I was the speaker at a local event yesterday, and a member of the audience said, “Didn’t you write a book about how to talk to your dog?” (I get this question often.) My answer was, “No, it’s about your dog talking to you!”

It’s important to remember, if you want to have a close relationship with your dog, that relationships — and communication — work two ways. You talk to your dog, and your dog talks to you. The problem is, you and your dog probably speak different languages.

“My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie” is a collection of photographic (color) examples of the messages my Golden Retriever, Jamie, sent as part of her every-day communication. The point of the book is that, by observation, you can learn to understand your dog’s messages, which are almost always sent by “body language.”

Much of our training (and reading) about how to work with our dogs focuses on teaching them to respond to certain commands, like “sit,” “stay,” “down,” “speak,” etc. Callie (Jamie’s successor) is going through this “puppy kindergarten” training right now (Lomita Obedience Training Club) The focus here is on sending messages to your dog, including using a “clicker” to tell your dog, “A yummie puppy treat is on it’s way!” The clicker reinforces the puppy treat reward for good behavior, and it is becoming an important part of sending messages to your dog. (Here’s a good article on “clicker training.”)

But the other side of communication is learning to listen to what your dog is saying, which really means observing your dog’s behavior and figuring out what messages it might be sending.

Here, from 101-dog-training-tips.com, is a good article on the subject of dog communication and body language. Once you get better at understanding your dog’s body language communication, you will also get better at using your body language to communicate with it.

For example, when your dog or puppie jumps on you, you can try to correct it by yelling “no” or “wrong,” but the “dog body language way” is to either turn away (expressing dissatisfaction) or follow the advice of this article from The How-To Lounge. It suggests grabbing your dog’s front paws and forcing it to stand on it’s hind legs, which it will not like. You release the front paws after a few seconds and say “OFF.”

To have a closer relationship with your dog, make sure you’re speaking (and hearing) it’s language.

For our newer readers, this is a repeat of the introductory post, so you get the flavor of the My Doggie Says… blog. I’m travelling. Back Thursday.

Does your dog talk to you? Can you tell what it’s saying? I spent the last five years photographing my Golden Retriever and capturing some of her body language messages. The result is a book titled My Doggie Says…: Messages from Jamie. How a dog named Jamie talks to her people. The web site for the book is www.mydoggiesays.com. In this blog, I plan to share some of the stories from the book. Also, everywhere I go these days, dog-lovers want to have fun conversations about their dogs and how they “talk” to their owners. So I plan to share some of these stories, too. You will also meet a four-month-old Golden Retriever puppy named Callie (short for Callaway) (short for Woodland’s Callaway Hole-in-One). I will post pictures of Callie as she grows up. One of Callie’s favorite things is to play soccer. I’ll post some pictures of Callie playing soccer in the next few days.

Please share your “dog-talk” stories with me and the other readers. Our pets communicate with us more than a lot of people realize. My Doggie Says… has helped a lot of people become more aware of their pets’ communications skills.

Happy Dog-Talking!

Callie is the first dog we’ve “crate trained.” Here are a few articles on how to crate train a dog: “Crate Training a Puppy or Adult Dog.” “Confinement and Crate Training,” the San Francisco SPCA.

We’ve been very pleased with the results, but we weren’t sure what the “end game” would be. Does Callie have to live in the crate forever? When would she be free to run around the house? Will she want to go back to the crate on her own?

Well, the last two nights answered some of these questions. We decided on Friday night to let Callie sleep on our bed. So we left the crate door open, and, sure enough, she jumped up on the bed and slept on the corner where Jamie used to sleep. Here, from My Doggie Says…, is a picture of Jamie sleeping on our bed:

Callie did just fine, except for bouncing off the walls — and me — for the first two or three minutes. But she settled down and had a good night’s sleep on the bed.

Last night was different. She jumped around for a few minutes and finally settled down on her corner. But, at about midnight, Barbara asked, “Is Callie still on the bed?” I took a look, and she wasn’t. She had jumped off the bed and snuggled up in her crate!

This made me feel really good about the crate. She obviously sees it as “her” place, and she was comfortable sleeping in it, even though she could go anywhere in the bedroom. This also started to make me feel better about the “end game.” So maybe there really will be a time when Callie has the run of the house & yard but will choose to spend some time in her crate because it’s “her home.”

Then, at about 2:00 in the morning, Barbara (asker of all questions), said, “Is Callie still in her crate?” So I checked (being the answerer of some questions) . Callie wasn’t on the bed, and she wasn’t in her crate. She had snuggled by the sliding glass door, with her nose right in the open crack of the door — getting lots of nice fresh night air.

I thought this was wonderful. One of my doggie fascinations is, “How do dogs decide where to be?” One answer is certainly “near nice fresh air.” But this is another topic.

