-
Body Language Breakdown | What do you see?
Here’s a short clip of my 2 year old Australian Shepherd, Bliss. She’s on a Down-Stay on the rock wall outside the front door of a Bass Pro Shop. I’m sitting next to her.
I’ll tell more about the context after you all have a little while to check out her body language.
What do you see?
0:43
-
9 Replies
-
I see looking into environment (ears following sounds, puffing cheeks as to gather scent information, closed mouth when taking info ). Yawn, tongue flick, but also looks to you ( you open mouth, ears relaxed) and then scans environment again
-
Good work, @pawsup – you caught a lot of detail, especially the puffy cheek blows… fascinating, right?
I’ll let a few more folks chime in … there are a couple elements more….
-
I am always so fascinated how dogs process so many things with different “super” powers!
-
-
-
I see everything Krista mentions. I will also add panting. Not sure if her whiskers are normally straight out but noticed they are here. Some blinking.
-
Yawning, panting , chuffing (not sure how to spell that one), ears busy, eyes busy, nose busy. This is a busy environment which appears to make her a bit anxious, but she’s handling it well.
-
Yes, yes, yes, @jenz and @Cyn – you brought in the remaining details, the panting and hypervigilance. Those head swivels!!
We had already gone in the store. She was not okay with the activity level indoors. I was quite surprised, actually. She’s been a great traveler and I’ve never seen her bothered to the extent she was that day. She startled at the sound of kids popping toy guns and had a real tough time recovering after that. In trying to move her away from the noise, I took her up some stairs only to find out she also had big feelings about being near the railing. ???? Lucky for me, her big feelings translated into escape/avoid, not bark/defend. But I hated seeing her in a panic!!
I had to get her down the steps, through the crowd and back outside. We sat out there for about 5 minutes, then did some big muscle work (see video) which I find helps dogs release some of the big feelings in a safe way. Then we went back in for a short loop, then back out again.
In all, I took her in and out 3 times and ended when she was feeling pretty good about it all.
However, even though she had mostly recovered, I was super mindful of her emotional state and did NOT let people pet her. Normally, Bliss loves people, but has less experience with kids, and I just had to tell them no. Instead, I stood with her on a sit-stay a little distance away and pointed out the stressed body language while I explained why she wasn’t up for a greeting. I feel like the mom caught a lot of what I said, even if the little girl didn’t.
I can see we need to do more outings… I’ve been keeping her to myself too much, and focusing on Magic, who did really, really well in the same environment. Funny only because if you’d have asked, I’d have said Magic is the more sensitive one…
We all have good and not-as-good days!
0:20
-
Here’s Magic, 4.5 months old. Excited to greet everyone in spite of the cacophony. ????
-
-
Seemed like she was very interested in those very squeaky birds. Her ears were following them closely.
-
Maybe that, too!! She’s really become critter patrol at our house.
The big head swivels were possibly because there was a family with a dog walking up behind us… dogs will always be her very favorite thing.
-
Log in to reply.