Man Calls to Golden Retriever via Ring Cam—Unprepared for What He Does Next

Newsweek

3 days ago

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
A man out driving thought it would be cute to call out to his roommate's golden retriever via the Ring camera set up in their living room.
What he hadn't bargained for, however, was the dog's hilarious response.
Research has shown dogs are capable of identifying their owners by voice alone.
In 2022, a study published in the journal Animal Cognition, saw 28 dogs and their owners recruited for a special game of hide-and-seek.
The experiment saw the dogs challenged with finding their owner in one of two hiding spaces.
Researchers would play a recording of the owner's voice from one of the hiding spaces and a stranger's voice from the other.
It was then up to the dog to determine which was their owner. This game was played multiple times, with researchers pairing the owner voices with 14 different voices, some of which were picked for sounding similar.
The study concluded that dogs were able to find their owners in 82 percent of cases, indicating dogs are more than capable of identifying human companions by voice alone.
Frank the golden retriever appeared to instantly recognize his owner Bryan's voice when he began speaking to him through the Ring camera in the front room of their home in Orlando.
"We were watching our golden retriever, Frank, on Live View from the car when he suddenly realized we were talking to him through the Ring camera," Bryan's roommate Katherine told Ring.
Frank's adorable reaction was captured on the Ring device with the footage subsequently shared with Newsweek. It was an adorable mix of joy at hearing Bryan's voice and assuming he was home, followed by confusion when he realized he and Katherine were nowhere to be found.
"Frank, albeit being only 1-year-old, is usually a bit of a slow mover, but he immediately perked up and started searching for the voice—it was hilarious!" Katherine said.
The pure blind confusion that plays across Frank's cuddly face had the canine's human companions in stitches. Katherine, meanwhile, thought it was worthy of a wider audience.
"My roommate Bryan and I couldn't stop laughing," she said. "We use the camera to talk to all four of our pets, but this moment with Frank was just too funny not to share."
It's not the first time a dog has taken center stage on a Ring video. One pet owner in Massachusetts vowed to never speak to his English bulldog again through the camera following the pup's surprisingly spooked reaction.
Another dog's adorable habit of waiting outside his neighbor's house for his canine best friend to come out and play was also captured on a Ring device.
Then there's Kota, the dog who sprung a doorbell surprise on his owner, who thought he was happily playing in the garden, not realizing he had dug his way out.