Blog 3, Prompt 2

Merry Bridgeman
Language Controversies
Dr. Hughes

Woof-Woof! Meow! What exactly do these words mean? Throughout childhood I fully believed that my pets could understand me. I would often say to them, “Woof-woof-awrf,” and they would look up at me and tilt their head to the side. This look was what I thought to be a look of understanding. Come to find out, I was totally and completely wrong.
Now that I am older and know better than to believe movies like Dr. Dolittle, I understand that animals cannot really tell what you’re saying. They more or less just know your tones and gestures. I might even go as far to say that once they have been trained they might know a couple of key words or sounds. There is no doubt that trained dogs know what to do when their owner says sit, lie down, or roll over, but if this dog is wild it will have no form of communication with the human. In the article, Yule, it states, “Animal communication seems to be designed exclusively for this moment, here and now” (pg.4). This is saying that animals can not tell you about past events that have occurred in their lives. Just like Lassie, she could tell you when little Timmy was in trouble, but not tell you about her past adventures. Even though our pets lack displacement and cannot verbally express themselves to you they can still get their point across. Scooter, a canine friend, will go to the door when he has to go to the bathroom, stand by his food bowl and whine when he wants food, and will bark at whoever comes into the driveway. Do we not count these as ways of communicating? He is smart enough to know that if he has an accident in the house he will get punished, and he knows that if he is hungry he should not only go to the food bowl but also get his owners attention.
No, I do not believe animals know everything we say. If they did we probably would not have them as our pets. I do believe however that once they are trained they are able to pick up gestures and certain words that we say.