointing tasks than untrained dogs, simply because they are more "tuned in" to their owners.
The pointing task involves presenting a dog with a choice of two pots which contain food a short distance away, with a human standing between the two pots. The dog is held by his handler, watching the pointing human. He watches the handler pointing at one of the pots, and is then released. Success is measured on him making a direct approach to the pointed-at pot. This is repeated a number of times, with the pointing randomly distributed between the two pots. The dog is not spoken to at all during the tasks, as the experimenter needs to minimise any other influences over the dog's choice.

Would ye believe, I actually did a research project on this with the help of the university in Budapest that is one of the major contributors to our knowledge of this area I even got people from this forum to be guinea pigs for me :pac: So, permit me to out-nerd myself for a moment

These researchers have found a marked difference between different breeds of dogs, depending upon the function they were bred for. So, co-operative breeds that were bred to work in close visual contact with humans... gundogs, herding breeds, perform much better in pointing tasks than independent breeds, such as terriers, hounds, and sled dogs.
Makes sense really, and helps to explain why the terriers, hounds and sled dogs can be a little more....erm... difficult to engage when training :pac:

The shape of the dog's skull also affects their performance in pointing tasks: long-muzzled breeds have a very horizontally-orientated fovea (focus point) in their eyes, and whilst they're fab at long-distance vision, they're not as good at up-close stuff. However, brachycephalic (flat-faced) breeds have a more centrally-orientated fovea (more like ours really), and their close-up vision is considerably better than the long-muzzled breeds. So, it comes as no surprise that brachycepahlic breeds perform better in visual tasks, including pointing tasks, than their longer-nosed brethren.

In reference to whether dogs are better than chimps at pointing tasks, this is a subject of much debate, and rightly so. It has been fairly recently found that the way the pointing task has been traditionally presented to the chimps has made it very difficult for them to understand the task, so when the test was tailored to suit the chimp psyche better, they actually did just fine at it!
Cats are also pretty good at understanding the point, but horses and goats are only so-so

belongtojazz

DBB wrote: »

These researchers have found a marked difference between different breeds of dogs, depending upon the function they were bred for. So, co-operative breeds that were bred to work in close visual contact with humans... gundogs, herding breeds, perform much better in pointing tasks than independent breeds, such as terriers, hounds, and sled dogs.
Makes sense really, and helps to explain why the terriers, hounds and sled dogs can be a little more....erm... difficult to engage when training :pac:

This interests me greatly, not just pointing but a dog reading of our body language. I do agility with my eldest terrier, she is a witch! complete nightmare of a dog! I adore the ground she walks on, she is very fond of me but would move out tomorrow if she got the offer of a better home... however she is one of the top small dogs in the country in agility and I have discovered recently that she runs much much better for me when I give her no verbal cues and I rely 100% on body language, for her body language is consistent and much easier to translate than verbals

Your point about the dog being highly trained and tuned in to me is probably very accurate to. This dog can read me before I walk into the house :eek:

Mountainsandh

Fascinating stuff DBB.

It does seem strange that the chimps wouldn't get it.

I must say I usually give my Gizmo a verbal clue, like I'd be asking "where is it ?" or else saying "there !". I have to try tomorrow without the verbal clue, just to check.

What he does respond to though, without the verbal clue, is the eye pointing. He knows well to follow my gaze, and not too appear mad or anything, but I think he gives me eye pointings too !
As in, if the cheese is on the table and he wants some, he stares at me, then ostensibly at the cheese, then ostensibly at me again, until he gets a bit. (cheese is his weakness, he only gets little bits)

He's so stubborn though, I don't even want to think how he'd fare at agility or any other kind of formalised training. He doesn't do recall, he does stop and sit and look at me saying "yeah wha'?".

The cat is pretty smart in his own way, and very observant of body language, but the pointing is either beyond or below him...

