Basket, a 7-year-old border collie from Manhattan's Upper West Side, knows the names of at least 150 toys. Names like "froggy," "crayon box," and "Pop-Tart" roll off her tongue. She can fetch each one on command. Basket’s owner, Elle Baumgartel-Austin, taught her from puppyhood by repeating toy names often. "I would play with her, say the name of the toy—say the name of the toy a lot of times," Baumgartel-Austin said. She started with 10 toys and added more as Basket learned. "There never seemed to be a limit," she added. Now, a new study shows that Basket, and a few other dogs like her, can learn new toy names not only by direct teaching but also by eavesdropping on their owners’ conversations. This skill puts them on par with 18-month-old children in how they learn words. Scientists say this type of advanced word learning is rare among dogs. While dogs commonly understand commands like "sit" or "stay," learning object names, known as label learning, is much harder. The study, led by Shany Dror from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna and Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, was published Thursday in the journal Science. Dror said, "They're very good at picking up on these cues. They're so good that they can pick up on them equally well when the cues are directed to the dog or when they're directed to someone else." Border collies like Basket seem to excel at word learning, possibly due to their breeding history where paying close attention to humans was valued. However, even among border collies, such language skills are uncommon. This research sheds light on how dogs can understand human signals and bridge the gap between animal cognition and language learning.