Author Mom with Dogs

Having grown up with animal-filled farms abutting our property, and adding to that our own four-legged menagerie, I learned early to keep a weather eye for all animals. And I learned to step in and do whatever needed doing, because the consequences of ‘not doing’ could mean death for an animal (and injury or death for the unsuspecting motorist zipping around a corner to find an animal in the middle of the road).

For instance, take the time I saw two legs sticking out the back end of a cow. At ten years of age and too afraid to pull the stuck calf from the cow’s rear, I at least had the presence of mind to run and get the farmer. It was a breach birth; the cow and her calf could have died without help.

And I can’t count how many times somebody’s horse, cow, dog, etc., decided to break through a fence to go on a walkabout. It didn’t matter whose animal it was, or how many times you might have fetched it and put it safely back — if it was out and you were the one who discovered it, you were expected to get that animal back to where it belonged. In return, when one of your animals got out, you could expect the same help.

Going on animal roundups was just part of my youth. Sometimes they were fun. Sometimes they were tedious. Always they were living lessons on what it meant to be “your brother’s keeper” in regard to both humans and animals. It was about learning how to step up and do the right thing. It was about not turning away, and excusing yourself by saying someone else would take care of it. It was a way of thinking and being that has deeply affected how I live and act in the world.

I though nothing about any of this until Cait got old enough to notice, which happened when she was about five. We were traveling to visit family where I grew up. A sheep had managed to find itself on the wrong side of a fence on a busy road. I stopped the car and tried to negotiate it to a safer place without luck. So I drove up to the farmhouse next to the field.

As I parked to get out, Cait suddenly dove down in the back seat. “Mom! What are you doing?” she whispered. “We shouldn’t be here. We don’t know these people. We should go!”

As it was a well-worn reflexive reaction to help or get help, it hadn’t occurred to me to explain what I was doing.

“Cait, I have to let these people know their sheep is out.” I said. “As soon as I find someone to get it, we’ll be on our way.”

“Mom!” Cait whispered from her hiding place. “You always tell me to stay away from strangers. We don’t know these people.” She peeked her head up from the back seat floor. “Please, let’s get out of here!”

As I looked at her face, I realized that she wasn’t scared. She was embarrassed. Embarrassed that her mother was perhaps transgressing some cultural norm. (I should confess that I’ve been known to transgress a cultural norm or two, so her response wasn’t totally out of left field.)

Once I saw that she was really all right, I got out of the car, knocked on the door and told the woman that her sheep was out. Her thanks was heartfelt.

Continuing on our way, I explained to Cait about the difference between strangers out of context and in context. And then I explained to her what my father had often repeated to me: “If not you, then who?” In other words, if each one of us doesn’t step up to help, who will? Why should we expect someone else to take care of what we decide to pass by?

The next time another situation like this happened, Cait (then eight) and I were once again on our way to visit family where I grew up. This time a foal was on the wrong side of the fence on a busy road, and her mother was obviously distressed at the separation. Once again I stopped, and tried to get the foal back inside the fence without luck. So I drove down the long drive. Cait once again dove down behind the back seat. I knocked on the door but no one was home. I was about to walk down to the barns when a truck drove up. I waited for the person to exit the truck.

“What are the odds!” I said laughing.

“I figured it had to be you when I saw the car,” Mike said.

It wasn’t the owner of the house, but a friend I’d grown up with. (We were both many miles from our respective homes.) In his youth, he’d shared in more than one roundup of our wayward horses. Together, we got the foal and mare reunited.

When Cait heard that it was Mike, she reappeared from her hiding place. When she realized that he was doing the same thing — stopping to help– I could see her reassessing that maybe this wasn’t such a strange thing to do after all.

Last week, on a trip to see family, we passed a horse that was lying down in the field. All the way down, with head on the ground. While it’s normal for horses to lie down with head up, it’s not quite as normal for them to lie totally flat. It can be indicative of a problem. I slowed as I went by and looked out the rear-view mirror with concern.

Cait looked at me and said, “If not you, Mom, who?”

“You read my mind.” I smiled, patted her leg, did a quick u-turn and went back. The horse was still lying flat out.

“What do you think the matter is, Mom?”

“Probably nothing, sweetie,” I answered. “I just want to make sure she doesn’t have colic.”

