You Speak, They Gesture! - Both Happier May 17, 2011 ; Dr. H Gale
Ms Senechal & four gesturing dogs
Many blind dogs probably can be taught to "gesture" specifically to tell their people what's going on, what the dog is anxious about, where it hurts, its wants, or needs with gestures, just as well as deaf dogs can, who are traditionally taught simple versions of American Sign Language (ASL) or SL versions of other countries. As mentioned on other pages of this Site, almost all dogs whether blind, deaf or ordinary rely mainly on gestures to communicate to humans and other animals, with a bit of vocalizing for emphasis.
Part of what causes newly blind dogs to be anxious, insecure and depressed is probably their loss of much information about the way their world is reacting to their actions and voices, and thus their loss of much ability to manage their world as best they can. If you speak, and they reply with Gestures much of that loss can be overcome – both happier. Ms Senechal’s methods and experience can be tailored for educating blind or deaf dogs - they were well described in her book and samples are available on her Web site. Her suggested methods were easily generalized (in our use), for each dog, its people and their homes.
Teaching a blind dog to communicate with specific body-paw gestures, in addition to their former personal “ad hocs”, can reassure them that they do indeed still have ways to control their world, and get it to react to their needs for security, active “play”, reconfirming bonding and “velcroing” with their people. For health and happiness, their emotional and physical needs are much more far reaching than just food!
Behavior of ordinary puppies as they learn to see is instructive for understanding the emotional and mental challenges and needs for caring for old dogs who become blind. Indeed a blind old dog has to some extent become a blind-puppy again, with many of the things that implies!
Inspired by personal observation that her horse, Princess, instinctively initiated attempted to communication to Sean what the horse wanted to do, and its probable opinion of events, Ms Sean Senechal ventured to explore using modern methods demonstrated for Gorillas and other animals. Together they explored Princesses’ ability and willingness to learn to communicate by gestures, and her ability to evaluate simple features of her surroundings such as “how many?” Results were favorable, documented on digital DVDs, and in books. Our review of Ms Senechal’s methods and results validated her scrupulous care to prevent the Clever Hans and similar known method-faults of previous researchers. We noted further that confirmatory features of the data correlated with events during teaching language to toddlers-children.
A German Shepherd, Chal age about four months, was enlisted for studies of domestic dogs to further affirm (or limit) with another species the teaching logic and methods. Later a member of an additional breed of dog, a Border Collie, was obtained and enrolled in the program at its age of about 12 weeks. Results were favorable. Studies continue with seminars, etc to explore and share knowledge with larger groups and their dogs.
Sean’s personal experience was based directly on two species (horse and dogs), and two breeds of dogs, plus many other breeds (her clients), indirectly through academic reviews on work with dolphins, gorillas and chimps. Sean worked with hearing, deaf, and blind dogs, one older dog being BOTH deaf and blind. The dog's response was enthusiastic and heartwarming. Continuing work with other dog breeds indicated that “everything” was consistent provided that the abilities and personalities of the specific “students” and their people were taken in consideration – every one of them was unique: being blind or deaf was just a “feature” like a long or a short tail.
From Sean’s experience, and ours, bonding and mutual trust are essential foundations. In fact, current research has shown that bonding promotes learning by increasing certain hormones (oxytocin) that specifically facilitate growth of neurons (dendrites). Learning happens faster and better when bonding is occurring. We would venture from our experience (and ABA – applied behavior analysis - research) that there would be less effective learning in a people-dog dominance/ submissive training situation beyond the near-robotic responses of a chicken. Sean in her recent book wrote an excellent discussion of the education methods that were most effective for her, which agreed with our observations. She used a combination method incorporating many ABA proven protocols used to teach language and behavior in human toddlers and children. From using her book, Web videos and conversations with her, we figured the main points were:
1. Mutual bonding, trust and “feedback”: Encourage self-confidence, independence and initiative (adapts and learns) and accept and work with their occasional regression to puppyish antics like bumping and mumbling. As we followed Sean’s suggestions, we found ourselves engaged with our dog in sharing agreements of how we and she would communicate. The dog too “gets a vote” on the details of each gesture and what it will thereafter mean for you both – things like arthritis will make a difference in what an older dog is comfortable with. Earlier life experience of the dog also can have consequences, such as a dog who strongly preferred to gesture-label the local cat a “Toy,” rather than "Food." Signing allows for greater insight into a dog's thinking.
