Do you have the ability to understand what it is your dog is saying? Learning how these animals communicate is not only beneficial to proper training, it also helps tighten the bond between man’s best friend and his owner.

In addition to using his barking, tail wagging, and body movements, dogs can also relay messages by the language of ear positions. The frightened dog tells of his submissive attitude to man by flattening his ears as well as lowering himself on haunches.

Also, in the last step in the sequence of aggression just before attack, the dog folds his ears close to his head and bares his teeth. But in the first step of aggressive movement, the dog picks up his ears to a vertical position.

Even the dog with hanging ears will pull the base of his ears forward, which makes the rest of his ears stand forward and outward. This upright position tells his human handler that there is every reason to be alert or on guard.

During World War II, the marines of M Company of the Second Raider Battalion laid their lives on the line in their dependence on the ability of their dogs to communicate to them what was ahead. While he was in the thick of battle, a Doberman named Andy had advanced from the shore to the jungle on Bougainville Island.

Andy liked to work off his leash. The dog was about ten yards ahead of the men when he froze and alerted his ears. The soldiers knew that those stiffened ears meant that there was a Japanese sniper just ahead. The scout leader sent two riflemen ahead, and they sprayed a mangrove tree with bullets. The sniper fell out. That same day Andy silently alerted his handler to snipers on two other occasions.

Now you might not have your own dog trained to such an elite degree, but you don’t have to in order to know how well your dog supplements his silent body language with his vocal communication. The vocal vocabulary has numerous and varied forms – your dog whimpers, whines, signs, grunts, hums, coons, howls, squeals, growls, and barks.

Your dog can vary his barking enough to communicate with you. Almost subconsciously, you have no doubt learned to understand the nuances of your pet’s barking. These minute differences may be in the tone, the frequency, the rhythm and the level of loudness. Your pet may bark to show his excitement, his pleasure, his sense of fear, and the need for your attention.

And your dog, by his tail-wagging, his licking, nosing, barking, howling and his many clever individual expressions, talks to you. Your pet tells you how much he wants to be your protector, your companion and your best friend. Like dogs throughout the ages, your dog has become your friend by his uncanny ability to communicate.

When you verbally ask someone a question you expect an answer, right? A well-mannered, thought-out response is always appreciated and humans talk with their mouths and voice boxes to respond. This is how we interact, mostly with words to let others know how we feel.

Dogs, on the other hand, communicate in a very different way. Yes they bark and use their vocal cords to cry about something, but the number one way to read how a dog is feeling or what he wants you to know is by looking at his tail.

As your dog wags his tail in happiness, he may also exercise the rest of his body to tell you that you are a welcome sight. He may greet you by jumping, dancing around, and attempting to lick your face.

As one dog trainer, Chris, tells of his German short-haired pointer, named Tiger, your dog can let you know when he is approaching a place which associates with comfort and happiness.

When Chris, who spent many hours out of the house to play golf and hunt, would come home from his long day and driving hours to get home, his wife would comment on how Tiger’s ears would perk up and the dog would show ripples of excitement up and down his back in awaiting Chris’s return.

What is amazing is that these signs of excitement to greet his owner at the door, Tiger would start to become anxious and happy when Chris was still more than an hour away driving home.

In addition to their expression of elation, dogs many times warns their owners of danger. You have probably heard many emotional stories of dogs scratching at the bedroom door to warn the family that the house was on fire. It happens all of the time.

One woman was suffering a heart attack while her dog literally broke through the backyard screen door to get to the husband, barking fiercely in the attempt to get the husband’s attention of what was happening inside the house. It worked – the woman survived.

Dogs also communicate with people by using their head and nose as part of the body actions. My three-year-old Dachshund nosed a message to me one afternoon. Sandy had learned that the covered candy dish on the coffee table was a good place to satisfy her sweet tooth.

This particular day, I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper, and I wasn’t paying attention to Sandy. She jumped up on the couch and nudged me with her nose. When I looked at her, she gave her head a jerk, pointing her nose straight at the candy dish.

After sensing that I knew what she wanted, she began to jump up and down as if to say, “Please, please, please! Just one little piece!” I had understood very well what my dog was saying with her nonverbal head and nose language.

You’ve just gotten home after a brutal day at work. The headache from your busy schedule would love nothing more than to be relieved by a warm welcome from your family. As soon as you open the door, you hear the high-pitched voice of your wife scolding your ten-year-old son, while his little sister is sobbing because he broke one of her new dolls.

The television is loud and your Mother-in-law is chatting on the phone…

So who is the loving one that meets you at the door?

Sammy, your three-year old mongrel dog, does. He’s wagging and wiggling from head to tail. He dances, then jumps into your arms, and, if you allow him, he licks your face. Obviously, he’s glad to see you. Your dog has expressed himself in the language that he knows you understand.

