Behavior Consulting, Training, Pet Sitting

These signs indicate that your dog is uncomfortable with the current situation and there is a need for intervention to prevent pushing the dog to the point of biting, and to make sure your canine friend is happy and not feeling anxious.

Please remember: It is a GOOD THING that a dog shows you that he is anxious or uncomfortable, rather than going straight to a bite. Never punish a dog for showing that he wants to be left alone by growling, leaving the situation or demonstrating more subtle signs. If you punish a dog for growling or breaking a stay to get way from a child you might suppress the warning or avoidance behavior and he might just bite without warning first the next time. The dog still feels exactly the same way about the child bothering him, but now he has no way to show it and no way out of the situation. Be glad if your dog gives a warning and take steps to modify the behavior of the child, condition the dog to enjoy the child and create safe spaces for both dog and child. See the parent information page and the dog owner information page to find out how to do this.

One Paw Raised

This is very cute but the dog is not happy and does not want to be petted or bothered. She is worried.

Half Moon Eye

The dog just wants to be left alone. Watch for this one when kids are mauling the dog. This is a commoin expression in dogs that are being hugged. If you see the half moon eye when kids approach the dog or are interacting with the dog, it’s time to intervene and give them all something else to do.

Displacement Behaviors

Displacement behaviors are normal behaviors displayed out of context. They indicate conflict and anxiety. The dog wants to do something, but he is suppressing the urge to do it. He displaces the suppressed behavior with something else such as a lick or a yawn. For example, you are getting ready to go out and the dog hopes to go too. He is not sure what will happen next. He wants to jump on you or run out the door, but instead he yawns. The uncertainty of the situation causes conflict for the dog and the displacement behaviors are a manifestation of that conflict. The dog may want to bite a child who takes his bone, but instead he bites furiously at his own foot.

Some examples of displacement behaviors include:

• yawning when not tired
• licking chops without the presence of food
• sudden scratching when not itchy
• sudden biting at paws or other body part
• sudden sniffing the ground or other object
• wet dog shake when not wet or dirty

These are all things that dogs do anyway. It is important to look at the context to determine whether the dog is feeling anxious. For example: if it is bedtime and the dog gets up, stretches, yawns and goes to her bed, then that yawn was not a displacement behavior. If the kids are hugging the dog or lying on him and he yawns or starts licking at them over and over then this is displacement. He wants to get up and leave or even to bite, but he displaces that with yawning or licking them or himself. In this context the licking or yawning behavior tells you that the dog is uncomfortable with whatever the kids are doing and it is time for you to intervene. You must then either prevent the kids from doing this in the future or use positive training techniques to teach the dog to enjoy (not just tolerate) these actions from the kids. Visit the dog owner information page for advice on how to do this.
Listen to a terrific interviewwith Doggone Safe cofounder and dog behavior specialist Teresa Lewin about displacement behavior.

Avoidance Behaviors

Sometimes dogs are more overt when they feel anxious and want to remove themselves from a situation. Please don’t force a dog to stay in situation in which he feels anxious, especially if children are the source of his anxiety. Here are some examples:

• the dog gets up and leaves an uncomfortable situation (he may bite rather than leaving one of these days)
• turning head away
• hiding behind person or object
• barking and retreating
• the dog rolls over on back in submissive way (please don’t hurt me!)

Other Body Language Signs of Anxiety

• tail between legs
• tail low and only the end is wagging
• tail between legs and wagging
• tail down or straight for curly-tailed dog (husky, malamute, pug, chow chow, spitz-type dogs etc.)
• ears sideways for erect eared dog
• ears back and very rapid panting
• dog goes into another room away from you and urinates or defecates

All dogs should have a safe place, such as a crate or mat that they can go to when they want to be left alone. All family members and guests should be taught not to bother the dog when he is in his safe place. We have recently heard of a mat product which gives the dog a shock if he tries to leave it, thus teaching him to stay on the mat. This is not what we would consider a safe place for the dog. This is a dangerous product and you should not have one of these.

Posted on Doggone Safe

Beneful dog food, made by Nestle’ Purina, declared April 10, 2012 National Hug Your Dog Day. It’s a thinly veiled ploy to sell Beneful treats. The marketers who put this concept together must have no idea who dogs actually are, or don’t care. Most dogs don’t like to be hugged. There are so many ways to enjoy your dog that hugging does not need to be one of them. Here are some examples of dogs getting hugged from youtube.

The baby and dog are face to face. The dog is displaying discomfort by looking away, licking his lips, moving away from the hug, yawning, and pinning his ears back. When the dog moves away from the child, he doesn’t go toward the dog until the adult taking the video encourages it. The adult is teaching the child to ignore the dog’s communication. This is a recipe for a bite to the face.

