Understanding The Meaning Behind Different Sounds Your Dog Makes

Have you ever heard a dog bark and wonder what it means? Or maybe you’ve experienced a dog growling or whimpering and thought you had a good idea of what the dog was trying to express. Dog sounds can convey important meanings; the better you are at discerning them, the better you’ll understand your furry companion.

Social species are known to be much noisier than animals that lead solitary lives. For example, snow leopards live their lives in central Asia in near silence, but groups of monkeys chatter incessantly in a high-pitched tone.

Given that dogs are descended from wolves, which are highly social animals, it’s no surprise that dogs communicate with humans, dogs and other animals using a variety of vocalizations, sounds and mannerisms.

How Dogs Speak

Dogs talk to us using their body language and different sounds, such as:

• Barking
• Growling
• Whining
• Whimpering
• Howling
• Huffing
• Grunting
• Moaning
• Yelping
• Yipping
• And other nuanced sounds.

From the earliest moments of a puppy’s life, dogs and their canine relatives produce tones, yelps and whines. Atonal barks and grunts appear within the first weeks of life in conjunction with the onset of social behavior.

Dogs have a very wide range of barks and sounds. They bark when alone and with other dogs. Some bark when playing, some when a car goes by, most when someone rings the doorbell. This is in contrast to wolves, who bark less frequently and in fewer contexts, primarily for warning or defense.

Research Behind Dog Sounds

How do we discern what canine vocalizations mean? Believe it or not, animal behaviorists have only begun researching dog vocalizations. Vocal behavior in birds and other species have been studied extensively, even to the point of note sequence and tiny variations. Vocalizations in dogs have not received comparable scrutiny. Vocal variations are a prominent feature of dogs and there is a lot to be studied.

There has been preliminary research, however. The research that has been done has been very insightful. For example, dogs use growling to accurately determine each other’s size.

Growls appear to be useful for other reasons. Dogs can distinguish between “play growls”, “stranger-approaching” growls and “food-guarding” growls. Even though food-guarding and stranger-approaching growls sound very similar to human ears, dogs are able to distinguish and act on different growls.

In the past, barking was often dismissed as meaningless noise. However, researchers are finding that barks produced in different contexts vary in their acoustic parameters (i.e. tone and pitch). For example, a stranger ringing the doorbell is a type of a “disturbance bark.” Disturbance barks are harsher and lower in pitch than “isolation” and “play” barks. Isolation (when a dog is separated from his or her owner) and play barks have a higher pitch and frequency, and a wider range of amplification modulation. A dog barking at a stranger sound very different than a dog barking before going on a walk.

Meaning Behind the Sounds

We’ve established that dog sounds can be nuanced and vary according to the context in which they are delivered. However, does that mean dog sounds carry meaning?

They do for dogs, although scientists are still exploring ways to determine exactly how they perceive and process that information.

Of course, humans can decipher different barks as well. Even if they aren’t trained to work with dogs, people are able to classify barks into their appropriate contexts and attribute them to perceived emotional states. People are able to distinguish an isolation bark as being a sad bark while barks from a play session are discernable as happy barks.

Interestingly, our ability to do this starts as early as age 10; children are able to assign different barks to the correct context. Humans are even able to so accurately discriminate between different barks that they can program computers to categorize them.

Recognizing the Patterns

How do we perceive meaning in the vocalizations of other species? Apparently, dogs and humans have more in common than you might think. Due to our shared mammalian histories, canine and human vocalizations follow similar acoustic patterns.

For example, high-pitched tones tend to convey friendliness, affiliation and “come here” whereas low-pitched tones tend to project aggression and “go away.” These rules and tendencies are shared across mammalian and avian species.

Barking

Researchers are studying the theory that dogs often bark because they feel “conflicted.” Dogs bark in so many situations that some have theorized that they are in a state of alertness or are experiencing an internal state of conflict. For example, a dog will bark when they are in the house and want to go out, and when they are out and want to go in.

Genes, environmental factors and individual temperaments all play a role in a dog’s vocalization patterns. As an example, Basenjis, a typically barkless dog, will produce one or two low “woofs” when they do actually bark. In contrast, the maximum number of barks recorded for a Cocker Spaniel in a 10-minute period was 907, or more than 90 a minute.

Individual dogs have different temperaments; some will bark profusely even if it isn’t a characteristic of their breed, and some will rarely bark even if their breed is known to be “barky”.