DBB

Mountainsandh wrote: »

What he does respond to though, without the verbal clue, is the eye pointing. He knows well to follow my gaze, and not too appear mad or anything, but I think he gives me eye pointings too !
As in, if the cheese is on the table and he wants some, he stares at me, then ostensibly at the cheese, then ostensibly at me again, until he gets a bit. (cheese is his weakness, he only gets little bits)

Oooh, the dog-initiated eye thing you're talking about is called triadic gaze alternation, and now we're entering the realms of behaviours that have so far only been seen in humans, chimps and dogs. Human children cannot do it until they're 2-3 years old.
It's something we're all familiar with in our dogs, but I doubt if many people understand how unique a behaviour it is amongst non-primates! I know I always took it for granted until I realised that it is a really unusual behaviour!
It's when the dog wants something, and stares at it. Then he stares at his owner, then he stares back at the object he wants, and he continues to alternate his gaze between object and owner until they respond.
Again, this is a behaviour that is not learned and it is initiated by the dog, although again trained dogs are certainly better at it than untrained dogs, because they're used to eye-orientated communication with their owners.

The researchers in Budapest and beyond have tested a load of different types of pointing gesture, including human-initiated eye points, foot points, crossing your left hand across your body to point at an object to your right (and vice versa), and yes, dogs can "get" an eye point too, but not as well as they can with a finger point, I suppose because it's much more obvious.
Incidentally, for the pointing gesture to be effective, the pointing arm and finger must project beyond the body... if you cross your body with your left hand to point at something at your right foot, for example, where your arm, hand and finger do not appear to "stick out" from your body, the dog is unlikely to comprehend the pointing gesture!

Wibbs

Monkeys and corvids can gaze follow, apparently it's even been seen in a turtle. Closer to home as it were wolves can do it too and interestingly perform better at it than dogs as they will also consistently gaze follow around visual barriers.



It seems the latter behaviour takes time to learn/develop as it's a more complex behaviour. Maybe dogs aren't as good at it because domestication selects for juvenile behaviors? Or maybe because humans and dogs being less competitive with each other the dogs don't need to develop the behaviour?

Interestingly wolves are also better than dogs at imitative behavior and learning from others. In human habituated wolves they'll learn from us as well as other wolves and dogs.

"In a recent study, Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi from the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna investigated if wolves and dogs can observe a familiar "demonstrator" -- a human or a specially trained dog -- to learn where to look for food within a meadow. The subjects were 11 North American grey wolves and 14 mutts, all between 5 and 7 months old, born in captivity, bottle-fed, and hand-raised in packs at the Wolf Science Center of Game Park Ernstbrunn, Austria.
The wolves and dogs were two to four times more likely to find the snack after watching a human or dog demonstrator hide it, and this implies that they had learnt from the demonstration instead of only relying on their sense of smell. Moreover, they rarely looked for the food when the human demonstrator had only pretended to hide it, and this proves that they had watched very carefully.

The wolves were less likely to follow dog demonstrators to hidden food. This does not necessarily mean that they were not paying attention to dog demonstrators: on the contrary, the wolves may have been perceptive enough to notice that the demonstrator dogs did not find the food reward particularly tasty themselves, and so simply did not bother to look for it."

So it seems these behaviours that made dogs and us such a good fit were already present in their ancestors and didn't require domestication to bring it out, rather domestication focused these traits for both our benefits. It's an interesting area.

I wonder has anyone tried triadic gaze alternation in habituated wolves to see if they do it? I'd be very surprised if they didn't.

DBB

Wibbs wrote: »

I wonder has anyone tried triadic gaze alternation in habituated wolves to see if they do it? I'd be very surprised if they didn't.

