In search of ponies: Careful with your context

In the world of wagging tails and tilting ears, the words themselves don’t mean a whole lot, rather it is the way things are said — tone, body language and emphasis — that make all the difference.

Admittedly it makes things fun from time to time.

link Sharna Johnson

“Who’s so ugly all the other dogs run away…?” Said in the right tone with a happy lilt and a touch of energy, these words and worse are sure to get tail thumping agreement from most any pooch.

The fact that though they learn certain words over time, for the most part their vocabularies remain in the single digits, is one of the upsides of sharing your life with a perpetual child wrapped in fur.

Sometimes the limits of communication can be frustrating… “How many times do I have to tell you not to pee on the ficus?”

However there is an upside to being able to say whatever comes to mind and still get a tongue flopping, full-body wag in response.

Silly, ridiculous and downright outlandish narratives aimed at the pooch are chief among the perks of being a dog-mom, said one anonymous dog owner who admitted she enjoys random and humorous communication with her pup because she can get away with anything, as long as it’s said with a heavy coating of love or fun.

Unlike a precocious child, she said, who can devastate their parents in an instant by parroting the most humiliating snippets of private household conversations, the dog will never tell — because they can’t.

And their self-esteem doesn’t suffer the details, thank goodness, because if they could really understand, “Mommy’s favorite poop-breath-germ-bag ” would surely need some expensive, long-term therapy and would suffer a lifetime of identity issues. Not to mention he or she would probably spark more than a few extremely uncomfortable conversations with the teacher.

But taking advantage of the language gap might just be a dicey sport, because researchers are of the growing opinion that the pooch has more complex communication skills than we give them credit for.

Psychologists in England recently put 250 dogs to the test in an effort to see just how they process human language and were surprised to discover that — rather than strictly hearing tone and emotion -- dogs are actually listening on multiple levels.

Researchers recorded the dogs’ owners saying, “Come on then!” then used electronic means to modify the sound clips. In the first trial, the emotion and identifying characteristics of the owners were stripped from the recordings and in the second trial, the audio clips were garbled so the words were indistinguishable but the emotion and identity remained intact.

When the emotionless clips were played for the dogs, researchers found that the dogs turned their heads to the right, indicating they were processing the sounds with the left side of their brains, the area of the brain associated with language.

Similarly, when played the emotional yet garbled clips, the dogs turned their heads to the left, indicating they were engaging the right side of their brains which is associated with emotion -- indicating dogs process communication both analytically and emotionally.

Being able to understand specific words and go even further to put them into appropriate context is an entirely different subject, but the study clearly shows dogs are paying attention and might just be better listeners than we give them credit for.

Luckily, however, since they lack the ability to speak human, nicknames such as “poop-breath” will remain a household secret — just so long as we know, there’s a good chance the dog is in on the joke.

Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at:

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