Take the time to pay attention to the pitch and tone of your dog’s bark as well as contextual cues. A dog that barks when you get home is probably saying they are happy to see you. A neighbor’s dog that runs along the fence, barking and snarling is telling you to stay away from her territory. You get better at interpreting a dog’s bark by observing when, where and how your dog barks as well as the body language that goes along with it.

Whining

A dog’s whine is almost as versatile as a bark, but not as assertive. Dogs normally whine when they want something – a toy, food, attention, etc. A dog that whines at the door probably wants to go out, and a dog that whines next to his leash probably wants to go on a walk.

Whining can also show anxiety or fear. A dog with separation anxiety will whine while alone and a dog that is afraid of the veterinarian will whine in the lobby. Dogs also will whine when they are in pain. If your dog seems uncomfortable and is panting and whining, that could indicate they are in pain. Look for contextual clues to let you know what your dog is trying to communicate.

Growling

Growls are pretty straightforward. Most of the time they mean “stay back,” “stop touching me,” or “I will bite you if you come closer.” Of course, dogs will growl when they are playing, especially if they want you to keep playing with them.

Besides play growls, growls are a warning that is to be respected. Dogs that are punished for growling may jump directly to biting to get their point across. We often see this in a pack setting at Canine Campus. Dogs that feel irritated, intimidated or threatened will sometimes move past the “growling” stage directly to the “protection” stage without any warning because they have been reprimanded too many times for growling.

At Canine Campus, in order to defuse some altercations, instead of scolding the dog that is growling, we will distract the dog that is being growled at in order to diffuse the situation. This way, we are allowing the growling dog to “speak its mind” safely without an altercation. Growls and snarls are intended to be intimidating. Pay attention to your dog’s growls. They could be saying “I heard something outside” or “stop touching me” or “I don’t like that dog or person and will bite if they don’t back away.”

Howling

Howling may be an ancestral trait. Wolves howl to communicate with their packs and dogs may be doing the same thing. Howling seems to be contagious among dogs, just like it is for wolves.

Some dogs never howl, and some breeds, like Siberian Huskies, howl regularly and use howling to “talk,” making strange and often amusing noises as they express joy, curiosity, frustrations and other emotions that seem totally alien to us.

Sighing and Groaning

Dogs sigh and groan to show contentment as well as disappointment. Puppies moan and groan when settling down for a nap and adult dogs may continue these vocalizations. If your dog pesters you to go out for a walk and then flops down with a loud sigh or groan, he is probably trying to show you that he will be disappointed if you don’t take him out soon.

While it is tempting, you can’t always compare human sounds with dog sounds. For example, dogs typically yawn when they are nervous, not tired, like humans. The sigh seems to be universal though – both species tends to sigh when contented, disappointed or exasperated.

The best way to understand the meaning of dog sounds is to pay attention to the context and body language of our dog to determine what is triggering the vocalization. If your dog has behavioral issues that seem to accompany the sounds, consult your veterinarian or a trained animal behaviorist to help you figure out the underlying issue and how to correct it.

What type of sounds does your dog make that makes you wonder what he or she is expressing? Please comment below…

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Sources:

Pongrácz, Péter, et al. “Dogs’ Expectation about Signalers’ Body Size by Virtue of Their Growls.” PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, 15 Dec. 2010, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015175.

Pongrácz, P. 2017. Modeling evolutionary changes in information transfer. Effects of domestication on the vocal communication of dogs (Canis familiaris). European Psychologist, 22:219-232. http://etologia.elte.hu/file/publikaciok/2017/Pongr%C3%A1cz%202017%20-%20Modeling%20evolutionary%20changes%20.pdf

Pongrácz, P, et al. “Barking in Family Dogs: an Ethological Approach.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2010, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19181546.

Molnar, Csaba, et al. “Do Children Understand Man’s Best Friend? Classification of Dog Barks by Pre-Adolescents and Adults.” Academia.edu, Applied Animal Behavior Science, 11 Sept. 2011, www.academia.edu/1542213/Do_children_understand_mans_best_friend_Classification_of_dog_barks_by_pre-adolescents_and_adults.

Yin, Sophia, and Brenda Mccowan. “Barking in Domestic Dogs: Context Specificity and Individual Identification.”

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American Psychological Association Inc., 19 June 2015, ucdavis.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/barking-in-domestic-dogs-context-specificity-and-individual-ident.