Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (19 page)

moving human experiences are the moments of
inarticulate emotion, where words fail us or seem
only something to fumble with while we search in vain for
some new means to express what it is we feel.
At such times, we may resort to precisely those
silent gestures animals use-a head pressed
against a friend, a hand laid quietly on a shoulder
or leg, a body gently folded around the contours of
someone's grief and pain. We proudly claim
language as that which sets us apart from animals, and
yet, when language fails us as it often does in
the face of profoundly moving experiences, the
animal quality of pure gesture is all that we
have left. To my way of thinking, it is not a sad
commentary on animals that they do not have a verbal or
written language by which to express their feelings, be
that love or sympathy or joy or grief. It
is, I think, a rather telling note that when we are
most deeply moved, we return to the pure
eloquence of communication that animals use all
along. We are, sometimes, most eloquent when we
are dumb.

reading between the lines
Fortunately for us, our dogs are masters at reading
us like books, though it's obvious they're sometimes
hard-pressed to follow the plot. They're
also terribly good at reading between the lines. Our
reliance on verbal communication coupled with a lack of
awareness of how our bodies also contribute to what
is being said leads straight to what dogs must consider
very confusing conversations. "Come here," we tell the dog
who has slipped his lead. Assuming he
correctly understands the phrase, the words register but
are balanced by everything else he hears and sees: the
anxiety in our voice (we fear he may run out
into the road), the tension in our bodies as we lean
forward toward him (a gesture that serves to push the
dog away from us), the shift in our breathing (telling
him something is alarming us, though he is unable
to relate that to his actions), all the tiny signs of
our growing frustration. Taken as a whole
picture, this tense, anxious and possibly angry
person grabbing for him contradicts the verbal
direction to "Come here." If the messages we
send are not under our full control or awareness, we
may be very surprised at the response we get from
our dogs.
When in doubt, dogs disregard words and believe our
actions. If I cheerfully tell my dogs that they

are very bad dogs indeed, they laugh. If
I put a different inflection on it, speaking
sternly, frowning fiercely, my dogs still laugh.
They live with me, and accustomed to my dramatic
moments, thoroughly educated in the art of living with a
lunatic, they know that I'm as full of play
growls as they are, and they recognize my mock
warnings as just that-make-believe. Only when a stern
tone of voice is matched with the hard eyes, tight
jaw, tense muscles and very still posture of an
angry me do they take me seriously. A dog who
did not know me well might easily mistake my
mock warning for a real one, just as we often
mistakenly interpret gestures or words of someone
we do not know well.
Before we open our mouths, even though we've opened
our mouths and long after we've opened our mouths,
dogs are busy trying to understand the
whole message. And they can only understand any of our
messages as they are understood filtered through the
canine point of view. What we say in actual
words might read back nicely on a courtroom
transcript where all but the most violent outbursts
go unnoted. A stenographer does not make
notations such as "sounded tense" or "in an
annoyed tone" or "sarcastic." In my experience,
when people report to themselves or a trainer what was said in
a situation with a dog, it is common for that report
to be in roughly the same format as a courtroom
transcript-all the subtleties and inflections
are missing except for the really dramatic ones. But
the dog takes far better notes than any court
stenographer, mostly because he has a holistic
recording device: the canine brain. Nuances of
gesture and voice are strictly and accurately
noted. Let's look at a typical scene from the
human "transcript" point of view, and then from the
dog's holistic recording device.
Scene: It is a quiet house. A dog lies
dozing at his owner's feet while she reads a
book. The doorbell rings, startling the owner. The
dog is instantly up and trotting to the door, where
he begins to bark. The owner quickly follows. She
attempts to quiet the dog and get him to sit so she
can open the door. She's eager to sign for this
month's delivery of Doggy Digest,

