I Am Dog, Hear Me Bark

I’ve been reading about how dogs communicate. Human use their voices to talk to each other and to us dogs and we get pretty good at understanding what they say. Dogs understand about 100 words.

Although we dogs use our voices too, we mostly use body language. We use out tails, ears, eyes and faces more.

How we hold our tails or ears mean important things. Like, if a dog’s ears are raised he could be relaxed or listening.

And not all tail wags mean the same thing. If we wag more to the right, it might mean something positive while if we wag more to the left, it could mean negative feelings.

That’s complicated even for me.

Let me tell you how I communicate with my Mom and Dad.

If I am sitting in front of the cookie jar or lick my lips, it means I want a cookie. I taught DixieLee how to lick her lips when she wants a cookie too. 

It is very effective when I stare and Mom says “What?” and we both lick our lips. There is little room for misunderstanding at that point.

If I am staring at you when you are eating, it means I want you to share your food.

If I am sitting in front of the cabinet where we keep the dog food or look at the clock, it means it’s dinner time.

If I am sitting in front of the door, it means I want to go out.

If I am looking at the leash hanging on the hook, it means that I want to go for a walk.

It I throw the ball at you, it means I want to play.

See how easy that is.

I have to admit it can get slightly more complicated when I bark. 

My barks mostly mean “DANGER, DANGER, DANGER” but Mom or Dad have different ideas about our how dangerous things are.

They don’t think the mail person stealing our mail, or a squirrel eating bird seed is as dangerous as I do.

DixieLee barks way more than I do. 

She barks when she wants to go outside. She also barks when she want to go for a walk or wants to play.

You can tell the barks are different because she is usually standing by the door when she barks to go outside or she has a toy picked out from the toy chest when she wants to play.

I bet you have ways that you communicate with your humans that are easy to understand to. Let us know what they are. They may be easier than how we are communicating and we all want communication to be easily understood.

Right now I am smiling (see photo) because I am done with my work for today and can nap.

Love

Zeva

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