The dog´s communication, dog's signals

Communication is originally a latin word that means something like common, mutual exchange, communication and take part of. Having the ability to convey itself is incredibly important for the dog's survival. Even newborn puppies communicate with the mother by signals - for food, warmth, contact, unease, pleasure, etc..

Picture taken by Mari - owner of smiling Gonzo

For the dog's part, it is impossible to learn to understand more than a few individual words and the meaning of the same in our spoken proverbs. Instead the focus of understanding from the dog's side is that we “unconsciously” uses signal transmitting by our body language that interprets by the dog.

It is therefore our responsibility, as the owner is to learn how to interpret with our dog's communications agency - the dog's signals.

What is a signal?
As soon as the dog meets other individuals, they begin to communicate by sending out different signals. A signal can be explained simply as a stimulus from one individual that affects the behavior of the receiving individual.

Head movements, positions and movements of ears, tail, sounds, urination, etc. are all examples of different signal.

The signals are the language for the animals - their means of communication and the path to socialization with their environment. The language is depending on what the sender can send out and what the receiver can receive and, of course, how they are perceived and interpreted.

The ideal transmitter

Different breeds often have different difficulty reading each other. For an example the German Pinscher can have difficulty reading the signals of a pug, the Briard and breed of boxers. They sent out signals with their black squashed face, long black coat … sometimes more or less concealing the tail – or how about the breed that have a twist on the tail and so on. The ideal transmitter should look like the wolf- the dog´s ancestors: white cheeks, black lips, selected drawings on their face, bushy tail with a pronounced "dump", standing ears and so on. Any deviation from the archetype complicates communication - and thus the  interpretation of signals.

Dogs, however, are great in having so big social learning skills, which include that they can learn what to look for in such dogs as boxer, pug, puli, or Bulldog. The more socializing - meeting different breeds the dog gets while growing up, the easier it may be for them to communicate –interphase readable signals of other races.

Visual signals

The visual signals are the ones the dog perceives by sight, ie. the eye.
Often we people have big difficulties to interpret the signals from the dog. This is because the dog is so incredibly fast in their signal shifting, but with practice we can at least improve our ability.

Are you interested in learning more about your dog's signals, you can start by carefully studying them in their meeting/interaction with other dogs. Look at the tail, ears, movement

etc.. The dominant, confident dog walking stiff, high tail carriage and forward-facing ears are fairly easy to recognize. Even so the dog with a more hunched posture, low tail and ears laid back. The many stages between these two are so mutts harder to understand and, as I said before we often do not have time to interpit, read them.

Acoustic signals

All individual dogs sounds different, but the language is the same. A narrow head gives an outstanding penetrating sound than the large and heavy. The dog has a fairly limited number of sounds: whining, screaming, shall, growl, howl, yawn, groan, sigh and a few variations between them. Because of the many links between the various types of sounds it still becomes a pretty good repertoire of the individual dog.

Chemical signals

Urinating fills an important social function for our dogs. Urine and feces serves the purpose of leaving messages between animals. Males mark with their urine a territory.

If you go the same round every day with your dog, you will discover soon that the dog is happy to urinate in the same places every day. It gives it a kind of a  "home feeling".

It has been found that these messages are likely to include answers of: individuality, gender (male - female), sexual maturation, heat (the bitch smells different in different phases of rennet).
 The recipients of these signals respond differently depending on which message
submitted.  You can even some time see a dog that is eager to go the other way if someone was there before that he fears. When two dogs meet the sniff careful over each other, everything from the face, corners of the mouth, anus, and genitals. The dog's body secretes odors are important to communication.

The answer, as too what the emptying of the anal sacks are messaging has yet to be fully understood, but it is believed that there is a danger signal / fear the dog indicates that "here something nasty happened".

Tactile signals

Finally, we come to the tactile signals. Surely your GP often comes and put the muzzle on your lap or jumps up with you on the couch and his eyes asking to be scratched and pampered. The tactile signals are important for contact between flock mates. It also includes "kisses", "bumping away at each other," putting a paw on the friend "and so on.

Study your dog

If you add all these signals together that we now only briefly reviewed, you will discover the enormous amount of language the dog actually has. It is a delightful experience to own a dog and fascinating to study its language, its signals. By studying your dog, you learn a lot. The exchange between you and your dog is greater if you only learn a very small amount, some few signals.

We can have a richer language and a greater understanding of our dog just by studying its signals. Dogs never really conceal their emotions and are real chatterboxes and when you learn to interpret them, you'll be surprised how well they speak!