Martin McKenna - Whats Your Dog Telling You?: Australias Best-Known Dog Communicator Explains Your Dogs Behaviour

How I Learned to Communicate with Dogs as a Boy

You could say I was born into a litter of pups.

This is because in our large family of eight kids, Im an identical triplet along with my brothers Andrew and John. My dad always used to call the three of us a litter of pups.

We grew up in Garryowen, Limerick, in 1960s Ireland and while Mammy was a beautiful German woman who always worked hard and struggled to raise us eight kids as best she could, Dad drank a lot and often became violent.

As you can imagine, it didnt help his temper that I had ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), it rains a hell of a lot in Ireland, and we kids were often cooped up inside because of the weather. Dads hangovers werent improved by my racing around our house making far too much noise, or stealing money out of his pockets while he slept in his armchair. As a result, Id often find myself curled up with our two German shepherds, Major and Rex, in our coal shed, recovering from yet another flogging. Dogs came to mean comfort and warmth for me and these two dogs really did become my best friends.

Needless to say, I didnt do well at school. What with ADHD, a traumatic home life, and some fairly brutal teachers, I couldnt understand what was happening up on that horrible nightmare of a blackboard. The teachers thought I was being a wilful, bold little bastard but I wasnt. I simply couldnt stop my mind from whirling around and being distracted by everything around me. It didnt help that my brothers seemed to be able to concentrate while I couldnt. It wasnt long before my teachers were beating me with leather straps.

However, this young dog eventually got sick of being hit.

It all came to a head one day when I was in the final year of primary school. The teachers decided my reading and writing skills were so bad that I needed to return to baby class, which was our name for kindergarten. I couldnt believe it: in front of everyone I was taken to the classroom where all the little kindergarten kids were and, amid much laughter, I was seated in one of those tiny baby wooden chairs. Never before had I felt more humiliated.

I decided Id had enough. Before anyone could stop me, I jumped through the open window and ran back home to my dogs.

Gee, it felt good striking back at those mocking, bullying teachers for once. I knew I was really going to get flogged for this but what the hell, I was having fun. Now it was me laughing at the helplessness of the teachers and all those cruel, mocking kids.

Things got even better when Mr K and Mr C rolled up in a car and stood at our front gate, threatening me with the leather strap if I didnt get into the car immediately.

Oh yeah? says I. How are you going to make me? Ive got two German shepherds here. Step inside the gate and Ill let them off.

They ignored my advice and stepped inside our gate.

It felt great releasing the dogs. Good old Major and Rex chased them out, biting them badly as those two bullies bounced off our gateposts, racing back to their car, threw themselves inside and roared off.

Aha. My first great victory against the world. Thanks dogs!

Then Mammy arrived home, wiping the grin instantly from my face. The dogs raced to the coal shed and hid but I wasnt quick enough to escape. She was just about as furious as Id ever seen her.

A couple of weeks later my brothers and I came home from school for lunch to find the pound man had already put Major and Rex in his van and was just about to drive away. We knew that could only mean one thing. The dogs were going to be euthanised for attacking the teachers. Furious and upset, we tried to stop the van from driving away by banging away on it with our hurling sticks but it kept going.

Distraught, we turned to our mother. I can still hear her words ringing in my ears today.

Martin, she said, this happened because you set the poor dogs on your teachers. Now you have to pay the price. Thats when it hit me: I was responsible for having my two best friends killed.

My brothers and I were crying because we felt so angry and helpless. Our mother said we had to be strong and go back and face our tormentors the teachers and other kids at school.

Sure enough, Mr K was waiting for us at school with a smirk.

He cleared his throat as we entered the classroom. All right, class lets have a minutes silence for the triplets dogs, he said, and then laughed in my face. Everyone else laughed too.

That was it as far as I was concerned. Humans were cruel creatures and I wanted nothing more to do with the lot of them. Not long after, I ran away from school and home to live an old hayshed that belonged to a farmer called Sean Cross.

The shed was dry and warm if you snuggled down in the piles of hay. Every day unbeknownst to Sean his angelic wife, Eileen, would bring me out a bacon sandwich and a steaming mug of tea. My brothers would also bring over whatever food they could scrounge from home.

To avoid running into humans I used to walk the streets of Garryowen at night. On these night walks I would make friends with the towns stray dogs. Soon I had a pack of about five strays following me around and sleeping in the hayshed with me. To begin with there was a shaggy Irish wolfhound-cross, a terrier-labrador cross, a cocker spaniel mongrel, a Belgian shepherd and, lastly, Black Dog the massive, bad-tempered Newfoundland-cross. I never really gave any of the other dogs names, only Black Dog.

The dogs were great company and they certainly stopped me from feeling lonely on all those long, rainy nights. They accepted me for who I was. They didnt care that I was hyperactive and couldnt read or write. They didnt put me down, torment me, bash me, laugh at me or think I was stupid.

To keep them around, I used to get them food. I did this by sneaking into Brendan Mullins slaughterhouse at night, sneaking past his big guard dog, Buddy, and stealing dog meat from the bins out the back. This was the meat he used to sell to the greyhound men.

As you can imagine, these stray dogs came to depend on me as their sole supplier of food. Soon they never left my side.

It was during this time that I was able to observe this pack of strays up close. We lived together, ate together, walked together and slept together for warmth. With no TV or radio around, there was nothing else to do except watch those dogs interacting and communicating with me and each other. Its not surprising that I soon ended up learning their language. As Ill show you, its an incredibly easy language to learn especially if youve grown up speaking English, German and Gaelic, like I did.

So this was my family and we were a pack.

However, I quickly learned that life doesnt always run smoothly in a dog pack especially when I kept interfering in the natural order of things. Dog fights would break out suddenly when I tried to be fair and share out the food so we could all eat at the same time like a real family. Arguments would start if I tried to make one of the more dominant dogs give up his nice, warm sleeping spot to a more submissive dog that I felt sorry for. Sometimes dogs would attack each other if I started giving too much attention to the wrong dog.

I soon learned there were clear rules in the Dog World that had to be obeyed or you got bitten. The main rule I learned is that every pack has a dominant leader and every other dog is ranked one by one in a hierarchy below this all-important leader. This meant that, as much as I wanted to create my own little family, I couldnt create a little democracy. This is because no-one can ever be equal to anyone else in the Dog World.