an edible magazine meant to be chewed by the
dog after the owner has devoured the fascinating
articles on "Fleas Flee" and "Top Ten
Ways to Tell If Your Dog Is an Alien."
Here's the transcript as our drama unfolds:
Doorbell rings.
DOG: Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark . . .
(continues even while owner speaks)
owner: Quiet.
DOG: Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark . . .
OWNER: Quiet. Quiet.
DOG: Bark, bark, bark, bark . . .
(deliveryman asks if he should come back some
other time)
growl, growl . . .
OWNER:
(to deliveryman)
No, wait.
(raises voice to be heard]
I said wait, please. Just wait a minute while
I get the dog under control.
(addresses dog)
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Hush.
DOG: Bark, bark, bark, bark . . .
owner: Quiet. Sit. Quiet. I said Sit.
Sit. Sit. I mean it-sit.
DOG: Bark, bark, bark. Yelp!
(oumer has grabbed his collar)
Grrrr . . .
OWNER: Sit. Sit. Quiet.
(adds shake of collar to emphasize her point, and
pulls him up)
DOG: Bark, bark, bark . . .
(sits)
bark, bark, bark . . .
Now, let's replay that scene told from the dog's
point of view: Doorbell rings. At the instant
the dog hears the doorbell, he's thrilled.
Doorbells mean it's time to play "What's behind
door number one?"
Could be that nice kid from next door wanting
to play; he can really throw a ball. Might be that
nice guy that always has dog biscuits in his
pocket when he comes to stare at the electric

could be an intruder who needs to be chased away from the
door. There's that guy that comes every day and pushes
strange papers through the slot in the door. He's
easy to chase away: just a few barks, works every time.

As the dog is getting up to respond to the
doorbell, he hears a slight intake of breath from
his lady. She is slightly startled by the bell, and the
dog notices this.
Aha, that caught her off guard too!
As he trots toward the door, he begins barking,
announcing that the visitor might or might not be
welcome, but either way, he's on duty to check
all passes. Behind him, the dog is pleased
to note, his lady is also hustling.
Not much of a watchdog, but at least she tries.
He increases his barking to assure her that he's got
it covered, and as usual, she chimes right in herself.
Strange,
he thinks to himself.
Human barks are strange. You think they'd know that

never could get my mouth around the
Q

but hey, each to his own. Man, she's revved
today!. She's barking like a fool puppy, all
breathless and high-pitched!.
The man says something, and the dog sees the woman
get more frantic in her actions and sounds.
Oh, boy! That really got her going. Wonder what
he said to get her all riled up like that? She's
barking at him, she's barking at me, and she's moving

heck, if she had a tail she " probably be

as always, she's forgetting about the guy out there and turning
on me. Barking right at me, like I'm the intruder!
Owl
He wishes she'd be more careful when she grabs that
collar. Twisting it like that really smarts. He
growls a little to warn her to watch what she's grabbing.
Crazy lady-now she's shaking his collar a bit,
and pulling him up off his hind legs.

when she gets like this, there's no telling what's
next. But wait. There's still that guy at the door.

Bark, bark, bark . . .
A different impression could be made on the dog if
instead of joining him in his barking-as he is most
likely to interpret our excited vocalizations and
quick movements-we moved slowly, quietly and with an
air of calm assurance. The sum total of our
communication in the above scenario is not one of
authority but one of excitement and arousal that equals
his own and may egg the dog on-precisely what we
hoped to avoid in the first place.
Arrogantly (though we may not intentionally be so),
we insist that regardless of the conflicts and mixed
messages of our communications, dogs somehow sort
out what we mean and then obey. One training
approach would be to punish the dog's actions even
though they are in response to our actual
communication. But that would hardly be fair- dogs, like
us, are not living in a vacuum. They are responding
to the world around them and, when interacting with us, to the
messages they receive. One of my cardinal rules for
dog training is that if I see a dog acting
inappropriately my response is to look
carefully at the person on the other end of the leash.
Quite often, the answer for the dog's behavior
can be found there in mixed or unintentional signals from
the handler.
We are often imprecise or conflicted or careless
in our communications, yet we expect our dogs
to figure out what we mean and act accordingly. Faced with
confusing or mixed messages, dogs do their best
to figure out what is meant. Confused, they also often
give up and simply do whatever suits them, an
intelligent response to a situation where no one
appears able to tell them clearly why or why not
something should be done. Just like us, until notified
otherwise, dogs shape their world to their best
advantage. They're not being deliberately bad
or trying to "get away with" something. They're
simply responding to a lack of clear information and
taking advantage of opportunities that present
themselves. We may find this quite annoying, particularly
if we're unaware that we are being confusing or sending
conflicting messages. But think of this as tax
loopholes. In the face of unclear tax
regulations, humans often shape their interpretation
of the rules to best benefit themselves. (when in doubt,
do you send the IRS extra money?) Of course,
we always have the fear of the IRS lurking in the back of

