use your words

I was noticing tonight that our dog sometimes growls. I wasn't noticing for the first time, but it did occur to me to wonder why it doesn't bother me. Occasionally he'll grumble-growl if he gets poked or shoved in the middle of the night (he sleeps in bed with us). Otherwise, though, he only growls if we try to take away one of his toys. I'm willing to bet most dog books would tell me this is a very bad thing, and I must put a stop to it and sternly punish him next time he tries it. But he never snaps, never bites, just growls. And so I disagree.

What do we tell little children when we're training them to play nicely with others? We tell them not to hit Billy because he took your train away; ask him nicely whether you may have a turn playing with it. We tell them, in short, to use their words. Well, dogs don't have language in the way that humans do, and there just isn't a dog vocalization that comes off as a friendly yet assertive request. Well, as I see it, doggy language is a mix-and-match affair. He growls; that's the assertive part. But he's not biting, and his tail is sometimes wagging -- that's the friendly part. And he's holding onto the toy -- that's the request. What he is doing is not the challenge to my authority some might see it as, but his way of communicating to me what he wants.

I find myself a little amazed that some humans with all the benefit of decades of teaching never manage to learn this simple lesson; but without teaching, without training, without even a common language, my amazing dog figured out the principle -- to use his words.