Your dog, like pet dogs all over the world, uses body language and a variety of vocal sounds to communicate with you. The dog possesses an incredible ability to communicate.Your dog talks to tell you how sad he is when he’s scolded. He shouts his distress when a stranger or something foreign approaches, and he talks to you about how happy he is to be near you and share your companionship. Your dog talks best with his tail. When you accidentally step on your pet or upbraid him, he will tuck his tail between his legs and cower down. This shows his submission. By tucking the tail, the dog is hiding his scent and thus hiding himself. This language goes back to the ancient wild dog when submissiveness and dominance were integral parts in pack dynamics. Your pet’s ancestors signaled his subservience to the dominant dog by dropping that tail. Today, the domesticated dog is saying, “I feel terrible about what happened.”

In contrast to the submissive tail movement, there is that happy, excited tail-wagging that states how much your dog wants to please you. The following story is such an example of this need to please. Max, a Collie, did his doggy best to please his young owner while she prepared for her wedding. Max had watched as Angelica opened her wedding gifts the week before the ceremony.  One afternoon, the Collie decided to provide his own gift for Angelica…

He yanked a brocade pillow from a neighbor’s clothesline and brought it home. After placing the pillow at Angelica’s feet, he wagged his tail in sheer joy. He thought he was pleasing his owner and sharing her prenuptial pleasures. As you might be able to deduce from this heartwarming example of one Collie’s desire to communicate pleasure, dogs are much more intelligent than we give them credit for. This is especially true in the communication department.

Many urban areas are experiencing an increased concern with the increasing accumulation of dog litter in city streets. With the huge concentration of dogs in metropolitan areas, whether as household pets or guard dogs, the city is experiencing a comparable increase in waste materials dotting the already run-down urban landscape.

Concern over environmental pollution in general is also on the rise. Many citizens and some media reporters have made a sensation over dog litter, claiming that every disease from the common cold to bubonic plague comes directly from dog litter. Some people have gone overboard by attempting to agitate parents with such slogans as “children before dogs”.

Generally speaking, dog litter presents few problems of medical concern to the average citizen residing in large city areas. The more serious health hazard is, of course, to other dogs. Diseases such as hepatitis and distemper are passed from infected dogs to healthy ones through saliva and urine, while internal parasites are transmitted through the stool of infected dogs.

However, for a human to contract a disease from a dog would, it would be required that said person walk the street barefoot or physically ingest dog waste or fleas. This is highly unlikely. The argument of the “children before dogs” group is that children will unwittingly eat dog fleas and stool. It is illogical to believe that parents would let their young children play unattended on public streets and parks; and when they are old enough to play unattended, they have been taught the basics of cleanliness and hygiene.

More likely to be of significant danger to human health is contamination of food by roaches, rats, and the common housefly, none of which seem to be exciting enough for these same people who are so concerned with dog litter.

But regardless of who’s judging who, most people agree that dog litter does present an awful smell and unsightly pollution of our environment in an area that can hardly afford it. Every dog owner is responsible for the mess created by his dog. Whether it is a Great Dane or a Chihuahua, each dog does his share in contaminating natural resources and infuriating pedestrians.

It is puzzling that dog owners who are fortunate enough to have a backyard have no difficulty keeping it clean of dog waste; but these same owners will walk their dog out the front door and allow her to pollute the public street, which is basically everyone’s’ front yard.

Animal lovers have a sensitivity to nature and animals that is not known to people who have never loved a pet. But the love and sensitivity must go beyond our pets and encompass our human neighbors. We cannot ignore the rights and privileges of other people. Our dogs are our responsibility and we have no right to inflict them on others.

If we all clean up after our pets, we will be contributing to a substantially cleaner, more pleasant environment. It is up to us to preserve decent cities to our pets as well as for ourselves and our neighbors.

Ticks are amazingly efficient at surviving almost any attack. The rate of propagation and resistance to insecticides is phenomenal to say the least. In heated kennels and homes, ticks breed all year round. When the weather is cold, they’ll withdraw to cracks and crevices to await warmer times.

Since it takes twenty to thirty days for eggs to hatch, an infested home should be treated at ten-day intervals, at least four times, then once a month for two or three months. Sprays and insecticides used should be marked as a acaracide. Other insecticides appear to have little-to-no effect.

Usually it is only necessary to spray as high as two or three feet from the floor up the walls (unless tick infestation is heavy). If the family dog is accustomed to sleeping on the sofa or in overstuffed chairs, spraying should include those areas, paying particular attention to cushions as well as the edges of rugs and baseboards.

To man, the tick represents the disease known as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Originally, it was thought that the disease was restricted to the region of the Rocky Mountains – thus its name. However, it is not regional at all, and may be acquired over a considerable portion of the United States, east and west, and even in Canada. (The tick is also responsible for “rabbit fever” in rodents, which is transmissible to man.)

