Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (18 page)

closer, trying to grab him gently by the
collar, and as she did this, Dodger grabbed her arm
in his jaws. Now able to dislodge him from the table edge,
Jennifer found herself half kneeling in a wrestling
match with the puppy, who alternated between wrapping his
paws around her arms and grabbing at her with a
wide-open mouth. The entire time, Jennifer was
keeping up a string of increasingly louder and more
breathless commands: "Off! Dodger, sit. Stop that.
Off! Sit. Sit!"
Finally, Jennifer was free and sat back in her
chair looking flustered and exasperated. Dodger
stood watching her hopefully, his tail wagging
happily. "Do you see what I mean? That's what
happens."
Knowing that the scene would be repeated, I quickly told
Jennifer that the next time the dog did that, she should
sit still and say nothing. I would handle it. Before I
could say another word, Dodger heard an imaginary
bell signaling Round Two and, with a gleeful look
directed at Jennifer, put his front feet on
the table again. Immediately, I gasped as if shocked beyond
all belief, and Dodger, surprised, dropped
back to the floor. The moment his feet hit the
ground, I quietly told him he was a
good dog. He wagged his tail in agreement. For a
few seconds, he looked back and forth between me and
Jennifer, puzzled by the silence. Then sky
the bright idea crossed his mind: He could start the
party again by putting his feet on the table! Once again,
paws on the table, another horrified gasp from me,
followed by silence. This time, he kept his feet on
the table, turning his head to look at Jennifer and then
me. Clearly written in Dodger's expression was
puzzlement-this was not working the way he had thought it
might.
Another idea flashed into his mind, and he
noisily slapped both paws on the table edge,
looking at us for reaction to this. Disappointed when we
did not move or speak, he sighed and settled
back to the floor. Instantly, I told him he was
a genius, something he already knew but enjoyed hearing
anyway. Tail wagging, he immediately leaped up on
the table but, hearing my gasp, froze. He stared at
my face for a long moment, and then, in slow motion,
he sank back to sitting on the floor, his eyes
never leaving my face. The instant all four feet
were on the floor, I praised him. "I've got it

now!" was written all over his face as he
came to bury his head in my lap for some much-deserved
loving before he voluntarily lay down with a
satisfied sigh. I gave him a chew toy, and he
settled down to amusing himself quietly.
Jennifer was speechless. Her "hyper" puppy was
lying quietly at our feet, and I had never once
touched him, nor had he tried to "attack" me.
Dodger was not aggressive, or even hyper. He was
simply responding to Jennifer's communications.
To his doggy mind, her shoving and breathless
verbalizations were an invitation to play. He quite
correctly read the gentleness and lack of threat in
her behavior, as I had when the first wrestling match
occurred. (if she had been angry or threatening,
I would have intervened on behalf of both woman and
dog.) Like many dogs, Dodger enjoyed wrestling
games with people, since they mimic the often-fierce
play dogs use with each other. As he would do with
another puppy or dog, Dodger had slapped her
with his paws and grabbed her hands and arms, but very
gently. Far from dissuading him, Jennifer's
attempt to push him away was an enjoyable
activity, a game for the dog. What Jennifer
intended to convey was "No, don't do that!" But only
her words said that, and only to someone who understood
English, which Dodger did not. All of her actions invited
play, and the puppy was glad to oblige. As the old
joke notes, "Ah, your lips are saying no but the
rest of you is saying yes, yes, yes!"
What was missing from the conversation was any clear way for
Dodger to understand what Jennifer really was trying
to tell him. Though without question her tone of voice was
disapproving, nothing else in her communication gave the
puppy the idea that he was wrong. A fair canine
interpretation of this whole message might be that the
"disapproval" in her tone of voice was nothing more
than mock growling, part and parcel of canine play.
Dogs interpret messages in context, weighing
all signals together to arrive at their interpretation.
The clear delight in Dodger's goofy, playful
expression was a tip-off that he found the entire
process quite enjoyable.
When Jennifer understood how her actions were sending the
opposite of what she meant to say, she was able
to use her body like a switch to turn Dodger on
or off depending on what he was doing. If she did

