There have been people who grew up without language, and learned to speak much later in life. It can happen to deaf people who grow up in a place where they don’t receive support for their deafness, for example.
But anyways, it is possible to ask those people what they thought about before they learned language, and at least one of them answered that they didn’t really think about anything.
So if humans are like this without language, it’s more likely that dogs are similar to what you suggest.
There have been people who grew up without language, and learned to speak much later in life. It can happen to deaf people who grow up in a place where they don’t receive support for their deafness, for example.
But anyways, it is possible to ask those people what they thought about before they learned language, and at least one of them answered that they didn’t really think about anything.
So if humans are like this without language, it’s more likely that dogs are similar to what you suggest.