Grumpy Dogs: Overcoming Your Dog's Fear and Aggression
When Dogs Roll Over for "Belly Rubs," What Does it Really Mean?
Jan 19, 2024
Scott Sheaffer, CBCC-KA, CDBC, CPDT-KA
When Dogs Roll Over for "Belly Rubs," What Does it Really Mean?
In my latest episode of Dog Aggression Answers, I delve into the complexities of canine aggression, focusing on the mixed signals dogs exhibit, like rolling over for a belly rub while simultaneously displaying aggression towards certain people. I explain that a dog's decision to roll over is often a sign of fear or submission, not an invitation for affection.
This behavior, known as 'submissive rolling' is classified as a 'calming signal' or 'appeasing behavior' and is one of the ways dogs indicate discomfort or fear, akin to a human's gesture of raising hands in surrender. This is a misunderstanding where humans interpret this as a desire for physical contact, which can actually exacerbate the dog's fear.
Further in the podcast, I explore the factors that influence a dog's reaction to strangers, including the size and gender of the person, their movements, and how they engage with the dog. Dogs often find men more intimidating due to their size and their more mechanical types of movements. Interestingly, dogs may react more positively to people who show indifference or less interest in them, as their lack of engagement with the dog can be less threatening.
My advise to dog owners on how to manage interactions between their anxious dogs and strangers: my key recommendations include instructing people not to look at, touch, or talk to the dog and to maintain a distance, especially if the dog shows signs of fear or stress. This approach can significantly improve the dog's comfort and behavior.
About Scott Sheaffer Scott Sheaffer, CCBC-KA, CDBC, CPDT-KA, is a certified dog behavior consultant who has worked with thousands of dog owners and their aggressive dogs. Scott specializes in the assessment and treatment of fear, anxiety, aggression, and phobias in dogs six months and older.
Disclaimer If you have a dog who is aggressive and dangerous to humans, it is important that you immediately consult directly with an experienced and certified canine behavior consultant who specializes in dog aggression to humans. Take proper measures to ensure that your dog is never in a position to injure anyone. The information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is neither intended nor implied to replace the need for the direct involvement of an experienced and certified canine behavior consultant who specializes in dog aggression to humans. Scott Sheaffer, the Grumpy Dogs podcast and USA Dog Behavior, LLC, are not liable for any incidents or outcomes resulting from following the advice given in this podcast.
When Dogs Roll Over for "Belly Rubs," What Does it Really Mean?
In my latest episode of Dog Aggression Answers, I delve into the complexities of canine aggression, focusing on the mixed signals dogs exhibit, like rolling over for a belly rub while simultaneously displaying aggression towards certain people. I explain that a dog's decision to roll over is often a sign of fear or submission, not an invitation for affection.
This behavior, known as 'submissive rolling' is classified as a 'calming signal' or 'appeasing behavior' and is one of the ways dogs indicate discomfort or fear, akin to a human's gesture of raising hands in surrender. This is a misunderstanding where humans interpret this as a desire for physical contact, which can actually exacerbate the dog's fear.
Further in the podcast, I explore the factors that influence a dog's reaction to strangers, including the size and gender of the person, their movements, and how they engage with the dog. Dogs often find men more intimidating due to their size and their more mechanical types of movements. Interestingly, dogs may react more positively to people who show indifference or less interest in them, as their lack of engagement with the dog can be less threatening.
My advise to dog owners on how to manage interactions between their anxious dogs and strangers: my key recommendations include instructing people not to look at, touch, or talk to the dog and to maintain a distance, especially if the dog shows signs of fear or stress. This approach can significantly improve the dog's comfort and behavior.
About Scott Sheaffer Scott Sheaffer, CCBC-KA, CDBC, CPDT-KA, is a certified dog behavior consultant who has worked with thousands of dog owners and their aggressive dogs. Scott specializes in the assessment and treatment of fear, anxiety, aggression, and phobias in dogs six months and older.
Disclaimer If you have a dog who is aggressive and dangerous to humans, it is important that you immediately consult directly with an experienced and certified canine behavior consultant who specializes in dog aggression to humans. Take proper measures to ensure that your dog is never in a position to injure anyone. The information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is neither intended nor implied to replace the need for the direct involvement of an experienced and certified canine behavior consultant who specializes in dog aggression to humans. Scott Sheaffer, the Grumpy Dogs podcast and USA Dog Behavior, LLC, are not liable for any incidents or outcomes resulting from following the advice given in this podcast.