not like what he was doing, she verbally
indicated her "shock" with a dramatic gasp or her
displeasure with a short, curt phrase and absolute
stillness in her body, messages Dodger understood
quite clearly. From his canine perspective, there was no
invitation to play in those gestures. Dodger quickly
figured out which behaviors resulted in Jennifer
shutting down and disengaging from him, and which behaviors
earned him her attention and praise. (simple dog
math: If you do this, this happens.)
The language of Dog is not unlike our own
human language. It is filled with nuance and
subtleties, the sum of which-examined within a given
context-provide a total communication. Like our
dogs, we can communicate volumes without uttering a
word, though doing so with great clarity requires
awareness of our own bodies and the subtle meanings behind
gestures. Ask any man about the Look and you'll
be talking to someone who understands that when a woman's
eyes get sharp and narrowed and the corners of her mouth
grow a bit tight, there's been a shift in the winds
and wise men ought to take heed. (all those mirrors
at the perfume and makeup counters? They're just for
perfecting the Look, and those smiling salesladies
are actually instructors; the Look requires
diligent practice to master.)
Even if the technology were possible, there would be no
point in Dog Radio. Though verbal communications
are part of the dog's language, it is rare that dogs
communicate solely through verbalization.
To the best of my knowledge, communications
that take place between dogs who
are not in visual contact are limited to simple
phrases. For the dog talking to another dog,
purely verbal communications are not terribly
precise or useful for sending complex messages.
In canine language, verbal communications without the
accompanying visual cues are useful only for
transmitting simple messages: "Where are you?"
"Hey look, someone's here!" "Go away!" "I'm
hurt." "I'm lonely." A rough analogy might
be what we could communicate using a brief
telegram-a crude message lacking nuance or
complex themes.
In reasonable weather, our back door stays open so
that the dogs can come and go as they please into the large
fenced yard. Often, while we watch TV, one
dog will slip out without the others noticing (or perhaps

they simply don't care), and while
investigating the yard, will discover a deer tiptoeing
past in the field or hear the coyotes singing up on
the ridge behind the farm. The alarm is then sounded, a
long, strung-out series of
woo-woo-woo-woo-woos
mixed with a few definitive woofs, a vocalization
meant to alert the others in the pack that something's
afoot but at a distance, not an immediate threat. were This
is different from the very specific, brusque warning
barks that warn someone approaching the house that they'd
best have an invitation.) The reaction from the pack is
an electrified response, and all dogs leap
to their feet and shoot out the door to investigate.
Once outside, they too can look and listen and
smell and know what the alarm-sounding dog was talking
about.
The dog understands communications from us as a whole
picture that includes all of our nonverbal
messages as well as our spoken ones. Far beyond
learning what exact words and phrases mean, dogs
listen carefully to the whole picture of what we are
telling them. The canine language is an
elegant and precise one, where context and congruity-
and not the spoken word-reign supreme. What sets
a skilled trainer apart from the average (and
often frustrated) dog owner is the congruity and
clarity of their communications with the dog. This does not
mean that they say "Sit" or "Heel" with better
elocution. The difference is that the message they send
is clear, with total congruity in their tone of voice
and their whole being-mind, body and spirit.
Endless books primly advise us that dogs don't
really understand what we're saying. While it is
true that a dog does not learn the meaning of words in
the sense that he can use them correctly in a
sentence, he does
certainly learn the names of things. There are those who
snicker as they point out that a dog could learn to sit
when he hears "frump" and point to this as proof of the
dog's stupidity. Of course, if these folks were
learning another language and their teacher decided
to teach them how to say "Your mother is a pig" when what
the folks thought they were learning was "Thank you very much!"
. . . You get the point. Dogs quite agreeably
work hard on figuring out what we mean by the torrent
of words that pour forth from our mouths every day-and they
wisely discard most of those words as meaningless to them.

