While rereading some of the works of one of my favorite authors, Lewis Carroll, several quotes came together that might help illustrate human/dog communication.

               "`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
               Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
               All mimsy were the borogoves, 
               And the mome raths outgrabe."

This is a verse from Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky. For me, this quote exemplifies the way dogs might perceive human language. In the context of the poem, it is possible to understand the ideas represented without actually knowing the meaning of the words. Separated from the contextual housing of poem, the words above appear to make little to no sense. Dogs often learn in the context of their environment and who or what might be present. Outside of those contexts, our cues often make little sense to them. Dogs are not being stubborn or defiant when they fail to respond to cues in locations (or with people or distractions) they have never experienced. They just do not understand that the word or hand signal means the same thing out of context. It is very important to thoroughly practice behaviors in every context you might need your dog to respond. 

“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

Our dogs must be very confused when we expect them to know the English language without going to the bother of teaching them. We expect human children to go through a lengthy learning process while obtaining their language skills. During the language learning process, most parents diligently and patiently repeat the associations between words and their meaning. At early stages of language development, young children often call everything with four legs a doggie or a kitty until they have learned to discriminate between multiple things with four legs. For some reason, we often omit this type of training with our dogs. Instead, humans seem to repeat in a louder and louder tone the same word with some expectation that the dog “understands” the English language without any training whatsoever. Positive reinforcement training can help us teach our dogs word associations with objects and behaviors. We can name objects and behaviors, and even ask for discrimination between two or more objects. However, this can only be done once we take the time to go through the process of teaching them what each word means. 

     "I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it."

When words are repeated over and over and the learning process has been omitted, this is exactly what dogs learn – that these often repeated words have no meaning. Cues, particularly verbal cues, must be taught in a systematic way so that the dog truly learns that each word means something specific in every location, every time. When teaching words to dogs, the cue must predict the behavior or item and be repeated over and over until the dog truly understands what you want – just repeating a word over and over is not teaching. It only serves to convince the dog that the word has no value to them.

            "I said it in Hebrew—I said it in Dutch— 
            I said it in German and Greek; 
            But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much) 
            That English is what you speak!"

Dogs are particularly adept at reading human body language, but are not born understanding English. Teaching dogs hand and body cues for behavior is far easier than teaching them words. Dog are capable of learning individual words, but this needs to be taught by systematically pairing a specific word with a behavior or item. It is important to remember that dogs do not do well when we apply more than one meaning to each word. If you need the dog to learn two different things, a new word and/or hand signal should be taught for each behavior. Using the word “down” to mean ‘lie down’ and ‘get off sofa’ is just not reasonable.

               "Curiouser and curiouser."

One might ask why we should take so much time and trouble to teach our dogs something that is so difficult for them to learn (and, seemingly, for us to teach). The answer has to do with relationship development and having a well behaved dog who can respond on cue. It is so much easier for humans and dogs if we systematically explain what to do instead of what not to do. I personally saw huge changes in the relationships with my dogs once I started teaching them what I wanted instead of only telling them what was wrong. Just imagine starting a new job and only being reprimanded when you guessed wrong. It is so much easier to be told “this is what you do and how you do it”. We are the ones with the big brains. Shouldn’t we take the time and trouble to teach dogs (the ones with the smaller brains) what we expect from them. I swear I actually saw Charlie’s eyes light up when we worked on retrieves using positive methods. His body language clearly said “really, you do not want my mouth around the ball (or your hand) when you reach for it? Okay!” The amount of communication that can occur once we take the time and trouble to teach our dogs what we want is truly astounding.
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