Some nonsense about talking dogs

                                                                                    By Dave Hamby

              There’s this old Gary Larsen cartoon that shows a man walking down a residential street with an apparatus on his head sprouting numerous wires and antenna.   There are dogs on both sides of the street barking at him.  The caption reads, “Finally Professor Smithoff has perfected his device that translates dog barking into English.”   The voice balloons above each of the barking dogs say “Hey! Hey, hey, hey!”

              While this cartoon is basically accurate, I’m of the opinion it’s not complete.   When my dogs are barking they’re trying to tell me something.   “Arf arf arf” on a clear summer night translates to, “Hey, will you look at that beautiful moon.”   “Woof woof woof” in the middle of the day means, “Hey, I dare that UPS man to get out of that truck,” or sometimes, “Hey, will you look at that stupid cat standing on the fence making a rude gesture at us.”

              This was brought home to me recently after a big storm.  The next morning when I let my dogs out they went to barking like a flying saucer had landed in my back yard.  

              I went outside to see if someone was in our yard or if there was some strange critter hanging around.  There they were, barking furiously at this tree.  

             “What?” I asked them. “Ruff ruff ruff!” they replied.  All I could see was this big tree so I started to go inside. Emily, our Golden Lab-sneaky neighbor’s dog mix, ran over to the tree and grabbed a broken limb and started to drag it over to me.

             “You wanta play fetch?” I asked. “Ruff ruff ruff,” she replied. I threw the limb down the driveway.  She looked at me like I was as stupid as the cat.  “Ruff ruff ruff,” she said and turned to the tree and started barking again.  

              That’s when I noticed that the tree had fallen down during the night.  Here was a sixty foot tall tree lying on its side and I was asking “What?”  I would have noticed the tree had fallen sooner or later without all of the barking, but I still thought it was really cool that Emily could communicate so well with me.  

              When I told my wife about this she said it was just like the Lassie episode when Timmy fell down the well. “What,” I asked, “Did Lassie go “ruff, ruff, ruff” and then bring in a bucket of water?”   “Emily is right,” she replied, “You are as stupid as the cat.”

              This isn’t the only example of my dog’s non-verbal communication skills.  A couple of weeks ago when I was getting my driveway repaved we had a truck full of workers stop in front of the garage and begin to get out to do a hard days work.  

              Here comes Emily the golden Lab and Hannah the black Lab running through the garage lickety split going “woof, woof, woof.”  I didn’t know my dogs were bilingual and could bark in Spanish. I say this because the English translation of what they were saying was, “Hey, you-all need to just get right back into that truck.”  Even though most of the workers were limited in their English skills, they were able to understand my dogs perfectly.  They all hopped into the truck pronto.

              Folks who are not dog people don’t always understand what dogs are trying to tell them. An example of this was a couple of years ago when our Border collie named Zephyr was still alive.  

               She was about seventeen years old and had lost much of her vision, most of her hearing, many of her teeth, and big clumps of hair.  She had also suffered a stroke, hung her head lopsided and she walked around kinda crooked.  

                Some disreputable looking driveway pavers noticed my driveway needed repaving and drove down to ask me if I would hire them to do the job. Zephyr saw them coming and ran out to the driveway going “Woof, woof,   woof.”   What she was saying was, “Man, I wish I had some teeth so I could bite somebody.”

                By the time they got the truck stopped Zephyr forgot why she was running out to the driveway and was looking at the fence as she was barking her head off.  

              Now here was this really old, cloudy eyed, lopsided dog barking at the fence.  The driver of the truck opened his window a little and asked me, “Does that dog bite?”  

              Now Zephyr’s barking at this point translated to; “Hey, why did I come running out here?” She wasn’t even facing the truck, she was barking at the fence.  

               “You bet she bites,” I said without adding that at least she would if she had any teeth left. “You’re lucky she doesn’t just jump through that window and tear you up”.  

             “You want your driveway paved?” the guy in the truck asked while he was closing his window.

              “Nope!” I replied knowing that Zephyr just cut short his sales pitch.

              I guess the point I’m trying to make here is if you pay attention to what your dog is trying to say, you can understand a lot more than just “Hey.”  

              Of course sometimes when they’re outside going “Woof, woof, woof,” all they’re saying is “Hey! Hey! Hey!”      

(This column appeared originally in the Round Rock Leader.   It has been modified some and is available for your publication.)