I quickly noted that her breathing was neither labored nor rapid and shallow, and that her eyes were clear. She wasn’t in any observable pain or distress. She just felt like lying down flat.

Seeing that I wasn’t “doing” anything, Cait asked, “Shouldn’t we go up to the house and get somebody?”

As I pulled out of the driveway back onto the road, the horse got up, shook herself off, and walked while she grazed. “Nope, she’s fine,” I said. And I smiled at my twelve year old daughter. She’d finally internalized for herself that helping was the right thing to do. The normal thing to do.

It’s that time of year. The weather’s warming. The birds are nesting. The garden’s calling.

Cold weather crops are well underway.

Seedlings are put outside for a few hours a day to start hardening.

When they all come back inside, there’s hardly a flat surface free. Time to seriously think about the benefits of a small greenhouse.

Also time to double the garden size.

I’m seeing lots of hot showers for sore back muscles in my future.

Still swamped with writing but just wanted to share this. I think it’s a wonderful idea. But check out the link and decide for yourself.

Hello,

My name is Kari and I’m writing you with the hope that you’ll let your readers know about GoodSearch.com and GoodShop.com, a new fundraising tool being used by supporters of the ASPCA, Best Friends Animal Society, and thousands of humane organizations across the country.

GoodSearch.com is a new search engine that donates 50% of revenue to charities and schools of the user’s choice. You use GoodSearch the exact same way you would any search engine the only difference being that you can designate your favorite non-profit or school to receive a donation every time you search the web! Because it’s powered by Yahoo!, you get proven search results.

GoodShop is an online shopping mall that features stores like Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, J Crew and hundreds of others and donates a percentage of each sale to the nonprofit or school of the users’ choice.

As I’m sure you get a lot of these requests, I just want to assure you that we’re legitimate and we work with more than 55,000 charities and have been featured by the NY Times, Oprah magazine and other press outlets.

https://www.goodsearch.com/Press.aspx

Supporters of the ASPCA have already helped raise over $13,000 through GoodSearch and GoodShop to help animals in need! Please let readers of your blog know about this easy way to raise money for humane organizations as it can make a big difference in the lives of needy animals! Thanks so much for your consideration.

Best,

Kari McMinn

That’s me these days. The faster I try to catch up, the hurried-er I fall behind. Too many projects and not enough clocks running two days slow. So, it’s getting to be that time again… Time for another intermission.

In the meantime, what was it that sign said on the doorknob? Ah, yes…

“Doorknob: Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.”

Okay, off I go.

See ya back here when I’m all caught up. :)

Cait has finally reached the age where she’s been made aware by friends of clothes labels. I always knew that I was on borrowed shopping time, because this kid came out of the womb with her own sharp sense of fashion style. I’m happy to have gotten away with outlets and discount stores with her for as long as I have, you see, because unlike my daughter I could care less about fashion. I lean more toward ‘if you’re covered, you’re good to go.’

Don’t get me wrong. Just because I could be happy wearing a uniform day in and day out, doesn’t mean that I don’t get people who care about clothes. Or that I don’t have a sense of what looks good. It’s just that with a life full of animals, building projects, and gardening dirt, it’s not worth it to spend a lot of money on expensive clothes that are quickly going to look old before their time.

So when Cait asked if we could go clothes shopping, and then specified that she’d like to go to the popular shops du jour, I sighed a big sigh, clutched my wallet to my breast, blessed myself for mercy’s sake, and said okay.

First, we went to Aeropostale, which Cait pronounced Airo Pastel. I corrected her pronunciation.

“I knew that,” Cait said.

We found a few cute things that were more than I was accustomed to paying for Cait’s stuff, but not outrageous. I said okay.

Next, we went to Abercrombie and Fitch, which I pronounced Finch. Cait corrected me, “Mom, there are no birds flying around here. It’s Fitch.”

“I knew that,” I said.

She tried on a pair of low riders. Only looking at herself from the front, I suggested she turn around and bend her knees, as if she were going to sit. She saw her crack, ah, I mean my point.

“I knew that,” she said, and quickly put the pants back.

Then she found a shirt that she really liked. In an effort to educate Cait on the finer points of comparison shopping, I pointed out to her that this one item totaled as much as the five items she’d just purchased at AeroPostale. She gripped tightly to the shirt, not quite able to put it back.

