How much do those fuzzy ears understand, anyway?

When your dog says “Woof,” you hear an eager “Let’s take a walk.” And your cat has a certain entitled meow that you know means “Put more food in my bowl -- now!”

You are not alone.

Sixty-seven percent of pet owners say they understand their animals’ barks, purrs and other sounds, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll released last week. And in a finding that many parents of teenagers might envy, 62% of owners say that when they speak their pets get the message.

“I speak to her on limited subjects and she does the same with me,” said Stephen King, 63, a retired chemist from Kempner, Texas, who claims to understand his dog Dagny’s repertoire of barks signaling anger, eagerness, contentment and other feelings.

“Common sense works 98% of the time.”

King is among about 20% of owners who said in the poll that they and their pets understand each other’s sounds completely.

The survey, conducted by GfK, shows that owners’ affection for their pets goes well beyond speaking their language. Even as a recession forces millions of families to curtail their budgets, only about 15% of owners said they’d had to trim spending on their pets in the last year.

Even so, these tough economic times are taking a toll.

Of the 15% of owners who say they’re having to spend less on their pets, about a quarter say they’ve contemplated giving up the animal.

Krystal Kantala, 27, of Bonneau, S.C., contemplated giving away one of her two cats when her husband lost his job, but “it would have killed me.”

They kept the cat after they took out a loan and he found a new job.

More than 70% of women and more than half of men say they and their pets understand each other’s efforts at communication.

Older and lower-income people are especially likely to say they and their pets get the message.

Men are twice as likely as women to say they and their pets are clueless about what each is saying to the other.

Dog owners are less likely than cat people to think their pet can’t understand them: Three in 10 dog owners think their pets are baffled when they speak to them, compared with nearly half of cat owners.

When it comes to communicating in the other direction, cat owners do better. Twenty-five percent say they completely understand those meows, compared with 16% of dog owners who claim to be fluent in barks.

Associated Press polling director Trevor Tompson contributed to this report.