How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"No!" Mom or Ethan would shout when I wet the floor. "Good boy!" they'd sing when I peed in the grass. "Okay, that's good," they'd say when I urinated on the papers. I could not understand what in the world was wrong with them. (6.60)
This is a comic sequence about the frustration people experience when they try to housebreak their pets. Here, it's shown as being pretty darn confusing from the dog's perspective.
Quote #5
One of my favorite things to do was to learn new tricks, as the boy called them, which consisted of him speaking to me in encouraging tones and then feeding me treats. (7.1)
It seems that it isn't necessarily the words that matter, but how they are said. The dog responds well to the encouraging tones. Hey, you get more tricks with honey than you do with vinegar, right?
Quote #6
"Stay"? "Dog Door"? "Good dog"? How were these terms, which I'd heard so often, even remotely related, and which one was "Stay" again? None of this made any sense to me. (7.11-7.12)
The words are very confusing to the dog. Here, the humans are speaking to him in a neutral way, so he is even more confused. Subtlety is lost on the canine kind.