I think they have Wibbs (the above-mentioned Zsofia Viranyi would almost certainly have been involved in it too), I'd have to check my stash of research papers but I'm pretty sure wolves don't use it outside of situations where it could be argued that they learned it. I'll get back to you on it though, when I've had a chance to have a root!
Gaze-following, on the other hand, makes perfect sense for a wolf to do when indicating the presence of prey, or danger, to their family unit, and indeed it has been surmised that pointing behaviour in pointing breeds of gundogs is an exaggerated version of the same behaviour.
Certainly, the genes for all of this visual communication are present in wolves, it just took the process of domestication to switch them on, or switch them on a bit more in dogs!

aonb

Fascinating subject!

Who new that my intellectually challenged JRT X has "triadic gaze alternation" skills!!! Jeez DBB my head hurts even trying to remember this term, never mind all the details - I bow to your very very superior intellect

My dog Pepper used to do the stare at prize/stare at me thing (i.e. triadic gaze alternation) - he wore me down EVERY time
He also did the pointing thing - throw a ball, he would look at me to say where the heck is it, I would point and off he'd go!
He was an exceptional dog too.

All of my dogs understand the 'This Way' command - and know to look and follow me at a junction/fork - but thats not the same thing I guess.

Ive noticed, that my aforementioned intellectually challenged dog (also a lot less secure) has, since the other dogs have died, started to watch me constantly when we're out, as if he has to rely only on me/my body language, where he would have looked to the other older dogs before. Ive noticed that he is more receptive to hand signals (pointing or gesturing come here, or down etc) when we're out (because he is watching me) too. Could he be more tuned in to me because he has lost his dog-guides - I havent been training him in hand signals

DBB

aonb wrote: »

Who new that my intellectually challenged JRT X has "triadic gaze alternation" skills!!! Jeez DBB my head hurts even trying to remember this term, never mind all the details - I bow to your very very superior intellect

Ah morto, would ya stoppit
There's loads of this research available free online, the people in Vienna, Budapest and the US are pretty into disseminating information to everyone, so at some stage later I'll go have a root and throw up some of the research papers for ye, it's got nowt to do with superior intellect, it's just that I've read the stuff,and it all had to be regurgitated in my research project

Wibbs

DBB wrote: »

I think they have Wibbs (the above-mentioned Zsofia Viranyi would almost certainly have been involved in it too), I'd have to check my stash of research papers but I'm pretty sure wolves don't use it outside of situations where it could be argued that they learned it.

Well you could argue dogs learn it too though. Unless they try it with wild dingoes maybe.

I'll get back to you on it though, when I've had a chance to have a root!

Certainly, the genes for all of this visual communication are present in wolves, it just took the process of domestication to switch them on, or switch them on a bit more in dogs!

Well my angle D was that if anything the process of domestication has dialed down the volume on these traits. Just as it turned down nasal, visual and auditory abilities. Wolves can smell, see and hear more than domestic dogs. Wolves are more aggressive and/or fearful too. In the visual communication area they're better at gaze following behind visual barriers than dogs. They're also better at learning from and imitating others.

"The scientists found that wolves are considerably better than dogs at opening a container, providing they have previously watched another animal do so. Their study involved 14 wolves and 15 mongrel dogs, all about six months old, hand-reared and kept in packs. Each animal was allowed to observe one of two situations in which a trained dog opened a wooden box, either with its mouth or with its paw, to gain access to a food reward. Surprisingly, all of the wolves managed to open the box after watching a dog solve the puzzle, while only four of the dogs managed to do so. Wolves more frequently opened the box using the method they had observed, whereas the dogs appeared to choose randomly whether to use their mouth or their paw."

It would make perfect sense that domestication dials down such traits. The non domesticated canine's senses would be overwhelmed around people and that particular kind of wild cleverness would make them impossible to handle and be around, never mind that on maturity they'd want to strike out on their own. It's one reason why I never bought into the earlier, within the agricultural revolution date for dog domestication. A less full on friendly tame wolf could fit quite well into a paleolithic hunter gatherer human social group as their lifestyles and social structures were remarkably similar, but the same animal would be a liability, even a danger in an early farming community.

