A couple weeks ago, my partner and I went cross-country skiing near Mt. Rose. We brought Halle and—for her first time trotting next to skis—she did great. While other dogs were off leash, we kept her on a long line because she tends to dart toward every dog she sees, with little regard for getting in the way of skiers.
At one point we stopped to let a skier-dog duo go by, but the dog locked eyes with Halle and stalked toward her. He was somewhat crouched, his entire body stiff. This was a red flag to me, but the owner didn’t call back or leash the dog. When he reached Halle the two started fighting and the owner had to pry his dog away from Halle.
This was a bummer for many reasons, but one is that it was probably avoidable just by reading body language. That dog did not look like he just wanted to say hi! But the owner either didn’t notice or wasn’t concerned enough to do anything. (I did hear him yelling at his dog after, which is a great way to make your dog more aggressive because they will associate other dogs with you being angry at them).
Despite our long history with domesticated canines, we tend to suck at understanding their language.
One illustration of this: a recent study in PLoS ONE underscored just how poor we are recognizing dog-dog aggression. 92 participants watched short clips of interactions between individuals of three species: dogs, humans, and macaques. They were instructed either to categorize the interactions as neutral, playful, or aggressive or to predict the outcome of the interaction.
For both groups, the participants fared the worst for dog-on-dog aggression—they failed to identify an aggressive context as well as predict an aggressive outcome. In fact, participants’ performance was worse than chance level at reading these interactions, suggesting they were biased toward assuming dogs are not acting aggressively.
This study didn’t consider whether participants had experience with dogs, but other findings suggest even dog owners can’t read dogs. In an earlier study led by some of the same researchers, the subjects similarly watched human, primate and dog interactions and predicted their outcomes. A portion of the participants had either lived with or worked closely with dogs. But, again, they fared poorly on predicting aggressive canine outcomes. It didn’t matter if the subject had dog experience or not, though dog owners reported being more confident about their prediction.
The authors note that this “unmotivated confidence” could be problematic, leading to riskier choices around dogs. “Just having a dog is not enough,” says Juliane Bräuer, coauthor of the studies and comparative psychologist leading the DogStudies Lab at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. “Dog owners simply underestimate aggression.”
I feel like I see this unmotivated confidence everywhere recently. The doggy daycare worker who leaned over and put a hand out at my shy dog (This is not how you should greet a dog, see this graphic for guidance). The absolute nuisance man at the dog park who continues to bring his dog despite the dog picking a fight every time. Actually, there are several of these guys at the dog park, and I might stop going because I don’t want to traumatize Halle.
I’ve also had this problem, though. A few years ago, I was out climbing and someone in our group brought her sensitive border collie. She very clearly told us that we shouldn’t touch the dog. But at one point during the day, she was climbing and I noticed the border collie had gotten tangled in her leash. Thinking that as a “dog person” the dog would instinctively trust me, I very gently lifted her paw to untangle the leash, and without even a warning growl she chomped on my arm.
In short, people who think they are “dog people” can sometimes be the worst around dogs.
What can help? One step is accepting that though we may have grown up around dogs, we might actually not be skilled in reading them. Part of this isn’t really our individual faults. Animal behavior scientists have really only in the past couple decades turned their attention toward dogs, which were for a long time not seen as worthy as chimpanzees or baboons, as Alexandra Horowitz notes in the intro to Inside of a Dog. And what behavior scientists have learned since then has been even slower to seep into our popular understanding.
That said, if we put aside our “dog person” pride for a sec, there are good resources out there, including the book I just mentioned. A quick Google search also yields some helpful guides, such as iSpeakDog. Just a few minutes’ worth of education might go a long way to keeping ourselves and our dogs safer.
Stuff I liked recently:
Kristina Spaulding, a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, has a two-part series about reactivity in dogs that I found really enlightening. It goes deep into why some dogs bark and lunge at other dogs or people and how to address this emotional reaction.
Joe Brown at one5C wrote about how to reduce your dog's environmental footprint. Did you know it’s OK to flush dog poop? I did not! (Brown notes you should check with your local wastewater provider, though).
I couldn’t love this more! I first was introduced to the basics of canine body language over 20 years ago, when working at a shelter & with rescues and one very smart, attuned trainer with her finger on the pulse of the broader canine behavior & scientific communities. I devoured Brenda Aloff’s coffee table sized paperback book on the subject and never looked back. It absolutely revolutionized and deepened my knowledge of dogs in general, improved my relationship with my own and helped with rectifying behavior issues, and so on.
I’ve been a passionate advocate for folks to learn it for themselves ever since. Seeing it so much more broadly taught and shared by vets & trainers & dog parents, discussed or written about in mainstream media & articles, and even some gifted trainers online doing video breakdowns for folks.... it’s amazing! Leaps and bounds ahead of how commonly known any of this was even 10 or just 5 years ago. It still feels like a drop in the bucket compared to where we could (or should!) be at, but I can’t not get excited and I want to encourage it to continue.