Dogs don’t understand the English language and when we forget this it causes all manner of problems. Certainly they learn a whole range of words, but they don’t understand language. You can prove this with a dog that gets excited when you say ‘Let’s go for a walk’. If you say ‘Let’s not go for a walk’ – using exactly the same tone of voice – you will get the same reaction! The dog responds to the word ‘walk’, not the whole sentence.

This is important in training – it is much easier to teach a dog to DO something, rather than NOT to do something else – for example teaching ‘sit’ rather than ‘don’t jump up’. Actually, I found the same thing was true of my son as a toddler. If I told him not to throw something, he invariably did. However, if I asked him to give it to me, he would quite happily do so – realising that made life so much easier!

But if dogs only understand words, not sentences, how do they seem to know what we’re talking about? The fact is that we communicate much more than we realise without words. Body signals and tone of voice are hugely important. Try watching foreign language TV without subtitles. I can’t follow the conversation, although I might recognise a few words, but I can very easily tell people’s moods and how they feel about the other characters. Now imaging trying to communicate with those people – that’s what you’re doing when you speak to your dog.

Remember the limitations of spoken language and be very clear with your tone of voice and body signals, and you and your dog will understand each other much better.

© Jo Belsten

This article was first published in the Great Yarmouth Mercury, 30 June 2006

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