In A Word

What’s in a word to a dog? It’s not a lot different than what’s in a word to us. Words are powerful – however, what’s even more powerful is the intention and the thought behind the word. On more than one occasion, most of us have experienced a “look” from someone that put us in our place. It could also have been something as simple as a smile that allowed us to shift our thoughts in that second.

Some times I have to intervene with the interaction of dogs and have found that the word “chill” works nicely. The word chill in itself, may not hold value to the dogs, but given in a calm, firm voice, with the sincerity of my thought of “knock it off NOW.” and as my Dad used to say with an added – “and I don’t mean maybe” gets across quite well. Dogs don’t need all of the extra words and even just making a sound works. It’s your presence, state of mind, and intention when using it that matters.

This also applies to human communication, but somehow I think that at the end of the day, we’d all feel like there were so many important, valuable words left unsaid. Maybe we should give it a try – it might come in handy at times.