Following on from my last blog post, Dog Language, I’ve put together a short Dog Phrasebook to show some typical dog phrases and their equivalent in English. Our part-time dog, Hamish, helped me with the translations on his last visit. You may remember Hamish from my previous post about dog borrowing and dog names : Give a dog a good name .
Here’s the subject in neutral
Some of his body language was impossible to photograph as he was moving so fast that the result would have been a brown blur. So here are the phrases, in chronological order from when he bolted in through our front door. I took a photo whenever the resulting image was likely to be vaguely dog-shaped.
Hello! It’s me! It’s you! (no chance of getting a photo of this phrase)
I’ve brought my toys…
Well, they’re here somewhere….
Come on, let’s play! (NB: this is dog to human. Dog to dog would be: chest and front legs on the ground, bottom up, tail wagging)
I’m so excited I don’t know what to do with myself
Tummy rubs please
There’s a cat (well, that’s where I saw one about a year ago)
There’s a squirrel/fox (impossible to photograph this – it’s a sprint where the back legs overtake the front legs)
I rolled in something, you see
Oh I give up!
Dinnertime (hard stare to human, and licking of chops too fast to photograph)
I don’t want to lose this ball again.
Ah! There’s my owner at the door (great excitement again, too fast to photograph).
Dogs say hello, but they don’t say goodbye!
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