“Here’s the thing with shopping,” I said. “That shirt is ridiculously over-priced. But sometimes when you really love something that much, it’s okay to splurge because you’re going to feel great every time you put it on.” I looked at Cait, “The question is: Do you love it that much?”

“I’m not sure…,” Cait said.

“Okay, then what we do is look at a couple of other stores to see if we can find this or something similar at a better price. If we can’t, and you decide you really love this shirt, we’ll come back and buy it.”

Relieved that I understood her dilemma and wasn’t just going to be reflexively cheap, Cait’s face broke into a wide smile. She grabbed my hand as we walked out of the store and said, “This is fun, Mom. I’m glad you’re here.”

Next on her list was American Eagle. We quickly found a shirt close enough in looks for a third of the price, and a valuable shopping lesson was learned.

On the way out, she asked, “What do you think of this tankini?”

I went to the next table and said, “I like this tank-tini better.”

“Mom, it’s tankini, not tank-tini.”

“I knew that,” I said a bit wearily.

Cait asked, “You had enough, Mom?”

“Yeah, I think I’m at my shopping limit for the day…”

“I knew that,” Cait smiled. “How about we head home?”

“Sounds like a wrap to me.”

We elbowed each other as we ran for the door.

Alex, the gray parrot, and Washoe, the chimpanzee, (both recently deceased) are back in the news in this month’s National Geographic Magazine, in an article about understanding the animal’s mind. In it, the newest kid on the “smarts” block is featured. Are you ready? Yep, a Border Collie named Betsy, who knows more than 300 words. Look to being hearing lots more about her.

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy this New York Times tribute to Alex and Washoe by Charles Seibert. Certainly gives pause for thought.

The Communicators

THERE IS, IN THE END, no telling what tales they had to tell, the two greatest nonhuman linguists of our day: Washoe, the sign-language-wielding chimpanzee with an intense footwear fetish; and Alex, the wildly outspoken parrot, an African gray known to regularly order about his human researchers and to purposely give them the wrong answers to their questions just to alleviate his boredom. After all, we only ever gave them our own words to work with.

Often dismissed as mere mimics, they were remarkable even by that standard. Washoe, originally taken as an infant from the wilds of West Africa in 1965 and sold to the Air Force for research, was the first to break the so-called language barrier between ourselves and the creaturely non-us. Under the tutelage of Allen and Beatrix Gardner a husband-and-wife team of cognitive researchers who adopted the young chimp at the age of 10 months and raised her as if she were their own child.

Washoe would learn 135 distinct American Sign Language signs within five years. By the time of her death from natural causes in October 2007 at age 42, she managed to pass along much of what she had learned to her adoptive chimp son, Loulis. It was the first recorded instance of an animal-to-animal transference of a human language.

Alex, for his part, was picked up in a Chicago pet store in 1977 by a newly minted Harvard chemistry Ph.D. named Irene Pepperberg. She had become fascinated with the stories of Washoe, along with other studies being done at that time on highly communicative species like dolphins, humpback whales and songbirds. Alex (an acronym for Avian Learning EXperiment) would learn more than 100 words in the course of his 30-year partnership with Pepperberg. He also learned to identify 50 different objects; to recognize their different colors, shapes and makeup; and to distinguish and pronounce phonemes (the root sounds of words). By the time of his sudden death from a heart condition in September 2007 at the age of 31, he had also mastered many compound words.

Still, it wasn’t the size of their respective vocabularies so much as the frequent winsomeness of their word usage that captivated us: the way that even the simplest impromptu phrasings from them could give us sudden glimpses into the minds of other beings, into the motive and mindfulness behind language in creatures that don’t happen to speak our own. The moment with Washoe that still resonates most is one that occurred outside the laboratory, when she happened to notice a swan adrift on a nearby lake. She turned to her caretakers and signed water,then bird: perhaps the first documented incident of another creature freely assigning our words to an observed phenomenon. It was, the Harvard psychologist Roger Brown noted at the time, like getting an S O S from outer space.

Skeptics insisted that Washoe and subsequent primate research subjects were not using language in the thoughtful, abstract, spontaneous way humans do, that their utterances were all merely rote, reward-based responses. The evidence, however, repeatedly suggested otherwise. When Washoe’s caretakers arrived in the morning, she’d sign crude sentences like Come hug, feed me, gimme clothes, please out, open door. Once, upon seeing a small doll inside a cup, she signed, Baby in my drink, as near to an original, unscripted sentence as any language-learning child might utter. And then there was that shoe fixation of hers. She was always checking people’s feet to see what shoes they were wearing. Whenever anyone came in with a new pair, she’d immediately request to see them and then sign her assessment.

