Watch your tone with me

Dancer had a crossword puzzle which she was suppose to use her vocabulary words from several previous chapters for the answers. She has some hard vocabulary words so I was going over them with her to refresh them in her memory and make the crossword less frustrating. We got to the word inflection. To explain to her what the word meant I told her that Nikki, our dog, was very good at understanding inflection. "Here watch" I said. In my sweetest little voice I said "Here Nikki, little cutie, come here Nikki". Nikki jumped up, started her tail wagging and came running over. She got about half way to us and in a low angry voice I said "Nikki, come here." She stopped and flattened right out on the floor with her tail down. I showed Dancer what inflection meant but I felt terrible for confusing the dog and making her sink into the carpet like that. Nikki got lots of hugs and an extra dog treat. I should probably go pet her again right now.