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This is the puppy training podcast episode number eight Puppy body language. This podcast is for those looking to train their own dog, whether it's a companion therapy or service. Doug, I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcasts, and I'm your host. Amy Jensen. Hello. How was your week going? Excited to record this podcast today for you guys. I've toyed around with a little bit of which day to do this on and what's the best day? And I found that Friday's are really terrible for me. So we're going to try this at the beginning of the week instead and see how that goes. So I hope you had a wonderful weekend today. We're gonna talk about your dog's body language. It's important to be able to read what they're telling us and because we don't speak the same language. We speak English and they speak dog. It's important to recognize how we communicate, so the dog needs to understand our language, which is what we teach them through our behavior cues and also our body language. And then, if we can learn how to read our dog or see what he's saying to us. We'll understand each other better, and that just facilitates a better relationship all the way around, which is what we're wanting to create here at Baxter Bella. We want to help you guys have the best relationship possible with your doc. So toward Regress the dog trainer in Europe, and she created a book called Calming Signals. And that's where I'm going to take a lot of my information today of just how your dog communicates with you and what their body would look like if they were telling you this or that. So, she says, we need to learn to understand the language of dogs so that we can understand what our dogs are telling us. That is the seeker of having a good life together. So calming signals and dogs let others know that they're friendly. So if your dog is greeting another dog, he might exhibit some of these call me and signals to let the other dog know that Hey, I'm nice. There's nothingto worry about There's nothing to stress about. They also help calm down stressful situations. Sometimes greetings are those stressful situations, so these things include yawning licking turning away, walking in a curve, sniffing the ground and Maurin facto. Rodriguez has identified over 30 of these calming signals just by observing dogs so they can be subtle. A lot of times, you're not even gonna know that they're doing them unless you're really watching or paying attention. Many owners miss them altogether, so watch your dog closely in stressful situations and see what types of calming signals your dog uses. Some use yawning, some use licking. Some use a combination of yawning and licking, so every dog is different. But there are all of these calming signals that we're now aware of that we can observe in our own dogs. And then we can tell really how our dog is feeling so you can use calming signals as well. If your dog is giving one, you could give one back. For example, if your dog is yawning, you could yawn back, and that would be a way of communicating to your dog that you're trying to calm the situation down. The last note before we move on is to observe before you interpret, so make sure as you're watching your dog that you're observing and you're taking careful note of all of your observations without actually interpreting what they mean at the same time. Does that make sense? So we want to observe first. Basically, what is my dog doing? My dog is turning his head to the left. He's yawning, his ears are back, his posture is stiff. And then once we've made all of those observations, then we can start to interpret what that means. The reason we want you to wait to do the interpretation is because these common signals can be combined. And it depends on the situation or the environment that your dog is in as to what the body language is actually telling you. So is he excited, as he stressed, Is he anxious? A lot of that plays into, you know, the environment and all of the calming signals that you're seeing and the different body language, what's happening at the same time. So don't be so quick to jump to conclusions like my dog is feeling. This or my dog is feeling that really observe first and be specific about all of the different body parts and what's going on, what's happening and what they look like. And then you can make an interpretation of how your dog is feeling, so let's be a little bit more exit. Let's give you some more specific examples of what the's calming signals are. And then we'll talk about kind of what they dio so things that you might wanna watch for our head turning if your dog turns his head to the side. That's what he's orienting towards, or that's what he's interested in are paying attention to. That's really important to note, because if you're trying to train your dog, you want his attention on you. And if he's not oriented toward you, then he's not paying attention. And it's not a very good time to train a new behavior. You're gonna want to watch for things like softening the eyes. So if a dog is trying to calm another dog down or trying to help himself feel better, like self Sue, he's gonna soften his eyes, basically almost like a squint versus a wide, hard I. So softening the eyes is another calming signal, turning their body weight when you approach a dog or another dog approaches, your dog noticed that if the dog's not interested in that dog or doesn't want to say hello. Oftentimes they just turn away from him. I do this when my puppy jumps on me. I'm not interested in my ingredients, a puppy that way. I'm not interested in