8 minute read
MORE THAN A DOG’S TALE
MORE THAN A DOG’S TALE MAN’S BEST FRIEND HAS SOMETHING TO SAY
By Elizabeth MacGregor
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Elizabeth MacGregor is a former educator and a regular contributor to SideOne.
I returned from work, excited to greet our new dog at the end of a long day. As I entered the house, I saw the big brown eyes staring at me and said hello. He threw back his head and howled hello back. What a surprise from this rescue who had not barked or vocalized at all since he had arrived two weeks before.
This one-year-old Shih Tzu poodle, Davey Jones, was named by his previous owner, either for the rock star or the pirate, due to his black colour with just a dash of white on his chest and a white beard that did give him a pirate look. The reason for his name will always remain a mystery. He was rescued from a crate in a motel room in Niagara Falls when he was ordered to leave by management because of his loud howls. He came to us, from an organization that stepped in to help, with his vet records indicating a stubborn streak. He apparently had a period of two weeks where he refused to eat anything because he didn’t like his food.
A FRIGHTENED GAZE
His frightened gaze, and a terror of retrieving toys that touched against furniture, told us he was a little wary of humans. Inexplicably, he also would try to catch dust particles suspended in beams of sunlight and couldn’t understand his or our reflections in windows or mirrors. Once settled in, he started to greet us with a semblance of hello. The howls also came when he wasn’t being understood or wanted us to play with him and his new toys. Now eight years old, he’s managed to accumulate a solid understanding of at least a dozen phrases that we utter with some regularity. Shorthand for “come here to get your teeth brushed” is “chicken toothpaste.” He hears the phrase, furiously wags his tail, sidles up, and jumps into a lap to have his teeth brushed. In the evening, when we go downstairs to watch TV, a quick “do you want to go downstairs?” will have him running ahead of us. A “stay” order keeps him from charging the front door and glued to the landing as we open it to delivery people or visitors.
WHAT DOES HE WANT?
If he is thirsty, he sits in front of his water bowl and stares into my eyes. What does he want? His water is there. Ah, it isn’t cold or fresh enough. He has convinced us to give him filtered water out of the fridge and won’t drink at all if he deems it warm or stale. He will sniff it and then turn away. Davey tries to communicate, and I try to understand.
Canine research indicates that when your dog looks into your eyes and you look at them, oxytocin, known as the “cuddle hormone,” is released in both the animal and their human. Dogs often relieve loneliness in their owners and if we can understand each other better it will improve our relationship with them. There currently is another form of communication between the two that is being explored and is driving researchers to explore the brains of our pets.
Taking the subway home after a brain MRI, I happened to read a book about Callie, the first dog to willingly enter an MRI machine. Callie was trained by using treats and rewards, not coercion. I was impressed, having just experienced the machine myself.
Callie’s owner, the primary researcher, wanted to explore her brain, her reactions to words spoken,
and her emotional reactions to the people she lives with. Reading about her piqued my interest. Why would such an expensive machine be used on a dog, and how? I had to work hard to stay still and not run out of the room.
THE DOG PROJECT
The quest was called The Dog Project. It commenced when researcher Gregory Berns decided he wanted to understand more of what his dogs thought about, and if their perceived emotional connection to him was a real one.
He was lucky enough to teach at a university with machines that went unused at night, so he was able to submit a proposal for his project. He had a mentor who helped him stickhandle through all the animal research regulations. The concerns around hygiene were countered. Then, the worry commenced about how to make Callie enter the machine willingly and sit still while the machine made all its horribly loud noises around her.
“Willingly” was key. As much as Gregory wanted to explore his dog’s emotional intelligence, he was bound by university protocol and simple humane practice. Ear muffs would need to be designed and worn, a special neck coil would be created to help her lie completely still while awake, and the dog would have to be gradually introduced to the sounds of the MRI without being repeatedly exposed to its radiation. Finally, a high value treat would need to be offered to encourage her participation.
THEY CARE, THEY REALLY CARE…
The book Berns wrote about his adventure is How Dogs Love Us. He proved the emotional connection he feels to his dogs is felt by them as well and can be seen in their brain activity. They do care and are indeed attached to us. Newest research, using an MRI machine and several dogs, indicates that dogs understand speech the same way that we do, separating tone from meaning. They listen for the emotion behind our words. Emotional cues were found to be processed on the right side of the brain, while words were processed on the left, just like in humans. I read this book several years ago and it set the stage for embarking on my own experiment.
The book How Dogs Love Us and posts from a speech therapist on Instagram, Christina Hunger, encouraged me to find out what Davey can learn. Christina employed principles she uses to teach nonverbal children to teach her canine companion, Stella, how to communicate with her. Using recordable answer buttons that have commonlyused words recorded on them in Christina’s voice, she has been able to teach words to Stella, so that Stella can communicate her needs by stepping on the appropriate button or buttons.
UNLOCKING COMMUNICATION
She employs techniques from Augmentative and Alternative Communication theory. When children cannot verbally express themselves, a therapist must find a different way to allow them to communicate. It
Davey Jones
is not that they do not have a need to communicate with others, they just can’t find the way to do so. Tools to help them unlock communication pave the way for a richer life experience.
We use AAC when we gesture, when we use facial expressions to share our feelings, when we write down a note and pass it to someone. Dogs have close relationships to their humans but rely on us to interpret their needs. If we don’t notice their clues, we may not act on their requirements.
DAVEY’S TURN
When Davey wants fresh water, he will stick out his tongue. However, he also sticks out his tongue when hungry. The answer buttons allow a dog to press a button to tell their owner exactly what they want. So, if he presses “water,” I know that a dog biscuit is not the solution to the outstretched tongue.
Starting with buttons that have my prerecorded voice saying “walk,” another “water,” and one that says “food,” we hope Davey will one day step on the buttons himself, just as Stella does, and thus have
some agency, and a way to communicate with his people and ask for his needs to be met. If he can learn this, we will then add more nouns and verbs on buttons so he can widen his vocabulary.
At this point, he listens for the correct button to be pressed as a confirmation that we both know what he wants. He has started to try harder to let us know what he needs, sitting close to either his water or food to tell us that a need is not being met. He never attempted to let us know before. Whether he wanted to go outside, have food or water, or hope for a treat, he did not tell or show us and we had to guess.
I imagine living in a crate with other cats and dogs in crates beside him, in a motel room, left him feeling there was no point in communicating with humans. I feel that even if he does not step on the buttons due to his long-term fear of touching “furniture,” he at least has managed to make us understand some of his needs. Our communication is much improved by this experiment.
Dogs are such wonderful companions and after reading about the Dog Project, and then seeing Hunger for Words on Instagram, I am left feeling that we can get to know our furry friends much better and can enrich their lives and ours.
Since we have decided to share our worlds with these creatures, why not see if our communication with them can improve? Dogs have been domesticated for many years and are programmed to please us. Now we can potentially engage with them with a bit more accuracy.
