The language of dogs: how to understand your pet by the facial expressions of the eyes, the movement of the ears and tail

Tail wagging

If your dog is wagging his tail, he is most likely feeling comfortable and safe at the moment. She may be happy to see you, ready to play, or just enjoying the moment. If a dog wags its tail at the sound of your voice, it indicates a strong connection with you and a sense of well-being in your presence. However, dogs wag their tails in different ways to indicate different emotions. For example, if the tail is slightly raised and the middle part wags, this usually indicates friendship. If the tail is raised high and has an unusual position, and the dog wags it slowly, this may be a sign of interest and suspicion, so you need to approach such a dog with caution.

How to understand a dog's tongue

You don't need superpowers to understand dog speech.

Try to take a closer look at your pet and listen to the sounds. Both barking and howling have their own meaning, and the dog conveys some thoughts with the help of its body.

Let's take a closer look at existing methods of communication.

Sound communication of dogs

The variety of dog sounds includes:

Growl. A growling dog is not always a threat. Its message depends on intonation and posture:
Low ranges of sound accompanied by barking and used for a long time. There is good reason for your pet to be suspicious or concerned.
Low ranges of sound at minimum volume. A warning signal from a confident and dominant animal. In this way, the dog hints to other creatures not to stand in its path.
Mid-range sounds accompanied by barking. Possible aggression is connected to the nervous state.
Low range grumbling sounds. The pet is happy with the current situation. During active games, the loud bark of a satisfied dog may be accompanied by grumbling.
Howl . Typically, howling sounds are used to express sadness: howling to sad music, loneliness, hunger and cold.
Barking. A barking dog may mean:
Desire to play. The sounds will be high and ringing. Showing friendliness, the pet may squeal a little.
Aggression. Expressed with high, fast and loud sounds.
The joy of meeting. The owner returning from work will be greeted with a jerky and perky bark.
Warning to get out of the way. Accompanied by a single or rare bark in a low range.
Whining. Whining sounds indicate:
Pain, fear or anxiety. The whining is abrupt and may be accompanied by sudden squeals. Be sure to check your dog for injuries. If the reason for this behavior is still unclear, contact your veterinarian.
Loneliness. If a puppy separated from its mother or a dog adopted from a shelter starts a long and prolonged serenade, then the problem is a rejection of the new environment. They miss their mother or comrades and need support. During the first week, do not leave your new pet alone and spend as much time with him as possible.
Manifestation of hunting instincts. If a companion dachshund, who has never been on a hunt, starts barking, accompanied by whining, then the spirit of her ancestors-hunters has simply awakened in her. Never scold animals for making unpleasant sounds, but try to teach them commands. In this case, the problematic situation will be solved with one word “quiet”.

Language of the body

In addition to their voice, dogs use body language to communicate.
Dogs are not much different from people in terms of communication, so they also use non-verbal methods of communication to talk.

Pay attention to the ears

Take a close look at the position of your ears:

Pressed down means fright .
Turned upward or forward indicate high enthusiasm for the process (hunting, games) or curiosity. Changing the angle of rotation closer to the head expresses an aggressive attitude.
Partial retraction without pressing the head indicates uncertainty and anxiety . The pet is upset or puzzled about something.

With cupping, mobility decreases, reducing the variability of conveyed emotions.

Talking with your eyes

Animals also do not like staring and boring glances, preferring to avert their eyes or even express aggression.

Dogs can talk and express feelings with their eyes

Using visual signals, the pet demonstrates:

Dominance . The dog looks straight into the eyes of the opponent, without looking away from other irritating factors.
Playfulness . The animal often blinks and seems to wink, inviting you to take part in a joint game.
Alertness and full readiness . With eyes wide open, the pet shows maximum concentration for action.
Submission and respect . If the dog looks away, then it accepts the primacy of the beholder.
Aggression . The gaze is intense, as is the case with dominance. Characterized by narrowing of the eyes.

Watching the face

A pet's face can take on different expressions depending on its mood:

Stress, awkwardness . In an awkward or stressful situation (meeting new people or animals), the dog yawns or nervously licks its face. Human yawning is transmitted to our four-legged friends.
Aggression, warning . If the dog shows his teeth and wrinkles his muzzle, then it is better not to touch him. Any movement in his direction will be calculated as an attempt to attack, which will provoke an immediate bite.
Joy . The famous dog smile is difficult to confuse with anything else, so understanding your pet's satisfaction is not that difficult.

