To me, nothing could be more boring than a walk, or jog, with Callie when she “heels” every step of the way. (Not much danger of that, as she’s still a full-of-beans puppy, but you know what I mean.) That’s obedience run amuk. I love it when Callie participates in our morning jog, and we go out of our way to let her make a few of the decisions.

1. “I really like to go walking or jogging.” For starters, what do you think your dog tells you when you’re getting ready to go for a walk or jog? Does it get excited when you put your jogging clothes on? Does it hydrate when it sees the leash coming? Callie’s predecessor, Jamie, did both of these things every morning before our jog. And Callie gets very excited when she sees me putting on my jogging shoes. She knows her turn is coming.

2. “OK. It’s time to pee or pooh.” You probably already know your dog’s pee & pooh habits, but can you tell when it’s sniffing for a place to do its business or just sniffing? When your dog starts sniffing the ground, it might be telling you, “Hey, I need to make a quick pit stop!” Your dog will appreciate it if you “hear” its message, and give it a little leeway.

3. “I need some help.” Callie (and Jamie before) sometimes comes to a cold, hard STOP in the middle of a jogging step. My first reaction is usually, “Let’s get on with it. We’re jogging, not looking at scenery.” But when a dog does this, it’s often trying to say something. Jamie’s message was often, “I’ve got some sticks stuck in my feathers, and I need some help getting them out.” Here’s a photo from My Doggie Says… Jamie was fine once we got the stick out of her butt feathers.

Callie’s feathers aren’t quite as full yet, but last summer she did the “hard stop” thing a time or two because she got some tar in the hair between her toes. She appreciated it when we helped her clean things up.

4. “Could I please stop and retrieve something I see over there?” Another reason Callie stops sometimes is that she sees something she wants to retrieve. After all, she is a Golden Retriever. She has a very polite way of saying, “Could we please stop for a minute, so I can retrieve that pine cone?” Or, “Could I pick up that stick and carry it for a while?” There’s nothing she’d rather do than carry a pine cone, or a stick, or a ball while she jogs.

5. “Could I please stop and get a drink out of that water sprinkler?” The first few times Jamie did this, it startled us. We had to think a little about what she was doing. But then the message became clear. She came to a complete stop right beside a water sprinkler. It was her polite way of asking, “can I grab a quick drink?”

A daily walk or jog offers many opportunities to “listen” to your dog and get better at understanding what it’s telling you.

Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, has a huge following and a way with dogs. You’re probably familiar with his TV program & other works. Here’s a recent article from the UK’s Telegraph.

It’s been well demonstrated that dogs need to know who’s in charge. In a wolf pack situation, there’s an alpha animal. In a family home, the owner needs to be boss. But isn’t there more to owning a dog than getting it to obey?

“My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie” is sort of a “Rosetta Stone” that can help you learn how to understand some of the messages hidden in your dog’s behavior. Why did Fido do that? What’s he trying to say? If you can learn to “decode” some of these messages, you can have a much more meaningful relationship with your dog.

So what is Dog Listening?

It’s mostly about observing your dog’s behavior and figuring out what it’s trying to tell you. Have you ever seen your dog do something that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time? Sometimes, if you work at it, you can figure out what your dog is saying.

Here’s a recent example. Yesterday, I took Callie on her morning jog by myself, because Barbara had an early meeting. When we reached the road that leads to the golf course parking lot, Callie made a big right turn and started to cross the street into the parking lot.

My first reaction was, “Why in the world did she do that?” But then I realized that Barbara always takes her through the parking lot in order to get out of the street traffic for a while. Duh! Callie was just saying, “Can’t we go this way? This is how Barbara and I usually do it.” Both Callie and Jamie seem to remember every route they ever took, and they are quick to re-trace old paths.

So why care which way Callie wants to go? I think it’s good for a dog to be part of a relationship. Sometimes we do it Callie’s way. Sometimes we do it my way. I don’t see anything wrong with letting her call some of the shots. I think it’s good for her self confidence, and it make our activities more of an interaction than “I command and you obey.” Instead of a master/slave relationship, our relationship becomes more like two friends sharing an experience.

How do you break doggie code? Here are a few tricks.

Your dog’s breeding has a lot to say about what it has to say. Callie’s a golden retriever. If she starts to run toward a stick, it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that she’s probably saying, “May I please retrieve that stick?” So keep in mind the things that your dog was bred to do.

There are probably also some things that your dog just likes to do. For example, Callie loves to play soccer in the back yard. So when she sticks her nose through the crack in the sliding glass door to the back yard, it’s easy to see that she’s saying, “Hey, Fred, could we please play a little soccer?”

Another good place to look to break doggie code is the recent past. Dogs are pretty good at remembering things. Barbara’s been letting Callie carry a small rubber baseball on her jog, so when Callie stops in the middle of the street and looks at Barbara’s fanny pack (containing the ball), it’s pretty obvious that Callie is saying, “Could I please carry my ball now?”

Sometimes, you have to stop and think, “What are the possibilities?” My adventure in learning to “listen” to Jamie started with a mysterious “wuuf” in the middle of the night. (A “wuuf” is a special doggie version of “woof.”) I couldn’t imagine what she was trying to say. So I went through a list of alternatives. She didn’t need to go pee, or she would have run to the door. Same thing if she wanted to chase our neighbor’s cats; she would have run to the door.

Finally, I realized that, because of her ACL surgery some months earlier, she couldn’t jump up on our bed any more. So I lifted her up onto the bed, and, sure enough, that’s exactly what she was asking me to do.

Dog Listening can be very rewarding for you and for your dog.