For those of you without grey hair, the index cards on the right are how we organized information back in the dark ages. (Also known as The 80’s.) I found hundreds of them this weekend while cleaning out a closet, kept from the research I did for my dissertation on the effect of acoustic structure on receiver response.
I have to admit that I was amazed at how much work I had done researching the central question–does the structure of a sound influence how an animal responds to it? I’m sure you know that feeling–“Did I really write that?” or “Did I really climb that mountain?”or “Was I ever that young/pretty/strong/athletic?”–insert appropriate adjective here.
Besides being blown away by the effort involved in doing research and keeping track of information in years past, I was also struck by the universal truth, at least in mammals and birds, that “It’s not so much what you say, but how you say it”. Back in the 80’s, I recorded acoustic signals from over 110 animal handlers speaking a variety of languages (including some obscure ones like Basque and Quechua) to encourage working dogs and horses to sped up, slow down and go right or left.
The results were overwhelmingly consistent: Handlers used short, rapidly repeated notes to encourage movement or speed animals up. They used short, abrupt single notes to stop fast-moving animals, and long, slow extended notes with little frequency change to slow or soothe them. Part of my analysis was comparing how each individual handler changed their signals depending on how the animal was behaving and how they wanted it to behave. Look at these sonograms from one handler, using clicks and smooches to get her horse moving.
The 4 tongue clicks in the upper left were given while I stood beside her (my bulky Uher tape recorded strapped to my chest) and asked her to use sound to get her horse moving forward. (Sonograms are easy to read–frequency or pitch (high or low) is on the vertical axis, time on the horizontal. “Pure” sounds like whistles look thin, while “noisy” sounds like voice and smooches are fatter.
In the top right, the handler still made “short, repeated notes,” but half as many and with a longer inter-note interval. I had again asked her to start her horse walking, but at that point her horse wasn’t standing still quietly. He was frisky, and you can see that she moderated the qualities of the sound’s structure to modulate how stimulating her cue would be.
In the bottom frames she and her horse were trotting past me. When they came along side I had asked her to signal her horse, using sound only, to speed up into a canter (bottom left) and later, to go as fast as possible (bottom right). The vertical notes are smooches, and you can see that she increased the number of notes and decreased the inter note interval to get her horse to gallop.
Here’s what is crazy cool about this. First, it’s not just that we humans use sound this way to communicate what we want the receiver to do. It’s that it works, and not just for our species. For example, check out what Marler, Duffy and Pickett found in chicken vocalizations. Note they say that the “call rate” (# of notes per time interval) influences the approach of the hen, and that females approached at the highest rates to calls given at the highest rates. In other words–short, rapidly repeated notes act to speed an animal up, just like it does when we call “Pup Pup Pup Pup” or click repeatedly to get a horse to move forward. All those note cards, about the vocalizations and responses of dozens of species of mammals and birds, contained a raft of information that HOW you say something makes all the difference. You gotta love science!
(FYI, my dissertation was published in 1988, titled “The Effect of Acoustic Features on Receiver Response in Mammalian Communication,” University of Wisconsin–Madison. You can also read about this research in McConnell, Patricia B. 1990. “Acoustic Structure and Receiver Response In Canis Familiaris.” Animal Behaviour 39: 897
This research had a profound effect on how I talk to my dogs. Short, repeated notes to call them to come or speed them up. Long, slow words with little pitch variation to calm or soothe (“Goooooood boy” to Willie in at the vet clinic) and short, abrupt single notes to stop them on a dime while running (“Whoa!” or “Down!”) And you? How do you decide what acoustic cues to use for each signal category?
Of course, sound is not magic. No amount of soft, soothing words are going to completely relax a terrified dog, and a blur of staccato notes won’t speed up one refusing to move forward. But it’s always good to remind ourselves that how we use our voice is important, and it is a good idea to review that part of our training repertoire every once in a while.
And you? I’d love to hear what you’ve learned about how you use your voice when talking to your dog.
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Finally snow! Granted, it was 5 below when we woke up, but it’s good to see some snow on the ground after so little this winter here in southern Wisconsin. I’ve been beginning to worry about a drought in spring, and this assuages those fears a bit. Besides, it’s pretty for us and the dogs seem to love it. Even the sheep are happy–they love eating their hay off the ground instead on in the feeders.
The snow also motivated me to remember what I learned in my Contemplative Photography classes–look at everything as if you’d never seen it before.
