DOES YOUR DOG UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR SAYING?

In this months Kennel Club Standard news letter there’s an interesting article written by one of the trainers that will be at their teaching event this weekend.

The article is about a recent trip she was on using public transport and whilst travelling, she sat near a dog owner who was busy speaking to their dog about something it was or wasn’t doing. The article boiled down to the fact that this trainer felt that we as trainers were not getting our message across to our clients and the general dog owning public at large that, Dogs cannot understand us when we speak to them. This particular dog owner was saying something along the lines of “now I have told you before that what you are doing is wrong, so why are you doing it again”. So not only has the poor dog supposed to understand what its owner is saying but that it also has to relate what it was told last week to the bad behaviour it is doing now.

Challenged by this trainers remarks that we are not getting our message across, I carried out a straw poll in one of my classes this week.

I posed the question “who among us believed that our dogs understood us when we spoke to them?” I was surprised by the response that I got. About 30% believed that when they spoke to their dogs albeit in short sentences they understood. For example if told No, bad dog. The dog knew it had done wrong.

Now in my classes, the first thing I tell my clients during the very first lesson is to imagine for the next 12 weeks that their dogs only spoke Russian. They spoke no words of english. I always check first before I say this, in case anyone in the class speaks Russian. One day someone will say yes.

I carry on and say that in order for us to get our dogs to understand English we would need to show them first what it is we want them to do and then teach them the English word for that. Much like we would try to teach someone we had met for the first time from a country whose language we didn’t understand. So simple things like “would you like a seat” would prove challenging if we couldn’t speak their language. I then ask them to demonstrate how they would do this using a stooge.

I then challenge them to do the same thing with their dogs when asking them to do everyday things like ‘Sit’, ‘Down’ etc.

The fact that I go through this with every class made me all the more surprised by the results of my straw poll.

I thought I was getting the message across quite effectively.

So then I gave the article I read more thought and I think I can offer up some possible reasons why some dog owners speak to their dogs.

Firstly, is that its easy for humans to believe something is right if they want to believe it in the first place. And if there is any kind of acknowledgement of that belief then all the better.

So when we say ‘NO, Bad Dog’ and the dog shows any kind of submission, its easy to believe that they understood what we mean. Yes I know that what the dog is doing is reacting to our body language and raised voice. But it makes sense to some people.

There is also a situation when handlers will scold their dogs for jumping up on other people or snap at an approaching dog. Most of this talk is for the other humans benefit. “Oh look what you’ve done, thats a bad dog making that nice ladies coat all dirty, now you go and apologise”.

Lastly why I think people talk to their dogs is because basically we are sociable beings and like to talk. Where people live in a single human environment with only a dog as a companion then i’m sure it gives them great comfort to hold a conversation with their only companion. And when that companion looks back and gives a few thumps of its tail and smiles with its eyes, then the human feels warm and happy inside. So it affects their wellbeing, even if deep down they will admit that the dog doesn’t completely understand them. And that can’t be a bad thing can it?