I’ve just read a piece in The Dodo on why dogs howl. It’s all about communication. Their ancestors, wolves, howled to communicate a location or a danger. One of my two dogs, Milo, howls when I play a harmonica on the high scale. And no, I don’t think he’s singing, I think his howler message is, “Please quit and give the world a break.” I’m pretty sure, by his concomitant body posture, that my mouth harp music in certain keys and certain ranges hurts his ears. I practice some songs when he’s out of the house just to avoid torturing him (and well . . . full disclosure here, his howling criticism of some of my harp riffs have been so insistent and heart-rendering that I accepted his conclusion to give the world a break and have abandoned those riffs altogether) (and, it’s a little embarrassing to realize your mutt has better musical tastes than you do).
Then there’s Mim, my highly skilled dog talker. She’s an Alpha female, West Highland White Terrier (Westy) and we have been together since she was a pup. Fifteen years now. She has a several dozen bark-grunt-ugh-growl utterances mostly directed at me, or her brother Milo, to get all her needs met. She’s adamant. With true Scottish stubbornness, she will naught take no for an answer. She has, I blush, trained me well (I did say she was Alpha, didn’t I?). Our little Covid family’s (my partner is looking after her father in a far-distant land) itinerary is pretty much run by Mim.
I remember when I first saw the kids cartoon Scooby-Doo about a dog that sort of talks through various sounds and thinking how absurd it was. That was before I had a talking dog. Mim talks, it’s just in a foreign language with a select vocabulary. (‘scuse me, I’ll be right back. Mim just grunted at me that it’s morning feeding time).
She has a different grunt for “The water bowl is empty.” Several and varied ugh-grunts for going out or in doors depending upon the activity to be accomplished—pee, poo, squirrel, rain, cold, etc. She also has a personalized bark for my closed bathroom door, depending on whether I shower or use the toilet. It’s the only inner door in my little humble hovel and she hates to see it closed. She’s not so much concerned when I shower—a few ugg grunts—but when I use the stool she seems to think that, since I watch her poo all the time that she should get to watch me. I, feeling like a hypocrite, but exercising the only pooch-free privacy in my abode, like to . . . well, have a little personal sphincter freedom when I go. Admittingly, it kinda disturbs me a little bit, too, to wonder, with her olfactory magnificence, she likes to smell my poo. On this issue, dogs and humans are 180 degrees out of synch.
She has a particularly long, attention-gaining sigh for “I’m bored, lets go for a walk.” It’s only slightly different from her utterance for “It’s after 1:30, time to go get the mail (it’s a quarter mile walk, rain or shine, to my mailbox we’ve been doing for . . . well, fifteen years). I’m convinced she has a ‘scolding’ bark directed at me, to wit, “Get off your lazy ass and away from the big screen and do something constructive.” “Oh, and take me with you.”
Then of course there’s her varied barks about her brother Milo. Those barks are for my benefit not his. For example, “Papa, Milo is teasing me, make him stop.” “Milo is blocking me from taking my afternoon snooze on my bed.” “Milo is hogging all the toys.” Again, I don’t think Milo pays one iota of attention to what Mim is saying; all those utterances are for me. Using me as a tool to get Milo to mind her. Clever girl.
Mim also talks to the birds. Well, bird singular. I call him/her, a raven, the Preacher. They holler back and forth at each other like the church goers and preachers of my evangelical youth. There is no doubt they are having some kind of conversation, just what, is hard to fathom. Mim will bark once; the Preacher will do the same with a caw. Mim will bark twice, wait a few seconds and then bark three more times and the Preacher will caw exactly the same including pause time. On warm summer days this goes on for quite a while. It’s almost as if the are communicating in some kind of cross species morse code. I am convinced, if I could crack that code I, too, could speak to ravens. I would also, most likely, be a linguistics superstar.
Oh, oh . . . Mim is doing her, “Get your paws off the keyboard and pay attention to me,” mid-morning growl-bark. The queen summons; gotta go.