For the Love of a Dog (10 page)

The importance of facial proportions appears to be replicated in our interactions with dogs. I am often amazed at the lengths people will go to to defend an aggressive dog with a puppylike face, even strangers who have been bitten by the dog. Being bitten by a German Shepherd, a dog with a more “adultlike” face, is another matter. Of course, the overall size of the dog is always a factor, bigger dogs being more frightening than smaller ones. However, I’ve seen some truly dangerous baby-faced dogs of all sizes, dogs who have ripped and torn enough human flesh to count as weapons of mass destruction, but these dogs are rarely judged as dangerous as adult-looking dogs who have caused far less injury. Even sheep seem to respond to infantile versus grown-up features on the face of a dog. I once saw a flock of sheep chased around a pen all day long by out-of-control Corgis, Border Collies, Pulis, and spaniels at a herding dog clinic, but when a docile German Shepherd walked into the ring, the sheep panicked as if he’d walked in with an automatic rifle. They literally crawled over one another in a desperate attempt to jump out of the pen when the well-behaved, prick-eared, wolfy-looking dog entered the ring and quietly sat down. Like it or not, our own reactions share something with those of the sheep, but at least we can be consciously aware that we are being influenced by anatomy as much as by honest expressions of emotion.

What follows are the expressions and behavioral changes that professionals count on to tell them what’s going on inside the head of a dog. It is not an exhaustive encyclopedia of all the expressions and postures made by dogs. I have highlighted some books that do that in the Reference section, but I want to focus here on some of the more subtle signals that allow professionals to thin-slice a dog’s expressions and evaluate his internal state in an instant. It will help to go back and forth between the text and the photographs to get the best sense of what to look for, and to compare the expressions of dogs with those of our own species.

One of the most important things to notice about a dog’s face is whether her mouth is open or closed. Relaxed, happy dogs tend to have
relaxed and often slightly open mouths. In its extreme form, biologists call the look the “open-mouth play face.” Aspects of this expression are not unlike a human smile—if you smile right now, you might notice that your teeth are not touching and your lower jaw is relaxed, rather than tense. When dogs come to my office I am always aware of whether their mouths are open or shut. Most dogs who come for appointments start out with their mouths closed up tight. I don’t even think about petting them at that point, not until their mouths relax and open up an inch or two. (Keep in mind that most of the dogs I see in my office have serious behavioral problems, most often aggression related, so I see a disproportionate number of dogs with their mouths locked shut.) Whether a dog’s mouth is open or closed is so important to me that I write in my records how long it takes a client’s dog to relax enough to open her mouth—ten minutes? Thirty? Some dogs never relax enough to open their mouths in the presence of a stranger, and that tells me a lot about the seriousness of the problem.

Your dog isn’t going to have her mouth open all the time, no matter how joyful she is, but if you learn to watch for
open mouth/closed mouth
, you’ll be amazed at how much you learn about her internal emotions. You might see her close her mouth as she sees a squirrel across the road, or another dog walking down the street. Dogs will close their mouths when they’re on alert, and watching a mouth go from open to closed is a good way to know your dog has begun to concentrate on a change in the environment. Dogs will also close their mouths when they’re serious about something. Mine often close their mouths when I put them on a down/stay for photographs. A closed jaw by itself can’t tell you whether the dog is alerting to the chirp of a chipmunk or signaling to you that he’s about to bite, but going from open to closed is a key indicator that your dog is no longer in a happy-go-lucky frame of mind. Look at the photographs in the middle of the book for some examples of dogs with open and closed mouths, and compare the open-mouthed dog faces to the faces of happy humans. The similarities are truly striking. We all recognize the relaxed face of a happy-go-lucky dog, but fewer people are aware of the opposite, the dog whose mouth is closed and tense. Start watching for when your dog’s jaw opens and shuts, and in just a few days you’ll understand your dog better than you did before.

