READING THE DOG

If you are already experienced at reading dogs during aggression and bite work, you should probably stick with the method you use. However, if you are new or do not have an established system for some reasons, I want you to know the following description will help get you started. Always try to look at all dogs in the same sequence so that all of them receive uniform treatment. If you look at the head first one time and the tail first the next, you will eventually miss something important. Also remember to allow for physical causes for the dog’s body language. For instance, if there is a noise in front of the dog, and he flicks his ears forward, it probably means he is listening and nothing more. At that point you will have to ignore his ears and read the rest of his body to find out how he feels about what he is hearing. If he slinks around slowly, it may mean he is feeling sick, not that he is insecure. Try to always eliminate physical causes before you assign emotional meanings to a dog’s body language. It also helps to observe the large indicators first (such as the body axis) and then move to the smaller ones (like the ears and eyes). This can be done in a series of seven steps, beginning with energy level and moving on through body axis, stride, muscle tone, neck, head, and tail.

SEVEN KEY FACTORS IN READING A DOG

1. Energy Level

2. Body Axis

3. Stride

4. Muscle Tone

5. Neck

6. Head

7. Tail

Start by reading the dog’s energy level, as is outlined above. Steps two through seven should be read in the order listed, since they are listed in order of importance. In other words, information from each step is more important than information from any of the steps coming lower on the list. For example, if a dog is leaning away from a loud noise but shows confidence in the head and tail, he is showing insecurity, no matter how good the head and tail look. Information from step two is more important than information from steps six and seven. A dog that shows insecurity in all three of the steps just mentioned is in much worse shape than the one whose head and tail look confident, but when signals give conflicting information, give more weight to what you see in the steps higher on the list. This will help you understand ambivalent dogs that send confusing sets of signals. If you already have an established pattern of reading dogs, you are probably not going to change your order of observation at this point. My advice is to stay with the pattern you are comfortable with, but add the levels of importance from the seven steps when dogs give you ambivalent signals. In the long run, you will understand dogs better and read them faster. In my next post I am going to describe each of the key factors when reading the dog during aggression work.