Phydoux adds more of his comments by use of his computer. This time he tells us about the whole "barking" world.
Phydoux, On Barking
Oh, man, we have people so confused about our barking. We have such a large variety of barks to choose from. I sometimes feel like a golfer with a large selection of clubs from which to choose. The golfer has woods and irons and putters and such. We have growls and yipes and just plain old bark, bark, bark.
One of the things that gives me the most fun is to bark with one of my fiercest weapons while wagging my tail. All humans think that a wagging tail is a sign of friendship. It’s like a human reaching out to shake hands at the time of greeting. The person looks at the tail and relaxes and then listens to the bark and gets stressed. It’s enough fun when you do both at the same time but it’s a riot and you alternate between the two. It’s like holding out some candy to a child and then pulling it back as they reach out for it. Man, I love it!
One of our tools is the little, short woof sound. It’s soft and brief. It’s kind of a stacatto sound. That puzzles them every time. What are we saying? It doesn’t sound angry or mean, but it also doesn’t sound very welcoming. Now I would like to tell you what that little sound means. I’d like to -- but I don’t really know. We all do it, but we don’t know why. It’s kind of like the curl on the top of an DQ ice cream cone. It’s like that green little sprig they put on your plate at the restaurant. It’s like a belt on a man who is wearing suspenders. It’s just there.
The growl is a very useful tool. It is our way of saying, “just a minute! Don’t come any closer.” It can start out in a low pitch and then it can increase in volume as you ignore the warning. It makes the smallest dog appear to be a giant. Aren’t we so frightening? Don’t let it fool you. All the time we are growling we are saying these things to ourselves: “Oh, I hope he doesn’t challenge me!” “That woman scares me. The ends of her toes are red!” “If they chase me I think I’ll run into the wall.”
When we start our real barking we have a variety of things we are saying. A low bark says, “I don’t really want to bark but I have to, so here is a generic bark.” It is an annoying bark. It not only annoys you but it annoys us as well. When you shout for us to stop, we play along because we know you really don’t mean it.
When our barking becomes a high shrill bark, it means I’m are frightened. We are barking with everything in us. We are trying to say, “Get me out of here. I can’t stand it any longer.” This is usually the bark which is accompanied by peeing on the floor.
LOL phunny. I sit here scratching the ears my wonderful Porty, laughing and snorting while I read about Phydoux antics. It's like watching Looney Tune cartoons all over again.
This one got me chuckling almost first thing this morning. Very well done Larry. I once read a book from a dogs point of view, and since they don't recognize faces, (we all look alike to them) he differentiated people by their smells. The cool thing was in the book, the dog placed people's smells into catagories of color. The blue person, the green person, the red person, etc. and he could tell the person's personality from the color of their smell.
Have you ever heard of a dog that just didn't like some person, and the owner says I don't know why he doesn't like you, He's always friendly to everyone.....but you....Maybe they smelled of evil and the dog could tell. animals, especially cats and dogs are very perceptive at times.