having my puppy, you know, all over me at that moment. So if I turn my body away, that's clear body language to my dog that I don't want that behavior freezing or your dog might become a statue licking the nose. Sometimes you'll see this where a dog is licking a lot, trying to touch. That knows a lot of times. That's a way of trying to calm themselves down. If they start to walk slowly now, a lot of these air going to be if they're out of the ordinary. So if you're just walking along and all of a sudden your dog really slows down, that might be a calming signal. Ah, play about you've seen this before, probably with the puppy's a lot. They do this. They will keep their bum in the air, but their front possible go down. So it's like they're bowing. We call it a play about. It's like an invitation to play means they're excited they're happy. It's also a calming signal sitting down eso. If they're running around playing and all of a sudden they sit down, that might be a way of them trying to calm the other dog down and saying, Hey, I need a break. Yawning is when we see a lot. When I take a puppy in the car, new puppies yawn frequently. And so I can tell that my puppies feeling a little bit anxious on this car, right? Because of the young, He's not tired. He just woke up from a nap. So a lot of these air when they're out of context, if he's yawning and you know he's not tired, he just got up where we've been playing for a little while. Sniffing is another calming signal along with that one. Where is if he's just going along plane? And then all of a sudden, he's just wants to sniff the ground for a minute, and they might not be anything on the ground. You know, a lot of times that's just a calming signal, the shake shake off. So if you've ever seen a dog a suited to give him a bath, they shake all the water off of them. Well, if a dog does that when he's dry, it's most likely a calming signal. So if he shakes his body after he finished playing with some friends, then he's probably just trying to reset himself and get his emotions back under control splitting. So if you have a couple dogs playing together and one of the dogs goes right down the middle of two other dogs, he's trying to calm down the situation. So let's say two dogs or playing. It's getting a little escalated, and the third dog comes and splits the dogs. I use this one a lot myself. So if I have puppies over plane and it's getting a little bit too exciting, they're getting a little bit too aroused. Then I simply split them. I walk in between them and cut off the play, hoping to help calm them down. Tail wagging is another calming signal as well as curving their body, so not only just turning their body away but curving when they approach other dogs. So if you're walking down a sidewalk and you're approaching another dog and handler, dogs will often curve and bend their bodies so that they're not going to be forced to have a head to head direct introduction. All right, so what do these calm and signals tell us? There's lots of emotions that dogs can exhibit, and they exhibit it through their body behavior or their body language. So let's talk about fear. First, let's talk about if your dog is filling fearful. Your dog sees something all of a sudden his ears go slightly back and he's. He lowers his posture. His tail is down. He seems a little anxious. Maybe he has a wide eye or a little bit of whale I, where you can see the whites in his eye that's, you know, possible fear. If it's major cowering, let's say that his ears are flat back. He's even lower to the ground like a low as he can get to the ground. Is Tellis tucked instead of just down. That would be some major fear going on, So I think everybody can kind of tell, you know, you're happy. Go Lucky Dog is kind of a noodle is bounce. He's happy to be there. Then you can kind of tell when they see something scary, their ears go back their eyes get a little bit whiter, they're tells, go down, and that you can vary by the level of fear there feeling like we just mentioned. So you're tell, you know, the dog's tell us. Down versus Tellis, severely tucked that year's air back versus their flat back. So pay attention to those kinds of things. Other subtle signs of fear, anxiety. Maybe your puppies feeling this way would be licking the lips. Lots of panting. Maybe his face is tense or for Oda's years or to the site. So we call those airplane years when your dog sticks his ears out to the site. He's kind of in a confused state. He doesn't know if he should be happier if he should be scared. He's a little bit anxious, we'd say. So here's to the side. They look like airplane years and most dogs. Ah, moving in slow motion. We talked about that one acting sleep you're yawning when they shouldn't be tired. Could be fear, anxiety, looking in both directions. So if they're constantly turning their head from side to side, they don't know where to orient. That's also a sign of fear, anxiety. Suddenly they won't eat. So this is a really good one that I tell lots of puppy clients of mine. If you're out on a walk and you brought some high value rewards and you're doing great and then all of a sudden your dog refuses to take food, he's most likely sensing something that's causing, fearing Zaidi. You need to create more distance between you and whatever it is that's making him nervous to the point that hell again, take a treat and then you know that he's feeling better and more comfortable and then pacing. If your dog is constantly pacing, he's probably feeling anxious or fearful. So again, what does stress look like? The panting looking away from something yawning, licking