And call me Ma'am when you talk to me

I have learned a lot about dog communication in the past six months. For one thing, I am learning to read Dog. Okay, that sounds weird. Let me explain, but before that have a look at Turid Rugaas's site and read the articles. So here's what I understand by Rugaas's theory. Dogs can't speak, right? By that sentence we humans understand, 'Can't open mouth and go blah blah blah'. Right. But dogs can't talk (different meaning altogether), so they don't use their voices to communicate. Instead they use a complex language of kinesics and proxemics (gesturing and posturing, if you like) to make their intentions known. In dog society, what each dog desperately needs to know is, how does the other dog feel toward me? Will she attack, or play, or just ignore me? There is a clear set of signs for each one, and if humans learn the language, they too can work out what the dog intends. To read Dog, they have to pay attention to what the dog is doing: how are its ears set, is it blinking, yawning, looking away, turning its back, licking its lips, grooming itself and so on? These are subtle signs, there are more dramatic ones like hackle-raising and cowering, but those only communicate a blunt mental state. The subtle gestures are more semantic.

Being able to read rudimentary Dog is essential if you want to carry out any long process of training, such as when you want to stop a behaviour, such as chewing things, freaking out at other dogs, food-guarding etc. Inducing a behaviour from scratch is way easier thn removing an existing behaviour or replacing it with better behaviour. The way to start is with frustration: the moment your dog does the behaviour stop her, and then take away a privilege by chaining, shutting up, or muzzling. If the behaviour is well-developed and is part of a bid for dominance, you are going to spend a long time frustrating it and there will be much heartbreak. But eventually, and hopefully before you're both exhausted, the dog will give up. It will decide, well, nothing I do gets me anything, I'm out of ideas here.

Note that the dog may not be very aware of the 'thing' it's doing, so part of your job is to pinpoint the nasty bit as accurately as possible. You do this by reacting as close to instantly as you can, as if causality just turned you into a puppet. Dogs are very sensitive to timing, and they learn by association, so if two things keep happening one a fraction of a second after the other, the dog will pretty soon associate them. So if you've got that bit right, the dog will go, hmm, my life seems okay but for this bit when my owner freaks out. The dog will then stop the behaviour, but the underlying need that propelled it, dominance, insecurity, boredom, and the big one, desire for attention, any attention, that will remain and find another outlet IF you don't catch that exact moment of giving up and quickly substitute a better behaviour: a quick game of fetch, a treat, maybe following a successful sit, even a pat. In the context, the better behaviour must MAKE SENSE to the dog, that is, it must get as close to meeting the need that underlay the bad behaviour as possible. So if the dog is doing it out of insecurity, make her sit, stay or fetch till you know she's forgotten the incident, and then pat her lots, and she will learn that doing fun things with my owner gets me pat and what the hell was I doing before that? Can't remember.

But to do this you need to catch the magic moment. How will you know when it happens? It will be marked by the language of peace: your dog will TELL you 'I haven't a clue, you got any boss?' She will yawn, open her mouth and pant, blink her eyes, and maybe settle down on the ground. Or she'll look away and start nosing about in a fake-nonchalant way. Or start grooming herself.This is different from the fake-obedience of the dominant dog because in the first case the dog will not look at the owner and in the second he'll be watching slyly to see the reaction. I kid you not. Anyway, at this point us orally-fixated humans say something like how dare you look away when I'm talking to you how dare you yawn in my face when I'm scolding you and freak out more. The poor dog is then confused, and says, look I gave up, I said so, why are you punishing me all over again? And next time he will be careful not to yawn or blink because you've associated a scolding with it, so you won't know your dog's mind because he's taped his mouth shut.

And of course there is a language of war, and the alphabet doesn't begin with snarling and snapping progressing to biting. It starts with a cold fixed stare, with the head lowered and maybe some white showing under the eye. Also a stiff body posture, legs very stiff, with or without hackles. This is the equivalent of 'you talkin' to me?' and is followed by uncouth yodels. However the humans nearly always punish the dog who REACTED, because he was the one who clearly bared his teeth first. However, if this goes one, the starer realises she can get away scot free every time because no one suspects her, while the staree becomes a nervous wreck. So she gets him punished whenever she thinks she can get away with it and laughs evilly to herself. How can you know this? Watch body language before a fight starts. (Of course that essentially means watch all the time because you don't know when the fight will start.)

There will always be a stare, or a very quiet growl. Second stage after growl is to whip the face and jaws sharply away from the staree while keeping the gaze of the widened eyes still fixed on him. This is the equivalent of the parar dada who retracts his fist and holds it there saying aiiisa mar marbo na, marbo ekhane pore jabi shoshane.' If there is no backdown proceed to level 3 and snap. Of course since this is dogs it all happens in a fraction of a second which to us just looks like a whirl of teeth. Why don't those 100 frames a second guys do an episode on dog behaviour? All fo these are clear and present indications of intention to attack. The target dog will instantly respond by attacking himself. But since he's the one who starts yodelling first he gets fingered as the culprit.

The point is, as the owner, until you get this, you will have no clue what the hell is going on. And yes, I speak from experience with the soap opera that is the lives of Babulal and Putlibai. Putli is in turbo nymphet mode. Babulal is insecure because he thinks we don't love him any more. (We yell and lock him up every time he defends himself from Putli's stares.) When we go out, Babulal has to be muzzled because if we see a dog, he tries to drag Putli or me away with his teeth. This is residual dominance because he still thinks it's his duty to defend us even though he knows he's thoroughly incapable of doing so. Next best thing: sink teeth in leg of ward and drag away. This has convinced Putli that he's the kind of little boy who puts chewing gum in little girls' hair so she growls whenever she feels he needs cutting down to size. Insecure Babulal+unamused Putli=mayhem.

Babulal is congenitally insecure anyway. He teases guests and steals their shoes to get attention. Because he was once a little alpha puppy who got all the attention, and he thinks its unfair to take it away just because he's ten times bigger now. Our fault entirely. We have, however, convinced him that in some things he just isn't cut out to be alpha, so now he's in transition. He steals stuff less, but his relationship with Putli is more tense. We have to convince him he's above her but below us, a situation Putli would be happy with if he'd just leave the chewing gum alone. Part of his teasing her is the doggie ethos of dominance: 'no one hurts/teases/chews you except me'. But being dominant over her also means he must defend her, if necessary with his life. Very bad idea. On good days, however, they get along fine. Putli does tend to look like a princess who has mistakenly been married off to the court jester, but she also seems to find his antics amusing. They can play together for hours on end and then something will set them off and they do the whole stare-growl-jerk-snap-yi-yi-yi thing. The biggest trigger being Avijit coming into the room, for some reason.