There are times, however, when an open mouth on a dog can confuse us. People often interpret a high-energy dog with a wide-open mouth as “extra friendly,” but sometimes these dogs are physically overheated or emotionally aroused. “Oh, he just loves everyone,” I’ve heard owners say, as their dogs repeatedly leaped up toward my face, their mouths open to give off the heat generated by their highly charged bodies. Unable to cool their bodies by sweating, as we do, dogs open their mouths to cool down, so don’t assume that every open mouth is an invitation to cuddle. However, there’s a lot more to a face than a mouth, and, just as we do in our own species, we can learn the most about how a dog is feeling by looking at all his facial features together.

If a dog’s mouth is closed
and
his entire body is frozen in place, you’d better pay attention. This is the thin-slice that professionals learn to look for early on, because if you ignore it, there’s a possibility you’re going to get bitten. If I meet a dog who reacts to me by closing his mouth and stiffening his body, I stay well away from him. I might talk to him in a singsong voice, keeping my own body loose and fluid, but I’m not going to reach out to pet him. A stiff body and a closed mouth are signs of a dog on high alert, whose next move may be to lunge forward. Buddy, the dog in the earlier story, stood like a statue for several seconds when I met him at the door. Because he was so stiff and was staring straight into my eyes, I read him as a dog who was uncomfortable about my presence, and willing to go after me if I made the wrong move.

There’s a downside to this knowledge, because now you’re going to join the hapless group of people whose hearts stop beating on a regular basis when they see a little boy across the street petting a new dog in the neighborhood, and the dog’s mouth has closed and his body has gone still and silent and the adults continue to chat on in oblivion while you wait for doom to fall, teeth to flash, and little Johnny to start screaming. Sorry. Ignorance can be bliss. But knowledge can avoid problems, so if you’re witness to a scene like the one above, you can call Johnny over to you or try to ease the tension by calling “Who wants to go on a
walk?” You’ll also know to tell a visitor to stop petting your own dog if your dog’s mouth shuts and her body goes still. If the general public learned to look for this important warning signal, tens of thousands of bites could be avoided every year.

Dogs frequently use “freeze” as a signal to other dogs. If you see two dogs greeting each other who are both stiff and still for more than a second or two, you’d better do something to break the tension. Things might get dramatic if you don’t. Clap your hands and suggest “Walkies!” throw a ball, sing out “Who wants
dinner
!”—but whatever you do, don’t go all stiff and immobile yourself, or you’ll make things worse.

You can also see a less problematic version of freezing when dogs are romping together. First they’ll be frolicking with loose, relaxed bodies, and then you’ll see one dog stop and freeze for just a moment.
²
Often the freeze is accompanied by a turn of the head directly toward the other dog—a good descriptive title for that is “turn to face.” Tulip does this when a dog she’s playing with attempts to mount her. Queen Tulip loves to play, but nobody gets to mount the queen. Mounting in play isn’t about sex, it’s about social status, and Tulip isn’t interested in sharing her title. If you know what to look for—it happens oh so fast—you can see Tulip whip her head around and freeze for less than a half a second as a dog tries to mount. The other dog will stop what he was about to do, perhaps play-bow to return the mood to frolicsome, and off they’ll go, bodies back to being fluid and relaxed.

You may have seen such a “micro-freeze” in some dogs when you trim their nails or pull burrs out of their tails. Groomers and trainers know to go on alert when a dog abruptly whips her head around toward their hand and freezes her body for a microsecond. I take it as a threat, a clear warning not to repeat what I just did. If a dog does this with a closed jaw, she is most likely communicating to you that she is objecting to what you are doing. It’s a great signal to be able to spot, and if you can do it, you’ll be ahead of 99 percent of the dog lovers in the world.

Whether another’s body is relaxed or stiff is important information
in dog-to-dog communication, and there’s no question in my mind that dogs interpret similar postures in humans in the same way. When I met Buddy I was careful to stay relaxed and fluid, because going still yourself is a signal to the dog that you, too, are on guard. That one change in your own body might be enough to get you in trouble, or, if used in reverse, prevent a bite from happening. A good example of that occurred at a seminar during which I saw a cute little Lhasa apso snuffling her way across the floor. As she turned toward me, I began wagging my body back and forth like some crazed two-legged Labrador, along with turning sideways, adopting an open-mouth play face, and crinkling my eyes in the universal sign of friendliness. As I approached her, she turned and cuddled against my leg, raised her head, and leaned into my hand as I stroked her neck. “Oh my,” said her owner. “That’s not what she usually does. She’s here as a case study because she snaps at people when they try to pet her.”