Understanding poses

If a dog clings to the ground and wags its tail, it wants to play.
A dog’s posture can tell you a lot:

Walking in circles can be explained by nerves, boredom, or excitement .
The pet presses its chest and head to the floor, stretching out its forelimbs and lifting its tail. In this case, it's time to take out your favorite ball for active games.
Fur along the spinal column indicates alertness and aggression .
Gentle touches with the paw are used to attract attention (the desire to eat, play, or an acute lack of affection).
A raised paw during movement indicates concern. If a head tilt is added to this position, the animal expresses puzzlement .
The dog, shaking its tail, is full of energy and wants to play .
Slow wagging of the lowered tail indicates embarrassment or puzzlement about an unknown object.
Swaying the hips and demonstrating the 5th point speaks of trust and friendliness. The pet rubs its backside, begging for scratches.
Tail drooping or tucking indicates fear and uncertainty . The pet needs to be encouraged and protected.
A neutral tail position (an extension of the spine or a relaxed descent, but not tucked) indicates calmness . The animal feels safe.
Sudden shaking of the shoulders and head after obvious aggression demonstrates normalization . The dog, convinced that there is no threat, tries to relieve tension.

The dog wags its tail and barks

A dog that wags its tail and barks at the same time may seem ambivalent because the two are conflicting signals—a wagging tail usually signifies friendly, cheerful behavior, while barking is often associated with aggression. Understanding the dog in this situation means that you must take into account other signals he is showing, such as the position of the tail, if it is raised too high then it most likely cannot be associated with friendly behavior. Raised hair on the withers, growling and slow “warning” wagging of the tail, accompanied by barking and a defensive posture, can be a signal of aggression.

How to learn to understand the language of dogs?

How to study? For example, read one or more books about the “language of dogs.” Enough of them have already been published in Russian translation: “How to talk to a dog” (S. Koren); “What your dog wants: Canine “body language.” Secrets of the Dog's Language" (V. Gorodetsky); “How to understand a dog. Learn to speak the language of your best friend” (D. Fennell); “Decipher your dog's language. Poses, barking, marks..." (V. Dramar); “Barking - what dogs talk about” (T. Rugos); “Dialogue with dogs: signals of reconciliation” (T. Rugos).

And somehow, after giving such a list of books dedicated to the “language of dogs,” it’s awkward to answer in a couple of phrases. And it may not work out at all. How can you describe in a nutshell what Stanley Koren (a professor of psychology, by the way) wrote in 390 pages of his book How to Talk to a Dog?

On the other hand, the presence of books about the “language of dogs” somehow by default implies the existence of this very language. After all, you can’t write thick books about something that doesn’t exist?

Have you ever wondered what kind of animal our domestic, house, master, family dog is? That dog that lives in an apartment and a house? If you think about it, this is not a trembling dog at all, but a proud “dog man”. And old Bulgakov was right with his “Heart of a Dog”! Oh, how right!

Remember: out of its, say, 10 years of life, our dog spends only 3-4 months in the dog world, and then lives, communicates and interacts with people for the rest of its life. She does not have time to become a dog, she does not learn the mechanism of exchanging information with other dogs, because she does not interact with them. Our dog adapts and adapts to us, adapts to us, participating in the formation of human-canine language - channels of information between itself and the person. But by and large, our Labrador has nothing and no need to talk to other dogs.

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Comrades who write about dog language begin to dance from the wolf as from a stove. They say that a wolf is a highly socialized creature, capable of carrying out cooperative (that is, joint with its fellow tribesmen) activities, such as joint feeding of offspring, collective hunting and collective defense of a common territory. To accomplish this, wolves must exchange information to coordinate their activities. And successfully, by the way, this information is exchanged using facial expressions, pantomimes, sound and olfactory signals. And comrades who write about dog language are happy to cite pictures with wolves, whose ears are now forward, now back, their tail sticks out like a stick, now tucked under their belly, and their mouths are present with varying degrees of grin.

Let us recall that on the way from a free wolf to a forced domestic pet, dogs stopped feeding their offspring together, and the wolf family turned into a loose group of individuals. Dogs ceased to be hunters, but became gleaners and scavengers, and their territorial behavior became simpler. Thus, what language was needed for disappeared. There was nothing left to talk about. And the language, if not disappeared, then became indecently simplified. Like the famous Ellochka the cannibal. What remains are genetically inherited signals that correspond to one state or another and are not addressed to anyone, but simply correspond to the physiological state: “I’m angry like a wolf,” “I’m kind of scared,” “I want love,” “let’s play.” I'm talking about dog-to-dog language.

However, simultaneously with the simplification of the wolf to a dog, the same domestication took place - in other words, humanization. There was even such a concept as coenvolution - the joint historical development of dogs and humans. The dogs were selected not for their ability to understand another dog, but for their ability to understand a person. And the man left next to him those dogs that understood him better. And, by the way, modern research shows that domestic dogs understand human signals better than apes. What I mean is that, in parallel with the degradation of the inter-dog dialect of the dog language, the dog-human dialect developed and strengthened. I congratulate you on this.

