Dogs Can Sign Too – An innovative way to teach your dog to communicate – By Sean Senechal

Have you ever wanted to sit down and have a conversation with your dog? Or just ask your dog “Why are you barking?” Well, that could be possible according to Sean Senchal. In her book “Dogs Can Sign, Too,” she presents a method of communicating with her canine: a system of gestures she calls “K9Signs” that could allow her dog to “talk” to you. . The goal is to teach dogs to use this sign language to ask for things, ask or answer questions, and respond to your commands or comments.

Senechal has set up an “academy” (the AnimalSign Center) where people work every day with dogs and other animals to see what their limits are as “language learners.” The author emphasizes that it will likely be years before definitive conclusions can be drawn about the ability of non-primates to communicate with us, but she offers a number of examples of what she has accomplished working with her own pets.

One example involved his dog Chal, with whom he has worked for several years. Chal walked into a room where Senechal was talking to a friend and hit a storage drawer with his nose, then raised his right front paw, which is the K9Sign for an item. When Senechal made the “What?” signal, Chal raised his right front paw and moved it slightly, the “keys” signal. The author opened the drawer and there was the key to the patio door; Chal immediately ran to the door and waited for Senechal to open it.

That story may not seem all that unusual or interesting; After all, I had a border collie whose parents herded cattle and sheep and could respond to a wide variety of voice and hand signals. The main difference is that in Chal’s case, she not only responds to various signs, but she offers her own canine signs of hers. If you thought Lassie was brilliant, imagine a sheepdog that could walk up to you and sign “Lamb stuck under a branch in a ravine over there; bobcat sneaking up on her, hurry up.” That is the fascinating part of K9Signs; not just the ability to communicate, but the complexity of information that can be exchanged in just a few signs.

K9Signs training, as Senechal points out, is fundamentally different from obedience training. It requires encouraging your dog to display creative behavior rather than obedience. Your dog should be instructed to initiate communication and make requests rather than just respond to commands. Conversation involves give and take, a two-sided method of communication, and that means your dog should feel free to “respond.”

Perhaps the most important thing to remember in K9Sign training is to make signing fun. If your dog obviously has trouble understanding what you’re doing and he seems frustrated or losing interest, he’ll back off and try breaking the lesson down into smaller steps and reward the achievement of each smaller step. Or go back to something your dog has already learned and enjoys (like playing with his favorite toy) and give that signal. Later you can go back to work on the new sign. Senechal constantly emphasizes the importance of patience, rewards, and slow and easy steps in teaching K9Signs.

I’m not sure I have the patience for K9Sign training and really like most dogs my two already communicate with me without animal signals. For example, my lab will bark and let me know if someone knocks on the front door. But if he and I could use K9Signs, who knows, maybe he could tell me “Pat at the front door, he’s got pizza” or “Two strange men at the front door, they smell good.” Or instead of just fidgeting, maybe our Rottweiler could tell me “I feel bad, I need to go outside and eat some grass.” It would require a lot of time and patience, but maybe one of these days I’ll work up the courage to try K9Signs (and find out what my dogs really think).

If you are interested in learning more about Sean Senechal’s K9Signs system or his method of signing animals in general, his books “AnimalSigns To You” and “Dogs Can Sign Too” are available at http://www.amazon.com .