Just as predicted, when the dog came up on the stage and was approached by strangers, she stiffened with concern. If I hadn’t stopped people several feet away from her, I have no doubt she would’ve snapped or bitten. The difference was in the approach: I was focusing on behaving like a friendly dog, while most people were acting the way people naturally do. The usual approach of all people, when greeting human or dog, is basically the opposite of a polite approach in dog society. Dogs approach one another from the side, curving their line of approach and avoiding eye contact, while keeping their bodies loose and fluid. We do the opposite: we keep our bodies upright and relatively still, and make direct eye contact while reaching out with our paws before we’ve even so much as exchanged scents.

This is so important in canine interactions that professionals learn to breathe deeply and keep our bodies fluid and relaxed even if we’re feeling afraid of the dog in front of us. (Make that,
“Especially
if we’re feeling afraid.”) If you go still, close your mouth, and stop breathing, the dog you’re with may decide that he had good reason to be on guard, and he will be more likely to do something aggressive. If you want to greet dogs like a pro, be sure to keep your mouth open slightly and relaxed, slowly wag your shoulders and your hips back and forth just the tiniest bit, and move your head to the side as if you were cocking it. (Dogs cock their heads to get more visual and acoustic information
when they’re curious about something, but they don’t do it when they’re nervous.) Don’t go so far overboard that you end up scaring the dog (“I have
never
seen a human behave like this before …”), but consciously stay loose so you don’t lock up yourself and inadvertently send out signals of potential aggression.

I’ll never forget a session long ago with a client in which her dog was freely interacting with my dog Pip. Before she retired at thirteen, Pip seemed to love working dog-dog aggression cases with me. Pip adored other dogs, and was a master at calming those who had been aggressive to others because they were nervous. As usual, I asked her if she wanted to work with this particular dog, and she answered by running to the gate with enthusiasm. (Sometimes she’d take one look at a dog and walk away, and I always respected that, assuming she was better than me at reading another dog’s emotional temperature.) Pip seemed enthusiastic about working with this particular dog, so I let them greet each other off leash in a half-acre fenced pen behind the house.

But the dogs weren’t the only ones in the pen. I hadn’t paid enough attention to the owner, who was extremely nervous about the arrangement. While the dogs greeted each other, she stood to the side, frozen in place and barely breathing while I tried to assuage her fears. My mistake, because while the owner stood stock-still beside me, her dog looked up into her eyes, just for an instant. The owner’s face was as stiff as a Halloween mask, her eyes were huge with fear, and her mouth was rounded as if she was saying “Oh!” This is the face of a dog about to attack, and after one glance at it, that’s exactly what the dog did. Before I could react, he attacked Pip, growling and snarling while she rolled over on her back in fear. I had the dog off in an instant, and Pip wasn’t hurt, but both of us were shaken up. Pip got more than her share of treats that week, and I got less sleep than usual, worrying about what might have been. Pip is fifteen now, and the incident was long ago and far away, but I’ve never forgotten the hard-won lesson of how important our own expressions can be to a dog’s behavior.

Stiff, frozen postures are so important that they trump the signal that people often associate with friendliness—a wagging tail. Tail wagging is
most commonly interpreted as a signal of friendliness, but that can be a big mistake. What
is
friendly is a loose, relaxed tail that wags the hindquarters along with it. “Wagging from the shoulders back,” I call it, and it’s a great indicator that the dog is happy to see you. However, if the body of the dog is stiff, the mouth is closed, and the tail is raised and only wagging from its midsection, watch out. A stiff body and a stiff tail base constitute the thin-slice that tells you this dog isn’t necessarily feeling friendly, no matter how hard the tail tip is wagging. Those of us with cats know that swishing tails and stiff bodies don’t always mean good things, and in this case, it’s accurate to generalize that to dogs.