Scott Sheaffer:
Welcome to Dog Aggression Answers with Dog Behavior Specialist Scott Sheaffer. Scott is certified in dog behavior by two international animal behavior organizations and has worked with thousands of dogs. His focus is primarily on aggressive dogs.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Dog Aggression Answers, where we show you how to address your dog's aggression using scientific and humane methods. My name is Scott Sheaffer and it's my mission to help you understand your dog's aggression and what you can do about it. In each episode you'll learn why your dog is acting aggressively, ways to prevent it and treatment concepts you can implement with your buddy. Right now, some people have dogs that are aggressive to people, primarily outside of their family, but their dog is kind of okay with others and seems to show this by rolling over for a belly rub when they come into their home, for example. If you have an aggressive dog that does this sometimes, what's going on? Is this behavior what it appears to be, or is it something else? Let me break this down for you today. First, in most cases when a dog rolls over, it's called, by the way, submissive rolling or a submissive posture. It's actually called a calming signal, also known as a calming behavior. What are calming signals and calming behaviors? These are things that dogs do when they're nervous and they want to signal to typically another dog, but also to humans that hey, I'm kind of done playing here and I need to chill out for a second. I'm just going to just book out for a second here, so leave me alone. Certainly, rolling over is one of the big ones. They're doing this because they're scared of that person or a dog, but in this case we're talking about people. They're afraid, they're fearful, the way to think about this. This is the same as a dog doing the human equivalent of a hands up like hey, I'm good, right. Or when people show their palms to someone saying I have no arms here, I'm not. Hey, we'll just stop for a second. Or hands up like this hey, just stop. Like what you might do when you're being questioned by the police, for example. It's just a human calming signal or a calming behavior hey, I mean, you know, harm, don't hurt me.
Speaker 2:
And some dogs might even go so far as to urinate on their backs when they roll over like this. So here they are, they flip over and then they may also urinate. And, by the way, this urination can be both involuntary and voluntary. It's kind of interesting, isn't it? They will sometimes are so scared when they roll over that urine starts coming out. And then sometimes they do it on purpose and that's dog talk. For hey, man, I'm really surrendering for you here, but why aggression to some people and this rolling over behavior to others? Why is that? When your dog runs into people out on the street, for example, and starts to bark and growl, what's causing that? And the other side is, why some people does she roll over? Before I answer that, I just want to remind everybody that you can contact me by written text or voicemail. Love to hear from everybody. Just go to USADogBehaviorcom and select the podcast tab. You can send me either a written text or you can leave a voicemail message for me. Like I said, I love getting notes from you guys and voicemails. Now let's move on again to why we see aggression to some people but rolling over to others.
Speaker 2:
When your dog encounters strangers out in public, fearful dogs normally react by using aggression to keep the scary stranger away. And for those of you who have been following my podcast and articles and videos and so forth, you know that's the essence of fear aggression. Just the essence of why dogs are aggressive is they are scared and they're trying to keep the scary stranger away from them and to create a distance. But they can also react in some cases by showing deference or submission by, as we've been talking about, rolling over. So it's an AB thing. So in one case I'm going to show a person aggression to keep them away and in another case I'm still afraid, I'm still scared, but I'm going to roll over and give the hands up oh, oh, you know, don't hurt me, please, thing. So the person won't bother.
Speaker 2:
And when dogs roll over, it can look like they're wanting a belly rub. I can't tell you how far from the truth that is. The last thing that dog wants is a belly rub, because think about the premise here. The premise is hey, I'm rolling over because I'm scared, I'm trying to show you that I'm not going to hurt you, please leave me alone. My hands are raised, all that. And now the person is coming down getting right over them. That's bad. Hovering over a scared dog is very bad, and then touching them is also very bad. So we're rubbing the dog, we're touching them, we're hovering over them. Now the dog is going oh heck, what is going on here? This is even worse. So you can see where this is not a. That's not a good response from the human. But what makes dogs choose rolling over as a response versus aggression In many cases, if the dog is really overwhelmed by this scary person, this fearful person, person they're afraid of, they'll choose rolling over Okay.
