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be all over the vets: they reek of epic dog fear.
scratch the ground after defecation or urination. Researchers think that this adds new odors to the mix—from the glands on the pads of the feet—but it may also serve as a complementary visual cue leading a dog to the source of the odor for closer examination.
may in fact be leading others to a message that otherwise would waft away.
odor may be of a dog she’s interested in, or of a dog she recognizes. Or it may be the remnants of a dead animal, rolled in not so much to conceal her own smell as enjoyed for its sumptuous bouquet.
mildest fragrance that cleansers come in is still an olfactory insult to a
We deprive dogs of an important part of their identity, temporarily, to bathe them in coconut-lavender shampoo.
antibiotics excessively, their body odor changes, temporarily wreaking havoc with the social information they normally emit.
sight before her nose. What was she seeing? The unknown dog who just turned the corner off the block? A barbecue down the hill, with perspiring volleyballers circling grilling meats? An approaching storm, with its fulminating bursts of air from distant climes?
The genitals, along with the mouth and the armpits, are truly good sources of information. To disallow this greeting is tantamount to blindfolding yourself when you open the door to a stranger. Since my guests may be less keen on the dog umwelt, though, I advise visitors to proffer a hand (undoubtedly fragrant), or kneel and let their head or trunk be sniffed instead.
think of objects, people, emotions—even times of day—as having distinctive odors.
daydreaming, we should envisage dream images made of scents.
communicate with their eyes, ears, tail,
and very posture.
They communicate; they declare; they express themselves. This comes as
Over the course of a walk, the dogs by their sides may scold one another, confirm friendships, court each other, declare dominance, rebuff advances, claim ownership of a stick, or assert allegiance to their person. Dogs, like so many non-human animals, have evolved innumerable, non-language-driven methods to communicate with one another.
is often made through body language—using limbs, head, eyes, tails, or the entire body—or even through such surprising forms as changing color, urinating and defecating, or making oneself larger or smaller.
They can detect sounds up to 45 kilohertz, much higher than the hair cells of our ears bother to bend to. Hence the power of the dog whistle, a seemingly magical device that makes no apparent sound and yet perks the ears of dogs for blocks around.
crystal resonator used in digital alarm clocks emits a never-ending alarm of high-frequency pulses audible to canine ears. Dogs can hear the navigational chirping of rats behind your walls and the bodily vibrations of termites within your walls. That compact fluorescent
“Do you want to go for a walk(?)” With the question mark, this sentence is exciting to a dog with experience going on walks with humans. Without it, it is simply noise. Imagine the confusion generated by the recent growth of “up-talking,” speech that ends every sentence with the sound of a question?
Try asking your dog on one morning to go for a walk; on the next, ask if your dog wants to snow forty locks in the same voice. If everything else remains the same, you’ll probably get the same, affirmative reaction. The
High-pitched sounds mean something different than low sounds; rising sounds contrast with falling sounds. It is not accidental that we find ourselves cooing to an infant in silly, giddy tones (called motherese)—and might greet a wagging dog with similar baby
come more easily to high-pitched and repeated call requests than to those at a lower pitch.
High-pitched sounds are naturally interesting to dogs: they might indicate the excitement of a tussle or the shrieking of nearby injured prey.
It indicates your frame of mind—and the punishment that might ensue for his prior uncooperativeness.
easier to get a dog to sit on command to a longer, descending tone rather than repeated, rising notes. Such a tone might be more likely to induce relaxation, or preparation for the next command from their talky human.
be fair, canids do not rely on hearing as their primary sense. Relative to even our hearing, their ability to pinpoint where a sound is coming from is imprecise. They hear sounds unmoored from their origins.
pinnae. Instead of being used to “see” the source of the sound, their auditory sense seems to serve an ancillary function: helping dogs find the general direction of a sound, at which point they can turn on a more acute sense, like olfaction or even vision, to investigate further.
Most of the sounds dogs make are oral: using or coming out of the mouth.
for the most part, dogs do not growl at inanimate objects,3 or even at animate objects that aren’t faced or directed toward them.
it is nothing like the possessive warning snarled over a treasured bone. Play these growls back over a speaker set up right in front of a desirable bone and dogs in the vicinity will avoid the bone—even with no dog in sight. But
chatter their teeth in anxious excitement, and the clicking of teeth serves as a warning that the dog is wary. An exaggerated shriek on being nosed or bitten roughly in play can even become a ritualized deception, a way to get out of a social interaction that is making the dog uncertain.
The dog laugh is a breathy exhalation that sounds like an excited burst of panting. We could call it social panting: it is a pant only heard when dogs are playing or trying to get someone to play with them.
playing a recording of the sounds of dog laughter at animal
shelters has been found to reduce barking, pacing, and other signs of stress in the dogs housed there.
theorize that dogs have developed a more elaborate barking language precisely in order to communicate with humans. If we consider barks as all cut from the same cloth, though, they are likelier to annoy than to communicate.
