DOES your dog sit when he's told? Does he salivate when he hears you talking about food? Does he understand the phrase 'window cleaner?'

A survey has been launched to find out if Oxfordshire might have the cleverest dogs in the country.

Pet sitting company Barking Mad is running the Dictionary Dog questionnaire through its 75 UK franchises, pitting counties against each other to win the title of most conversational canines.

Urging people to take the survey locally is Oxfordshire co-ordinator Amanda Powell, of Abingdon, who runs the franchise with her sister Jeannie James in Leafield.

The 51-year-old mum-of-two said: "I've got a poodle and I would say he understands most of what we're talking about.

"Of course it varies from breed to breed and how they are trained but it's in their interests to understand us."

Mrs Powell and her sister help find holiday accommodation for some 300 dogs across Oxfordshire, linking owners up with volunteer sitters who get expenses covered.

Without wanting to pre-empt the results of the survey, she said she had always been impressed with the intelligence of dogs she had encountered in the county.

She added: "I think this survey will position us to be able to see in our area whether Cockapoos are cleverest or whatever it might be."

The short online survey firstly asks dog owners which of a list of words their faithful friend recognises, including 'sausages', 'postman' and 'window cleaner'.

It then asks people to estimate how many words in total their pet understands, from 'less than 25' to 'more than 1,000'.

The questionnaire also asks: "What is the most unusual word your dog understands?"

Mrs Powell said the survey was supposed to be a bit of fun rather than hard science, but the idea dogs know what we are saying is well-established.

In 2016 researchers from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary concluded that dogs really can understand human speech.

The 'Neural Mechanisms for Lexical Processing in Dogs' study was the first to investigate how dogs follow speech, and found canines did not just pick up on tone of voice. The study showed that dogs were capable of learning the meaning of up to 1000 words, with their brains working in a similar way to humans', and could also differentiate between the positive or negative manner in which the words were spoken.

The Dictionary Dog survey is available now at surveymonkey.co.uk/r/dogdictionary and runs until the end of August.

Participants are also invited to enter a contest to win a dog photography session at barkingmad.uk.com/competition

Barking Mad charges customers a £42 registration fee and a £28 daily rate which helps cover sitters' expenses.