2. Basics first! Some older dogs can learn most easily, as they already know the basic verbal commands to Sit, lie-down, and come when called. When you speak or gesture new commands or ask for new actions to enhance their self-confidence, they can quickly gesture back to you with a response. This has a valuable effect of mental exercise to keep them alert and interested in life while they’re also figuring out with physical activities (including bumping things like a puppy does, and “spinning”, and other tactics) how to do their location mapping and navigation with sounds and smells.
3. NEXT - Situations and (verb, adjective, noun):The next part of education should probably deal with showing or giving the dog “gesture-words” for specific situations (such as smelling a fire, hearing a telephone, …), objects (food, water, cat, …) and actions (Get, go, come, bring, up, …). Our dogs self-generalized the “situation/ object/ actions” into elementary phrases such as “Get Sheep Toy” i.e. Verb-adjective-noun. When an accident happened - one of us needed a ladder-rescue, our dog summoned help by dashing in-doors to gesture “distress” to another person and lead to the place where help was needed.
4. Names of people and other animals: Agreeing on specific gestures to indicate more “name- things (noub - objects)”.
Consistency by their people is important, because the dog is entitled to think you know what you’re doing and what you want them to do. Blind and or deaf dogs, despite often being adopted into human families at an age of about eight weeks or a little later, do by zealous study of their new homes and people learn to specifically "gesture" and-or vocalize to tell their people:
- what they smell, hear, or see (if they can see) around them,
- what the dog is anxious about,
- where it hurts,
- what it wants, or needs.
At some point your dog will almost certainly offer of her or his own initiative new gesture-words and perhaps phrases for your mutual pleasure. That’s when you are doubly entitled to celebrate!
This doesn’t replace basic puppy training. If you’re new to dog training you can use the book "Dogs Can Sign, Too" with some of the suitable literature suggested and-or dog training classes. It offers lots of fun exercises - and a potential to greatly enrich mutual understanding. There is little to lose and much to gain – even against old doubts or prejudices!
When humans have hearing or visual challenges, we provide them with tremendous support and education for learning, let's do the same with our dogs—educate them with gesture training!
***
Please, for more information contact Ms Sean Senechal, MA at <www.animalsign.org > She has been a Cognitive Physiologist, ABA Behavior Specialist/Therapist for Humans and Animals College Instructor: Biology, Behavior, Communication.
She published recently a hand-book available from Amazon.com and other places:
= > Sean Senechal, MA; “Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate to You”, 2009; Random House
Part of what causes newly blind dogs to be anxious, insecure and depressed is probably their loss of much information about the way their world is reacting to their actions and voices, and thus their loss of much ability to manage their world as best they can. If you speak, and they reply with Gestures much of that loss can be overcome – both happier. Ms Senechal’s methods and experience can be tailored for educating blind or deaf dogs - they were well described in her book and samples are available on her Web site. Her suggested methods were easily generalized (in our use), for each dog, its people and their homes.
Teaching a blind dog to communicate with specific body-paw gestures, in addition to their former personal “ad hocs”, can reassure them that they do indeed still have ways to control their world, and get it to react to their needs for security, active “play”, reconfirming bonding and “velcroing” with their people. For health and happiness, their emotional and physical needs are much more far reaching than just food!
Behavior of ordinary puppies as they learn to see is instructive for understanding the emotional and mental challenges and needs for caring for old dogs who become blind. Indeed a blind old dog has to some extent become a blind-puppy again, with many of the things that implies!
Inspired by personal observation that her horse, Princess, instinctively initiated attempted to communication to Sean what the horse wanted to do, and its probable opinion of events, Ms Sean Senechal ventured to explore using modern methods demonstrated for Gorillas and other animals. Together they explored Princesses’ ability and willingness to learn to communicate by gestures, and her ability to evaluate simple features of her surroundings such as “how many?” Results were favorable, documented on digital DVDs, and in books. Our review of Ms Senechal’s methods and results validated her scrupulous care to prevent the Clever Hans and similar known method-faults of previous researchers. We noted further that confirmatory features of the data correlated with events during teaching language to toddlers-children.
A German Shepherd, Chal age about four months, was enlisted for studies of domestic dogs to further affirm (or limit) with another species the teaching logic and methods. Later a member of an additional breed of dog, a Border Collie, was obtained and enrolled in the program at its age of about 12 weeks. Results were favorable. Studies continue with seminars, etc to explore and share knowledge with larger groups and their dogs.
