How many times have you looked at your dog and thought "what the heck are you thinking?" It is definitely a challenge to share your life with someone who can’t speak to tell you what’s going on. But luckily, our dogs are actually quite expressive in their own way, and if you know what to look for in their body language and behavior, you often can get a pretty good understanding of what is going on inside that little head.
Here are a few of our tips to easily and instantly improve your ability to understand what your dog is communicating:
Stay curious.
Research has shown that our assumptions of how we think a dog should feel in a situation often get in the way of us reading a dog’s body language. So remind yourself to view your dog with fresh eyes and questions and notice when any assumptions (eg. “Of course my dog wants to say hi to the neighbor kids!”) stop you from reading your dog’s body language.
Drop the word “fine.”
When we talk about dogs (and TBH, ourselves, too), we use “fine” to mean anything and everything between terrified or abjectly miserable and over-the-moon elated. When you notice yourself use the word “fine” to describe how your dog is feeling, take that as a sign that you should pause and dig a little deeper.
Look at the whole dog.
Dogs show their emotions using every part of their body. Rather than focusing on just one part of the body, like their tail, take in the whole picture of their mouth, eyes, ears, forehead, posture, and tail. This will give you a more accurate, and potentially more nuanced, picture. Just like us, dogs can feel multiple, potentially conflicting emotions at once, so if it seems like your dog is sending mixed signals, they might be!
Ask your dog.
Sometimes, it’s hard to say for sure if a dog is enjoying a situation or interaction or not. But for a lot of situations, consent tests give you a way to ask them. To perform a consent test, guide your dog away from whatever it is that might be bothering them. If they try to get right back over to it, that’s a pretty clear sign! This is a great one to do during play with dogs or people, when it can be hard to tell the difference between barking, growling, or running away for play vs for real.
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