our minds. For the dogs, sometimes we
are the IRS, stepping in after the fact to sternly
say, "That's not what you're allowed to do." Like many a
puzzled taxpayer, dogs might justifiably
respond, "Well, then why didn't you make that
clear in a way I could understand?"
When we fully appreciate the exquisite
attention our dogs offer us, we realize we have
to clean up our act; we, and not our dogs, are most
often to blame for miscommunications. Faced with an
audience that is listening very hard (unless we have
systematically though inadvertently taught them to pay
us no mind), failures of communications rest
squarely on our shoulders.
To understand our dogs, we need to learn to look for the
whole picture and listen for the whole message the
dog is trying to send. We do this for our human
friends, but understanding the vast world of nuance and gesture in
human communication is something we've been working on
for a lifetime with countless people around us. We've been
practicing with humans for a very long time, and still most of
us have not yet mastered the communication style of more than
a few close intimates.

Given that most of us have but a handful of dogs
in a lifetime, it is not surprising that we are often
less than fluent in Dog. With limited
opportunities to practice and only so many
native speakers of the language to learn from, our
ability to communicate successfully with our dogs and
understand what they are trying to tell us will not come
"naturally." Like any foreign language, Dog
takes time and practice to master. But this is joyful
work, this exploration into another being's world, and the
rewards are countless. We need not be perfect, but
we do need to deeply want to know more and then some.
My niece Hannah's dream of a dog of her own
came true when she was nine years old and her
family adopted Ben, a nine-year-old
Labrador. A true gentleman in his manners and
heart, Ben was the perfect first dog for a family of
five despite his considerable size and, as Hannah
noted wryly, his "goobers" of saliva whenever it was
hot or he was watching people eat. In the first few
weeks of Ben's arrival, there were many phone calls
back and forth to Aunt Suzanne as my sister and her
family integrated this dog into their busy home. Of
all the wonderful things that were reported to me, my
favorite remains Hannah's enthusiastic

description to her mother of all the subtle
ways she had learned to understand Ben. She described
how she knew the difference between Ben's needing to go out
now
and a need that could wait a bit if necessary. His woofs and
barks conveyed a world of information to Hannah, and she
understood his playful growl and the more serious "Someone's
at the door" woof of warning. In vivid detail,
Hannah could pinpoint the slight shifts in the shape
or expression in Ben's eyes, the lift or
droop of his ears, the lift of his tail or the
madly delighted wiggle of his whole body. "I
know what he's saying, Mom, I really do. I'm
knowing this dog!"
And there, in a child's pure knowledge and love, is the only
magic any of us need to understand what our dogs tell
us in so many ways, even when we are not listening.
Hannah's joy and curiosity, her complete
willingness to study Ben with careful, loving eyes and
to trust what Ben told her-without rationalizing or
intellectualizing-is what made "knowing this dog"
possible. To hear what our dogs say, we need
to listen with a child's heart, knowing past our minds, knowing
with our hearts. But for many adults, this is a
struggle; we have to learn how to climb down out of our
minds and listen. If we don't understand that
we are holding our hands over our own eyes, if we
assign magical powers to those we see who
apparently can communicate, if we think this is a
skill granted by the gods to only a few, then we
will be forever in search of Dr. Doolittle or someone
like him. But the truth is, all of us can learn to talk
to the animals, and best of all, perhaps most
important, we can learn to hear what they have to say
to us.