Dog Speak

I speak dog fairly fluently.  Not Cesar Milan the Dog Whisperer fluency level.  But well enough.

Which is why I was completely surprised the other night to discover perhaps not as well as I thought.

But first, a little context.

Regarding my boast of my dog speaking skills:  We are on dogs number 4 and 5. Daisy, age 10 and Winnie, age 8.  Altogether it has been over 30 years that dogs have been members of our family.  So, you know.  After all that time, you learn to speak their language.  Nothing inherently talented about it. It just goes with the territory and you soak it in, like osmosis.

Some additional context:  Years ago we started out allowing our dogs to sleep in our bed with us.  Until Daisy and Winnie started occupying way too much space in our king-size bed and Ernie and I would find ourselves curled up in a tiny corner of the bed, half falling off it most of the time.

Next step was to put their dog beds on the floor in the bedroom, at the foot of the bed.  This worked for a time until Daisy, who is such a bossy b*&^ch, would pick on Winnie and they’d get into arguments over who was going to sleep on which bed.

Still bleary-eyed and tired from lack of sleep trying to break up that nonsense, we decided we’d put them to sleep in their crates.

This worked beautifully for many years and Ernie and I achieved sleep nirvana.  We had also kicked out the cat, who also used to sleep on the bed with all of us.  We’ve also had cats as part of our family for over 30 years, but I would never ever claim to even approach being able to speak cat.  Dogs? Open-books.  Cats? Mysteries wrapped in enigmas.

I digress.  Back to the dogs.

This sleeping in the crates worked beautifully for many years.  And as they have gotten older, they hardly make it past 8 pm before they just go into the crates themselves, ready for bed. 

However, recently, Daisy had taken to following Ernie up to bed.  I’d come up a little bit later and there was Daisy sleeping on the floor.  I didn’t have the heart to kick her out.  So, I let her stay.  Winnie got curious a couple of times and came up and checked it out for a bit and then was like, “Nah.  The floor? I mean, yeah, there is a rug on it, but I have a nice comfy bed in my crate downstairs.  See ya.”

But then Daisy got greedy.  She kept trying to get up on the bed.  I’d tell her to get off and she would comply.  I would fall asleep and then wake up to find her back on the bed.  I told you she is a b*&^ch.  So after going through that routine numerous times, we decided best to go back to our old tried and true routine of them sleeping in their crates.

Ok, hopefully you are still with me, because now we are getting to it.

The other night, Daisy was ensconced in her crate and started barking.  Speaking dog as I do, I could tell from the type of bark that it did not mean there was an intruder trying to break into the house.  It did not mean that she was arguing with Winnie.  It did not mean that she was in pain or hurt in any way.

I concluded that it meant she did not like being in her crate and wanted back in our bedroom.

Ernie and I conferred and agreed we’d let her ‘bark it out’.  The Ferber Sleep Method for dogs.  So, the Furber Sleep Method?

I don’t know if you have dogs, but trying to sleep while they are barking is a near impossibility.

I got up, after however many minutes, and scolded her, telling her to ‘no bark’.  She looked at me ever so innocently with her big brown eyes and complied.  For about 10 minutes.

Back downstairs I go, rinse, repeat.

After that second time, Ernie says, “You don’t think she has to go the bathroom, do you?”

I paused for a minute to consider that possibility.  Now, whenever Daisy has to go to the bathroom, she doesn’t bark to be let outside.  She stands at the back door, stares outside, then turns and looks at me, then back outside.  If I don’t move fast enough, she will scratch at the door.  We always let the dogs out before crating them for the night.  So I truly did not think that was it.  I was convinced that she just wanted back in the bedroom.

However, as the barking continued, and by the way, the barking was nothing insistent, demanding, or carried any urgency to it.  Just a consistent, medium level, short bark. She’d bark for a bit.  Then pause for a bit. Then start it up again.  Just trying to get our attention. But as it continued, I went downstairs for the third time and let her out of her crate and then opened the back door to see if she needed to go out.

Yup.  She needed to go out. She peed. She pooped. And then she came right back in and went right into her crate, curled up, and went to sleep.

I failed.  So much for my faith in my dog speak skills.  Poor Daisy had to pee and poop and my inability to interpret her bark led to her having to hold it in for however long that whole process was (which felt like forever, but was probably like less than 30 minutes).

Now to be fair to ourselves, this was not a bark we had ever experienced from her.  Normally she/they never have to go back out after their last potty session for the evening.  And since we were re-crating her after she had enjoyed the bedroom, it just seemed logical to us that that was what she had wanted.

However, none of that made me feel any better and I just felt AWFUL.  Which translates into extra hugs and kisses and dog treats for the pooches.

And I learned that one is never done learning.  I got a new lesson in dog speak.  And I now understand that there is much I have yet to learn, no matter how much I think I already know. And that dogs have the patience and forgiveness of saints.