Of course, with chimps it’s not so big a leap to imagine them having cognitive and linguistic powers at least kindred to our own. It would, somehow, take a parrot long the very icon of mindless mimicry, with a brain no bigger than a walnut to give full voice to Washoe’s silent signaling and force us to rethink our narrow, anthropocentric conceptions of language and thought. Alex’s cognitive abilities tested as high as those of a 4-to-5-year-old child. He understood concepts like presence and absence, making him very adept at the shell game. He frequently cajoled and coached the other parrots in Pepperberg’s lab. And he never hesitated to express his frustrations and affections. When Pepperberg returned to the lab after a three-week absence, Alex turned his back on her and commanded, Come here! As she put Alex back in his cage the night he died, he signed off with: You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.

They were not unusually gifted members of their respective species, Washoe and Alex. But armed with our words, they opened our minds, making us aware of the pervasive and protean nature of the linguistic impulse across species. Of the many tales they told us, the most universal tells of an early ancestor of our own, standing hundreds of thousands of years ago on a lake shore somewhere, seeing a large winged creature drift by and signing or saying outright, in whatever language it might have been: water,then bird.

With The Bucket List having recently played, a movie with Jack Nicholas and Morgan Freeman running around the world checking off items on their to-do list before they kick the bucket, it’s gotten people thinking about what their bucket list would look like. Sarah over at Teetotaled asked me to share 5 things I’d like to do before I kick the bucket.

I have to smile at a certain predictableness to my list now, as opposed to what would have been on it when I was younger. Then, it would have been all about daring-do and adventure. All done at high speed. As I’ve matured, it’s become more about (mostly) quietly going the distance…

1. Start an elementary school that would mark the beginning of changing how this country viewed education.

2. Live on a few hundred well-fenced acres, with no neighbors, so my dogs could run safely all day and I wouldn’t have to worry about whether Graidy felt like having a bark-fest with the coyotes at 2 am.

3. Have a job like Bill Moyers on his show, Now. I think he’s one of the best interviewers — ever. It would be way too much fun to pick up the phone and know that anybody I wanted to talk to would be thrilled to have me call.

4. Write a book that found mainstream success.

5. Go on a really long walkabout.

What would be on your bucket list?

Lying here, coughing my brains out, I have more time than usual to contemplate the deep mysteries of life. Like why have car colors become so boring?

Think about it. What are our options? Take a look at any parking lot and this is what you’ll see. All pulled out of the same sock drawer of mismatched darks and lights. Pretty darn dull if you ask me.

There was a time when you could pick a car from nearly any color in the rainbow.

Like this ‘68 Camero in Lime Green.

Or this sporty little ‘69 GTO orange number.

Or how about a wispy sky blue roadster?

Or this adorable pink little getup with the white top?

Purple? Did somebody say purple?

St Paddy’s Day is coming up. How about kelly green?

And, for those of us who couldn’t make up our minds,

we had two-tones.

Highways looked like cheerful rows of skittles scooting along.

And since we Americans loved our open-tops, we could see into our fellow cars to check out their snappy interiors.

Like this dapper hounds tooth.

Or this outrageous red!

And, it goes without saying, that back in these good ol’ days, you’d inevitably spy one of these coughing and sputtering down the road.

Oh, I think it’s me who’s coughing and sputtering. Time for a swig of codeine cough medicine and lights out. So I can continue to dream about my Technicolor cars, with bumpers that actually worked.

That’s a Copy good buddy. Over and out.

But before I konk out. What would you pick for a car color, if you could pick ANY color?

Me?…

This little Austin in yellow would suit me just fine.

Nutmeg saved her old dog, Ezra’s life today. From all the way across the front yard and down across the street!

Ezra, Nutmeg’s beloved 12 year old boxer, got out the front door and wandered across the street, before Nutmeg had a chance to realize. With four kids and a busy house, it happens. But Nutmeg did see Ezra in time to watch the speeding car heading straight for her, as she was about to step into the street.

