Domestic Dogs Research Paper

Alex Grio

English 27-K

Andre Dominic Peralta

The Communication between Humans and their Domestic Dogs

The aim of this paper is to understand the communication between domestic dogs and humans, and to understand how dogs were domesticated, how humans perceive a dog’s way of communication, how dogs perceives human communication and its benefits. ‘‘Do humans understand dog communication as well as humans understand them? Or do dogs understand us more?

Background on Domestic Dogs

At some point in time, there were no domesticated dogs but what was only present at that period were wolves, foxes and coyotes. According to Udell (2008), dogs were the first of the animals to be domesticated and to share a mutual environment with humans. During the period

There were two theories propose regarding the domestication of wolves. First, it was believed that wolves were domesticated by taking wolf pups away from their natural habitat, taming and conditioning them to live with humans (Clutton-Brock,1995). Another theory was that wolves domesticated themselves by adapting to the human environment (Coppinger and Coppinger,2002). The theory by Coppinger and Coppinger (2002) was more supported by recent discoveries and it seemed that dogs domesticated themselves by involving themselves with humans and so this explains the relationship and interaction by dogs and

Like any other relationships, be it with our pets or with other people, it is essential that we understand each other for a firm relationship. Each animal has a unique way of expressing itself (Feddersen-Petersen, 2007). Dogs uses a variety of communication signals involving a human’s five basic senses (Wells, 2009). This signals involves their use of vocals and body posture. Oftenly displayed characteristics by a domestic dog is its aggressiveness, submission to owner, playfulness and it also shows fear and anxiety (Feddersen-Petersen, 2007).

The domestic dog’s ancestors, the wolves, are animals who leave together as a pack, and wolves has developed a way to regulate their pack. They are similarities with the social behaviour shown by both wolves and domestic dogs, but this behavior has changed from time to time as a way to adapt to the human environment (Goodwin et al., 1997). Due to these changes in the behaviour of domestic dogs, humans might have difficulties in understanding the communication signals of each dog breeds which would lead to confusion and miscommunication (Schilder,