Want more? Check out my friend Emma’s video about pets and animals here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxq24jXVCo8
Take the quiz on this lesson: https://www.engvid.com/real-english-pet-dog/
TRANSCRIPT
Ruff. Hi. I’m Ronnie. I’m not a dog, but I have a dog, and I like dogs. Not: I like dog. I don’t want to eat a dog. No, actually I would eat a dog if you gave it to me. If you barbequed it, I’d eat it. But, oh, we’re not talking about eating dogs. We’re going to talk about how to actually not eat your dog, how to care for your dog. In English and in our society we call our dog our best friends, although it really has no choice. Even if your dog doesn’t like you, it has to hang out with you a lot because you have to care for your dog. So, I’m going to teach you English vocabulary, English verbs for caring for your dog. Hopefully you can learn some stuff. You probably know it in your language, but now you’re going to learn English with me because that’s what I do.
So, the first thing that we should talk about is someone called a “breeder”. Okay? A breeder is a person who breeds dogs. So, I’ve written the word “breeds” here as a verb. Now, to breed a dog means that you get the boy dog who’s called a stud and you get the girl dog who’s called a bitch, and you make them have sex. I don’t know how they do this, maybe they give them some doggy wine, play some nice doggy music, but anyways, the boy dog and the girl dog have dog sex, doggy style – and they have puppies. Woo-hoo. So the breeder is the person who cares for the dogs and makes more dogs. They’re magical.
It is a really, really bad idea, almost illegal in Canada to buy a dog from the “pet shop”. We have really tried to cut down on dogs who are for sale in pet shops. Just the treatment of the dogs, there’s been a lot of controversy. Also, you can find a dog on the internet, you can go to Kijiji or you can go to many websites where you can buy a dog. There’s also dog rescue sites where maybe a dog doesn’t have a house, a dog is homeless, and you can rescue the dog and make him your… Or her your best friend. So there’s many options. I do not recommend the pet shop option, but make sure that your dog is going to be… You’re going to be able to take care of a dog before you get one.
So, the place where the dogs or the puppies live and where they have all their doggy sex is called a “kennel”. So the kennel is the place, and the breeder is the person. You can use both of these words interchangeably, but a breeder is always a person. It’s important that you go and look at the kennel when you’re buying a dog to make sure that it’s clean and the dogs are well taken care of. There’s some terrible-looking kennels I imagine.
The next person that you’re not going to want to go to and your dog is going to hate more than the mailman is the “veterinarian”. Now, in English we don’t need to bother saying: “Veterinarian”, which is an animal doctor. What we need to say is: “Vet”. So you’re going to say: “Uh-oh, I have to take my dog to the vet”, because maybe your dog is sick. Vets in Canada and probably around the world, America as well, are very, very expensive. So we don’t want our dogs to be sick because it costs us a lot of money.
But there is one thing that people or breeders really encourage you to do if you have gotten a puppy and you’re not going to breed the dog, you’re not going to have… Make more baby dogs with this. That’s a whole other business. So, for this you’re going to do what we call “get your dog fixed”. Your dog is not broken, don’t worry, it’s not a toy. So: “Get your dog fixed”, you’re going to go to the vet, you’re going to go to the animal doctor and what’s happened… What’s going to happen is you’re going to get your animal neutered. “Neutered” means… We have two different meaning… Two different words we use for this. For the boys or for the studs, neutered means “castrated”. Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen, this means they’re going to remove the dog’s testicles so the dog cannot produce sperm to have little puppies. Don’t worry, I’m sure the dog doesn’t feel anything, and when he wakes up he is very happy because he has less balls to lick. So, “castrated” is only for boys and they remove the testicles. The word that we use for women, or sorry, girls or bitches, mm-hmm, is “spayed”.