Nutmeg did what we all would have done in that instant. She screamed for her dog to stop. But that’s not what saved Ezra. Because, you see, Ezra is mostly deaf and couldn’t hear the scream. What saved her was that Nutmeg had also taught Ezra hand signals along with the verbal commands. Ezra saw Nutmeg’s hand signal to stay. And she did exactly that.

Having raised a deaf Aussie, I also had to find a way to communicate with her. Since I’d already learned a fair amount of sign language, it was no problem to create signals that cover all the kinds of conversations I’d want to have with her. I still use a lot of sign language with both my dogs today. It’s convenient for those times like now, when I have bronchial pneumonia and can’t talk without coughing. And it’s always convenient to use when my dogs are at a distance and they may not hear me.

Until I have the energy to do a full post, here are a couple of great links and a short video to get you started:

DDEAF Training Hand Signs

Hand Signals on Dog Obedience Training

Remember, there are the basic obedience hand signals for sit, down, stay, and heel. These are always used in the same way by everyone. And then there are deaf-dog sign language commands that may be varied, depending on who’s using them. Once you decide what the signal is going to be for the command, it’s important that you stick with that so you don’t wind up confusing your dog.

Not only are these hand signals super easy to teach — as Nutmeg found out, they can be life-saving to know.

Most of us have wills providing for our significant others and children in the event something happened to us. But what about our animals?

If you were in an accident, or delayed from getting home from a trip, or you suddenly died, what would happen to your animals? Do you have a plan in place? Do you have people lined up and willing to step in and help? Have you set aside the resources to pay for food, vet care, etc.? Do you have a legal document outlining your wishes?

Never a happy subject, but also never a good time to think about it. So let’s think about it here and talk about it now. Especially if you live alone. Because if you don’t make a plan and something happens, you should know that in all probability your animals will be taken to a shelter (and if not adopted quickly, probably euthanized), or, worse, left stranded in your house to die.

There are a few quick and simple things you could do right now that could spell the difference between life and death for your pets, should something unexpected happen to you.

Contact three people you know (and hopefully that your animals know) who would accept responsibility for your animals in case something should happen to you. Make sure they have a copy of what your animals eat and when, which animals need to be kept together vs. which animals would do okay being rehomed by themselves, your vet’s phone #, and any other pertinent information.

Create a simple card that goes in your wallet near your license that says: “I have animals at home that depend on me. In case of emergency, please contact [person/phone #]”

Have these same cards attached to animal crates with dog’s photos, name, microchip info, contact info (2 friends and your vet), and instructions to take your animals directly to the vet and not a to shelter for care until the people listed can be contacted.

Make an ICE (in case of emergency) entry in your PDA and/or cell phone contact list. Police and firefighters responding to an accident will check whatever electronic devices you have, looking for ICE information.

And, if you’re open to such things, consider leaving arrangements for an animal communicator to talk to your animals about what’s happened to you and what will be happening to them. Assuring them that arrangements have been made can be very helpful and calming to distressed pets.

I have a list containing the following in my wallet, car glove compartment, and in a folder on my desk at home :

• My dogs’ and cat’s names, photos, breed and description, and dates of birth
• The ID on their collars
• Information that Kiera and Graidy are wary of strangers, and how they should be approached.
• My vet’s name and phone
• My husband’s and sister’s name and phone
• A nearby friend’s name and phone
• Instructions that I will be financially responsible for food and vet bills in the event that I’m unable to express these wishes due to incapacitation or death.

I update this list annually.

When making arrangements for your animals, you should know that a regular will isn’t the way to go. Not only could your animals be dispersed and/or euthanized before the will is read, heirs can easily contest your wishes. You need a legal contract that appoints someone to assume guardianship of the animals and the funds/property set aside for their care, along with your instructions. The guardian you select then needs to sign the contract.

Such a contract also works much better in the event you don’t die, but are incapacitated, and arrangements and money for animals are still needed. That means you should spell out immediate as well as longer term wishes in the documents. You also have the option of setting up a trust for your animals, but it’s not cheap to do.

As with wills, you need to make sure these documents (contracts, trusts) are kept updated. A lapse in doing so could nullify your arrangements and leave your animals unprotected. For example, if you were to make a rescue/shelter program the guardian (lacking a family member or available friend), and the personnel and philosophy change, your wishes could be in jeopardy.

