Talking To Your Dog Is RUINING YOUR RELATIONSHIP

Dogs are our good friends, our companions, and so much more. We want to share our lives with their furry faces and wagging tails and want to give them the best life that we can possibly offer. There are few things that are better than having a happy, obedient, confident, and fulfilled dog. Unfortunately, the path to getting to our ideal dogs is something that isn’t easy. It’s a path filled with many twists and turns. Today, we’re going to talk about something that might be hindering you on your journey with your dog. It’s something that seems so miniscule that it is often overlooked in our everyday lives. What is it? Talking to our dogs.

It certainly seems like a small thing doesn’t it? As human beings, we tend to be quite verbal. It’s how we generally communicate with other humans, and often we apply that to our dogs as well. Sometimes, we're constantly talking to them. Maybe we’ll talk about our day at work, or tell them about the weather, or maybe just tell them about all the fun that we had at the movies the other night. For some dogs, this isn’t necessarily detrimental, but for others, especially if you have a dog that never seems to listen to you, or one that has fear, anxiety, or reactivity issues, it can be something that is completely ruining your relationship. I understand that we mean well when we speak to our dogs, but there’s a few things that I think we should really keep in mind.

As much as we think or wish that our dogs understand English (or any language that we speak to them) there really isn’t any evidence for this. Don’t get me wrong, dogs are smart animals and they often understand many things about us such as our facial expressions, tone of voice, and energy. They also understand specific sounds that come out of our mouths when we’re asking them to do obedience (sit, stay, down, heel, place, etc.), but that’s because we’ve taught them to understand those sounds through training. No dog comes with an innate ability to understand language. Having said all this, dogs certainly don’t understand whole sentences or the long conversations that we might be having with them. But why does this matter? The biggest reason is simply that if you constantly talk to your dog, your voice becomes meaningless and unimportant to them.

What do I mean by that? Like I mentioned, when you’re having full blown conversations with your dog, they don’t actually understand what you’re saying. Your dog might initially try to understand what all those sounds mean, but it’s not possible for them to do so. It frustrates them and they quickly learn that everything that comes out of your mouth is actually not useful or meaningful information to them. Many dogs learn to tune out your voice, or human voices in general because of this. This means that when it comes time to actually listen to you and you ask them to do something, many dogs just ignore you because to them, it’s just another sound coming from you that they don’t have to pay attention to. It’s like if you were trying to learn a completely new language that you didn’t speak and all people did was talk to you in that language with no other input. You wouldn’t learn anything or understand anything. All it would do is frustrate you. You might try to figure out what they’re saying initially, but eventually you would be so frustrated that you would just tune them out because you simply can’t process the information they’re giving you. If, along with their verbal, people said a word and then pointed or gestured to something and showed you what that word meant, you would be able to learn the language and process that information. Dogs, for the most part, are non-verbal creatures, and they learn much more through showing than through talking.

The other main reason I don’t advocate excessively talking to your dog is because, while we have good intentions when we speak to our dogs, speaking to them can sometimes make stressful situations worse. When dogs are in a stressful situation, how many times have you heard the phrase “it’s okay?” While there's nothing inherently wrong with saying that, as verbal creatures, we tend to say this phrase in order to try and calm and comfort our dogs, and tell them that everything is going to be alright. Unfortunately, as we’ve discussed, our dogs don’t actually know what we’re saying. The phrase “it’s okay” does not mean anything to them. What they do pick up on is the tone of voice and the emotion/energy that people use when they speak and interact with them. The sad, emotional, almost pitiful tone that people often use when trying to console their dogs is something that, at that moment, the dog does not need. In their time of stress, dogs need you to advocate for them, take ownership of the situation, and be shown that they can trust you to stick up for them. Talking to them certainly doesn’t do that. If anything, it is often confusing, leaving your dog wondering ‘what is happening? What’s ok?’

None of this is to say that you can never speak to your dog with your dog. Far from it, especially once they’re relatively well-trained and can distinguish between sounds that aren’t for them and sounds that are. However, be mindful of when you’re speaking to them and why you’re speaking to them, especially if you and your dog are dealing with some behavioral issues. Information that is unneeded and can’t be understood by your dog is only going to frustrate them and do more harm than good. Remember, dogs are non-verbal creatures, so when the time arises, show them your intentions through your actions and not through your voice.