When Dogs Talk

8/15/2004

When Dogs Talk

Understand sweet granddaughter, that your batty grandmother is not about to declare that dogs can talk or any other such thing. At least they cannot talk the human language known as English though my little dachshund Cleetus has been known to speak Chinese on occasion. But yes, Kaitlyn Mae, dogs can understand 90% of what their humans say and do and grandmother wants to touch on this subject before you get your own dog.

At this point in her life, granddaughter, your mother once removed is able to spend a lot of time with her dogs. While grandmother has been owned by many dogs in her lifetime, from childhood through to adulthood and throughout many marriages, grandmother has never been able to be in the company of dogs so frequently. Thus I declare it’s not that the dogs to which I might refer are special in any manner as to intelligence, canine tendencies and observational skills. Dogs, Kaitlyn, live to be with their owners and have nothing else to do with their lives except memorize the movements of the master and mistress and comprehend how it all will come to affect them, the dogs.

I hope that you would read my insightful missive before you get a dog, Kaitlyn, that you may be forewarned and become ever the wiser, and happier, dog owner. This may not happen in that your parents are very much dog people and I suspect a canine might be part of your life before you are five and have yet begun to tackle grandmother’s tome of wisdom. Whenever you read it, Kaitlyn, you will know that it is true.

Dogs, granddaughter, do not have to go out and make a living. There are no dog carpenters or canine beauticians is what I’m saying here though I do understand that some dogs ‘work’ in that they look for dead people, drugs and such. Your ordinary house dog, Kaitlyn, has nothing to do every second of every day but watch the humans and hear their sounds.

Cleetus and Jo-Ann, grandmother’s current dogs and no more disparate dogs exist. Jo-Ann is a Belgian Malinois and Cleetus is a dachshund. Both dogs understand every word husband Billy and I say to each other as well as all human talk directed at them.

No, they do not understand the words but they understand the sounds and they’ve studied the matter enough to know what the sounds mean.

In fact, Kaitlyn, the entire animal kingdom communicates by sound and we’ll insert grandmother advice here. Should you ever be confronted by a strange and hostile animal of any kind, Kaitlyn, and you cannot get away, Grandmother suggests two things: one stand perfectly still. If this doesn’t work, try talking to the animal. That’s right, speak right up and say something in a soothing tone. Now grandmother makes no guarantees that Kaitlyn’s sweet murmurs of ‘calm down, calm down’, will calm that angry grizzly, I do say it’s worth a try.

It’s the tones the other animals in our kingdom understand. Indeed humans also understand the tones, our higher evolved method of communication involving both tone of voice combined with syllable and phrase. Sometimes they don’t jive, Kaitlyn, as when grandmother is speaking about John Kerry in any other tone but a shrill scream which would indicate something not quite right.

Which brings me to the dogs in my surround, Kaitlyn, because they too do not like John Kerry and for a while there they really hated Howard Dean. Currently they become enraged by New Jersey’s Governor Rendell.

Now my dogs, Kaitlyn Mae, are not Republican or Democrat and really don’t have any sort of committed ideology though Jo-Ann is probably a liberal in that she’s from Belgium.

They understand when their mistress, which would be me, is speaking of politics and several things happen when she takes on this tone: there is likely no food involved when she launches into these rants, there will be no petting when mistress takes on the political tone, and there will likely be loud tones and shrill notes to pester sensitive dog ears. Sometimes, the dogs know, there is pounding on human objects also involved and in summation, the political tone is the time when dogs should retreat under tables or to adjacent rooms.

On the other side of the equation, Kaitlyn, there is the singing tone emitted by the mistress and occasionally by the master. Singing tones can often be quite loud and often involve human objects requiring concentration on knobs and doo-dads to bore a dog to tears. Eventually the music will blast and the mistress will emit some sort of human speech all blended together she calls ‘singing’. The dogs consider music time to be a good thing no mind the loud noises and big lady moving all about doing something called ‘dancing’. They understand that there will likely be no food during the music time but the dogs are allowed to frolic all about and even jump up on the mistress to join in the dance.

The communication, human to dog, Kaitlyn, is often more nuanced than these two examples. It takes a keen attentive human eye and ear, but grandmother has noted the dogs’ reaction to all of her apparel, movements and sound. As a result I am able to fool them as required.

They know if grandmother’s hair is in curlers that she is probably going to leave the house at some point and even worse, they might have to go in the garage. They know that any movement of grandmother’s kitchen stool means she’s going to do something besides pound on the computer keys and as the dogs’ calculate, there might be food.

They have also learned how to spell, Kaitlyn, and remember this piece of wise grandmotherly advice because the human who eventually resorts to spelling words to avoid dog detection will no longer be successful in that the canine quickly adapts and learns the spelling. Grandmother’s dogs have both learned how to spell “b-o-n-e’ since they were puppies.

Here’s the final piece of advice, sweet granddaughter, as regards communication, or in some cases NOT communicating, with your dogs: Combine an inappropriate tone with whatever is being spoken that concerns the dogs.

Example: when grandmother has a steak bone for the dogs she will pass along this information to husband by adapting the political tone and while in the middle of a political rant, insert the word ‘bone’ or better yet, do the B-O, then talk about John Kerry, then the N-E then complain about the Democrats.

Like this: (loud, angry tone) “Billy, you know the guy running for Governor? He’s a lying SOB, ‘I’ve got my steak B-O over here’ and then he doesn’t want to resign for two months, ‘N-E over here put yours next to mine’, the creep. That entire state is for creeps. ‘I’ll give it to them later’ you know that guy who’s running for Governor?”

Just as soon as the dogs hear the political tone they lose interest. Though I find I cannot even mention the word ‘bone’ or ‘toy’ in any context, even any discussion not involving dogs. “They found human bones in that house, Billy,” I might say and both dogs will come over with tails wagging.

So you gotta be really sneaky about it, Kaitlyn, but after a while you will have invented a whole new language.

After a while the dogs will learn the language and you must invent anew.

You’ll be a better person for it, Kaitlyn.

Kaitlyn, you find grandmother’s hidden message to human husband in her example.