Words Get in the Way

"Language is the source of misunderstandings." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)

I just saw this quote for the first time and I love it! It captures so much about the relationships between humans and their dogs, and our efforts to communicate.

Dogs don't use language, and they never have misunderstandings. They communicate with their bodies: eyes, mouth, tail, breathing, muscle tension and posture. There is no filter, no spin, just to

tal honesty.

People, on the other hand, decide what we want other people to know and communicate it verbally, while often unknowingly communicating the truth with our bodies. For a vivid and sad illustration of this, watch Sandra Bullock's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes with the sound muted, and then watch her Oscar acceptance speech, given just a few weeks later, also with the volume down. There is no question that her life, and her emotional state had changed profoundly in the weeks between the two speeches, although she does not acknowledge it in her words.

More often than not, the language, concepts and symbols filling up our heads muddy up our attempts to communicate with our dogs. Here are a few scenarios I see a lot:

• An owner saying, "Good boy! Good boy!" while petting and rubbing around the dog's head, ears and face. The dog is trying to dodge the petting, clearly irritated, but because the owner is saying "Good boy!" the owner fails to notice.

• People getting frustrated and repeating a command, like, "Sit! Sit! Sit!" when it's not working, because the dog "knows what it means," and the dog "should" sit. This scenario is at the heart of a cardinal rule of behavioral conditioning: "If it's not working, do something different." (I once read about a psychology experiment where both humans and lab rats were taught to navigate a maze to a certain spot and find a reward. Halfway through the trials, the location of the reward changed, unbeknownst to the subjects. The lab rats were able to adapt and find the reward in the new location; the humans were not. "It should be where it was before!" "He should sit !")

• Owners saying, "She knows it's wrong!" -- as thought we share a common moral code -- when their dog exhibits appeasement behaviors like a lowered head, and a tail between the legs. Another one along these lines is, "Why should I give her a treat for doing what she ought to do?"

• Owners relating to their adult animals as though they are human children or babies. We are all susceptible to this to some extent, because our brains like to file things into the cubby holes of our concepts, and our concept for small, warm, cute thing is "child". Baby talk and cooing work well for kids, but not so well for animals. Here's an example that really rankles for some reason. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXjPQYgT25Q (For the record, I do think the hedgehog is very cute, but the way the people talk to him drives me crazy!)

If you want to have fewer "misunderstandings" with your dog, try interacting in total silence. You'll be surprised at how good your instincts are when you get the words out of the way.