How to Speak Dog: Mastering the Art of Canine Communication Stanley Coren ISBN 074320297X Learn to better understand and communicate with your dog. More information $18.70 $11.20 £7.19

Reviewed by: Elizabeth Gredley

If you have a dog, or come into contact with dogs, you need to read this fascinating book. Using humour, illustrations and anecdotes, psychologist Stanley Coren teaches humans the language of dogs. He also makes a convincing case for considering dog communication a language as complex as that of a two-year-old child.

He calls the language dogs speak "Doggish" and the language we speak to dogs "Doggerel." Drawing on both scientific research and personal experience, he covers the meanings of different dog sounds and body postures, how understanding "Doggish" helps us train our dogs and how dogs suffer from misunderstanding.

There's even a chapter comparing the language of dogs and cats and showing why they often misunderstand each other.

A "Visual Glossary" of dog body posture and a "Doggish Phrasebook" of different sounds and their meanings concludes the book.

Stanley Coren in Person
May 5, 2000 at the BC SPCA/Canadian Federation of Humane Societies conference held in Vancouver, Canada

A large man with a colourful scarf around his neck and an orange dog at his side walked to the front of the room - Stanley Coren and his Nova Scotia Duck Toller. The room was full of SPCA* people eager to hear "how to talk dog" from this author of three books, The Intelligence of Dogs, Why We Choose the Dogs We Do, and the latest, How to Talk Dog. Coren did not disappoint. The next hour was packed with amusing, informative and often eye-opening insight into inter-dog and human-dog communication.

Stanley Coren didn't stand still. As he moved around, the dog watched intently and followed his every move. Coren told us all about dog body language and how we communicate and miscommunicate with dogs, and finished with a succinct explanation of why dogs and cats don't get along.

His talk was sprinkled with training tips and interesting facts.

The first surprising fact was that dogs don't use sound as primary communication. Humans bred dogs to make noise. The average dog makes 40-45 different sound patterns and understands about 160 words, roughly the same as a 2-year-old human.

Coren said that the key to a dog's understanding our verbal commands is his name. Always use the name first to alert him that the words which follow are for him. In many cases though, the dog is reading our body language rather than listening to the words.

An interesting and useful remark was that yelling at a dog to stop barking actually encourages him to bark more. The dog interprets our sounds as barking and therefore an indication that he should keep going. What we need to do instead is mimic the mother wolf by putting a hand over the dog's muzzle and giving a low, short, "quiet." Coren said it was like a herbal remedy - repeat as necessary and after awhile, the dog will listen to our voice.

Using diagrams and amusing anecdotes, Coren clearly showed different postures and what they mean.

Dogs have a rich set of facial expressions but not the range of humans because they have a muzzle not lips. On the other hand, dogs have expressive ears, humans don't.

Dogs communicate through ear position, wrinkles on muzzle, shape of mouth, and height and movement of tail. People misinterpret a lot of dog communication. Wagging tails, open mouths, licking tongues, yawning, sweaty pawprints and raised paws have meanings that people have tradionally misinterpreted.

In reference to children and dogs, Coren said, "It's amazing to me as a psychologist that all our kids don't get eaten." Everything children typically do in approaching a dog is very threatening in dog language. It's important to teach them proper dog etiquette.

Dogs and cats use the same body postures to say opposite things in everything from ear and tail position to rollover. It's no wonder they have to learn to get along!

Listening to Stanley Coren for an hour whet my appetite for more. His insight and amusing, down-to-earth approach can only help both dogs and people understand each other better.

Chapter Titles

Conversations with Canines
Evolution and Animal Language
A Dog Is Listening
Is the Dog Really Listening?
Animal Noise or Animal Speech?
The Dog Speaks
Learning to Speak
Face Talk
Ear Talk
Eye Talk
Tail Talk
Body Talk
The Point of the Matter
Sex Talk
Signing and Typing
Scent Talk
Dogs Talking to Cats
Doggish Dialects
Is It Language?
Talking Doggish and Doggerel
Appendix: Visual Glossary and Doggish Phrasebook