In the southern portion of the United States, as well as in France and Africa, there is an intestinal protozoan parasite – Babesia – which attacks blood cells in a dog and causes extreme anemia. This protozoan is spread from dog to dog by ticks. Heavy infestation of ticks upon a dog can cause an extreme loss of blood, anemia, paralysis, and even death.

Flea and tick collars are available commercially, but while such collars might eventually cause the tick to die, much damage and infestation can be done in the interim. Veterinarians can also prescribe tablets, which, when given to a dog, ensure that any tick that bites the dog will die.

The consequences of tick infestation should dictate the importance of tick control in homes and kennels. The approach of warmer weather signals the approach of Rhipicephalus Sanquineus. Now if THAT sounds like a blood-sucking monster from a science fiction movie, you’re partially right. Blood sucking monster? Yes! Science fiction? No way!

Once on a dog, a female tick buries her head beneath the skin tissues, extends her barbed “tongue” and is then clamped on tight. Once the head and barbed probe are beneath the skin, no amount of shaking or scratching by the dog will cause the tick to dislodge.

The tick then feasts upon the dog’s blood in this manner until she bloats to about the size of a pea. The male tick (brown, and a fraction of her size) then mates with the female. When she has received her fill of blood from the dog, she withdraws her barbed probe, and drops off of the host dog. She’ll then crawl into tiny crevices between sofa cushions and carpeting to lay her thousands of eggs.

Once a home or kennel is infested, eradication is no simple process, any more than ridding a dog of the parasite is a simple process. A single tick found on a dog necessitates immediate and zealous efforts at all stages of its life cycle.

Removing a tick – or ticks – from a dog can be done by the owner, providing the tick has not attached itself to the inner ear, on the eyelid, or some other inaccessible place that would require anesthesia. And because the tick’s probe is barbed (similar to a fish hook), brushing or combing by the dog owner may rid ticks that haven’t yet “locked on”, but does nothing for those that are already attached.

The dog’s hair should be pulled back from around the tick for the benefit of full exposure. A few drops of iodine or rubbing alcohol can then be applied directly on the tick. This will momentarily shock the parasite, and in some cases, cause it to loosen its probe.

Using a pair of tweezers, and getting as close to the skin line as possible, the tick can be pulled out with a slight twisting motion so that the head is not severed and allowed to remain embedded in the dog’s skin. If that should occur, secondary infection could result. It is always wise to reapply iodine, alcohol, or other antiseptic to the puncture once the tick is removed. If the tick’s head remains beneath the dog’s skin, applications of hydrogen peroxide can be helpful.

Once the dog is free of ticks, complacency on the part of the dog owner usually results in reinfestation. It should be remembered that if the dog picked up a tick, he may well have picked up larvae from four or five thousand recently hatched eggs. Dousing with a tick powder or other acaracide would be beneficial here, but if the larvae have dropped off in your home or yard, removing the original tick is only the beginning of the battle.

Each year as the warm weather approaches, dog owners should be increasingly apprehensive about the gluttonous, disease-carrying Rhipicephalus Sanquineus, better known as the tick. This dangerous creature can infect man with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, cause paralysis, and even kill dogs and puppies. These parasites are blamed for carrying the micro-organism that caused the death of so many British war dogs in Singapore several decades ago. And during the Vietnam war, more than 300 U.S. war dogs had died mysteriously from tropical canine hemorrhagic syndrome, and canine hemorrhagic fever. Intensive studies resulted in the finger of guilt pointing directly at the ordinary tick.

Although there are several different species of ticks (wood tick, brown dog tick, etc.), a tick by any other name is still a tick. Because of resistance to insecticides, the tick is one of the most difficult external parasites to control. The female tick will lay up to five thousands eggs in the crevices of a kennel, baseboard, or under the carpeting in the home. Eggs are never deposited upon the host animal. After twenty to thirty days have elapsed, the eggs hatch and become larvae. The larvae then seek out a host dog, gorge themselves on his blood, then drop off again to hide.

Six to twenty-three days later, the larvae molt and become eight-legged nymphs. The nymphs obtain another blood meal from a dog, drop off again and go into hiding. Twelve to twenty-nine days later, the nymph tick molts and becomes an adult. As an adult, it once more seeks the dog, engorges blood, and mates. From the time the eggs hatch – and before the tick becomes an adult – it returns to the host dog more than once to feed on the canine’s blood. Once hatched however, a tick can live in a house for up to two years without needing a host dog to feed on.

Out of doors, ticks climb onto branches and into foliage to await the arrival of a dog host. A dog napping under a bush, or walking within jumping distance of the tick is all that is needed to provide the parasite with a host. In the home, ticks will emerge from beneath rugs and carpeting, climb walls, table and chairs, and even up as high as wall pictures, to await the passing of a dog. They may even have to wait up to six months, but a tick can instantly sense the approach of a dog and jump on it as it passes.