Though it's still pretty amazing how much we've changed them* by comparison to the cat for example.






*and IMH they changed us too but that's an angle for another day.

Rips

My cat is pretty clever, but pointing escapes him entirely. He plays fetch, he's learned how to open doors, he knows 'sit here' is a double tap and we've thought him to jump into our arms with hands out and shrug.

Pointing? Looks at the finger every time.

He's so bad in that respect, so focused on following movement, that even though he is fed in the same place everyday at the same time, if he's distracted by something when you put his food bowl down, he won't realise you've done it!!!

So if you put down his food and then walk to the bin = he's dancing at the bin. If you point at the food, he'll look at your finger ... and then, back to the bin

DBB

Wibbs wrote: »

Well you could argue dogs learn it too though. Unless they try it with wild dingoes maybe.

Not as far as they think, because the behaviour is seen in young pups that have had very limited interactions with humans, though there's little doubt they must improve at it with experience.

Well my angle D was that if anything the process of domestication has dialed down the volume on these traits. Just as it turned down nasal, visual and auditory abilities. Wolves can smell, see and hear more than domestic dogs. Wolves are more aggressive and/or fearful too.

For clarity's sake, which is necessary in this HUGE area of experimentation, I'm talking generally about visual communication with humans, and dogs using what are considered to be rather human-esque communicative gestures with humans at times and in situations that the dog needs our help or direction to achieve certain tasks, as opposed to the bigger picture of behavioural evolution.
I suppose what I meant is that humans took wolfy traits (in visual communication) and via selective breeding, turned on or strengthened elements of these traits to suit the purpose the dogs fulfilled, and it's easy to suppose that traits such as gaze alternation and pointing would have been seriously desirable in domesticated dogs to fulfil their varying functions. Wolves don't follow human pointing gestures so well, and I *think* aren't marvellous at gaze alternation either, it is these sorts of characteristics that I meant were switched on/strengthened by humans.
There's no doubt about what you're saying though, that if dogs were as "highly tuned" as wolves are, we simply could not live with them.

Mountainsandh

Thanks for all that, that's all really interesting, and it's giving "pointers" (:pac:) to read a bit more about it.

DBB you're too modest, I tried reading bits on line already, but I can only take tiny bits at a time, can't understand everything, and don't retain the information, so it's more than just having a read

What I did pick from the reading is that for both the pointing and the gaze thing, it implies that the dog has some sense of self (since it is inter-acting).
That brings up a whole load of other questions for me, to do with the mirror test, and a dog recognizing its own species...

Gizmo is our first dog, I grew up with cats rather than dogs, so the dog specific behaviours are all new to me.

Wibbs

DBB wrote: »

I suppose what I meant is that humans took wolfy traits (in visual communication) and via selective breeding, turned on or strengthened elements of these traits to suit the purpose the dogs fulfilled, and it's easy to suppose that traits such as gaze alternation and pointing would have been seriously desirable in domesticated dogs to fulfil their varying functions. Wolves don't follow human pointing gestures so well, and I *think* aren't marvellous at gaze alternation either, it is these sorts of characteristics that I meant were switched on/strengthened by humans.

It seems with pointing anyway D, they aren't as good as dogs but it's age related which would plug into exactly what you're saying about selection for such traits in our dogs. When wolves are puppies they're useless at the task and as the linked article notes they were hard to handle, lacked focus and sometimes even bit the human testor. :eek::D

"the 4 month old dog puppies surpassed all hand-raised wolves of the same age. These results show, that an early and intensive socialisation is not enough to reduce differences behaviour and performance between young dogs and young wolves. The success of the adult wolves was accompanied by a higher willingness for cooperation with man."

The older wolves did just as well as dogs on the test simply because they're clever and are often quicker to learn behaviours and learned to accept and cooperate with the humans. It wasn't innate like it is in dogs. That came from us.