Now let's return to those pictures of the wolf tongue, which is so easily transferred to dogs with the position of the ears, tail and other poses.

A wolf can understand a wolf, because a wolf is a wolf in Africa! It is almost the same everywhere. Now imagine: a pug (boxer, boerboel, mastino-napoletano, etc.) and a German shepherd met on the street nose to nose. The shepherd dog, having read Stanley Coren, let's pretend to be a wolf: he will spread his ears and move them back, and put his tail up with a stick, and gracefully pull the corners of his mouth into a friendly smile (not to be confused with a grin!), and finally sum up the phrase with the position of his body. Maybe the pug will understand something, but he won’t be able to answer for sure: neither with his ears, nor with his face, nor with his tail, nor with his dashing body position. The pug didn't have a snout to talk like a dog!

So decide for yourself whether dogs have a tongue or not.

But, in spite of everything, read a couple of books about dog language.

And to understand your dog, you need to carefully observe it. They understand us perfectly even without knowing Russian.

Growl

Growling is almost always a defensive or aggressive reaction and should be treated with special attention and respect. You should never approach a growling dog you don't know, much less try to pet it or enter its personal space. However, some dogs may growl during play, at a toy, or even at their own owner, without taking any action. You need to understand your dog to differentiate between a warning growl and a play growl, although you should always stop your dog's irrational growling, even during play, to teach him the correct behavior, as the situation can easily escalate if it is not brought under control early.

Submission

The manifestation of signs of submissiveness in the language of dogs is necessary in order to maintain hierarchy in the pack. A weaker dog shows the stronger one that it is not dangerous and is not going to attack.

Domestic dogs also often show submissiveness in front of people, whom they treat as older brothers. They lower their head and tail slightly, move their ears back, look from under their foreheads and avoid direct eye contact. Pets also use a similar position of the body and muzzle when they want to reconcile or feel guilty. This happens when owners scold the dog for something.

Very often, our tailed pets, when they feel a threat that they want to prevent, or show their trust in their owners, lie down on their backs.

Jumping in place

Jumping is usually a sign of excitement and means your dog may be enjoying playing and is ready for it when the jumping is accompanied by other signals such as a wagging tail. However, jumping in place should not be encouraged. This behavior can be extremely annoying for most people, causing the dog to jump in place and get clothes dirty, or even cause injury, so you should discourage this kind of jumping with a firm word “no” and positive reinforcement when it is followed.

Let's summarize what has been said

So, to summarize:

A wagging tail usually means joy or contentment. Dogs perform similar actions when they meet their owner or receive tasty food. And dogs also wag their tail if they feel calm and good. But this should not always be taken as a good sign, since the animal may wag its tail slightly when it is aggressive or afraid.
Growling is a sign that the dog is aggressive, anxious or irritated.
When a dog jumps, it is happy, wants to play, or is begging for something (for example, food that the owner is holding in his hand). Pets often jump before going for a walk. The animal can be weaned from this habit if it is stopped with a firm voice and subsequent reward.
Eyes and gaze also play a big role in the language of dogs. But correct interpretation depends on other nonverbal cues. So, when a dog is aggressive, its eyes are very open and its gaze is motionless, but not directed at the eyes of the enemy. But if the dog, on the contrary, looks at you and lowers its head slightly, or when it meets your gaze, it averts its eyes, then this means that it is submissive to you and is in a good mood.
The position of the body can also change: the dog tries to either squeeze into a ball, lower its head if it is scared or feels humiliated, or, conversely, stand on tiptoe, proudly lift its head when the dog shows that it is in charge here. That is, the dog says that it does not pose a threat when it “shrinks” and shows humility. It shows its dominance or aggression when it seems larger than usual.
Our tailed pets flatten their ears when they are afraid or express their submission, and they rise in their normal state or when the animal experiences curiosity, surprise, or enthusiasm.
By whining, pets usually show their melancholy and how much they miss their owners. This is how they want to attract attention. Sometimes animals also whine when they are scared.
Licking is also a way to attract attention or get something tasty. But mostly dogs lick their owners after they meet them to show their love and how much they missed them.
Barking is the most controversial sound in animals. They may bark when they are afraid, aggressive, seeking attention, or when playing. Typically, animals use a high bark when they are afraid, and a low bark when they are experiencing aggression.

Don't forget about safety

Become familiar with your dog's basic cues and cues to catch his mood and feelings, and respond accordingly. Never approach a dog you don't know, and never touch someone else's dog without the owner's permission. This behavior can be quite rude to dogs, and even potentially dangerous.

