Learn your dog's language

“If a lion could speak, we couldn’t understand him”

Other species’ experiences, and the way they navigate through life is so profoundly different to

ours, that even if they spoke English, we wouldn’t understand. It’s the same with our dogs.

They largely see the world through their nose. It blows me away in tracking classes, when dogs can find a track I laid some time ago, on a path that has been trodden by many people, without any treats. They can smell history- things that have long since passed through the area. Ghost footprints. It’s incredible. And we would never understand it.

And similarly, they won’t understand us. While they are off taking in all of this extraordinary data through their nose, we are taking in data through our eyes. Scrolling through a little rectangle in our hands. Try explaining to a dog that those strange squiggles on that lit-up glass are ‘words’. Shapes that mean things, that we read aloud in our heads. Explain that those squiggles arranged in a certain way mean something totally different to the squiggles arranged in another way.

Try to tell them why looking at unmoving, black and white squiggles on a rectangle is more interesting than the scent of a herd of deer that passed through the area that morning, and they’ll try to explain how an invisible scent tops reading the latest headlines and being connected to those across the world.

The truth is, our lives are so completely different. People ask “why does my dog do this?” in despair at a seemingly random behaviour, and yet to the dog it makes total sense. What doesn’t make total sense is why you put lace-up chew toys on your perfectly capable feet before you leave the house.

But, although the disparity is enormous, we can try to get a glimpse into our dogs’ worlds. Try to get a little bit of insight, to bridge that gap. Because even if something doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t mean you can’t try to learn.

If your dog goes to sniff a track, although the scent is lost to our rubbish humany-noses, take an interest. Follow it with them, see where they take you. If there is something they’re looking at in the bushes, get involved and take a look with them. Even involve yourself- if you see something your dog might want to look at, like a bug crossing the path, point it out to them. Be their partner, involved in their world, instead of somebody a thousand degrees of separation away from it.

Engage with your dog, and learn more about their world. True, if they could talk English, we may still not understand them. But if you try your best to learn your dog’s language, you will discover that they’re talking all the time, and their world is truly fascinating.