Why learning to read your dog’s body language could save their life

Imagine being in an elevator with strangers. The one standing closest to you keeps staring, so you turn your head away, hoping they’ll get the hint. They move on to touching your shoulder, and you tell them to stop. They don’t. Your fight or flight response kicks in as they continue to invade your personal boundaries, and finally, you hit them. The other people on the elevator start shaming you, they call the cops, and you get taken to jail.

This happens to dogs every. single. day.

Many end up in shelters or worse, euthanized, for simply standing up for themselves when their cries for help were ignored.

In my 20 years in the dog behavior industry, I have found that most dog guardians don’t understand how their dogs communicate. Their subtle hints of discomfort, like lip licks and head turns, are ignored, so they try more obvious signs, like growling. If the growling gets punished, they do the only thing left that they know – biting. The truth is, there are usually many signals that dogs attempt to give us before they resort to biting; we just need to listen.