Calming signals

I usually watch the approaching dog rather than mine!  Lots of looking away.  Some lie down and don't move.  Very little yawning.  The eye movement seems to be the biggest thing I notice.  I am trying to notice dogs tails but I can't take my eyes of the eyes.

 Also, I have to have a prof walker for my down now since I'm a wheelchair and I really miss taking him myself.  So I am studying his body language in the house!!  Still fun :-)

 Turid's book has stuck with me from when I first time I read it around 5 years ago.  Fascinating stuff.  I've longed for a dog myself that could help dog-aggressive dogs.

 Viv, Belper, Derbyshire, UK (and the sun is actually shining this morning!!)

Kenya does a lot of stuff with her mouth.  She yawns, she half-yawns, she tightens her face when she gets nervous, she will curl her lip if someone gets up in her face, but it's mostly avoiding eye contact and yawning. 

Conrad is a sniffer. Part of it is just he's a nose-oriented dog and he's got a tremendous sense of smell, but a lot of his sniffing is sort of a obsession-compulsive thing, to relieve tension and anxiety. Though I think rather than it being aimed at another dog or whatever made him anxious, he does it as a self-calming thing. He's pretty sniffy on walks, but his sniffing goes way WAY up and gets a lot harder for me to get him to stop after we've had an unpleasant encounter with another dog at some point along the walk.

He's also big in to the facial gestures. Yawning and sneezing, and he's got a very expressive mouth (he's got black "lipstick" around his mouth, and also black "eyeliner", so his facial expressions area always really easy to see). His grimace is world class and last year when we tried to take posed family holiday pictures, 50% of them have Conrad tongue-flicking because the situation was kind of weird (Okay, stand here, no, that way, okay, now don't move, now look over there....)

When the dogs are playing and they need to take that "I'm still okay, are you still okay?" break, they both will sniff, yawn, sneeze and/or stop and scratch themselves.  

Marlowe on the other hand holds his cards a lot closer to his chest than Conrad. It's sometimes hard to get a read on that dog for me, as a human. I'm not sure whether Conrad has similar problems with him, but I suspect he does.  Marlowe is mainly about the stopping and scratching and the grimace and eye contact (and averting thereof). But his signals are a lot more subtle and refined than Conrad's are.  

With other dogs, Rascal freezes a lot. He'll run up to another dog like an idiot, take a token sniff or two, then freeze. The the other dog sniffs him, Rascal jumps backwards, freezes. If the other dog moves slowly/friendly-ly towards him, that's the point when Rascal typically starts play bowing and running around.

With a doggie friend, Rascal looooves "bitey face." He and his buddy will both lie down (calming), then bare their teeth and sort of chew on each other's faces. To take a break, they just shift their weight and lie down on their sides. Very funny to watch! 

With me, Rascal is a huuuuuge circler. I can't train him a good "come" because he hates hates hates coming at me head-on for any reason. Even for treats. It's really weird. He also uses the "look away" method of avoiding eye contact. He yawns a lot, but I still can't tell if it's just because he's sleepy or what. (Sleeping is his favorite sport.) He also stretches a lot, but again, as a hedonistic dog, I'm sure a lot of those stretches aren't just calming signals. Every morning when he gets up he has to slooooowly stretch each of his legs individually before he can be bothered to go outside to do his business. 

When it comes to meeting a strange dog, or communicating across a street while on a leashed walk, Sasha's main thing is to sniff. Ho-hum, just checking out this bush. Looking the other way, too.

She sneezes with us a lot when she want to be playful.  

Sally even uses them with the cats.  I was in the bathroom the other day and one of the cats was in there with me.  Sally was going to come in, and the cat growled and hissed at her.  Sally tongue flicked, turned her head away, and did not come in. 

Because my older girl, Buffy, has been bullied in the early days by Sassy and still doesn't appreciate her over-zealous approach, she uses a lot of calming signals. One of them is to stop, sit down and start scratching behind her ear with her back leg. It took me awhile to see that she was using this as a tool to say "I'm busy, leave me alone" but it's very apparent now and very effective.  I've also noticed that if Sassy is in the back part of our yard, rather than get really close to her, Buffy will go and start eating grass about 10-15 feet away and slowly graze her way closer and closer. She keeps her head down and acts like she's not interested in anything but the grass, so Sassy really doesn't pay attention to her.

