Webinars

Here is a part of Lecture 7. Each of the 5 groupings have similar lectures and application activities.

Distance Increasing Behaviors (including agonistic behaviors)

Distance increasing behaviors are those a dog uses to ask for more space or time to consider the situation. He may want the other dog or human to move away or just stop coming towards him. Or he may move away himself. Interestingly, there appears to be more of these types of behaviors than the groupings. They parallel the biological behaviors of "fight, flight or freeze" to varying degrees. These behaviors are about survival. If a dog can minimize conflict they increase their chances to survive and reproduce.

Since dogs are social beings, this is the main emphasis of communication. However, when in survival mode, they can choose to escalate them to the point of physical contact but this is risky.

Unsocialized dogs who don't know their native language as well tend to offer a narrower range of behaviors and escalate much more quickly to physical conflict. 

When a dog is conflicted, you may see behaviors from both ends of the distance increasing spectrum plus behaviors from other groupings occurring together within a short period of time.

You will notice that humans use many of the same behaviors to request distance from other humans, they are just done in a slightly different way and we are often not even aware that we do them. For example, if a person comes too close to us, we turn our head or take a step back. Or if we find ourselves in close proximity to others such as in an elevator, we stare to a point away from the other people. For many of these behaviors, the expectation is that the others recognize the behavior and respond appropriately. If they don't, the animal tries to escape by adding physical distance or escalate the behavior to get a more noticeable response.

Nose tip lick  
This is in response the the camera. The tongue comes partially out of the mouth or is extended all the way past the tip of the nose. 

 
This dog is in pain. The frequency of the lip licks is a clue. He was later diagnosed with a vertebra out of place. This is the same dog that we see in a later video just standing still at the woman's feet.

Due to the physical structure of this dog's mouth, it is hard to know if this dog is doing a nose tip lick or just a saliva clearing lick. The deep inverted V up to the nose makes it hard for this breed to do a saliva clearing lick. Comparing the first lip lick the ones after feeding, they look very similar. The licks may also be helping the dog to swallow the food. His head is up and swallowing may be difficult for him in this position. This dog may also be 'softening' his eyes (a distance decreasing behavior) but it looks like the sun is coming from above so when he turns his head up, it may be due to bright light. He also does it after he turns his head forward though. He may also have dry eyes which could cause the partial squinting/blinking.

From Lecture 8: Samples of Behaviors Used in Context:

Jessie near Lucy while Training
Jessie the black and tan dog, is very conscious of her personal space and it can be stressful for her to be near other dogs, even Lucy who she has lived with for two years (when this video was done). You will see several early signs of stress not many but she does use a variety of them over the training period.   I wouldn't want to see any more or she may not be able to focus on the task at hand. I realized after I uploaded the video that my leaning toward her may be another reason she is stressed as me being in her space is also an issue for her. (On the other hand, she expects to be able to come into my space anytime she wants. LOL! At least she usually asks first.)

Jessie Head Pat
Another example of the behaviors she uses to ask for more distance.

Watch this video with the sound off first and make a list of the distance increasing behaviors you see between these two off leash dogs.  Rewatch it with sound to get a verbal commentary of the behaviors as they occur.