Because states differ considerably on what legal protections are allowed for animals, at some point it would be worth contacting a lawyer to assure that your wishes can be legally upheld.

Here’s a place to get ideas about the contract/agreement:

Here’s a place that has information about pet trusts:

Here’s another helpful article full of tips on Providing for Your Dogs If You are Gone

Taking an hour to get this all in place now will give you peace of mind and could save your animals’ lives later.

What I like most about my laptop is the freedom it gives me to set up shop anywhere in the house. This evening, I’ve parked myself in the living room by the fireplace. There’s nothing I love better than working by the warmth of a crackling fire.

Having finished her homework, Cait is drawn by the cozy flames. With a good book in hand, she makes herself comfortable in the chair across from me, knowing full well that in a few minutes I’m going to tell her she needs to head upstairs.

You see, we play this nightly game. She knows that it’s time for her to get ready for bed. I know that she’s the queen of dragging out bedtime. Thus, the game of getting her ready to get ready for bedtime.

I let her have several minutes, before I say, “Cait — teeth, jams, bed.”

She buries her nose deeper into her book.

Gazing at her contentedly reading, I say, “It’s nice having your company while I’m working.”

Before I can follow that up with “teeth, jams, bed” again, she peeks over the top of her book, and cuts me off at the pass, “So, do you really want to ruin this moment?”

If my wit was half as quick as hers, I could rule the world.

Can you see him? He’s in the middle of the two clumps of trees. (Sorry the photos aren’t clearer. He was all the way across the pond, toward the ridge. Even with the digital 12x zoom, it was hard to get a good shot from this distance at dusk.)

I called out to say hello, and he turned to look. He’s such a big boy now.

This coyote and I go way back. All the way back to a field six years ago when Kiera broke lose from me and played with him. I hadn’t seen him this past year and wondered if he was all right. I can’t explain the relief and joy I feel, knowing he’s still alive and well.

But for his sake and ours, it’s time for him to keep moving.

Finnegan gets some outdoor time under a watchful eye.

There’s a great debate raging at our house. When I got Finn for Cait, I made the executive decision that he was going to be an indoor cat. Knowing that the average lifespan of outdoor cats is around four years, and having lost my most favoritest cat in the whole world ever (yep, at around four years old) to a wild animal, I decided that for both Finn’s lifespan and Cait’s emotional well-being, it seemed the only reasonable choice to make. Cait agreed.

But then Finn got out once. And he loved being out. Really, really, really loved being out. And so it was that we discovered that Finn desperately wants to be an outdoor cat. We’ve had to close off the Dog Door because of him, so the dogs feel penalized. Still, he tries to get out every time the regular door opens. He hides under the dogs’ bellies and tries to shoot out with them when we let them out. He hides under the chair by the door, hoping to make his escape. He hides behind our feet with eyes trained on the door, hoping we don’t notice him lurking there. His escape attempts have gotten so frequent that we’ve all become paranoid about opening any door.

Under this duress, it seems cruel not to let him out. So he gets visitation rights with guards on either side to keep him from going over the fence.

And we continue to have ongoing discussions about what the right thing is to do…

Andrew thinks that it’s about quality rather than quantity of life. His vote is to let Finn out. Of course, I don’t think it’s a simple matter of either/or, and I think Cait would be crushed if anything happened to Finn. Yet Cait wants Finn to be happy.

Dear reader, please weigh in. What’s your vote? If you have a cat, is it indoor or outdoor, and how did you decide?

In my last post, I talked about some of the different factors that could trigger a dog to bite when on its own property. It boiled down to roughly three categories: a dog protecting its turf (including people, objects, and food); a dog undersocialized and/or uncertain or afraid of novelty (whether processed through smell, sight, or hearing); a dog in pain.

More than 4.5 million people get bitten every year, in part, because they don’t know how to read a dog’s body language. That’s a scary statistic. But let me put this into some context. There are approximately 73 million dogs in the US. That means that roughly 94% of dogs don’t bite. (There are many, many more bites that don’t get reported, so I’m going to say that number is more realistically 80%. But those are still great odds.)

The point here is not to make people afraid of dogs, but to help people understand that they need to be more cautious, observant, and respectful around dogs. While the vast majority of dogs are safe to approach, if people learned more about how to read a dog’s body language, those bite statistics would be significantly lowered. That’s because dogs give plenty of warnings before they’re pushed to bite.

