반려견 바디랭귀지: 개과의 소통 신호 및 감정 이해하기 #157 #팟캐스트

Turn on a camera when you're sitting on the couch and reading a book and you start patting your dog. Stop patting. What happens? Does your dog move away and say, I've had enough? Does your dog lean in and say, that was good. Let's keep going. Your dog is constantly giving you clear communication. And what I'd like from you is to be able to see when your dog is saying, I'm relaxed and content. When your dog with their body language is saying, I would like your attention, or I'm feeling a little agitated or anxious. I'm feeling afraid. I'm feeling stressed. I'm feeling worried. I'm feeling extremely fearful. Now there's some obvious ways that our dogs may show those emotions, but there's a lot more less obvious ways that I would love for you to know about. I'm going to go through those today. And I would like you to start watching those videos, maybe freezing those videos at certain points and saying, Hey, I just saw my dog's tongue just dart out from between his teeth just for a second. And then it went right back in his mouth. I wonder if that means something. Yes, it does. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So, just so I don't forget, I'm not going to leave this to the end. I'm going to recommend my four favorite books that are really going to help you understand what I'm talking about. Probably the most popular book on how your dog tries to give you clear communication. It's called On Talking Terms with Dogs, Calming Signals, and it's by Turid Rugas. Now this is a book that every single human being that teaches anybody about dog training really has to know inside out and back in front. Now there's another book. It's a lot more expensive, but this is another great book. It's called Canine Body Language and it's by Brenda Alof. I love that book because it's a pictorial dictionary towards really understanding dog's body language. The other two that I like are, this is an oldie. I really don't even know if you can get it anymore. It's called Body Posture and Emotions by Suzanne Clothier. And the final one I'm going to recommend is Lily Chin's Doggy Language. Okay. So, those are the books that are really going to be super helpful to you to understand what your dog is trying to communicate to you. Now let's just walk through the different body parts. Now, starting with the tail. Podcast episode number four, I talked about T-E-M-P. That was a really simple overview of looking at dog's emotions. But guess what? Dog's emotions are a lot like ours in that they're complex. When somebody says, what's wrong? Nothing. Now we might be saying one thing, but our body is going to be saying something else.

So, it isn't always cut and dry, but I'm going to give you a really gross overview in this short little podcast episode at things that you can be on the lookout for. So number one, let's look at the tail. Obviously, everybody knows that a dog with a slow rhythmic wag in conjunction with a relaxed body, relaxed face, relaxed mouth, relaxed ears is a happy dog. But did you know that a dog that is anxious will often wag his tail only to the left? If you look at this clip of my puppy, this, when she was quite young and she was resource guarding, you can see when Tater Salad comes into the room and she gets upset, her tail wags only to the left. You're going to see this with a lot of dogs. When they're feeling anxious, stressed, fearful, the tail goes left. Now a dog may tail wag to the right when they're feeling a little submissive or when they're feeling relaxed. But most people just go, oh, that's a tail wag. A tail wag that is right up over the hips, stiff and vibrating along with a fixed gaze is a dangerous tail wag. It's a tail wag of a dog showing great anxiety about the person, the animal, the child, the environment. And when dogs show great anxiety, it's fight, flight, freeze, we need to do something to help them. So, tails can be low wagging between the hawks. That's a sign of a dog that's a little bit of worried. It can go up along the belly. So, you've got to look for these signs along with other signs in the body, which we're going to talk about because it all paints a picture together. For example, my dog, this is a submissive dog, so she will tail wag very, very low when she greets new people. And so, you could isolate that and go, oh, that's a dog who is super anxious and fearful and might bite. But if you look at the rest of her body, you can see it's very relaxed and she is a happy dog. It's just a low tail wag. So, let's go from the tail to the E, the eyes. So, a dog who is got very squinty eyes, they may be showing some submission. They may be showing another dog a calming signal. Now that's the title of one of the books that I suggested. And what does that mean? That means the dog's trying to communicate, let's regulate. I'm regulating myself. They may do it for themselves alone. They may do it for a child that's nearby or for an adult or for another dog. So, there's a lot of parts of the body that's involved with calming signals and an eye squinting may be one of them. Eye squinting may be also a dog that's showing sheer joy. This is amazing. Another calming signal done with the eyes, the more common one is a dog that blinks. A lot of frequent blinking.

