Canine Communication

Canine Communication

by Greg Farmer © 2008

Communication is the foundation of any relationship, so when you are interacting with your dog, it is important to understand how dogs communicate. Knowing how dogs communicate can help you to understand what your dog is "saying" and can help you to "speak" in ways that your dog will understand.

When I talk about communication, I try to avoid talking about "energy". The problem I have with talking about energy is that it bypasses any real substance on the subject of communication. The statements you hear about energy may be completely accurate, but they have very little if any practical value. Most people simply cannot translate "You need to project a stronger energy," into any meaningful action.

The one that annoys me most is when someone says, "Your energy travels through the leash to your dog." Most of the times when people say that, it is not even a real case of leash aggression, and even when it is, it is not a result of the leash conducting any kind of energy. One example of leash aggression may be caused by the leash physically pulling the dog upward into what another dog perceives as a dominant position. If the other dog feels threatened by that, it could trigger a fight. In this case, the fight is an indirect result of the leashed dog having bad leash manners and the handler not having enough control. It is not caused by the leash conducting bad energy or weak energy from the handler to the dog.

When humans communicate with other humans, we tend to focus on words. However, even among humans, words only play a small part in our communication. Humans communicate with each other first by body language, second by tone of voice, and third by actual words. Since dogs have no spoken language, they communicate through body language and vocalizations. In addition, they can be taught to recognize a few spoken words. Most behaviorists agree that most dogs can learn to recognize a hundred or so different words.

In discussing communication, we are going to deal with reading, interpreting, and using body language. Then we will address vocalizations and tone of voice, and finally we will discuss teaching dogs to recognize words.

Dogs use body language to show what kind of mood they are in, and body language usually uses signal clusters, or a group of signals to indicate one thing. If a dog has a relaxed grin, is holding his ears forward, is wagging his tail in a large arc, is averting his eyes away from you, and is bowing, it means he wants to play.

On the other hand, if the dog has an intense stare, is holding her ears straight up, has her lips raised and drawn back, has her tail up, and is making short, stiff wagging motions, and has her head lowered and extended forward, she is warning you to stay away.

If the dog has the same intense stare, has his lips raised and drawn back, has his ears flattened, his tail tucked, his head lowered and extended forward, and the hair along his back raised, it means he is afraid. Notice that some of the fear signals are the same as the stay away signals above: intense stare, lips raised and drawn back, and head lowered and extended forward. The reason is that the frightened dog wants to be left alone, and he is trying to scare you away by acting mean.

The last group of signals to cover is the most important, and in my opinion, every dog trainer should know these signals well. Dog behavior expert Turid Rugaas calls them "calming signals", but wolf biologists have known them for much longer as "cut-off signals". These signals are used by wolves and domestic dogs alike to reduce stress and resolve conflict.

There is a long list of calming signals. A few of them are sniffing the ground, yawning, looking away, scratching, lip-licking, nose-licking, lifting a front paw, approaching slowly in an arc, sitting or lying down, blinking, moving slowly, shaking, and sneezing. I have this list in my obedience training hand-outs because they are so valuable. I want people to recognize calming signals so that they can use them and reward their dogs for using them. Many traditional trainers inadvertently make their dogs aggressive because they unknowingly punish the dogs for using calming signals.

I used calming signals to desensitize my dogs to trains. I am fascinated by trains and love to watch them, and since the city park is right next to the railroad tracks, it makes sense for me to take Jessie and Sara to the park to walk them and then stop and watch any trains that pass by during that time. The problem is that trains are big and loud, and understandably, my dogs were afraid of them. The first time a train came, I moved close enough for my dogs to be nervous but not overly frightened. I sat down and yawned and avoided looking at them until they began to relax. (Sitting, yawning, and looking away are calming signals.) When they began to relax, I began petting them and talking softy to them to reinforce the calm state of mind. The next time, I moved a little bit closer to the tracks and did the same thing. The result is that now I can get close enough to read the small print on the train cars without the dogs becoming frightened.

While body language is probably the most important part of canine communication, vocalizations, or the sounds they make, also play a part. The basics of barking, growling, whining, or whatever are pretty obvious, so I'm not going to deal with those here.

One part of spoken language that is related to vocalizations is tone of voice. Even though your dog does not understand your words, she does hear your tone of voice. The important thing to understand about tone of voice is that it reveals your emotional state. Whether you are uncertain, confident, serious, playful, nervous, angry, or whatever, your tone of voice does more to express it than your words. For example, one my co-workers might say she's sorry for some silly mistake, and I say, "You should be." Now if I said that with a serious tone, she would probably think I was being pretty harsh, but I always say it with a cheerful tone so that she knows I'm teasing. That's how it is when you're speaking to animals. They can't understand your words, but they do understand and respond to your tone of voice.

The last part of communicating with your dog is teaching your dog to recognize and respond to certain words. That is the purpose of obedience training. Some people who call themselves behavior experts say that obedience training does nothing to help with serious behavior problems such as aggression. To some extent they are right; teaching a dog to sit and stay does nothing to address the issues that can cause aggression or bad manners. However, what obedience training does do is very important. It opens a line of communication. An obedience trained dog can be told when he has done something good or when he has done something bad. An obedience trained dog can be told to sit and wait at the door instead of pushing his way through, or to sit instead of jumping on visitors. Even with a very serious problem like food aggression, an obedience trained dog can be told to leave her food dish and come to you, which makes the issue much less dangerous. This is communication; this is the foundation of your relationship with your dog.