Before we get into how dogs interpret posture and movement, I need to say that no signaling or communication system in social animals —including dogs — is simple. The main reason for this is because the context is often determined as much from where and how the communication is taking place, as it is from the communication itself. So congruency or incongruency of body signals is important and telling. Congruent signals indicate that the dog is certain in its course of action. Incongruent signals (a dog that’s growling and wagging its tail) indicates ambivalence and less certainty in the course of action.

As you can see, there’s a lot to this, But let’s see if I can get you started by breaking it down into a quick overview. Okay, on to how to read a dog’s body language for cues.

The Cliff Notes Version:

In general, dogs interpret straight lines and sharp angles, and direct approaches as aggressive. They consider direct eye contact a challenge. In contrast, anything soft, curvy, relaxed, indirect, or slow without being still, is seen as non-threatening.

Some Particulars:

Behaviors Humans Do That Dogs Interpret as Aggressive

• Approach a dog in a straight line rather than an arc.
• Approach a dog quickly.
• Stand in front of a dog and look directly (stare) at it.
• Reach out quickly and lean over or squat to pet, face-to-face.
• Suddenly reach out a hand (front or back), straight-armed, to be sniffed.
• Stand and lean into or over a dog.

How You Should Approach a Dog You Don’t Know

I wouldn’t, but if you feel compelled to, this is what you need to do:

• First, observe without staring.
• After you’ve assessed (see below) that the dog is relaxed, approach in a slight curved line.
• Approach at a casual pace, don’t stare the dog in the eye, and stand slightly sideways.
• Stop several feet away from the dog, and let it come up to you if it wants.
• The first encounter shouldn’t be about an attempt to pet, but rather to let the dog get comfortable with you.

Dog Body Language - Okay For You to Approach

When you see a dog offering several of these signals, it’s telling you it feels comfortable.

• Lips, ears, facial muscles, eyes are relaxed.
• Soft, relaxed stance.
• Tail relaxed and wagging easily.
• Play bowing.
• Respiration normal.
• (When a dog is really happy to see you, often the whole body wags in soft curves.)

Dog Body Language - Potentially Dangerous For You to Approach

These signals are a dog’s way of communicating that it’s feeling overly confident, nervous, or protective. If you insist on ignoring this communication, do so at your own risk.

• Slowed breathing, slowed, stiff movements, compression of the lips.
• Ears fully erect or pinned back against head.
• Growling, snarling, barking.
• Lips drawn back.
• Intense stare (direct or sideways) with constriction or dilation of pupils
• Straining against a leash.
• Food, bone, or toy between its legs.
• Angular, stiff legs and body, leaning back or forward on toes.
• Tail straight out or up, with hackles up.
• Tail out or up, wagging in tight circles.

Dog Body Language – Not Okay For You to Approach

These are all signs of stress or appeasing signals that dogs offer when they’re nervous, afraid, or wish to appear non-threatening. It’s kinder to the dog not to try to approach, but rather let the dog get comfortable with you, and decide for itself that it wants to come and investigate you.

• Shrinking back or backing up.
• Licking lips, blinking eyes, yawning or stretching tongue forward
• Tail curled under or between legs.
• Shaking, whining, rapid panting.
• Distracts itself by sniffing, scratching at self, looking away.

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Some Dog Bite Statistics

According to the American Medical Association, dog bites are the second leading cause of childhood injury, surpassing playground accidents.

Dog bites to males are approximately 2Xs greater than to females.

Licensed dogs with an identifiable owner are implicated in the vast majority of dog bites (compared with strays).

Dogs not known to the victim account for approximately 10 - 20% of all reported dog bites. That means that 80 – 90% of dog bites happen to someone who knows the dog.

Dogs between 1 and 5 years old are involved in more dog bite incidences than dogs older than 6 years. Male dogs are more frequently involved than female dogs.

The list of breeds most involved in both bite injuries and fatalities changes from year to year and from one area of the country to another, depending on the popularity of the breed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document that a chained dog is 2.8Xs more likely to bite than an unchained dog.

Intact dogs are 3Xs more likely to bite than spayed or neutered dogs.

My goal is to help keep you and the dogs you meet safer. Hopefully, this post will start you down the road to being more observant of a dog’s body language, which will help you make better choices when meeting new dogs.