And then, when it was time to get up, we noticed that Callie had moved to the floor by Barbara’s side of the bed. Callie had an adventurous night — starting to sleep on the bed, moving to her crate, then some fresh air and, finally, snuggling up close to Barbara.

Somehow, it all felt really good. It validated some of the crate theory — that she liked it well enough to choose to sleep there for a while. But it was also fun to see her making her own decisions about “where to be.”

As I reported before, my three-year-old granddaughter, Lauren, has a stinky. Actually she has about three stinkies, because one of them is usually so stinky that it needs to be washed. Sixteen-month-old Granddaughter Amelia has also started to use one of Lauren’s stinkies. Here’s Amelia with a borrowed stinky.

The stinky, or security blanket was popularized by Linus in the Charles Schultz Peanuts cartoons. Psychologists call these things security objects. Here, from Wikipedia, is some background on security objects. At least as they pertain to children. The article says that they can help children adapt to new situations and aid in their learning. This seems to work for dogs, too.

Jamie (My Doggie Says…) used a red, blue and yellow stuffed ball as her “stinky.” She kept it nearby most of the day. And at night, she often carried it into our bedroom to park it a few inches from her nose. She didn’t chew on it a lot; she just kept it close. Sometime, she talked to it in a high-pitch, whinie voice. But when her ball got lost forever, Jamie was depressed for several weeks. She had obviously lost an important part of her life. Here’s Jamie with her ball:

Callie’s stinky is her little stuffed dog. She carries it around and gently chews on it frequently. But especially at night. Almost every evening, she finds it and gently “gums” it just before bedtime. Sometimes for thirty or forty minutes. It seems to put her in a very peaceful mood — ready for a good night’s rest.

Monday morning, at Lake Arrowhead, Callie was looking for her stinky. I could see that she realized it was still downstairs in the bedroom. So she ran down two flights of stairs to look for it. Realizing that it was still in her crate, with the door closed, I followed her down. Sure enough, she ran right to the crate. I opened the crate door, and Callie ran in, collected her stinky puppy, and ran back up two flights of stairs to enjoy it.

Callie inherited her stinky puppy from Jamie, but it wasn’t really a security object for Jamie; it was just another toy. It’s amazing that, after about six months of chewing on it, or “gumming” it, Callie hasn’t shredded it. She’s very gentle with it.

Callie does something with her stinky puppy that I’m not sure I understand. Jamie did the same thing. She will offer it to me, almost like a gift. I’ve seen her offer it to her doggie cousin Ishka, too. She offers it, but she doesn’t really let go. I’m reluctant to force her to “give” the puppy to me, because I don’t really think she intends to give it to me. And I don’t think she wants to get into a tug of war. So I usually hold onto it for a minute, while she’s still got it in her mouth. Then she seems happy to walk away and enjoy it again. It’s almost like she’s offering to share her most precious thing with me, but just a litle bit.

Watch your dog and see if you can figure out which toy is its stinky. Which toy does it play with the most? Which toy does it play with at bedtime? If it does have a stinky, then be aware that it might be extremely important to your dog’s good emotional balance to spend time with it. If it gets lost, help your dog find it.

It will appreciate your help more than you can know.

Does your dog talk to you? If it did, would you know what it’s saying? That’s really what “My Doggie Says…” is about — listening and observing and trying to figure out what your dog is telling you.

Last night, Barbara and I went outside for our pre-bedtime Jacuzzi (or Cajjuzzi, as granddaughter Lauren would say). Just as we got into the water, we heard four loud barks from Callie.

Now, this is pretty amazing all by itself, because we’ve only heard Callie bark three of four times. A few weeks ago, we were starting to wonder if she even had a voice. But she did bark at some raccoons at Lake Arrowhead and another time when a neighbor’s dog walked by off the leash. So it was surprising to hear Callie bark so loud and so emphatically.

Right away we wondered “what could be the problem?” She was in her crate, inside the house, with a sheet draped over it for the night. She has gotten tangled up in the sheet a time or two, so that was a possibility. The only other things I could think of, as I got out of the Jacuzzi, were that she was stuck in the crate somehow, that she wanted to come outside, or that her water dish was empty.

When I pulled the sheet back, Callie was standing up with her nose by her water dish, which was totally empty. I thought, “it sure looks like Callie was asking for a puppy water refill.” I filled the dish to the brim, closed the crate door, and pulled the sheet back over the crate.

And that was the end of the barking. I got back in the Jacuzzi, and Callie didn’t say another word. She was just saying, “Please fill my puppy water dish!”

It’s hard to understand what a dog is saying, sometimes, but it’s very rewarding when you figure it out. Sometimes you just have to think, “what are the different things he/she could be saying under the current circumstances?”

Think how good it makes your dog feel when you do finally “get the message.”