A Dog’s Perspective on Human Behavior
Weekly Topic: “Baby Talk”
By Dudley Dufus. (Dudley Dufus has spent his 11 years of life amongst the two leggeds, and brings his insightful and quirky interpretations of their odd ways to the common canid.)
Baby talk - we’ve all experienced it. The normally upright two-legged suddenly seems to regress to a pre-evolutionary form of its species. The human, most often a female, tries to make herself smaller by awkwardly curling her body down to us, her envy for our ability to ambulate on four limbs evident as she tries to mimic our superior conformational stance, and her voice takes on an abnormally high octave. Her normal concise vocalizations change to a slurry of incomprehensible babble which is almost always accompanied by the curling of lips and baring of teeth. Humans call it “baby talk”, and not only do they bestow us with this odd form of communication, but also subject their own offspring to it!
While it can be scary to have a human suddenly drop to the ground and start up with this high pitched vocalization, you should be aware that the human is not in pain or infected with rabies, despite the noise and occasional salivary spraying. Rest assured that during baby talk the human is very unlikely to show aggressive tendencies. Do not expect them to roll over and urinate, as would be appropriate, but in their own way they are showing submission to us. While annoying, baby talk is a harmless human behavior.
There are several responses to this that can be of benefit to canids. One response is to gracefully accept this subservient behavior and roll over onto your back to allow the human to give you a belly massage. Most humans will, oddly enough, enjoy giving this freely although I’m told they actually have to pay each other for this service.
Another response is to simply ignore this bad behavior and walk away. This method does not stop the human from repeated attempts to appease you and may actually escalate the behavior in some individual humans.
If you do not want this groveling auditory assault to continue, a gentle way to stop it is to jump up on the human to throw her off balance, then while she’s struggling to regain her feet (humans are hopelessly uncoordinated), lick the face with encompassing wet swipes, paying particular attention to getting your tongue in her mouth. That will almost always result in the human returning to her normal upright position and ceasing the high pitched vocalizations, although it may require a few repeated efforts on your part to get her to desist. This method does not permanently eliminate baby talk, however, and you will almost certainly be subjected to it again.
Another less subtle response to stop this behavior would be to stand your ground and bare your teeth back at them. Sometimes you also need to emit a sharp warning bark. While humans’ intellectual limitations do not allow them to speak “dog”, they seem to instinctively respond to this reprimand by backing off and stopping the baby talk. This method does tend to permanently stop baby talk although there is the occasional human that is too obtuse to understand and will continue to cajole and try to entice you to respond to the baby talk.
The one key point to remember about baby talk is that it is an attention seeking behavior of humans and that it is a non-threatening and harmless practice. Feel free to enjoy the ear and belly rubs should the mood strike, and if not use one of the above techniques to stop this vocal torment.