IMH that might be down to something else rather than a direct link to human acceptance; food guarding. Wolves are extremely food possessive and food focused compared to dogs, especially as pups. Even though the family tries to feed all, they have to fight for each meal and growl like feck at each other throughout(sometimes even at the adults ), so I reckon any test with food and wolf pups might be skewed because of that over and above/as well as differences in socialisation. Hence they were twitchy and snapped at the handlers. They were afraid the humans were going to eat the food.

Domestication took that out of the mix. It might have even been simply because with humans food was more plentiful and regular so competition was less and humans would have selected for easier going animals in the first place.

EDIT I suspect the same results would come with gaze alternation. The pups would be useless, but an adult with a lot of interaction with humans would get it, especially if it observed dogs doing it. Though the food item would have to be out of reach or they'd just take it. I had a German shepherd like that. Oh he'd look at the food, then look at me, but it wasn't to ask for it, it was to work out how quick he could get to it before I got to him.:D

DBB

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Thanks for all that, that's all really interesting, and it's giving "pointers" (:pac:) to read a bit more about it.

The research articles can be heavy going alright, but one of the world's leaders in the whole area of animal/human communication is Brian Hare, and he published a nice new book aimed at pet owners last year which explains it all without getting too bogged down. Tis a good read, I'd recommend it if you want to get your mitts on it :
http://brianhare.net/the-genius-of-dogs/

For anyone who wants to do a bit more digging into the research papers, the Budapest people have a lot of papers available free at this link, which seems to be down as I type, but is a long list of papers about many things discussed in this thread, from pointing to gaze alternation, to whether dogs can learn by example... they were doing research while I was there, some of which is now published, into the dog's use of acoustics, and to cut along story short found that small dogs will modulate the tone and depth of the growls and barks aimed at other dogs in an attempt to make themselves sound bigger than they are..
And you all thought that the saying "my terrier thinks he's a wolfhound" was just a saying, huh?

http://familydogproject.elte.hu/publications.html

Pretzill

My girl understands point when she's snuggled into my chair and I point to the floor so she gets down (often reluctantly so) However she is far more tuned into language and I think she has a large vocabulary of understanding, obviously (she's yet to speak )

If she loses her ball in the long grass she understands 'no' ' getting close' and I get my 'yes's' more excited until she locates the exact spot. I know this is largely scent driven but if she's way off in another part of the field a simple 'no up there' will bring her back. When going out to play I'll say which feild. Top feild...garden...back feild and she'll be sitting waiting in whichever one I say.

There are now words that she even recognises when I spell them out - you know the ones you don't want to say too early...like dinner!

And she has some German words too. She is an intellgent girl and her lil brother is becoming just as bright with words. Border Collies have probably got all that built in genetically though as they would be used to voice and whistle and pointing commands.

Wibbs

DBB wrote: »

For anyone who wants to do a bit more digging into the research papers, the Budapest people have a lot of papers available free at this link, which seems to be down as I type, but is a long list of papers about many things discussed in this thread, from pointing to gaze alternation, to whether dogs can learn by example...

Cool.

into the dog's use of acoustics, and to cut along story short found that small dogs will modulate the tone and depth of the growls and barks aimed at other dogs in an attempt to make themselves sound bigger than they are..
And you all thought that the saying "my terrier thinks he's a wolfhound" was just a saying, huh?

Wolf cubs apparently do similar, they howl "older" and "bigger" than they are. Funny enough European wolves howl less and more quietly than North American wolves. Probably because they live and have lived closer to people for longer so go into stealth mode.

Pretzill wrote: »

And she has some German words too. She is an intellgent girl and her lil brother is becoming just as bright with words. Border Collies have probably got all that built in genetically though as they would be used to voice and whistle and pointing commands.