Turid Rugaas says in his book "Bowing can be an invitation to play, particularly if the dog is jumping from side to side in a playful manner.  If he stands still in a bow the possibility of it being a calming signal is high." 

I have seen the bow in both of these situation and also a third.  To go into the backyard, the Danes have to go down 3 stairs to a hall that leads outside.  Without fail, the 3 Danes will stop on the 2nd stair and bow...getting a good feeling stretch.  And that is all there is to it...a stretch to warm up the muscles before anticipated fun activities.  I don't think there is any deeper meaning than that.

Corvus oddly enough Marlowe is not the big calming signal sniffer, that's Conrad. Marlowe's not big on the calming signals just in general (confident does not even begin to describe Marlowe). However, with Conrad the sniffing is of the ground, not the air. It took me forever to actually be able to differentiate that kind of sniffing from the regular just-reading-my-pee-mail typed sniffing, but once I figured it out it was a major lightbulb.

A lot of dogs will sniff the ground in the presence of another dog just to signal "I'm not a threat, I'm just minding my own business sniffing the ground here."  Conrad takes it to a whole other level, however. He keeps up this sniffing behavior long after the other dog is out of the picture. And he's absolutely compulsive about it and can not be dissuaded from doing it for anything. I am positive this is a self-calming behavior and not just a signal given to other dogs. It's all about his leash reactivity. At the dog park he acts just like any other dog with a normal degree of calming signals and sniffing, but on-leash if something freaks him out at any point during the walk, his nose is compulsively glued to the ground (and one spot on the ground--he's not a moving sniffer, he picks one spot and just digs in and inhales) for the entire rest of the walk.

I'm actually a little conflicted on this issue. I've been working with Conrad on his leash manners just in general and obeying the "let's go!" command is at the top of that list. But if he is using this sniffing as a calming behavior after an anxiety-producing encounter, should I just let him do it? Or try to distract him and stop him? 

we've informally used my alpha bitch to help socialize some troubled dogs, and she is the master of the calming signal- head turn, tongue flick, sniff the ground, even lie down with back to other dog if that is what it takes.

My neighbor's dog makes loud "squeaky yawns" as his primary calming signal.

Dakota scratches, sniffs and yawns to relieve tension.

Neikos is very expressive/sensative and will do all manner of things: sniff, yawn, lots of "away" eye movement, ears back, head kind of lowish, licking, etc. 

Neiko only sneezes in excitement.

Dodger is very big on avoiding ALL "head on greetings"... He usually leads me away laterally from oncoming dogs (he's aloof and has no interest in socializing). He is very business like about avoiding greetings - he immediately leads the way with a confident trot - never showing submission but avoiding confrontation by looking away as well as walking away. If the dog gets too close and Dodger cannot move away he immediately becomes engrossed in a "smell".  Dodger's attitude around dogs is pretty much "you are not there" (until they breach his personal space).

 Away from dog-dog interactions, Dodger uses yawning, sneezing and scratching constantly... I rarely see him use these calming signals with another dog (and in the case of sneezing I have never seen it)... IMO he has figured out which signals are easier for us humans to interpret and has reserved them to use around us... Dodger likes to make direct eye contact but at dinner time, he does an insane amount of blinking.

He used to use tongue flicks a lot but now they are mostly reserved for comminucating with the cat (not that she listens LOL)... The only other time he tends to tongue flicks is when at the vet's or if someone leans over them.

Dodger has never used paw lifts - at least not from what I have seen (although I'm sure I've missed things)... Anybody have a dog that uses them a lot?

 Rascal doesn't do it a lot, but he does it sometimes. Particularly if I'm trying to mess with him, like putting on his halter. At first I thought he was being "helpful" but then I realized it was more that he was stressed out about the big scary halter being fastened and was trying to ensure I wouldn't kill him.

He also does a sort of leg lift outside... I don't know what to make of it. There's one place in the yard where he's supposed to go to the bathroom, so I take him out there and he doesn't get to leave until he goes. Sometimes when he wants to go in and I'm still waiting, he'll lift up one of his hind legs and just look at me. I don't know if that's supposed to be a calming signal or if he's trying to fake me out!! ("Look, see? Leg's up, I must be peeing, let's go inside now!";) I swear, sometimes that dog....! lol!