Animals understand ALMOST everything we say

In my precious career, when I worked at an organizational development consultant, one of the things I did was coach managers on how to give their employees feedback in order to improve their performance.  One of the key points I always emphasized was the importance of being specific in your feedback.  It wasn't helpful to tell an employee they needed to be "more professional" because "being more professional" could be interpreted a hundred different ways and the employee would never know for sure what they were being asked to do.  I would help manager define the specific changes they were looking for, so that they could give their employees a clear understanding of what they were asking.  To me, it was paramount for setting an employee up for success.  

While this is something I believe in and try to always do in my communication with others, I caught myself slipping up with my german shepherd, Lucky recently.  I laughed to myself, thinking about the ribbing I would get from those managers I used to coach if they heard how unclearly I was communicating with Lucky.  

It all started when Lucky needed my help walking and we began using a sling.  Those first few weeks were equally frustrating and entertaining, depending on how I looked at it.  I would lean down, put the sling under her belly and be attempting to grab the straps when she would take off.  In her mind, she was ready to go and expected me to move when she was ready to move.  If I didn't have my hand firmly on the straps, the sling would fall off and after a few rapid steps, Lucky would fall down.  Or when I was getting her out of the car, I would lift her out and set her on the ground, then place the sling under her belly and she'd take off, not giving me time to even get the car door closed.  This resulted in multiple bruises from slamming my elbow or knee into the car door, or if I managed to throw the car door closed quickly enough and lost my balance, I'd slam into the garbage cans in the garage.  

I couldn't figure out why we couldn't make it work.  We looked like a couple of circus clowns every time we attempted to use the sling in the first few weeks and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't getting any better.  Then one day, I stopped and listened to myself and I realized that what I kept saying to Lucky when I was trying to get the sling on or tripping after her was "Lucky, WORK with me!"  "You need to work with me" and "We need to do this together."   At first I couldn't understand why she didn't "get it" but then I realized that I wasn't being specific enough in my feedback.  What the heck does "Work with me" mean anyway?  

I decided to take some of my own advice and describe more specifically what I needed from her. I said "When I lift you out of the car, I need you to give me a minute to get the car door closed and pick up my purse before you take off towards the door."  Amazingly, that was exactly what she did.  She waited until I had closed the car door before she started walking.   Each time I put the sling on her, I would tell her specifically what I needed her to do, whether it was wait until I picked up my keys and sunglasses before she started moving or to wait until I said goodbye to people. (because that was another one of our comedic routines, where I would put the sling on her when we were leaving somewhere and she'd just take off running, with me running behind her, trying to yell my goodbyes over my shoulder, while trying to keep up with her)

It's something to consider if you don't feel your animal is understanding you or being cooperative.  Are you being specific enough in your communication?  Will he/she understand what you are asking them to do?

This issue of being specific comes up a lot, often times with people saying "It's ok" to their animal without being anymore specific.  If your animal is barking at the person approaching the door, saying "It's ok" may not be specific enough.  You may need to say "I know this person and I trust them, they won't hurt us."   If your animal is afraid of something they hear, saying "It's ok" may not be enough.  You may need to be more specific "I know you don't like that "fill-in-the-blank" sound, but I promise, it won't hurt you. 

I always say animals understand everything we say, but I guess in some cases they don't. Not because they can't understand our language but because we are using words that are either too vague or not in their vocabulary.   A friend of mine was nice enough to write a testimonial for my website this week.  When I told her that I had uploaded what she wrote and also put a picture of she and her horse on my website, she said "Oh great, I can't wait to tell Tucker." I reminded her that Tucker may not know what "the internet" or a "website" is and that she might want to use other words to explain it to him.  She had a good laugh and thanked me for the reminder.  

As always, I encourage you to keep talking to your animals - Just keep in mind that the words we use will have an effect on how much they can understand.