by Angela Schmoll

Created on: January 23, 2009

If you've ever stepped out the front door in your running shoes and had your dog greet you with happy barking and a wagging tail that summons half the dogs in the neighborhood to join your morning jog, then you have an idea of how similar the communication between humans and animals can be. The dog's happy barks are just like a child yelling for his friends to come join in his favorite game.

All too often people discount the ability of animals to communicate with other animals and with people, simply because they don't use words. But their range of communication is like ours in that it includes body language, eyes and for some animals facial expressions, and vocalization. While that range may be easier to understand among primates, people who are willing to take the time to recognize the similarities and differences can begin to comprehend communication among many other animals as well.

As our closest companions, dogs are often the target of this effort to communicate. The work of service dogs who learn to meet our needs, intervene in our compulsions, and recognize our medical emergencies, illustrates how successful this effort already is. In many of these areas, it was the animals who first showed the ability to do the job by seeing the needs of their owners and reacting in a way that humans recognized. Had dogs not shown and instinctive ability to recognize the obsessive behavior of autistic children and divert them, would we have decided that was a role they could fill? Probably not. Their ability to communicate with us without speaking is phenomenal when we recognize it.

The popular television series "The Dog Whisperer" often deals with our communication styles. An owner who speaks in a high voice can encourage a dog to bark and be hyperactive, even as they wonder why their dog won't calm down. It's because to the dog, a high pitch is exciting, just as it is to us. In her book, "The Other End of the Leash," Patricia McConnell, Ph.D., talks about our miscommunications with our dogs in much the same way by drawing correlations between our style of communicating and that of other primates. There are many similarities and issues, such as repeating our selves and body language, that we can change to communicate better with our dogs. Learning to understand their language is also made easier by looking at the behavior of wild canines in packs.

Even as the work of animal behaviorists teaches us how to communicate better, most animal owners know at basic level how their animals communicate and the similarities make it easy for us to understand. A patient look from the dog sitting by the door while we wait for a television commercial is the same one we once got from our parents as we dawdled getting ready for school. Pacing pets at dinner time, which they recognize without a clock, shows impatience just as it would for people. Dogs on a trail barking say "Come here!" in a language we have no trouble understanding. A dropped head and tail says "I'm sorry" just as surely as the spoken words.

With all the similarities in our communication, any shortcomings in understanding are often ours. After all, domestic animals have already adapted so much to be part of our lives that it is a shame we can't go a little further sometimes to understand them.

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