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I have one particular family member who is a rather quiet sort. No matter my attempts to levy conversation, she'll just sit there quietly and stare at me. Make no mistake, she lets me know when she's hungry or displeased with a house guest, but she otherwise spends her days freeloading and napping.
 At least it's a cute face; I'm clearly talking about my dog.
As our technology progresses to the point where it becomes almost impossible to fathom the next breakthrough, our canines have been left rather low-tech. Overall, that's a good thing. I feel as though nothing needs to complicate to beautiful simplicity of the human-dog relationship. I often say one of my favorite traits of my dog is actually her silence. If we start trying to improve our pets too much, it won't be long until we end up with a real-life CatDog.
Despite not having verbal speech, our dogs communicate and interact with humans and other dogs in a very sophisticated way. Dogs are the only other animal besides humans which understand pointing with the index finger; not even chimpanzees understand the clue. When communicating primates focus on the right side of another primate's face for emotional clues since that side of the face is intrinsically linked to the right hemisphere of the brain, and dogs are the only  non-primate to exhibit this behavior. Dogs and humans are so compatible in their communication styles that DogTV, the first television channel aimed at dog viewers, has become successful enough to expand into new markets. Dogs communicate with each other by a series of body and facial movements, odors, whines, yelps and growls. Seemingly, barks do very little as a means of communication, but dogs are able to determine the size and intent of another dog simply by listening to its growl - and furthermore no dogs have been observed as 'lying' about their size.
However, several sources believe that better animal-human communication is on the verge of a breakthrough, and that decoding animal language is shortly to follow. A team of inventors are currently working on a system called FIDO, or 'facilitating interaction for dogs with occupations.' The project is part of a recent trend of wearable computing, and the concept team includes one of the inventors of Google Glass. The pup is outfitted with a harness with four different odor sensors that the dog has learned. Each sensor indicates a different signal to the handler, who is wirelessly linked and nearby. The idea is that a drug-sniffing dog can indicate different concepts to its handler, a search-and-rescue dog can report different patient conditions, or your household pal can tell you it's thirsty. While we're not quite to the point of Dug the dog, it's at least a step in the right direction.
Previously, a Japanese company released Bowlingual. This one-way communication device features a microphone transmitter attached to the dog's collar which feeds a handheld computer its recording. The dog's bark is compared to a library containing thousands of reference barks. The computer provides the dog's emotional state, as well as the message behind the bark. However, this product is strictly for "entertainment purposes only," so its interpretations should not be heavily considered. One veterinarian notes that BowLingual is untrustworthy and nonsensical.
 Con Slobodchikoff, an animal behaviorist at Northern Arizona University, believes that the day when we decode the language of dogs, and cats as well, is only a decade away. Slobodchikoff and his research teams have decoded the complex language of prairie dogs. Their research indicates the 'chatter' prairie dogs emit is a type of verbal language which can even form short sentences. Examine the video at right for a more in depth explanation by Slobodchikoff himself. He believes that many other animals utilize verbal language as well, but that our understanding of how they use it and what information they convey is still developing. Slobodchikoff feels that humans have also largely ignored the potential for verbal animal languages due to our species hubris.
It seems as though we're only a few innovations away from fully realizing the communicative powers of our pets. In the case of my Labrador retriever, I'm rather sure the ability to talk to me would result in nonstop requests for food, 24/7. But at least I'd be able to shut the device off for some peace and quiet, something quite unobtainable when there are other family members around the house.
Resources
Pop Sci - FIDO would enable...
The Atlantic - Animal Behaviorist: We'll Soon Have Devices...
Wikipedia - Dog; BowLingual
PC Tech Mag - New devices let's dogs 'speak'...
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Re: Chatting with Canines