You can see this with Swagger interacting with this doodle that he does a lot of fast blinking. And you can do that yourself. We'll get to that more near the end of the podcast, how we can mirror calming signals to our dogs. So, eyes that are fixed in one direction, that's not a relaxed gaze. Eyes that you can see the whites of the eye, sometimes called a whale eye, that's a dog who is very, very anxious. Are they very, very afraid? Are they ready to bolt? Are they ready to fight? They are a dog that is not relaxed. Along with that, you will see the skin around the eyes will show facial tension to support what the eyes are expressing. So, you might see all of a sudden skin wrinkling up between the eyes, or you might see tension in the skin being pulled back towards the ears because the eyes and the ears are going to work together. Eyes and ears and tail along with all the other communication that the dog is giving you is going to paint a picture of what's going on in that dog's brain at that moment. So ears that are loose and hanging naturally, that's a relaxed dog most of the time. Ears that start rotating back, they may be locating sounds in behind them. They may be showing great anxiety. Rotating back, maybe rose budding. Flop ears might start rose budding and that they start curling at the top. Ears that are normally prick might rotate back or flatten to the head. So dogs who are really anxious, you'll see the pupils dilate as well. They'll get huge because they're getting ready to bolt. If they can bolt, they are bolting. So let's stay on the head. We've done the ears. We've done the eyes. We've done the face. Now you'll see wrinkles in a number of places, but the most common ones will be between the eyes, just on the outside of the eyes and the mouth. So a dog that has a lot of tension in their body or they're stressed, you'll find that they'll pull their mouth back and you'll see a little wrinkle in the corner of their mouth. They may be open mouth panting. You might see their breathing is definitely going to change. It's going to get more elevated. The tongue may get long and it may get curled at the end called spatulating. That's just stress. Now it could be stress from working too long in the heat. They're overheated. So you might see a spatulated tongue for that. But again, putting all these other things together. Now I talked about tongue flicking where you just see a little bit of the tongue coming out from between the teeth. That is a dog who is showing that they are a little bit anxious. The tongue flicking may come up over the nose.

That could be a calming signal to another dog that I'm de-stressing my body. I'm showing you all these other things along with the tongue. We look at the dog's gaze. They may look away, avert their eyes from the dog that's oncoming or the child that's nearby. So you get the tongue flicking. You get the eyes or the whole head turning away. Another probably the most common, common signal that people are aware of is when dogs yawn. We often call them stress yawning. When the dog is giving these big open mouth yawns. Again, it may be that the dog is just regulating their body. They're giving a clear message that I'm just letting you know, I am feeling a tad uncomfortable with what's going on. I'm just going to deregulate, de-stress myself with these big yawns. You can actually yawn at your dog and help them to deregulate because a lot of dogs will mirror you if you blink and yawn. Which is why I tell my students all the time when they're going into the agility ring, if you're tense and barely breathing, guess what? Dogs are great at mirroring us. So that's how if you have a dog that you're worried with them around other dogs and you see another dog and you start hyperventilating and all, I know it's hard, but if you can relax, you're going to help mirror the emotions you want your dog to take on at that time. Now let's look at the dogs, just the posture of their head. A dog that lowers their head to sniff. Sniffing is a good thing. They might not be sniffing anything in particular, but that sniffing, another clear calming sign to another dog. I'm okay. I'm deregulating over here. You do you. I'll do me. Everything is going to be fine. And you can see in the video where this did growl at Tater when he came in the room when there was a bowl of food in the room. That's what Tater did. He's like, yeah, this carpet looks really interesting. I think I'm just going to like have a big sniff and then I'm just going to leave the room because I don't want to deal with this anymore. A head that's lowered, a head that's sniffing. It could be that they're looking to diffuse the situation. Head that's turned away along with a body that's bent away is a sign that the dog is okay with you being there, but they are just showing you that that's a little bit of a calming sign. All of these things together is what's giving us information about the dog's emotions. You cannot take one thing in particular and say, I know what's going on now. That's why I'm encouraging you to video your own dog. Now a dog that puts their head up, they may be curious.