Sean’s personal experience was based directly on two species (horse and dogs), and two breeds of dogs, plus many other breeds (her clients), indirectly through academic reviews on work with dolphins, gorillas and chimps. Sean worked with hearing, deaf, and blind dogs, one older dog being BOTH deaf and blind. The dog's response was enthusiastic and heartwarming. Continuing work with other dog breeds indicated that “everything” was consistent provided that the abilities and personalities of the specific “students” and their people were taken in consideration – every one of them was unique: being blind or deaf was just a “feature” like a long or a short tail.
From Sean’s experience, and ours, bonding and mutual trust are essential foundations. In fact, current research has shown that bonding promotes learning by increasing certain hormones (oxytocin) that specifically facilitate growth of neurons (dendrites). Learning happens faster and better when bonding is occurring. We would venture from our experience (and ABA – applied behavior analysis - research) that there would be less effective learning in a people-dog dominance/ submissive training situation beyond the near-robotic responses of a chicken. Sean in her recent book wrote an excellent discussion of the education methods that were most effective for her, which agreed with our observations. She used a combination method incorporating many ABA proven protocols used to teach language and behavior in human toddlers and children. From using her book, Web videos and conversations with her, we figured the main points were:
1. Mutual bonding, trust and “feedback”: Encourage self-confidence, independence and initiative (adapts and learns) and accept and work with their occasional regression to puppyish antics like bumping and mumbling. As we followed Sean’s suggestions, we found ourselves engaged with our dog in sharing agreements of how we and she would communicate. The dog too “gets a vote” on the details of each gesture and what it will thereafter mean for you both – things like arthritis will make a difference in what an older dog is comfortable with. Earlier life experience of the dog also can have consequences, such as a dog who strongly preferred to gesture-label the local cat a “Toy,” rather than "Food." Signing allows for greater insight into a dog's thinking.
2. Basics first! Some older dogs can learn most easily, as they already know the basic verbal commands to Sit, lie-down, and come when called. When you speak or gesture new commands or ask for new actions to enhance their self-confidence, they can quickly gesture back to you with a response. This has a valuable effect of mental exercise to keep them alert and interested in life while they’re also figuring out with physical activities (including bumping things like a puppy does, and “spinning”, and other tactics) how to do their location mapping and navigation with sounds and smells.
3. NEXT - Situations and (verb, adjective, noun):The next part of education should probably deal with showing or giving the dog “gesture-words” for specific situations (such as smelling a fire, hearing a telephone, …), objects (food, water, cat, …) and actions (Get, go, come, bring, up, …). Our dogs self-generalized the “situation/ object/ actions” into elementary phrases such as “Get Sheep Toy” i.e. Verb-adjective-noun. When an accident happened - one of us needed a ladder-rescue, our dog summoned help by dashing in-doors to gesture “distress” to another person and lead to the place where help was needed.
4. Names of people and other animals: Agreeing on specific gestures to indicate more “name- things (noub - objects)”.
Consistency by their people is important, because the dog is entitled to think you know what you’re doing and what you want them to do. Blind and or deaf dogs, despite often being adopted into human families at an age of about eight weeks or a little later, do by zealous study of their new homes and people learn to specifically "gesture" and-or vocalize to tell their people:
- what they smell, hear, or see (if they can see) around them,
- what the dog is anxious about,
- where it hurts,
- what it wants, or needs.
At some point your dog will almost certainly offer of her or his own initiative new gesture-words and perhaps phrases for your mutual pleasure. That’s when you are doubly entitled to celebrate!
This doesn’t replace basic puppy training. If you’re new to dog training you can use the book "Dogs Can Sign, Too" with some of the suitable literature suggested and-or dog training classes. It offers lots of fun exercises - and a potential to greatly enrich mutual understanding. There is little to lose and much to gain – even against old doubts or prejudices!
When humans have hearing or visual challenges, we provide them with tremendous support and education for learning, let's do the same with our dogs—educate them with gesture training!
***
Please, for more information contact Ms Sean Senechal, MA at <www.animalsign.org > She has been a Cognitive Physiologist, ABA Behavior Specialist/Therapist for Humans and Animals College Instructor: Biology, Behavior, Communication.
She published recently a hand-book available from Amazon.com and other places:
= > Sean Senechal, MA; “Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate to You”, 2009; Random House