So, you are wondering how to talk to your dog?
It’s not as if he is going to understand your cute little conversation with him.
English, French, Italian or even Spanish, isn’t all that just gibberish to him?
Oh, wait, maybe knowing the doggy language can help if you want to have a conversation with your four-legged friend.
But, seriously talking to your furry friend every day has a ton of benefits which we bet you didn’t even know!
It is a well-known statistic that speaking to a human baby helps the baby pick up speech and its cues faster.
Parent and child bonding also gets a massive boost as the child starts relating to the parent much more.
If you do speak to your pets, will it really help in improving the bonding between you and your adorable dog?
Amazingly, that’s just found out to be true!
Increases the Liking
This one is really a great benefit! The researchers found that if you keep talking to your friend, he starts liking you more.
Hah, did you talk to him about how well Neymar played in the World Cup this time?
Though he may not understand who Neymar is, you are probably strengthening your bond with him.
The actual content and its specific tone are important. High pitched and affectionate tone while talking can help. Since you are already so attached to your pet, this may come instinctively.
What is its impact on your furry friend?
The researchers started analyzing if the regular conversations with the pet had any effect on the bonding between humans and dogs. They also wanted to find out if the regular conversation with dogs was useful to them.
If the behavioural benefits, speech cues and bonding which a human infant shares with an adult are similar to the bond shared by dogs and their owners.
Well, its great to know that there is something called dog-directed speech.
Pretty similar to baby-directed speech, this is a type of conversation which dog owners have with their pets.
It was a wonderful way of knowing if the content and style of communication had any effect on the social bonding between humans and animals.
Dogs prefer talking adults
In this adorable experiment, two different sections were present. In one, the adult-directed speech was analyzed while the second one analyzed dog-directed speech.
The dog-directed speech section was customized for conversing with dogs regarding the content and the style of delivery.
They had a rhythmic and high-pitched tone. In this one, several statements were made like: ‘You are doing great’ or ‘Let’s go for a walk in the park’.
Alternatively, in the adult-directed speech different sentences like:
‘I had lunch at her place’ or ‘I went to the theatre last night’, were spoken in a standard style of conversation which is used with another adult.
Once both styles of content were spoken to the dogs, their attention spans were measured. The speakers were also lined up where the dogs were made to choose their preferences of speakers.
The astounding takeaway from this experiment was that the dogs exhibited a strong preference for humans who used the dog-directed speech.
Well, it is entirely possible that they loved your tone and style of speaking and content was not a factor at all.
Special Dog Words
In another amazing experiment, the dog content was spoken with the adult-directed speech tone and style while the adult-directed content was spoken in the dog-directed tone and style of talking.
Hey, so what do you think the findings were?
In one word, the results were ‘Remarkable ‘.
The dogs preferred interaction with the speaker who used dog-directed speech and dog-related content than the other options.
Basically, they were differentiating dog words from human words and exhibiting a clear preference for it.
In the third style, when the two types of content and speech were intermixed with each other, the dogs had no specific preferences.
Get Your Dog Language On
Wonderful to know, isn’t it!
Well, we feel like hugging our adorable little pets when we get back home! And yes, talking to them in that cute high-pitched tone which they will listen to and like!
Any time you are playing with your dog, training your dog, asking your dog to have water to combat the summer heat or simply cuddling him, remember to speak to him in the special tone and style reserved for him!
So, go ahead and talk to your dog!
Apart from making him happy, you would be significantly increasing the quality of your relationship with him!