Inside, one of our Amaryllis continues to go crazy. This is just one bulb folks. Holy moly!
Here’s to winter outside, and spring inside. I hope the weather is what you want it to be where you live.
LisaW says
Many years ago, I had my own ceramic tile business. I designed, made, and installed custom tiles (mostly for residential applications). Recently, as we were cleaning out drawers for the move, I found my portfolio. Like you, I was initially surprised and somewhat impressed by the body of work I had accomplished. It was such a treat to revisit my installations and remember so many nice clients. A whole lifetime ago but very pleasant to go back for a brief few minutes.
I’ve found with Olive that if I explain to her what is coming up, she handles things with more ease. I don’t know if it’s my tone or body language or both, but if I can lay out the next series of steps or events, she handles it much better. She also responds to tone of voice like no other. I have to make sure I’m in a sing-song or friendly voice or else she will look at me with suspicion. Tone and modulation make all the difference to her.
LisaW says
I forgot to add that she now mostly likes my singing (wasn’t always the case). Singing the song I used to sing to help her calm down or go to sleep still has a visible soothing effect. Not all songs are created equal, though. There are some songs I sing that compel her to leave the room (it must be the song choice :-).
Grace & Baxter says
Nice to see this! I know you talked about in the other end of the leash, which is still one of my favorite books by the way, I recommend it all the time! After I first read your book for my class, and then again recently re-read it, tone has been one of my important focuses in working with my dogs and with my grooming client dogs. (As an aside it now drives me crazy hearing owners try to soothe their dogs for nail trims “good girl good girl calmdowncalmdown calm down” And actually makes me tense as well I’ve noticed.)
I’ve noticed a big difference and was able to use it to call my Malinois mix off chasing a cat with just tone and voice cues. A fantastic first I was thrilled. It really makes a difference and of course it wouldn’t, and isn’t, the first thing you think about when working with dogs, considering we as humans focus on their scent, and not visual or auditory perceptions.
Honey Loring says
Dear Tricia – HELLO! said bright and cheery! I am so glad to have the benefit of your knowledge and expertise at sharing it through this blog.
I remember, back in the days when no grey hair, skinny, more energy, that someone demonstrated this idea of how you say it quite vividly. He stroked his dog calmly and sweetly, and with low slow words what he was saying was something like, “What a bad dog you are, nasty, smelly, badly behaved, terrible.” She melted under his touch and tone!
My stop word is simply, “No!” I use it very infrequently and tell my friends not to use that word with my dogs. Being poodles, I tell them, you can just say, “Don’t jump up,” “Don’t eat that food I just left on the coffee table,” etc. Of course, humans are much harder to train than dogs.
I look forward to getting more of these and being in touch.
We’ve had a real winter in Vermont this year – snow, below zero temps, lots of ice. Must say I’m tired of it. Too much grey, too.
But poor me…I just got a call from a friend who asked if I could pick up her standard poodle baby in Portland, Maine, and fly it to Florida. Does a bear poop in the woods!
Yours is the wonder of dogs, Honey
Dorte Nielsen says
I used to be a reference librarian and I just LOOOVE your index cards. Nice work, very nostalgic.
I once worked with a very talenter and skilles chemist, who said: If you can’t do it by hand you won’t understand what happens digitally 😊
Mona Lindau says
I always have taught recalls using a shaker like a box of tic-tacs or Advil. I have someone else holding the puppy in a restraint, then I run away, stop and shake, the pup usually comes as fast as he can. The pressure release from the restraint makes for a fast start, the chase instinct kicks in by my running and the shaker works much better than words. Then I found your work and understood why this works, it is also hardwired. Training goes so much faster and better when you go with the hardwired stuff.
The shaker frequency is about 3-4 cps and is there anything in the brain that would resonate at that frequency??? I have not found it yet.
Mary V Tegel says
How do I talk to my animals, or my chidren- – back in the day, when they were young? Just as you say:
and The pitch was varied: chirping, somewhat fast and higher pitched for enticements to pay attention and do something, such as “come along”, and more droning, deeper pitched, and slower cadenced for when they were overly exited, too fast, or unhappy, such as “easy.” Seldom do I or did I bark — it doesnt work when they are also barking or fretting
Barb Stanek says
Was I ever that energetic?? Been there!
