Misunderstanding Our Dogs

To be understood is to be loved, but to be human is to be imperfect. We love our dogs, but as a society, we tend to misinterpret their behavior. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're part of a small but growing group of people dedicated to better understanding our four-legged friends.

As a certified canine behavior consultant, I could boil down my job into this: I help people learn to hear, understand, and support their dogs better. This is most often very rewarding. Most usually, people pay me money explicitly to help them do exactly this.

But it does still, at the end of the day, mean that I spend a lot of time telling people the things they thought were joyful, funny, or cute are actually signs of pain or distress. Despite this, I'm still considered fun at parties.

The fact is, we can never look at a single data point and draw a conclusion. We need to look at the whole context and make our best-informed guess based on the whole picture. Then, we continue to gather data and adjust as we learn more. I often tell my clients, "I'm more than happy to be wrong."

So when we observe a behavior, we need to consider the body language, the context, the dog's current arousal levels, and what we know about the individual. To do our dogs the justice of being known, we need to keep a beginner's mind and be prepared to adjust our understanding as we gather information.

The relationship we have with our dog is one we likely enter without realizing we need to learn more to understand them. We're social creatures, and so are our dogs, and so often, until a behavior concern arises, we assume our understanding of our dogs is correct. That we love them so much, there can't possibly be more to know.

But when a behavior concern does arise, and we don't know how to support our dog, it often creates an opportunity to learn and know them better. Then, it becomes obvious how much we don't know. And this makes sense, really. They're a totally different species, even if they live in our homes and sleep in our beds. Of course, it's necessary to actively learn to understand them. Behavior concerns often allow us to know our dogs better, and understand ourselves and our relationship with them more deeply.

If you read this post and find that you've been misunderstanding some aspects of your dog's behavior, emotional state, and communication, I encourage you to celebrate the acquisition of new knowledge rather than lambasting yourself for not knowing everything there is to know.

When someone takes the time and energy to better understand us, it is an act of love. Your dog is fortunate to have someone who loves them so very much.

Misunderstanding 1: A dog running around must be having fun.

I often receive videos from my clients of their dog moving around quickly. That's the best way I can think of to summarize this category of behavior. Maybe they have the zoomies. Maybe they're engaged in what looks like play. Maybe they're just running and jumping. When dogs move around quickly, we tend to assume they're very excited, playing, or having a great time. And sometimes that's true!

But sometimes, a dog moves around quickly because...

• They're experiencing pain. Dogs might engage in exercise or fast, frantic movements when they experience pain. These dogs are often "impossible to tire out" and engage in excessive exercise like fetch or running until physically exhausted.

• They're hyperaroused. Frustrated, overwhelmed, overstimulated - they may be adrenalized and do a lot of moving. This can be mistaken for play.

• They're navigating conflict. We overestimate how well we can distinguish between play, tense conversations, and actual fights.

• They're conflicted. Dogs may display a fidget response when experiencing high levels of stress and conflicting emotions. This is often mistaken for over-excitement.

• Compulsive behavior. Dogs can engage in truly compulsive or compulsive-lite behavior that's mistaken for having fun. Commonly, this includes fetch, light or glare chasing, or tail chasing.

So how do we tell the difference? Remember, context is everything. We want to observe the context of the situation and what we know about the individual dog, their body language and behavior, and the level of their arousal and emotional state.

Misunderstanding 2: Mistaking licking for affection.

As humans, we often assume that a licking dog is showing affection. And while dogs may sometimes lick to show affection, licking is a behavior with a lot of possible functions. These might include...

• Stress relief. Licking helps to relieve stress, and dogs will often lick to self-soothe.

• Pain relief. Excessive licking can be a sign of pain, GI distress, or allergies.

• Kiss to Dismiss. Sometimes dogs lick when they're trying to say "go away". We talk about this a lot concerning dogs and babies!

• We taste good. Sometimes dogs are tasting our lotion, sweat, or other things on our skin.

When licking becomes excessive, repetitive, difficult to interrupt, or appears within a context that points to distress or physical health concerns, it's worth investigating as more than affection.