They may be seeing something that they're interested in, but they also might be posturing. Dogs like to, of course we think dogs go at other dogs with their mouth, but they also might just head bop another dog just to say, hey, give me some space. Get me out of here. You are too close. So the head is another great telltale sign. Okay. Our dog's posture. The dog that's getting low is a dog that's stressing. Now a dog may go into a bow to tell another dog, hey, I want to have a little run. You want to have a little run? If they play bow and go forward, maybe even you'll see a little wag of the back end. That's a dog who is making an invitation. It may be reciprocated. But if it's a play bow that's held, it may be trying to de-stress a situation. You see that a lot around puppies. Adult dogs might hold and freeze, might be even turning away, trying to defuse puppies that are getting a little bit out of hand. So that play bow doesn't always mean I want to play. A play bow with a dog spinning away from the other dog. Maybe this dog wants to play, but this dog's saying, I don't feel comfortable playing. They'll constantly be moving away, moving away from the dog that actually is saying, no, come on, let's go, let's go. True play. When you see two dogs playing, you want to see a give and take. Oftentimes you'll see one dog self-handicapping. There's something momentum constantly does. She'll play up and then she flips onto her back. Because obviously you can't be as big a threat when you're on your back. So she's self-handicapping to let the other dog know that, yeah, it's okay. This is good. We can have fun. And then she might get up and run a little bit, play bow and come in and flip over again. So that posture is very clear. Posture that's stiff. If a dog gets very stiff with their back end and forward or recesses back, they're showing some signs of fear. My legs are locked back here. I might go a little bit forward, but my back legs are locked. Locking legs, dogs are ready to leave. They are not relaxed. I mean the whole body should show relaxation and even the fur. So a dog that stressed the fur may stick up on end. You might suddenly see dander in your dog's coat. You might suddenly see the dog start shedding in a moment of severe stress. If you've ever had a dog afraid of the veterinary clinic, you might say, why are they shedding? This is embarrassing. I brush them all the time. It's just another one of your dog's signs that they're telling you, I'm not comfortable with this environment at this moment. So let's look at the dog's posture.

When the top line is flat and everything you see the shoulders relax, that's a relaxed dog. When you see, as we did in the video with the Aussie, the back end in that play bound was tight. It was under the dog's body. A dog may have a rounded top line and our Aussie did showed us that in that video as well. A rounded top line that's saying, I am not comfortable. Now what we want to see from a dog who is showing relaxation is what we call a shake-off, where they give a whole body shake to try and de-stress to neutralize the situation or to say to another dog or a person, hey, I'm okay here. You can just move away and everyone will be happy. This is good. It's a calming signal that the dog is telling you that it's time we moved on from this. Along with that dog's posture, you may see a dog lift one paw. One paw lift is a dog saying, I'm a little bit anxious. I'm a little uneasy with what's going on. All of these things. A lot of terriers will just lift their paws. Hey, pointers lift their paw the time, don't they? But it's the motion in conjunction with any of these other signs. Okay. I think I've given a general overview of many different parts of the dog's body. We haven't even talked about the teeth, you know, and we haven't talked about vocalization, but I don't want to go any deeper into this. If we need a part two and a part three and a part four, we are going to do it. Right now, I want to roll the video that I showed you at the beginning of this podcast. And what I would like you to do is I would like you to see if you can identify when the dog goes into a bow and then rolls away from the puppy. How many times do you see that happening? Can you identify? Now you have to be really careful to see the tongue flicks where the tongue just comes out between the teeth. You'll see several of those. The shake-offs that the adult dog does. The number of times that the adult dog tries to ask the owner by locking eyes, please help me. Please get me out. There are at least four, maybe five times where that dog looks to escape. Looks up the wall, looks up the panel of the gating, looking for an escape. The clear obvious sign that the dog wasn't enjoying himself was when he was asked to jump out or when she was asked to jump out, she didn't hesitate. She came right out immediately. But there was one or two signs where the dog vocalized. It wasn't being hurt. It was vocalizing to say, this is enough. I am done here. You'll see here creating space by bopping the puppy, sometimes using your mouth to push the puppy away in order to get away. You will see the dog's breathing change.

Watch the beginning video and watch the ending. You'll see all of this within that short little 50 seconds will tell you so much. Look at how the dog's facial tension, ears and posture change the moment it sees that puppy. And that cascades into all of the calming signals and signs of tension and stress that she's trying to communicate with her owner to say, please help me. I recognize if you're listening to this podcast, there's a lot that you have to visualize. So, you might want to jump over here to YouTube and watch it. What I'd like you to do is when you're watching this, write in the comments, the time marks where you picked up this. I picked up this. I saw this and the time marks. And please start videoing your dog, screen capping things within that video, make it a game with your family. What does this mean when you see this? What do you think this means? Well, let's line it up with this podcast Susan did or with one of the books that Susan suggested. This has been a really long podcast, but I hope it is seriously helpful. And I really hope if you ever see one of those videos on social media for the sake of the child that might get bid and the sake of the dog that's going to be put in a precarious situation, you are not afraid to leave a comment and say, Hey, refer to this podcast because you're going to learn that your dog was showing a lot of signs of anxiety and stress, not happiness. And I'm right here on Shaped by Dog. Taters pretty good at hitting targets. Now it's your turn. If you're not a subscriber to this page, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Now, be sure to turn on the notification bell. So you'll never miss another video. And if you are already a subscriber, that's for you. Go ahead and give yourself a really good cookie.