i just had to pick this up....
No. I cannot speak to animals. I can just interpret what I observe.
And that is what the "dog whisperer" does.
Also dogs in particular do react to the spoken word, they just don't speak your verbal language back to you and do not have much if any of the language structure based on the human concept of it.
. so you
could speak to animals rather than cannot, you can say what you like to them,
conversing however, is language wise pretty much one way in the verbal sense of the word.
To get some sort of reaction to what you say is helped of course by both of you being interested in each other, but its not so essential on the more basic "all dogs do this because of that" type of training.
In fact all dog basic training starts (or ought to) out by just being reactionary on a primitive level to the dogs actions within its basic instinctual drive system.
I watch the Dog whisperer. He is good at interpreting animal mental states.
I bow to his wisdom.
Regards
DL
Actually from my own experience as a dog and horse handler i'd probably consider the interpretation to be just as valid by basing it on the animals body language, which is actually what the DW does.
No consideration of its mental state strictly speaking is involved or needed.
We as humans translate what we see the animal do in repeatable situations and work out whether it's hungry or whatever.
He observes the dogs body and repeatedly instructs the owners to
watch the dogs body for those initial subtle clues as to what the dog is about to do. (read:
react to) not the "mental state" of the dog
also in the broadcasts i've seen he seems to pretty much only use only one method in practice, and rightly applies it to the many but limited situations he knows it will work for.
to some (maybe not you) it might look like lots of different things he's doing, but , look again. ....
To be even more pedantic (?) he never whispers to anything to great effect on the show, never mind to the dog.
I got bored with it real quick, after a few shows.
although probably wildly off topic here, i'd rather chat about this than respond to Ali who i'm a bit bored with now.
holding on tight to the keyboard while mods move the thread.......