IIRC border collies have the largest capacity for words. Isn't there one in Germany/Austria that has a vocab something like 300 words? And she can understand symbolic representations of toys. So if you show her a photo of the toy she'll retrieve the correct one. That's clever stuff right there. :eek:

DBB

Wibbs wrote: »

IIRC border collies have the largest capacity for words. Isn't there one in Germany/Austria that has a vocab something like 300 words? And she can understand symbolic representations of toys. So if you show her a photo of the toy she'll retrieve the correct one. That's clever stuff right there. :eek:

It's kinda mind-boggling, what some dogs can do. I met a Jack Russell in America who had an astonishing "vocabulary" too. Nowhere near this clever Border Collie, but very impressive all the same, and she was just a bog standard pet Jack Russell.
The APDT in the UK had a lovely article in one of their magazines last year where owners were teaching their dogs to "understand" written cues. For example, if the owner held up a sign that had "SIT" written on it, the dog would learn to sit for that sign. Of course, and I assume the same is true for the above collie and JRT (albeit to a really impressive degree with them!), the dog is not actually reading the word as such, but recognising the card with that particular shape on it is a cue to put your bum on the ground. A different card, with a different shape on it (e.g. the word "DOWN") is a cue to lower your body to the floor.

Pretzill

I often wonder is it that some dogs are just more attuned to what we are thinking - they kinda know what you want. So it's our language but they've figured out just before you said it.

I'm sure everyone has had a dog who whilst you are thinking 'I must bring her for a walk' she's already up and waiting at the door. Or a dog, I had, who would wait beside the door ten minutes before my brother came in from work - it happened everyday - once my brother timed his walk home it was exactly ten minutes. We figured the dog knew when he left work. He wouldn't wait if the brother headed off somewhere else after work.

I always wonder do dogs and probably cats too (haven't had cats for years) practice a type of telepathy!

DBB

Pretzill wrote: »

I always wonder do dogs and probably cats too (haven't had cats for years) practice a type of telepathy!

Not for me, I'm afraid.
Pretty much all the things that dogs and cats do that seem "telepathic" can be explained in a more straightforward, factual way. For example, we give off cues before we do things all of the time that we're not aware of, but our dogs notice them because they become relevant to him via experience. Many seemingly odd or spiritual or telepathic behaviours can be explained by fairly simple learning theory.
For others, we might not have always quite figured out what the factors are that make our dogs seemingly "predict" things, but I think we will, eventually!

Pretzill

DBB wrote: »

Not for me, I'm afraid.
Pretty much all the things that dogs and cats do that seem "telepathic" can be explained in a more straightforward, factual way. For example, we give off cues before we do things all of the time that we're not aware of, but our dogs notice them because they become relevant to him via experience. Many seemingly odd or spiritual or telepathic behaviours can be explained by fairly simple learning theory.
For others, we might not have always quite figured out what the factors are that make our dogs seemingly "predict" things, but I think we will, eventually!

I didn't mean it in a spiritual sense at all - but yeah good at reading us would sum it up for me - and I do think things are retained genetically, being domesticated for centuries I would be disappointed to know our domestic pets haven't carried traits in living with humans through their genes - and even built on that in some cases - BC's being one breed close to human contact in a benefits for both situation.

Predict is a good word. Learned perception too.

Mountainsandh

I think that like Wibbs and DBB are suggesting, they're just extremely fine tuned to our non-verbal communication and so able to "predict" a lot of human behaviour.
I'm not sure the dogs have really down scaled with tuning into what humans want, and perfecting relationships with humans though. They just developed other skills, and lost old ones.
Like they've become extremely cunning and manipulative when it comes to begging for food.
(instead of having to "read" the world to find their own food)

edit : I'm French, and have always spoken French to the cat, but for some reason I speak English to the dog... but now he also understands the French words I use with the cat (mostly about food and dinner !), so I guess you could say he's bilingual Told you he was a genius.:pac:

Thanks for the links DBB, I'll have a look now and then, I have lots of other things on, but that'll be a nice read once in a while.