You shouldn't assume that any aggressive dog in a public place will be muzzled, so you shouldn't assume that unmuzzled dogs are inherently friendly. In addition, a dog can be muzzled for many reasons, sometimes as a precaution to prevent it from harming potential prey it might be chasing, and therefore not all muzzled dogs are aggressive. Again, the first step is to act on what the dog's owner says, and then you need to "read" the dog's signals yourself before approaching him.

Dog body language: how it makes it clear that it is peaceful

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Dog body language: how it makes it clear that it is peaceful

Any experienced pet owner will tell you that they can communicate with their pet, or at least understand it. You may ask how to do this, since the dog can’t speak? The dog really can't talk. She communicates with people through her body language. The topic of today's article is the so-called gestures of appeasement. Try not to miss the article!

Types of appeasement gestures. There is a certain set of gestures through which a dog shows that you are either completely indifferent to it, or it is not going to show any aggressive actions towards you. These include: yawning; licking lips (outside of eating); scratching; sniffing the ground; moving the eyes to the side. There is also a kind of obsequious grin, as some experts call it. Be careful, this grin can easily be confused with bared teeth, and this is a sure sign of aggression.

Why do dogs use these gestures? Recently, the term “calming signals” has become increasingly common in the specialized literature. We must admit that this term is correct: the dog is the first to make it clear that it is peaceful towards you. In some cases, dogs resort to these gestures when they feel severe discomfort or fear of a person.

Yawning or licking lips are sure signs that the dog has come in peace. This is how the dog communicates with both humans and other animals. You will also notice similar behavior when you scold your pet for some offense. The dog will tell you – it has no complaints!

Cunning animals sometimes use tricks from this arsenal to stall or delay time. For example, it’s time for the dog’s next training, but she really doesn’t want to start training! Maybe all is not lost yet, and the owner can change his mind and move on to other things? Then the dog yawns, stretches, scratches himself - and then, lo and behold, the situation miraculously changes.

How to respond to appeasement gestures. Of course, we will proceed from the fact that these gestures have nothing to do with aggression and will not require any special correction. What to do in a particular situation is up to the owner to decide. If we talk about the above example, then we should use the so-called soft persistence: do not cancel the decisions made, but come closer to the pet, pet it, talk to it. Perhaps the dog is simply nervous before the start of classes, and a show of participation and care on your part would help relieve unnecessary anxiety.

Yawning or licking lips in such a situation can already be interpreted as a clear reluctance to engage. The dog is much more tense than usual. This is where it makes sense to take a step back and give your dog some time to calm down. Your excessive persistence will still be of no use.

If you have just scolded your pet for an offense, and the dog reacts with a sort of guilty smile-sneer, do not continue to be angry. You won't achieve anything other than dog aggression. Also step back and look for a new approach to the situation. Don't let your dog become afraid of you.

It should be noted that sometimes (we emphasize that this happens extremely rarely) such pacifying gestures can develop into aggression. It is not at all necessary that a dog that has just yawned will certainly rush to bite you! Learn to feel the moments when anxiety and concern in the dog increase, and in the future it may behave unpredictably. This is especially true when you are dealing with a completely unfamiliar dog. You should not continue to get close to the dog unless absolutely necessary. On the contrary, keep a distance that is comfortable for both of you: by doing this you give the dog the opportunity to calm down, show that you have no aggressive intentions, and you yourself get an additional opportunity to protect yourself before a possible attack (bites).

Original publication: Dog Communication and Appeasement Gestures. Author: Amy Bender. Source and photo:

Dominant or submissive?

A dominant, self-confident dog stands straight, its ears and tail are raised to take up as much space as possible. They also push their chest forward a little and the hair on the nape of the neck rises, allowing the dog to slowly wag its tail and growl. So many people think that wagging the tail should always mean friendliness and cordiality, but they are making a grave mistake. But submissive dogs, on the contrary, try to take up as little space as possible: they lower their head and tail, try to appear smaller, like a puppy, swing their tail quickly, keep their tail low and can squat, some dogs, expressing obedience, roll over on their back and expose the stomach. Dogs, like people, have facial expressions, and by looking at your pet’s face you can easily determine what emotions and feelings the dog is experiencing. The dog's ears are raised if he senses danger or uncertainty in the situation; if they are pressed to his head, it means he is afraid or shows his submission. Look into your dog's eyes: if they are wide open, it means anger or fear, while a happy, peaceful dog's eyes are half-closed and appear narrow. If you want to establish contact with your pet, then eye contact is ideal. Thanks to this, you can show power over the dog. Look into her eyes more often, when you praise her or are strict with her, stroke her periodically. It is very important to communicate with the dog: talk to it, call it by name. Many owners only talk to their dog when they scold it, but this is a grave mistake, because in the future your dog will simply stop listening to you. The dog feels that you are unhappy with it, which is why it is so important for it to feel needed.