Deaf Dog Education Action Fund

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How to Speak Dog: Mastering the Art of Dog-Human Communication

by Stanley Coren

How to Speak Dog takes a more academic approach to understanding dog communication. The book has many examples drawn from the author's years of experience in studying and training dogs. Sketches illustrate a variety of dog communication postures and facial expressions.

This is an interesting book and is probably more appropriate for someone who has already spent time observing and studying dog behaviour. By taking a theoretical perspective, How to Speak Dog becomes more useful as a reference book on dog communication than as a book that can be used during training.

At the end of the book, two appendices - Visual Glossary and A Doggish Phrasebook - form a quick reference for the longer discussions in the main chapters. The Visual Glossary has 8 sketches, which clearly and dramatically illustrate relaxed, alert/attentive, dominance/aggression, fear/aggression, stress/anxiety, fear/submission, extreme fear/total submission and playful postures and behaviours. A Doggish Phrasebook is a chart listing sounds, eye signals, ear signals, facial signals, tail signals and body language and their corresponding human language and canine emotion translations.