DOGS BODY LANGUAGE

What is My Dog Trying to Tell Me? Decoding your dog’s body language

Think for a moment about going to a bridal shower after a long day at the office, a 90-minute traffic snarl, and four customer service misunderstandings to get your bank card reactivated. Most likely, you aren’t in the mood for a “fun” time. Nevertheless, it’s an important event for the bride. Putting on a fresh dress and your best party face, you go, even though you would rather snuggle up with the dogs on the couch and throw in a movie. When you arrive, your sister takes one look at you and says “You’ve had a rough day! Coffee or wine?”

How does she know? How do we pick out that the bride is tense, the bride’s mother is proud, the maid of honour is excited, and the groom’s mother is disaffected?

In humans, we send body language signals without even thinking about them, and we read them accurately through long experience and a certain amount of innate knowledge. Although there are some cultural differences in how body language is spoken around the world, for the most part, we have a base language that we all share. Tense people tend to be rigid in their movements, nervous people tend to move quickly and with jerky movements, and relaxed people tend to move fluidly and gracefully.

How often do you watch your dog and read him just as well? Dogs have a rich body language that they use to great effect. We can eavesdrop on what a dog is telling you by knowing a little bit about how dogs behave when they are relaxed, happy, nervous, frustrated or angry.

Imagine, for a moment, that instead of walking into a bridal shower, you were walking into your living room at the end of the weekend. By considering a dog’s posture, path of travel, gait, eye shape, and tongue, you could quickly assess what that dog was experiencing just as well as you read a friend’s body language.