Reading Dog Body Language 3

Here is a picture of Carly. Take a look at her posture and body language. What can you tell from it? Is she happy/relaxed, or nervous/fearful, or aggressive, or neutral - kind of just hanging out?

When identifying (or interpreting) body language, we may look at individual body parts - ears, tail, eyes, feet, and so on, but we also look at all of these as a whole and the context surrounding them. For example, licking lips (or quick tongue flicks in and out of the mouth) can indicate a dog is uncomfortable, but this can also simply be a dog naturally doing this behavior (to keep the lips from being too dry) or from cleaning the mouth, or from thinking about or looking at food.

So for this particular Carly picture she is slightly nervous. Her body posture is lower than normal. Her head is lowered. Her mouth is closed (which can be a normal behavior or indicate some stress). And she has concerned eyes - a little extra eye white showing.

If it was challenging to tell, don’t worry. Still photographs can present additional challenges when examining dog body language - especially since behavior and emotions can change quickly.

Here is a second photo to compare:

Hopefully that helps show the more nervous Carly compared to happy Carly [normal eyes, relaxed open mouth (smile), tail out (not tucked), standing in normal posture (not lower like in an attempt to avoid someone or something).

Also note that once we identify behaviors, such as Carly displaying nervous behavior, then we can use positive reinforcement training to help her build confidence and to be happy and relaxed.