FF190: All About Nails

Week 2 Lecture:

What’s Your Dog Telling You? (Tells & Consent)

The term ‘tells’ refers to the behaviors that your dog exhibits in response to feeling anxious, stressed, or pressured.  The term comes from poker playing lingo where a good player learns to read the others and thus can tell if someone else is bluffing by small changes in their body language.  Those changes in body language are typically unconscious; we don’t realize we are doing them. However, they are consistent in giving away inner emotions.

If you hear the term ‘poker face’ that refers to someone who is hard to read.  They don’t give away much in their tells. This can be purposeful when someone wants to hide what they are feeling or it can simply be natural.  Our dogs don’t hide their emotions the way other humans do, but there are still some dogs who are harder to read than others. They just don’t give us a lot of clues about what’s happening in their inner life.  With these dogs it can take very astute observation in order to pick up on the tiniest of changes.

So what should you be looking for as you watch your dog for tells?  Every dog is different, but there are some overall signs we can watch for.  There are the big movements that should be fairly obvious. If your dog takes his entire body and leaves that’s a huge message for you.  Your dog is telling you that he is so uncomfortable in the situation that he cannot stay there. If you have to restrain or hold your dog in place then he does not have a choice.  He’s there only because he cannot leave. This is why it is so important for us to give our dogs the choice to opt in or out of a husbandry session. By staying or going our dogs are giving us incredibly important information about their comfort level in a situation.  

At a lower level we would see dogs who move a body part away when you reach for them, but stay in the same basic location.  If your dog jerks his foot back every time you reach towards it, or shuffles away sideways a bit, that’s a tell. He’s avoiding you without actually leaving.  If you persist then his behavior is likely to escalate to that level. A dog who flinches when touched is also telling you there is emotional, and possibly physical as well, discomfort.  

It’s important to note here that many dogs hide or mask physical discomfort as much as possible.  The same tells we use for emotional comfort also work to help us determine if there is something that is physically unpleasant or painful.  The sooner we note these issues the sooner we can have them properly evaluated and treated. Keeping a close eye on your dog’s tells is important for their physical as well as mental health.  

If your dog vocalizes during any procedure that is another big tell.  Your dog is indicating distress and also letting you know that he’s uncomfortable enough to possibly move to defensiveness.  A grumble or growl is actually an attempt to avoid further confrontation, but if it is ignored then your dog may feel the need to escalate, which we definitely want to avoid.  It puts your dog in the position of feeling the need to defend himself from you or others, and that is never going to lead to a good outcome. It is a big red flag that you are heading down the wrong path and you need to stop and rethink your approach.  

Typically your dog’s ears and tail are good indicators of his comfort level.  Positions change as emotions change. Ears go sideways, or back, or seemingly disappear all together!  The tail goes from neutral to straight down, to tucked. These are typically easy and important indicators of emotional levels.  Pay attention to them and note when change happens.

Watch for overall body stiffness and tightness as opposed to relaxed and loose.  Many dogs will freeze and go still when they become stressed. The stillness doesn’t mean they are okay; just the  opposite. There’s a huge difference between waiting patiently and a stress induced lack of movement. Much of our work depends on our dogs holding still first, but there’s normal stillness and then there’s a lack of movement that is not at all comfortable or relaxed.  If you’re not sure whether you have stillness or freezing take a close look at your dog’s facial expression. Are the eyes bright and happy or does there seem to be a flatness to them? Is your dog easily making eye contact with you or are you noticing some *side eye happening?  

*Side eye, also sometimes called whale eye, is a term used by dog trainers when the dog’s eyes are as large and round as possible and he is looking off to one side so that the whites are clearly visible on the other side.  This can be a sign of extreme distress or impending defensive action.

It’s important for you to know what normal looks like, so that you will then notice any change to that.  Your dog’s normal facial expression is likely to typically be soft and relaxed. Any changes to that are important and should be noted.  Some dogs display furrows in their forehead area (worry lines). Others show more tightness around the muzzle. And sometimes the expression in the eyes is simply different.  

We have started talking more and more about the concept of consent in dog training.  How do we know that our dogs are freely agreeing to do what we want them to do? This is a fairly new question because, in the past, nobody really cared all that much about how the dog felt.  They only cared about what the dog did (and sadly that is still true in many training circles). Most of you here, however, are vitally concerned with your dog’s emotional comfort and well-being, and understanding when they are consenting to procedures or not is an important factor to consider.  

What does consent look like?  This is going to depend on the dog and on your training history together.  Our dogs cannot give us verbal consent, as other humans can, so we need to look at easily observed behavior changes.  In addition to watching for tells of discomfort we can also introduce consent behaviors into our work. A consent behavior is a way for your dog to tell you that he’s ready to continue or session or that he needs a break.  The consent behavior must be taught and highly reinforced before it is paired with other husbandry procedures. But once taught then the dog gets to decide if he’s comfortable enough to use it or not. We use two similar behaviors (the chin rest if the dog is standing or sitting and the hand down flat if the dog is lying down).  It’s very easy to observe these behaviors and to change our behavior based on whether or not our dogs are comfortable continuing the consent behavior.

For consent behaviors, if the dog moves out of position then we stop what we are doing.  When the dog moves back into it we continue. If the dog moves away repeatedly then we definitely need to change our approach.  The ability to maintain the consent behavior tells us that the dog is comfortable enough to continue. We are giving him a way to communicate with us about his level of emotional comfort.  

Respect your dog’s choices to opt in or out of a training session.  As trainers, it is normal for us to take the role of controller in a session.  We decide when to train, how to train, and what to train. What decisions does the dog get to make?  Typically none. The dog either goes along with the program or things become unpleasant. But what if you actually listen to your dog and make your training choices based on what he’s telling you?  What if he gets equal say in how long you work together in a session? Many folks worry that the dog would simply opt out all the time. But would he? And if he does, what does that tell you?

Is there ever going to be a time when you will simply need to ignore all your dog’s tells and do what you need to do anyway?  Sadly, yes. There are procedures that are simply non-optional because they are necessary for your dog’s health and well-being.  So we do what we have to do in as efficient and neutral a manner as possible. But we know that we have set back our training and will need to do even more work to make up for the non-optional stuff.  There is no way around it sometimes, but there are still going to be consequences to doing it. However, if you find yourself rationalizing that things are non-optional and forcing them often, then you may be heading down the wrong path.  Do the thing that needs done, then do a LOT of training to counteract that experience and avoid it in the future.