Jenny H says
I think I just absorbed the importance of ‘it is not what you say that matters so much as how you say it’ as I grew up. In ribs and drabs. Sarcasm (when what is saif does not match the way it is said) I know is hated by both children and dogs.
Scott Lithgow’s book “Training and Working Dogs for quiet confident control of stock” (UQP) alerted me the the importance of rising and falling notes as well as long versus short notes when using whistle ‘commands’ — further research increased my understanding.
Both Julius Fast’s and Allan Pease’s books on Body Language alerted me to just how much even our human communication is based on ‘non-verbal’ communication — including use of the voice –slow/fast, high/low, soft/loud. Estimates vary from 7% up to 35% for ‘verbal’ communication. (And I suspect that the difference here is just what is being talked about!)
Those of us who talk to our dogs know just how much they can understand from normal spoken ‘human’– and I expect that it is more the tone and tempo of our voices, as well as other body signals that allow this understanding. I’ve always said that IF you talk to your dogs (in sentences) you will subconsciously use the right inflections and give off the right body signals.
Mary Eckstein says
I’m glad you are including research on horse/human communication as more and more of us use +R and ground work to establish relationships with our equine friends. You realize as you train, that less and less is more with horses. Their hearing is just as good, maybe better than dogs in some cases. I’ve observed how important smell is to them also.
Cindy Knowlton says
Communicating in soothing tones does as much to model balanced arousal for our dogs as it does to calm the handlers we coach to do so in our Connection, Cooperation & Control program. Great to see it confirmed and laid out as you have here, and to have a resource to point folks to. Thanks for all you do!
Charles G. Couturier says
Dear Patricia,
It feels really good to read from someone that has passion for human dog communication. I find this notion that we could teach a bit (and sometimes a fair one) of human language principles to another animal. Thank you very much.
I’d like to answer one of your question, and also ask a question to you.
“And you? How do you decide what acoustic cues to use for each signal category?”
I speak to my shiba inu in 5 different human languages, + some sounds which aren’t words per se. I cherry pick from 5 languages to try and get the best “sound” possible, given the communication I want to issue. These codes are pronounced in a manner which exploits the acoustic features that made me chose them.
Sounds are very important as well. Dogs respond better to sounds, than to words (at least it’s the case with mine). A fair % of all my communications aren’t related to obedience at all. I spend as much time implementing communications for which, I don’t expect the dog to perform an action. Naming things for instance, allows me to teach my Shiba our way to enjoy looking at life whilst walking at steady comfortable pace (e.g. “look, a dog, look a person, look but keep walkin, find your pleasure in looking at all these interesting things”). The more she understands concepts, the better the connection, the better the obedience, as she’s well intentionned. I feel she enjoys learning communicating this way.
I have a code that means play! And she does at least 50% of the time. Starts from no contact state, I say play (missik, it’s in inuktituk), and she responds jumping at the other dog’s face.
Here’s a little example. Usually, the first 15min of a walk belongs to her. I follow, she’s entirely free. But this time, I see a lot of distractions (i.e. lots of birds). So I give her a bit of a warmup to get sharper obedience. I ask her to heel. Not natural in this context, I need (or choose) to communicate a lot.
You have an exemple of the impact of fast short repeated sounds on the pace. She takes off as soon as she hears moc moc moc moc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SpkUxNsrs
Now my question. Since dogs tend to use repetition between themselves, do you agree that we should condition ourselves (h/d dyad) to aim for obedience at first call? In which case my tendency to repeat myself is a flaw. I can tell that my dog feels better, more confident (that she actually understood what I meant), when I repeat. It’s the case for a few things.
Also, and my apologies you may have provided an answer, e.g. in your books. I am reading “The other end of the leash” right now. In reference to this acoustic vs visual communication. Obviously for a Shiba, visual would have made more sense. Would you say it’s worth spending more time developing acoustic? Even with those beagles that clearly responded better to visual?
Thank you very much.