  Again, this baby is being encouraged to handle the dog inappropriately. The baby grabs the dog’s face near its eye and no one does anything about it. Then he grabs a handful of lips and chews on the dog’s nose and everyone laughs. The dog leans away from the baby and licks its lips. The dog is being encouraged to be “tolerant” of the baby but at some point may choose not to. This will be one of the times everyone will say, “But they grew up together! I just don’t understand it!”

   The dog is obviously uncomfortable. It’s trying to get away, licking its lips, turning way. When it’s being handed to the child multiple times, the ears are back and the weight distribution is away from the child. The child is holding it by the neck which gives the dog a negative association with children this size. Then he leans over the dog and gets in its face. The dog is leaning away, turning away, licking its lips and everyone is laughing.

   Mango is being hugged by a worker at the day care. He’s trying to turn away from her face. It looks like he might like being on her lap but doesn’t want his head hugged and she ignores him. My dog wouldn’t go to this day care.

   This appears to be three young adults in a dog park petting and hugging strange dogs. Some dogs display appeasement behaviors by leaning away, licking their lips, actively trying to escape, and some are seeking attention. Because of the number of dogs involved, it’s good to watch the whole video. The dogs that come over for attention on their own and are not restrained in any way appear to enjoy the interaction. Because these people don’t know the dogs, it’s a really bad idea to put their faces near the dogs, though.

    This dog is NOT enjoying this! Lip licks, showing teeth, lumpy whisker bed, growling, dilated pupils. Even if the dog does come back for more, it has been taught that the owner will ignore all warning signals of discomfort. The only thing left for this dog is to bite, if it truly wants to get out of a situation.

   This man has trained his dog, Baxter, to come for a hug. The dog comes on cue and is able to leave when it wants. If you must hug your dog, this is a good example of how to do it.

A dog bite to NBC news anchor, Kyle Dyer, has been in the news for the past few days. She was bitten in the face, on camera, during a live news show. The dog is in quarantine, the anchor had to have plastic surgery, and the owner is going to court. Many things went wrong for this to happen.

The dog is showing signs of stress

In a clip that’s only 25 seconds long, I counted about 11 lip licks. Max is in an environment with high distractions and people he doesn’t know. He looks away from the woman. About three times he’s panting and closes his mouth. His pupils are dilated. These are all signals that the dog is stressed. Everyone ignored these signals. When Ms Dyer finally moved even closer, he did the only thing he had left to make Ms. Dyer go away.

The owner doesn’t know the dog

Michael Robinson, the owner, is holding the collar tightly. He’s also ignoring Max’s stress signals. A local firefighter rescued the dog on Tuesday, Feb. 7 and he and the owner brought Max to the studio on Wednesday, the 8^th. HUGE stress the man ignored. The owner should not have allowed anyone at all to physically interact with Max after all that.

In addition, Robinson received citations for not having his dog on leash, allowing the bite, and not being able to produce vaccination records.

Ms. Dyer was uninformed and inappropriate

The interview began with Ms. Dyer sitting in a chair facing Max’s back. Then she gets on her knees beside him and pets him constantly until the bite. As the interview progresses, she moves closer to Max with her body and her face. After about 25 seconds of constant petting, she moves her face very close to his face and Max bit her lip.

This happens far too often because people expect dogs to tolerate any behavior that is offered “with the intention” of being friendly. Dogs have no way of knowing what a person’s intention is. They only know their signals are being ignored and they need to escalate the communication.

Owners need to be advocates for their dogs and not put them into stressful situations. Learn your dog’s stress signals. Be able to tell when he’s nearing the point that communication needs to escalate. Know when your dog is afraid or has shut down, also. A dog that’s trying its best to be invisible is likely to bite quickly.

The Denver 9News staff is going to undergo training in how to safely interact with dogs, which should have happened before dogs started coming onto the set. Learning now may prevent future incidents similar to this bite.

Some simple guidelines offered by Matthew Levien, a behavior technician from Dumb Friend’s League, are the following:

• Offer the side of your body instead of approaching the dog face to face.
• Let the dog come to you instead of approaching it.
• Let the dog get away from you, if it wants to.
• If the dog turns its head or eyes away from you, look away from it.
• Don’t treat anyone else’s dog as you do your dog. They don’t live with you.
• If the dog has recently been through a stressful event, those chemical changes can last for days to weeks. Lower your expectations until the stress has passed.

 I hope Max doesn’t pay for everyone’s mistakes with his life.