It's a dog's life - and the sooner you humans understand that the better. Think a dog wagging its tail is happy and friendly? Forget about it. It could be eyeing you as its next meal. On the other hand - or paw - a snarling dog could be just smiling at you.
After years of dogged research, Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has come out with a book to help dog owners understand what their pets are telling them and to help dogs understand what their owners are saying. He wants you to talk dog.
When it comes to communication, dogs are often smarter than their owners, he said in an interview. But the responsibility for communicating lies with the humans since, no matter how intelligent they are, dogs cannot read his book.
Coren, who grew up playing with his family's three pooches and has been studying canine behaviour and psychology for more than 30 years, said that while dogs are able to understand people, for the most part people do not understand dogs.
´´Dogs are much more intelligent than we give them credit for. They can understand up to 200 words, or commands, and they can read our body language to understand what we are trying to tell them,'' Coren said promoting his new book, ´´How to Speak Dog: Mastering the art of dog-human communications,'' published by Free Press.
´´People should recognise the fact that a dog has the intellect of a 2-year-old child. And the dog, just like the child, understands a lot more than it says,'' Coren said: ´´Once owners realise this they won't expect too much of the dog, but they won't expect too little. You are not going to teach a 2-year-old, or a dog, Chinese philosophy, but with an understanding of 200 words you can actually teach a dog to do just about everything necessary to function in the house and on its walks.''
It bothers Coren that dogs give out so many common signals through body language that people fail to interpret: ´´All the information is there, you just have to know what to look for.'' Unlike humans, he added, dogs speak a universal language.
One of the most common misinterpretations of dog talk involves tail-wagging. ´´When a dog wags its tail high and arched slightly over its back, people think it is happy. What the dog is really saying is ´I'm top dog and I'll fight to prove it.' I have seen parents send their child over to play with such a dog because they think it is happy, but in reality they are putting that child in serious jeopardy of being bitten,'' Coren said.
Another common misconception is when a dog's tail is down, wagging slightly. ´´People will say the dog's a little bit happy. What the dog is really saying is, ´I'm a little bit poorly,''' he said. But a broad tail wag really does mean a dog likes a person or another dog.
Do dogs snarl when they show their teeth or are they smiling? Both, said Coren. People have to read the other signs that the dog is giving off with body language. A dog with its teeth bared and its tail straight out behind is snarling and spoiling for a fight. But a dog with its teeth bared and wagging its tail broadly is smiling. ´´I was asked to help with an Irish Setter named Finnigan who was sent back to his breeder because he was too aggressive. He was leaping and snarling at visitors and other dogs. When the breeder opened the kennel, out leaped this happy red dog who looked around and then bared every tooth in that large mouth of his,'' Coren said.
´´To people who do not understand dog language, that could have been a snarl, but actually it was a submissive grin which meant, ´It's OK, I'm not a threat.''' The young dog's bounciness did cause him to leap at people but he did it with a submissive smile to let them know he was only playing.
Dogs have been called ´´animals who put horrible things in their mouths and then want to lick you.'' But is licking the human equivalent of kissing, as many people think? Not really, said Coren. The dog is trying to tell you something: ´´It can be saying ´I'm hungry,' or ´I'm dependent on you.' In either case petting the dog or giving him a biscuit is in order. But as all licking is passive and submissive, I'm quite happy with joining the world and telling my granddaughter that her dog is ´giving her a kiss.'''
But what chance do we poor humans have of mastering doggy body language when we cannnot even agree on what a dog's bark sounds like? To English-speakers it's bow-wow, woof-woof or arf-arf, to the Spanish it's jau-jau, to the Dutch waf-waf, to the French woa-woa, to the Russian gav-gav, to Hebrew speakers hav-hav, to Germans wau-wau, to Czechs haff-haff, to Koreans mung-mung and to the Chinese wung-wung. This reporter's mixed-breed pooch, Sasha, assures him that the correct pronunciation is woof-woof.
Stanley Coren: How to speak dog: Mastering the art of dog-human communications. Published by Free Press, New York, 2000.
Freitag, 12. Mai 2000