I cannot stretch enough how much I have been learning, in my acting and directing career, about dogs. I know, you may be wondering what those two realms, acting and dog behaviour, have to do with each other, right? Well, let me tell you: a lot! I should probably write a whole book on all the links. In this case I will feature, really in short and just to give you an idea, one aspect—the relevance of the tone of voice for an actor and a dog parent.

The power of voice

Voice is not just a mean to transport sound and contents. Voice itself is the essence of communication. Communicating what? Our intentions, of course. You see, in theatre, or in cinema, the way you pronounce a sentence is way more important than what is written in that sentence. For example, you may say – Don’t go! – and you may mean “please stay with me”, or “I told you already hundreds of times that I don’t like you to go there”, or “just don’t go if you don’t feel ok”. So the same line can express in the first case a request, in the second case a disappointment, in the third case a piece of advice. Do you see what I mean? And the audience of a drama will emphatically understand the intentions behind the words. That is why acting is, conversely to what people believe, a very refined art of communicating. Well, bottom line, dogs understand in the same way as an audience would do, emphatically and based on the tone of your voice.

Science is getting there

Interesting things going on

Already in 2019, a study on how dogs recognize human speech sounds by Holly Root-Gutteridge, a researcher at the University of Sussex, highlighted this aspect. Wait a moment… the fact that dogs understand intentions and vocal tones was already known anecdotally. Many dog parents and caretakers know very well how dogs can “read” their intentions when they speak to the dogs. Well, science may come after anecdotal knowledge, it is often the case, and yet it is crucially important.

By previous studies we also know that dogs can recognize familiar humans by their voices. Root-Gutteridge’s team found that dogs can also recognize the very same word, spoken by different people, even unfamiliar voices. When they hear humans, dogs are connecting to both the words and the tone of voice.

Anna Gábor and other researchers at Eötvös Loránd University I had the pleasure to collaborate with, in a recent study determined how dogs categorize sounds — finding that dogs class intonation and word sound into a hierarchy similar to humans. Intonation is the priority, while the sound of the word itself is secondary (Scientific Reports).

Although no one can exactly tell how much dogs understand when we talk to them, all of those studies are very exciting and promising, for they can reveal more on dogs cognition and communication, can bridge the gap between scientific and anecdotal knowledge, and can support dog parents and dog caretakers in being more aware and confident in that powerful tool their voice represents when communicating with dogs.