Learning To Communicate Underwater Above Ground; Part 2. Land Animals

It's amazing what one can find underneath a couch that hasn't been moved in years.
 I could have started my own variety store with what I found behind it's dusty, furry, green, back.

 I had everything I needed to set up a camp, with enough dog hair and paper clips to build my own mattress and box spring set, pencils for an adequate fire, and hair bands to use as weapons, should I be attacked at dawn.

 The many drawbacks with hiding behind the couch for years though, is there is very little room for cooking and bathing. I could no longer turn my underwear inside out.
I begin to miss important dietary needs such as homemade macaroni and cheese and Jamba Juice smoothies.
 I missed human murmurs and hacking sounds over meals. I missed the family mime and the shabby sign language.

I missed me in the world.

When a wonderful ball of shedding fur, was brought into my life one day, I began to observe, what at first, seemed to be random behavior, with a tilt of the head, a tap here and there, or a yawn.
 Could it be that she understood me?! Does a speech challenged, tick apartment,  really need to yawn every few minutes or was she trying to speak to me?! 

I already knew it was not exactly riveting front page news that the average canine could understand around 160 words of the human language, but did they really?
 It could be that dogs hear sounds with distinct patterns, such as I did, perhaps, even, sound patterns that match certain human behaviors. Like, "Go for a walk?!" could easily be heard as, "Listen to me talk!", or something as far fetched as, "What a big cock!" Ha!
 I knew between Dijon, the mustard colored, coyote, and I, it was all the same thing, until the leash was brought out.

What I learned from her, I begin to take out into the real world.
I begin to observe when people bit their lower lips when they knew they shouldn't say something or adjusted their pants when girls with silicone chests took their orders. I noticed that people scratched, picked, bit, caressed, poked, grabbed, fluttered, blushed, teared, gulped, and swooned, all to communicate without a voice.
I saw that weakness shuffled and arrogance went forth in strides.

 And,even without understanding words, like Dijon, I could recognize speech patterns, from a "rat-a-tat-tat" of a type A who had just been to Starbucks, to the,  " chirp, chirp, chirp" of a "Pollyanna".

 With all the obsessive behavior of "Monk" and the  irritation from of an episode of "Psych", I was ready to head out the door and lock it behind me..... or was I?