Dog Behavior and Communication

Dogs communicate with:

• vocalizations
• body language
• touch
• scent
  

dog behavior

a little about
behavior theory

a little about reinforcement of behavior

the importance of
social reinforcement

dog aggression, aggressive dog behavior and reactive dogs

behavior problems

classical and operant conditioning

Using dog behavior along with communication is how you let your dog know that you're a high ranking family pack member

Use the dog's preprogrammed behavior to tell the dog of your pack status in a way that the dog was genetically created to understand. One way not to convey this message is with a constant barrage of verbal chatter.

Dog communication and Verbal Behavior

Many people feel their dogs can understand English (language) and that they can explain to the dog like it was a young child. I would disagree and encourage people not to use the explain and coax model of pedagogy with their pets.

It is accepted that dogs do not posses the ability of abstract thought that is necessary to understand language.

While studying Chinese I think I may have gotten a glimpse of how a dog might interpret words. In the beginning if I really listened to a conversation, I could understand a very few words. As I became more conditioned, I could pick out more words and understand some even if I was not paying attention. However, I did not really know what was being said. I only knew what some of the sounds represented or stood for. I only knew sounds that I was conditioned (trained) to respond to. I did not know the context of how the words where used.

Professional Dog Training Secret: Ignore your dog most of the time and give attention (social reinforcement) to your pet when it's doing what you want.

The first step to good communication with your dog is: don't talk too much. Your canine friends do not spend hours in long verbal conversations with each other.

Tone inflection can influence how a dog responds to its owners. It may appear to us that our pets do not have many different verbal patterns (howling, whining, barking, growling, snorting, crying). However, when we closely listen to many different canine vocalizations, we discover a wide variety of meanings communicated verbally. These meanings are usually indicated by intensity, duration, tempo, and notably, tone inflection.

When communicating with our pets we should use the tone inflection that is appropriate to the message we are trying to convey to the pet.

Avoid excessive verbalization with your dog, otherwise your best friend may think that its humans have a whining problem, or maybe it's a growling problem, and in trying to adapt to their human's problems, your pet may develop some problems of its own. To ignore the dog is better than excessive verbalization.

Dog communication and Body Language

Dogs are almost always communicating with each other and with their humans. The majority of this communication is through body language. Our problem is that we only understand some of the vocabulary.

If you pay close attention to your pet, you will begin to understand more of what it is trying to tell you.

This is particularly evident when you and your dog are stressing each other socially. When you train your pooch, you are teaching the pet how to respond to social stress in an acceptable manner.

It's dog training that gives most people an opportunity to begin the process of decoding canine body language.

Once you understand your canine companions body language you can start to communicate with your best friend in a language they can understand.

We can supplement the dog's natural language with conditioning (training), that includes verbal and body cues.

A big part of understanding and communicating with your dog is understanding where your pet is physically in relation to other living things. Be aware of your pet's spatial relationship to significant environmental points of reference.