Charles
Trisha says
First of all Charles, I envy your ability with language! I’m just awful at learning languages, and can’t imagine speaking five of them. But I love learning, and my life has been improved by learning the Inuktituk word for play (missik, love the sound of it) and moc moc moc as a way to encourage movement.Your question about repetition is such a good one. I’d rather answer over a cup of tea with an hour to talk, but the painfully short version is that first, there are two kinds of repetition,right? One is the use of ‘moc moc moc’ or ‘pup pup pup’ as a way of stimulating movement or energy. No one could argue would that I’d think. The kind of repetition that trainers caution about is saying one cue and then repeating it until the dog finally responds–something many of us do often. This is only a problem if you really NEED your dog to respond the first time, as in competition or if in danger. Avoiding it also eliminates the problem that your dog simply never does what you ask the first time you ask, and waits for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th repetition. What’s interesting to me is the grey area in between those two types of repetition–saying Lie Down Lie Down in long, slow notes, designed to get your dog to lie down but also to calm down. I’d argue that Charles is brilliant at it (listen to his video, you’ll want to go on a walk with him too). Thus, the bottom line question is, from an ethologicaly perspective, is a sound we make just conveying information about an expected action, or is it attempting to influence the emotional or physiological state of the dog? Sometimes it’s both, right? I love thinking about this… whose coming over to talk about it over tea?
Denise Kovach says
Tricia,
I stumbled upon your lecture “The Science of Dog Behavior” on UTube today. Thank you so much for sharing your knowlege with the general public. My great pyrenees Yonah also appreciates it. She rescued my family last May and we are still getting to know each other. One day I will figure out what it means when she stands in front of me almost in my face…eyes wide open, panting…back legs doing a side to side dance…with a firm expectation that I know what she wants. So far we have ruled out what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean a walk outside to potty or more Yummies or I want to play fetch or catch the ball. One possibility is that it means I want your permission to go to my kennel to take a nap. Oh…and give me a treat because I am a good girl going to my kennel. I plan to check out your books and blog for a bit of guidance and insight into the behavior of dogs.
Maya says
I learned a lot, how to simplify my communication with my dog, when I got my last rescue – he was a victim of a hoarding situation and had lived in a pack of around 60 other heads in a small house for the first years of his life. We started with classic obedience and trick training to build his confidence and ability to learn, but it was a problem then and still is now that he gets very confused and stressed at times with all the words and visual cues (part of that is a fault of me as a trainer, of course).
Since outside the house him off-leash walks were not a problem (he follows close by or behind me all the time), after reading a german dog trainer’s book on dog-to-dog communication and various character types of dogs, I switched to body language and simple sounds.
For example, a quiet “Schtt!” means “stop”, a two-three tongue clicks are meant to alert him that we are changing directions or that he is too far behind and that he should hurry along. “[Name], ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!” is used for an immediate recall – stop, what ever you are doing now and come here. “HEY!” is for extreme situations (“STOP now!”) and, since my dog is sound sensitive, this is reserved for emergencies only – he stops and freezes on the spot. It is also very important, what kind of and how much emotion/intensity I put in the sound.
In terms of body language – I learned that during the walks we have silent dialogues, where each look, motion, stop and moment of alertness is meant to discuss, what are we doing now. For example, “are you sure we are going in the right direction, because usually we go that way?”, “there is a dog ahead – what are we going to do about it” and more often “am I walking in the right direction”. I also noticed, how very well he can read my intentions judging by my pace – if it is a leisurely walk, then he too goes and sniffs around as much as he wants, if it is a quick-pace, then he too picks this up and focuses on following me close behind. By imitating his play bows and playful mouthing behaviour (with my hand), I got my dog to play with me.
Simple and meaningful communication helped me a great deal to let my dog know, what I want, and make his life easier understanding me and gave an insight, why for us the classical conditioning did not work that well.
Charles G. Couturier says
Thank you so much Patricia, your reply meant a lot to me.
I must say that you are the most important behaviorist I am studying at the moment. I was thinking just from reading your book; i.e. even before noticing here that your passion is still burning intensely… (I was going to say after all those years ooops no offense, grrr I talk to dogs more easily than I talk to human lol).
You help a lot of people.
Now I want to correct an important thing. I speak French fluently, and struggle a bit with English. And I have this roughly 50 codes vocabulary which I am getting better and better every day at. I selected 3 languages I knew nothing about to provide me with a richer set of words.
Do you think that we change who our dog is, by “infecting” her with primal notion of spoken language? For instance, do you think that having named “Pascale”, i.e the human on which Sana loves to jump the most, would alter the way Sana dreams?
A bit before she goes to sleep (she gets on the couctch next to me). I tend to talk to her about how our walk was, who we met, what we did. Of course, I get the foxy tilting head. She listens to this, very intensely. Do you think teaching spoken language has a deep impact on cognition?
Thank you, I won’t bother you with another question no worries 🙂
Thank you.