Speaker 2:
So this isn't always true, but in most cases they'll default to aggression growl, bark or bite. You know, I starts out with a bark, then a growl, then a bite. It's kind of a typical sequence, but in some cases they're so scared and so overwhelmed they don't even try that, and I think part of the reason for that is they don't think it's going to work too well, so they just roll over, show their underbelly and saying please do not hurt me. But each dog is different when it comes to this, and the following things can affect their response, and there's about four things I want to mention here.
Speaker 2:
One is the size of the person. So clearly, a large person, for most dogs, is more scary versus a small woman Okay, I saw a small person typically like a woman, okay, versus like a large man. The other big variable and this is really interesting, a lot of research has been done on this recently and that is men are more scary to dogs than women. Well, I think one of the reasons everybody knows we get it Men are typically, as I've just mentioned, bigger than women and they look scarier. But there's been some interesting research done in the last few years that suggests and I think it's kind of common sense actually that there's another reason why dogs are typically more scared of men and that is how they move. Women typically are more mechanical and kind of jerky, if you will, in their movement and that's more scary to dogs, where women typically not all women of course, but women generally tend to move more fluidly and it's less scary looking to dogs. So that's another thing that can affect how individual dogs respond and decides whether they use aggression or they're going to roll over.
Speaker 2:
Everyone would be the human. Does the human overly engage? The dog Is the human? Does the human come in and give it the old hi, how are you? That voice pitches up and they get all animated and I love dogs so much and they start hopping around. Well, their intentions are good, but the problem is, is that really scares Dogs? If you already have a fearful dog and then you have someone come in your home that is jumping all around and Making noises and reaching toward the dog, that's going to make the dog more scared for sure. And the last thing would be Just kind of building on the last point, people that are loud and have lots of movement tend to scare dogs more.
Speaker 2:
Now, before we move on, I want to make one last comment about the different things that scare dogs. And here's a real interesting one, and it took me a few years in my practice to figure this out. I would have clients come in from time to time when they would say things like but Becky doesn't even like dogs, yet my dog's kind of okay with her. Then another client might say wow, john could care less about my dog. I don't, he's just not a very friendly guy. I didn't even care about my dog. But the irony is my dogs kind of okay with him and it's not okay with anyone else.
Speaker 2:
What's going on here? It seems paradoxical, doesn't it? It's someone who doesn't like dogs. The dog, a fearful dog, appears to be okay with what. It's actually quite explainable based on what we're just talking about. If, if the person doesn't like dogs or is not interested in dogs, it's very likely that they'll ignore your dog or ignore the dog. And what does the dog think? Oh, this is great, I'm not so scared of this person. He's not showing interest in me, he's not doing scary movements and making loud so and sounds that scare me, and and so the dog does better and that's pretty cool and it's not obvious, but I've come to see it over and over. And so what we want to do, kind of ironically, we want our visitors to emulate what those people do with our dog.
Speaker 2:
I know this sounds kind of funny, but it takes more confidence for a dog to use aggression Than it does submission. So we're talking about why do some dogs roll over and some use aggression? And, by the way, dogs will flip flop too. By the way, I call these ambivalent dogs, meaning sometimes they'll show aggression and sometimes they'll flip over, and One of the other reasons that they choose this is through confidence.
Speaker 2:
Dogs actually transition from Rolling over onto aggression to being okay. Let's break that down a little bit more. A dog that is really low on confidence it's gonna easily be overwhelmed by people, especially ones like we were just talking about is pretty likely to roll over and say Please don't hurt me. Once they gain a little confidence and this is the irony once we start behavior modification a lot of times they will begin to improve and they actually Start to get a little aggressive. So it actually takes a little more confidence for a dog to be aggressive to a scary thing versus just rolling over and they might start to bark or growl and certainly would. We don't want them biting, of course Then they transition to if you continue behavior modification to being okay around strangers Okay, and that behavior modification I've talked a lot about. It has to do with Desensitization and counter conditioning of the dog to these Unfamiliar or scary strangers.
Speaker 2:
So now that you know all that, what do you do in these situations to make your dog more comfortable? Well, let's give you a couple rules here and, by the way, these are rules for the people, not for the dog. We're helping the dog out by managing the people. Think about that way. First of all, they don't want the strangers attention. It scares them, even though these people are well-intentioned. I love dogs, all dogs love me, etc. It scares them when people move up to him and start giving him attention.