In the end, even the most brilliant of
dogs are working with a crude vocabulary not unlike
a tourist in a foreign land. And just like the tourists,
dogs learn the words and phrases that have the most meaning
for them: "Where is the toilet?" or "I need a
drink." (granted, only dogs would actually link
these two phrases into one meaningful question.) Looked
at in a certain light, this points to a very
practical intelligence at work that probably
prevents dogs from dying of boredom or going mad
in the face of our seemingly endless babble.
Countless authors of dog-training books as well as
trainers themselves urge dog owners to remember that their
tone of voice is all-important. If we
view dogs as non-English-speaking guests in our
world, then it's easy to understand how important tone of
voice can be. Depending on my mood, I find the
whole tone-of-voice advice bit hysterically
funny or deeply sad because it reveals an underlying
truth: We're in need of being reminded how to speak
to our dogs. Why does this advice about the tone of
voice even need to be said? Isn't tone of voice
important in all our conversations, at least the ones
in which we are addressing someone we love? I doubt
most of us would appreciate having our friends and
family come up and bellow "I love you!"
in a belligerent tone. If we snarl "Give me
the salt," our loved ones might understandably take
offense, though they still might pass the salt. I
haven't seen any child- raising books that feel the
need to urge mothers to use soft, loving tones with their
babies-"After thorough study of the vocalization
patterns of maternal behavior in a wide
variety of cultures, it appears that babies
prefer not to be shouted at for any reason." Nor have
I seen any dating advice that tells a man that
he'll get further with a woman if he refrains from
shouting in her ear and slapping her on the back like one
of his buddies down at the bar. If we want to be
successful in our relationships, we shape our
conversations to reflect the love and respect we
feel for the other.
Unless we've lost all basic civility (been
to Long Island at rush hour?), unless we no
longer care about the person or
the relationship, unless we have lost control of our own
feelings, we don't interact with others that we care
about in harsh, demanding tones, ordering them about in
peremptory ways. And we certainly don't like it

when we're addressed that way; it is not a
loving or even a respectful way of conducting
conversation. One clear warning sign that trouble is
brewing in a relationship is the way in which we
communicate. We no longer speak with love or
patience or respect in our voices. We grow
shrill, angry, demanding, dismissive, impatient;
we don't listen. (and we may get the same in
return.) If we love our dogs, if we
respect them, if we view ourselves as being in a
relationship with them and not just as being their drill
sergeants or keepers, then our verbal communications
to them need to be as loving and respectful as to any
human. This seems to me to be at the very least
simple common courtesy. Within a loving
relationship, it is more than that-it is a critical
ingredient without which we may not succeed. And when we
lose our way, when we find ourselves shouting at our dogs
or treating them in ways we would resent for ourselves, we need
to hush so we can hear the echoes of fear or anger in
our own voices.
Of course tone of voice matters. In the tone of
our voice, regardless of the words we use, there is a
world of information. Dismay, anger, happiness,
alarm, frustration, fear, sadness, surprise,
encouragement, confusion, warning, urgency,
approval-all these and so much more can be communicated just
in the tone of voice. Our voices can be marvelous
tools of communication, allowing our dogs to hear
clearly what we are trying to say. But focusing on
our tone of voice without also learning to control the rest
of our bodies is pointless at best, and terribly
confusing to the dog. Dogs just don't buy the "do what
I say and ignore what I do" garbage humans
hand each other. It is the whole message of voice
and body that tells a dog what is really being
communicated. Although we humans pride ourselves on
our linguistic skills and often believe that we
communicate mostly through a verbal to written
language, the truth is that we're not all that
different from dogs and other animals. Nonverbal
signals comprise an amazingly high percentage of
human communication. Some researchers estimate as
much as 80 percent of our communication is contained in
our gestures and body language.
I think it is worth remembering that some of the most