INTERPRETING BARKS

Noisy barks, Dr. Feddersen-Petersen explains, relate to "defensive and offensive threats, social insecurity, physical distress." Harmonic barks, however, are used as a signal for social play, in active and passive submission to another dog or person and when making social contact.

Dr. Feddersen-Petersen made recordings for her work while the dogs were engaged in normal behavior, so she was able over repeated sessions to observe how dogs were barking in specific situations. After a while, she says, she began to be able to tell what a dog was doing by its bark.

Dr. Feddersen-Petersen also recorded mixed play barking among German shepherds, poodles and Weimaraners that had noisy and harmonic components, and a "noisy play bark" among American Staffordshire terriers and bull terriers that indicated a turn on the part of the dogs from play to more aggressive behavior.
Like many canid vocalizations, these barks are often associated with physical cues, like a wrinkling of the brow, staring, raised hackles, pinned-back ears, an upright or lowered tail and other submissive or threatening postures, Dr. Feddersen-Petersen says. But, she notes, in a wide range of breeds physical expression is limited because of the lack of a tail, floppy ears and other physical characteristics.

A few breeds, like the poodle and the American Staffordshire terrier, appear limited in their vocal repertory, she added, although none as severely as the barkless Basenji. In fact, Dr. Feddersen-Petersen recorded as many as a dozen variations of some types of barking among several of the breeds she tested, including the German shepherd and Alaskan Malamute. She says the often-subtle variations corresponded to "dialects" and were used by dogs in identical situations at different times, for reasons not yet clear.