As I became more familiar with my pets, I came to realize that dogs (and cats, and other animals) are very sensitive to the subtlety of their human owners' voices and body languages. I believe that our pets are observing us more than we can imagine in our daily life.

One evening, my husband and I were sitting on the sofa, relaxed and chatting. As our conversation went on, our dog (who was sleeping on the sofa next to us at first) got up and walked toward the corner of the living room, looking scared and intimidated. At first I was perplexed by my dog's sudden strange behavior, but it didn't take me long to realize that it was our changed tone of voice that caused the dog to cower. When our discussion heated up (we were just discussing renting DVDs! It was a fun conversation to us), our dog must've thought we were arguing. We were too carried away in our conversation. We decided to change the tone of voice deliberately to more high-pitched and lilting voice to see how the dog would react this time. And there she was! Wagging her tail, trotting back on the sofa happily!

Since then, every time my dog looks a little worried, I try to change my voice to a slightly high-pitched tone, basically talking to my dog as if singing, "Lalala...lala... everything will be okay, so don't worry...Lalala!"