Speaker 2:
And if you have a cute dog, that is even more of a problem. One of my dogs actually both my dogs, I think, are pretty cute Luke and Charlie. However, charlie is kind of a smaller cute dog, but I have a pure white great Pyrenees. He's huge, his name is Luke and he's a people magnet and kids and adults just come over and start hugging on him and stuff, which is really not a cool thing to do, and people don't even ask me if it's okay to do that, which is really nuts. You got to. Really. You want to get the permission of the owner and make sure the dog is safe and certainly don't hug dogs. The thing is, luke's great with people. We've really worked with him. He's dynamite proof. He can handle all this. But the point is he's a magnet. People want to go see him and if you have a dog like this that people just can't stay away from and they are afraid of strangers, you've got a big problem here.
Speaker 2:
You need a lot more management and you need to do really be careful to do the things about what you do. Here they are. Here's how you manage people around a dog that is afraid of people and may even do belly rubs A rollover for the belly rub. Quote, unquote. Of course that's not really what they're doing. Instruct the person not to look, touch or talk to your dog. They need to pretend that your dog is invisible. Don't look, touch or talk to the dog. Pretend they are invisible and don't approach or move toward the dog. Stay your distance. Let the dog, control the distance and they should never, ever, if the dog rolls over, rub the dog's belly. That dog is screaming to leave me alone. I don't want anything to do with you. When they do, it makes the person even scarier and perpetuates the fear. In short, it's as simple as scary person to your dog should never interact with your dog, period.
Speaker 2:
You will see an immediate improvement. When I go over to clients' houses when I'm doing a session and I walk in and they have a dog like this which is like 90% of my practice I walk in and they, almost without fails, say this, something like this. They go wow, you're a miracle worker. I can't believe it. All those good things that people say about you are true, et cetera. Well, the truth is I'm not a miracle worker and, of course, all the things people say about me are true the good things, of course but I'm not a miracle worker because what am I doing? I'm just not looking, touching, talking or approaching their dog. That's all I'm doing. It's not rocket science. You will see an immediate improvement. I've seen some people just not do this and say, hey, I really appreciate it. If you not look, touch, talk or approach my dog, he's afraid of people or she's afraid of people, and we're working on this. So you got to be a little bit firm with some people because people think, well, I'm so wonderful, your dog is going to love me. And, by the way, just a little quick reminder here who makes that call? 100% of the time your dog does, your dog makes the call as to who's scary or not. So this is something I want you to do right now and you do it 24, seven everywhere.
Speaker 2:
And one of my last episodes on my podcast. It's called If your Dog is Aggressive to People, never Stop Doing these Two Things. Listen to that podcast episode because it really goes into detail about that. Don't look, touch, talk or approach protocol for people that your dog interacts with. It just drills down on that little bit. If you like to learn more, a link to that episode is going to be in the show notes.
Speaker 2:
So what is your to do? Your to do right now is to get with your family and coach them on what we just talked about. If you have one of these dogs that's rolling over and people are giving your dog belly rubs, you're going to get with them and say, hey, when people come in to our home or when our dog sees people out in public and he does that roll over for a belly rub thing or what people think that's what they're doing. They are not to look, touch, talk or approach the dog period in the story all the time. That is your call to action. Do that right now, and that wraps up another episode of the dog aggression answers video.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much for joining me today as we continue to explore and understand the world of dog behavior together. If you've enjoyed today's content and want to delve deeper into the world of dog behavior, make sure to follow and subscribe to our channel on YouTube and turn on those notifications too, if you get a chance. Also, don't forget to follow dog aggression answers on your preferred podcast platform, whether you're on Apple podcast, spotify or any of the other popular platforms. Hit that follow button to stay updated with our latest episodes. Your subscriptions and reviews, as you know, help us reach more dog lovers like you and make a bigger impact.
Scott Sheaffer:
Thank, you for watching this episode of dog aggression answers with Scott Sheaffer, and don't forget to follow us on any of your preferred podcast platforms. We invite you to follow and subscribe to our YouTube channel and make sure to hit the notifications button. You can also go to our website, usabehaviorcom, for free articles, free and premium videos and more.