I understand the need for a certain amount of whispering. It is stock in trade if you’re an international secret agent. You never know who is behind today’s copy of the local newspaper. For those who insist that the print version of the newspaper is destined for obsolescence, my rejoinder is that there are too many eavesdroppers to ever let that happen. A magazine is too small a substitute for someone attempting to be incognito. Anyone holding a magazine right in front of his face instead of looking down is bound to be obvious. The broadsheet, not the cheesy tabloid, is the “go to” tool of the trade so don’t haul out the post-mortems on the newsprint industry quite yet.

The whisper is also the decibel of choice for gossipers and rumor-mongers. It is hard to talk behind a person’s back if he or one of his friends can hear you. Discretion is the better part of cowardice.

What I find strange however, is how many persons these days are whispering to animals. Until recently I didn’t know such people existed and that they were available to speak to your animals – dogs and horses seem to be the most common. Cats are also ubiquitous as pets but seem to have an atheistic indifference to spiritual beseeching.

Apparently there are those who whisper to ghosts. This I understand. It may be a little difficult to explain why you’re talking out loud when there’s no one around. Whispering to spirits is a better course of action. That assumes you don’t have your own Sunday morning preacher show. Then apparently you have to yell, preferably with a microphone, so that spirits, other invisibles and tithees can hear you.

There is some trainer with his own TV show who whispers to dogs. I don’t have much experience with dogs but what I do have involved a lot of yelling, chasing and grabbing by the collar. I have to admit that I am pretty impressed when a guy can just murmur to a dog and get its attention.

What confuses me somewhat is that all dogs are not created equal. I can see whispering to a border collie. They appear smarter than many humans. I’m sure a few quiet words or even just an auction nod and the border collie is off to get you a sheep or a cow or steal back the newspaper from the spy who claimed he loved you.
In contrast, the bulldog looks pretty stupid to me. At what point do you have to stop whispering and yell, “We’re fighting on the beaches, we’re fighting on the landing grounds, we’re fighting on the…. Can’t you take a shit by yourself?”

And what about dogs that speak other languages? Does a dog whisperer have to be a linguist as well? I think that guy on TV is Latino and probably speaks Spanish as well as English. He can communicate with English speaking dogs like the sheepdog, the British Bulldog, the Irish Setter and a lot of those multigenerational dogs that came over on the Mayflower and have picked up American.

He should also be able to speak to the Chihuahua, the taco the town in Mexican pueblos. The only danger there is not to mistake it for a rat which might chaw off your nose as you breathe sweet nothings in its ear.

But what happens to the dog whisperer with the German Shepherd for example? As the name suggests, this dog does not understand either English or Spanish. Does this mean that, as with humans who don’t speak English, the TV guy talks louder so as to make the meaning clearer? I would say that if you do speak English or Spanish to a German Shepherd, you best be careful. One small misunderstanding and you’ve got a pack of them at your border looking to claim a chunk of your land.

And what about Russian Wolfhounds? Not only do they speak a different language, they have a different alphabet. So it’s not just that you can’t talk to the dog in its idiom, if you leave a note that ain’t in Cyrillic he’s taking it right to one of the newspaper guys and suddenly your ambassador is being sent home or people are dropping dead with high levels of plutonium in their blood.

I would think that a dog whisperer living in Alsace Lorraine might be able to communicate with a few different breeds. The area has changed hands so many times between the Germans and the French that a whisperer there would be equally at home with say the German Shepherd and a French poodle, synecdoches of the countries whose names they bear.

Ironically, the Swiss who speak every language known to the world, have just one breed of dog, the St. Bernard. Seems kind of a waste. Well, perhaps foreign dogs go there to take the spa or if there is talk of war.

Exactitude in language is more important than it may seem at first glance. Steve Irwin for example could charm the bite out of saltwater crocs, but when he tried to soothe a manta ray, the creature responded with sharp barbs.

There are people who live close to the land who claim to be horse whisperers. There is no doubt that an aboriginal or rancher who has spent his whole life around horses is going to know better how to connect to an equine than a dude who exchanges his white collar for chaps on a weekend outing. How much discourse goes on beyond that, I don’t know.

There was a time a few centuries back when a herd of horses, Houyhnhnms, were actually smarter than ranchers, so it was possible to hold stimulating conversation with them. However, as is painfully clear, the yahoos won the day and in the mane, with the exception of the generally positive Mr. Ed, today’s horses tend to be very negative, nay-saying and nagging until they spit the bit.

I don’t suppose horse whisperers can gurgle to sea horses. It’s tough to talk softly when you’ve wearing a mask and you’ve got gas coming out of your mouth. I would think that fish in general, are a difficult audience. I mean they’re in school and all, so they’re not uninformed, well maybe the ones in the Arabian Sea who have a limited curriculum. But fish tend to speak in comic strip balloons without the words, like a cartoonist with writers’ block.

I have always thought that horses get way too much attention when compared with other capable, if not as aesthetically pleasing, domestic animals. George Orwell attempted to correct this error in his sketches on farm life and another pig, Babe, made a cinematic splash a few years back. But that seems so few when compared to Mr. Ed, Black Beauty, the Budweiser Clydesdales, Trigger, Quick Draw McGraw and Ohio Silver. And what about cows? I never hear of anyone whispering to them. They’ve done a lot of amazing things over the years. Without a cow, Jack couldn’t have killed a ferocious giant. Another cow even jumped over the moon for Christ sakes. Horses can barely clear a steeplechase. Yet everyone wants to talk to horses while the poor cow is left to clean out the fridge.
Anyways, I’m not sure about these animal low talkers. I kind of put the whole idea in the same category as bone throwers, tea leaf and palm readers, tarot cards, séances, alchemists, astrologists and priests. On the other hand, if you show me a Russell’s viper whisperer, I’m prepared to reconsider.

Copyright © 2009 Paul Heno