It's Not Only What You Say to Your Dog - It's HOW You Say It

It's no secret that dogs and humans are two completely different species, which means that even though they share their lives with us, there's a communication barrier we have to break through.  Well, studies have shown over the years (read about a most recent one HERE that's used some impressive MRI testing) that dogs have the brain wave capacity to interpret the intonation in our voices.

Yes, it's quite true!  Dogs will learn whatever words we use consistently to convey a message - they can't tell the difference between the words unless we teach them what a particular word means by making an association, so the tone we use is critically important! 

I first did my own "experiment" of sorts when I was young (and maybe you've even done the same thing)... We would actually play around with the dog I grew up with (a cock-a-poo named Sandy) by using a happy, excited voice to say all sorts of things and we would laugh at how we would get the same reaction from her regardless of what we said (unless she had a prior association with that word).  For example, if our body language and tone of voice were the same, she would respond the same whether we said "Sandy, you're such a cute little dog!"  or if we said "Sandy, you're stupid and ugly!".  She couldn't interpret exactly what we said, just how we said it. 

​If we used a word she had a prior association with, however, such as "we're going to take a bath" and she didn't like "baths", that's the only time you would see her hesitate, as she tried to figure out why we said that word "bath," which usually had an ominous meaning for her, in a happy tone.  We were giving her mixed messages and you could see she was confused and worried about what to expect! 

Me and Sandy

This is why I tell so many of my clients that we have to say what we mean, mean what we say, and have that conviction in our energy and body language.  How we say something is so important to ensuring we are getting our point across appropriately to our dog!  If we understand this, part of our communication quandaries can be solved!