his nose, her lips scratching himself. Sometimes a dog all to sit down and just itch. If they do that a lot, or ah, in stressful situations, just notice. Does your dog sit down and it randomly? Maybe he's a little bit anxious if you sniffing the ground. The shake off that we talked about. If he's not wet, just shaking off again, it's, ah, subtle sign of stress, or that he's trying to reset himself years back head down while I Those are all things that we can look for that if our dog is doing those things we can recognize Oh, he might be feeling a little bit anxious. And maybe there's something I can do to help the situation. Okay, we're gonna move into dog bite prevention and I'm gonna bring this up today because a lot of this body language, if we start paying attention to it, we can recognize the steps that lead to win a dog would bite, and there's a lot that we can do to prevent it. This is super important. If you have Children in your home or if you ever have Children that come over to visit or even just lots of friends that come over to visit, you're gonna want to make sure that our dogs obviously aren't biting people. We want to make sure that they're friendly, but a lot of their body language will tell us the signs leading up to the bite so that we can prevent the bite. There's so subtle, though sometimes not all of them. Some of them are pretty obvious. But some of them are so subtle. But if you don't know what you're looking for, then you wouldn't even know when they say he just bit out of nowhere. I had no idea it was gonna bite. Dogs use their bodies to communicate purposely and that if you watch a dog long enough, you can learn that a dog is neither doing things that are incidental or accidental. Everything is very purposeful in a dog's body language. Okay, so going back to the dog biting if your dog has a stiff or tense posture, if he's staring directly at something for more than a second or two, if his mouth is tightly closed, he's very still. He could be snarling, showing his teeth. He could be growling some of those growls or low, really low grumbles, where he could be snapping like air biting. So he's not biting anything. But he's snapping at the air, you know, snapping his jaws. You can hear the clicking of the snap. Those are all signs that your dog is ready to bite. I would defuse the situation as quickly as possible, or move away slowly and don't make eye contact because his next move is most likely a bite. So we wanna watch for these things when our Children are interacting with our dogs. Sometimes these things air super subtle. Your dog might just go super stiff, intense. His mouth might go closed instead of open with the tongue hanging out. And maybe he's just being very still. That's a very subtle thing. That's not a very loud, boisterous warning. Simply, he basically froze, got a tight mouth, and he's staring and he's very still. A bite is likely to come next, so we wanna watch out for those things to protector our kids. Okay, so to close up today, you guys have a choice. When you and your dog understand one another, you'll have a better relationship that's really up to you. How good of a relationship do you wanna have with your dog? Until now, a lot of dog train has been I tell you what to do, and I want you to do it right now. That's not really relationship building at all, and I found in my training that I really enjoy training dogs when we have a relationship. When I can read what my dog is telling me, they know what I'm telling them, and then together we can make decisions. So, for example, I might have mentioned this previously. I was walking a puppy down the street and I could tell she just did not want to go on a walk that day. It was cold. There were leaves blowing. There are lots of things going on in the yard. She just wanted to run around and place, had a lot of pent up energy and the strict attention walk was not really what she was feeling like. A the moment so I could have battled through. I could tell by her body language this was not what she was wanting to do. The moment, and I could have fought through that and said, No, this is what we're doing and I forced her to do it, But that's not who I am and that's not what I'm about. So I recognize this and my dog. I could clearly read her body language. Instead, we went back to my house and we didn't awfully session where we worked on. Sit down, stay calm, chase like fetch. We played games and we threw in obedience queues at the same time. We got a lot accomplished. We had a great training session. But we also had fun, and she appreciated the fact that I could tell what she was saying to me. So a safe, secure patient and friendly puppy hood and adolescents gives your dog the best foundation for becoming a well functioning adult dog. We need to protect our puppies, allow them choices and teach them with kindness. And that's what from two Rodriguez from her book, The Calming Signals. All right, you guys, that's all I have for you today. I hope you have a wonderful week training your dogs and building your relationship. I challenge you to look for ways that they tell you things. Watch their body language this week. Look for those signals that we talked about. Are they giving them to you? And what does that mean when you look at the entire environment? And how can you help your dog? Either relieve that stress or go ahead and interact with him when he is feeling friendly. Happy training and I'll talk to you guys next time. If you have a question about anything you've heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my sight. Baxter and Bella dot com to contact me.