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Most of the time when a person hears another person talking, we usually respond not only to what is being said but also to the consonants and vowels that result in words and sentences. Other features of speech including the emotional tone and the speaker’s dialect and body language also contribute to the communication process.
We cannot be certain how much or in what way dogs understand what we are saying, however, we can assume that dogs react to both verbal and speaker-related information and that these components appear to be processed in different areas of the dog’s brain. Communicating between human and canine may be very different to human to human but it still certainly occurs.
Victoria Ratcliffe of the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex in England has completed a study that shows dogs have hemispheric biases – left brain versus right, when they process the vocalisation sounds of other dogs. Research has been conducted and results suggest that the processing of speech components in the dog’s brain is divided between the two hemispheres in a way that is actually very similar to the way it is separated in the human brain, Ratcliff says “All of this should come as good news to many of us dog-loving humans, as we spend considerable time talking to our respective furry friend already. They might not always understand you, but they really are listening.”
If you already communicate with your dog be sure to tell your pet sitter when you go away so that they can maintain this when you’re away.
