Chapter 2: Do Dogs Understand What People Say?

Are you kidding? Just because we don't have vocal cords that allow us to babble all waking hours, doesn't mean that we can't understand much of what short-snouts say to us. We just don't know how to react when it isn't a useful instruction. I understand "let's go outside". But "Sandie is a good girl" communicates no useful instruction to a dog.

Dogs communicate with other dogs in a variety of ways, including speechless communication. I don't know what humans call that. But you can see it happening whenever your dog greets another dog in the neighborhood, and then they stop and stare at each other face to face for while. It almost looks like we're about to lick each other, but there is definitely some dog thought exchange going on there.

We try it with humans all the time. We stare at you, and you act as if you have heard nothing. What we put up with for food, shelter, warm couches and membership in the human pack! So then we use pointing signals with our head (let's go outside to take a dump, manservant) and even barking, a tool that humans bred into us after our ancient wolverine days. I'll be honest- it isn't always easy to get our messages across to short-snouts.