Misunderstanding 3: Aggression is different than fear.

I work with dogs displaying aggressive behavior, and dogs experiencing chronic dysregulation. Some dogs with anxiety or trauma disorders display aggressive behavior, and others don't. When they do, their guardians are often quick to tell me that the behavior seems to be based in fear, rather than truly aggressive.

But the truth is, aggressive behavior is often based in fear. Aggression is the "fight" part of fight-or-flight (there's also fawn, fidget, and freeze). And the same dog can display any or all of those five responses due to the same emotion (like fear or anxiety), depending on the context.

Consider this: someone approaches you in a threatening manner. How do you respond? Well, it probably depends on context.

Are you injured, in pain or under the influence of medication? Alone or with your 10 closest friends who happen to be black belts? Somewhere familiar or unfamiliar? Who is threatening you, and how much of a threat do you perceive them to be? What are your options for moving away? What's your history with being threatened - what has worked for you in the past?

And - dogs displaying aggressive behavior most often have pain as part of their experience. In fact, up to 80% of behavior cases in which dogs display aggressive behavior are being directly or indirectly influenced by pain in their bodies. This doesn't mean pain is the whole story, or that pain and fear or anxiety are mutually exclusive. Chronic pain can sensitize the central nervous system and impact mood, stress response, resilience, and the individual's ability to cope with their environment.

Misunderstanding 4: My Dog Feels Guilty

Based on our current understanding of canine cognition, we don't have good evidence that dogs experience guilt the way we conceptualize it. So what's with all the guilty dogs in dog-shaming content on the internet? Fear and appeasement. Those dogs aren't thinking, "I did something wrong, and I have regrets." Those dogs are experiencing or anticipating experiencing something aversive.

In fact, this is why dog trainers recommend cleaning up housetraining accidents out of view of your puppy. Sometimes even just the look of disgust on our faces can create a behavioral pattern of avoidance (and now the puppy is pooping in secret places!)

Misunderstanding 5: My dog is just dumb.

I've never met a dumb dog, but I've met a lot of people who didn't appreciate how their dog learns.

There are a lot of reasons our dogs might not learn in a way that makes their intelligence obvious to us, including...

• Stress. Dogs experiencing chronic stress often appear unable to learn, because they spend more time in survival mode than learning mode. Their problem-solving skills and curiosity take a back seat to coping and survival.

• Pain. Dogs often hesitate or decline to perform tasks that are uncomfortable or painful for them, and are misunderstood as being unable to learn (or stubborn).

• We're measuring wrong. You know the saying about judging a fish by their ability to climb a tree? Often we don't appreciate the way our dogs' intelligence appears, and because it doesn't look like we expect it to, we dismiss them as dumb.

One time, I made a video about how it drives me bananas when people call their dogs dumb. I had to turn comments off, because the video went viral, and I started getting hundreds of comments of people describing dogs engaging in behavior that very clearly indicated physical or emotional health concerns, and insisting THEIR dog really was just dumb.

The Takeaway

It's possible you were aware of all of these common misunderstandings, or it's possible one or two or all five of them contained brand new information.

My best hope, if this is the case, is that you are celebrating what my good friend Emily calls "leveling up". I am always incredibly grateful to know more and to be doing better than 6 months ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, even if I also sometimes feel grief or sadness about the information I didn't have when my past dogs were alive, or my current dogs were younger. It's normal to get new information and think about how we could have used it in the past to be more patient, more supportive, kinder, or helpful.

One of the reasons intrahousehold conflict is one of the types of behavior cases I'm most passionate about is because I've navigated it myself. If I'd known then what I know now, my dogs would have experienced a lot less emotional and physical distress. Seeing this through today's lens feels bad, but I know that if I beat myself up, it will only get in the way of learning more and doing better - and I care more about knowing and doing better than about avoiding bad feelings.

When we're open to learning and revising our worldview based on new information, we become the best versions of ourselves again and again, and can then share that self with those we love.