Two dogs rush towards each other. One rears up, mouth wide open, teeth visible. A fraction of a second later, that open mouth appears to be heading straight for the other dog’s neck.
Are they playing?
Are they fighting?
And perhaps most importantly, if one of those dogs were yours, would you know whether to intervene?
Being able to read canine body language accurately isn’t simply an interesting skill for people who love watching dogs. It can help us understand how dogs are feeling, recognise when an interaction is changing, identify the early signs of discomfort or conflict and, sometimes, prevent an altercation before it happens.
But there’s a catch.
Dogs are incredibly fast.
And if we try to interpret what they’re communicating from a single facial expression, posture or photograph, we can get it spectacularly wrong.
What does dog play actually look like?
Take a look at the first photograph in this sequence.
These are my own dogs: Quill, my Kooikerhondje, and Bliss, my Japanese Spitz.
From this single moment, what do you think is happening?
Quill’s body is elevated. His mouth is wide open. He’s moving directly towards Bliss and, if you didn’t know either dog or what happened immediately before and afterwards, you could be forgiven for wondering whether things were about to turn nasty.
Now look at the next image.
Has that changed your mind?
It certainly looks dramatic. Quill appears to be directing an open mouth towards the back of Bliss’s neck.
And then we get this:
These three photographs are in the correct sequence.
Quill rushes towards Bliss, rears up with his mouth wide open and apparently targets a bite towards the back of her neck.
And then he moves his mouth so that it misses her entirely.
Not accidentally. Not because Bliss escaped.
He appears to alter the movement with extraordinary precision, turning what could look alarming in a photograph into part of an entirely playful interaction.
And all of this happens so quickly that I didn’t fully appreciate what he had done when I watched the original footage at normal speed. My slow old human brain caught the general gist of it, but some of the really fascinating detail was completely invisible until I slowed the footage down and started looking frame by frame.
In fact, I isolated seven different still images from this interaction, showing changing facial expressions and movements in both dogs.
They all occurred in less than one second.
Boy, dogs are fast.
Why a single piece of dog body language can be misleading
This is one of the reasons I’ve spent so much of my career studying canine – and feline – body language and facial expression.
We humans love labels. We want to be able to say that a wagging tail means a dog is friendly, ears back mean a dog is frightened, showing teeth means aggression or a play bow means “I want to play.”
Unfortunately, animals aren’t quite that accommodating.
Body language needs to be interpreted in context and as part of a sequence.
Rather than asking simply, “What does that signal mean?”, I encourage people to become much more curious:
What happened immediately before it?
What happened afterwards?
What is the other dog doing?
Is the interaction becoming more intense or less intense?
Is either dog trying to increase distance?
Does one dog have opportunities to disengage?
Are movements loose and exaggerated, or becoming increasingly still, tense or direct?
And, crucially, how is the other dog responding?
A dog’s communication doesn’t exist in isolation. It is part of a constantly changing conversation.
The subtle signs of healthy dog-to-dog play
Quill and Bliss know one another extremely well and are great friends. Their play can look dramatic, but when you slow it down, there are lovely clues within the interaction.
Quill’s open-mouth launch towards Bliss is exaggerated. His movements have a theatrical quality that we often see during play. And although his eyes can look slightly wild – he’s a Kooiker; I think he’s contractually obliged to look mildly unhinged at least some of the time – the whole sequence tells us much more than his eyes alone ever could.
Bliss isn’t desperately trying to escape him either. She actively moves back into the interaction and has her own favourite strategy of attempting to grab his feet as they romp around together. Her facial expressions can be magnificently fierce-looking, but again, we have to read those expressions as part of the entire interaction rather than diagnosing her emotional state from a frozen millisecond.
Good dog-to-dog play can contain behaviours that, removed from their context, look remarkably similar to behaviours we might see during conflict.
Chasing. Biting movements. Growling. Body contact. Rearing. Open mouths. Teeth.
This is precisely why simply learning a dictionary of “dog body language signals” isn’t enough.
We need to learn to watch the conversation.
Why video is so valuable when learning canine body language
One of the most useful tools we have for becoming better dog watchers is something almost everyone now carries in their pocket: a phone.
Video gives us the ability to replay an interaction, slow it down and look again.
It allows us to notice tiny changes in facial expression, body weight, direction of movement, eye position, mouth shape and response that our brains simply can’t process quickly enough in real time.
This is also why I use so much video material when teaching canine body language. Seeing real dogs communicating, stopping the footage, predicting what might happen next and then examining the sequence is a completely different learning experience from simply memorising diagrams or lists of signals.
The more we practise observing dogs in this way, the more skilled our real-time observations can become.
Can you learn to predict what a dog will do next?
We can never know with absolute certainty what a dog is thinking, and I think it’s important to be transparent about that.
But we can become much better observers.
When we understand canine vocabulary, coping strategies, social signals, changes in intensity and the early warning signs associated with stress, fear and conflict, we can make far more informed assessments of what we are seeing.
For professionals, that’s an essential skill.
For owners, it can transform everyday life with a dog.
Instead of waiting for the growl, snap or fight, we can begin noticing the much quieter conversation that came first.
And once you start seeing it, dog watching becomes ridiculously addictive.
Learn more about canine body language with Sarah Whitehead
Canine and feline body language and facial expression have been specialist areas of my work throughout my career.
I’m Sarah Whitehead MSc, CCAB, a Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist and ABTC Registered Clinical Animal Behaviourist, with more than 35 years’ experience working with dogs, cats and the humans who live and work with them. I’m a full member of the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors (APBC), an author and international lecturer, and I specialise in the interpretation of canine and feline body language, facial expression and behaviour.
My flagship canine body language programme, Learn To Talk Dog – Programme One: Canine Body Language, is designed for dog owners as well as trainers, behaviour professionals, veterinary staff, welfare professionals and students who want to become much more skilled at understanding what dogs are communicating.
The programme explores canine vocabulary, coping strategies, social signals and early warning systems, using extensive photographs and video footage so that you can practise observing real dogs rather than simply memorising theoretical descriptions.
Explore Learn To Talk Dog – Programme One: Canine Body Language:
https://sarahwhitehead.thinkific.com/courses/learn-to-talk-dog-one
And if dog-to-dog communication is the bit that really fascinates you, Learn To Talk Dog – Programme Two: Dog-to-Dog Communication takes the subject further, looking specifically at meetings and greetings, play, sex and conflict, and the factors that can help us predict dog-to-dog aggression.
Explore Learn To Talk Dog – Programme Two: Dog-to-Dog Communication:
https://sarahwhitehead.thinkific.com/courses/learn-to-talk-dog-programme-two-dog-to-dog
You can also watch my short Dog-to-Dog Play: Green Flag Behaviours mini-webinar, which looks specifically at some of the behaviours that can help us assess whether play between dogs is going well.
Watch Dog-to-Dog Play: Green Flag Behaviours:
https://sarahwhitehead.thinkific.com/courses/webinar-dog-to-dog-play
And if you’d like to see the original Quill and Bliss interaction from which these photographs were taken, watch the video below. Keep your eyes on Bliss’s facial expressions in particular. She does “fierce” with considerable enthusiasm.
Bliss had a bath and Quill can’t resist her!
Happy dog watching!
Sarah
