Oh, I’m not missing anything. Sparky and I talk all the time. For example, the photo above, Sparky is saying, “Are we going for a walk, or what? We aren’t going to prom, just put some pants on and let’s go.”
Often owners think they understand their pooches pretty well, but research suggests that dogs are much better at reading our body language than we are theirs.
That’s baloney. Dogs don’t have to figure out if we need to poop, hate our food or are sick, why we are shaking, bored or sleepy, or why we are limping. Sparky may be able to read my body language, but just doesn’t care.
“Some dogs have very, very expressive faces. Others aren’t quite as expressive because their face shape is different,”
Sparky has very expressive eyebrows. Most of the time, he’s judging me.
A classic over-anthropomorphisation, Todd says, is the ‘guilty look’. You know, the one your dog gives you when you come home and find your cushion shredded into a million and one pieces on the living room floor.
Sparky is an independent spirit, with good intentions. The only thing he does that he knows to be bad, is to sneak out of the house and do a walkabout. When I get him home, he sits there with a shit-eating grin.
The only shit he actually eats is goose shit, and after he’s snapped that up, he is looking around for more. In the Winter, he is intrigued with his own frozen turds. He doesn’t eat it, but carries it around in his teeth like Winston Churchill smoking a cigar. Maybe he saw a bulldog do an impression, and thought it looks funny.
So, maybe not a shit-eating grin, but a self-satisfied smirking grin. I would never do it, but I understand the impulse to slap that smirk off of his face. Instead, I put him in his crate.
Sparky has taken a shit in the house, but he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. If there is snow outside, he doesn’t want to trouble me to go outside. If he poops in someone else’s house, it’s a method of communication. “If I’m living here now, you should know that you don’t have to take me outside to poop, I’m a civilized dog.”
If dogs were so great at reading body language, it wouldn’t have taken so much effort to convince Sparky that I don’t mind taking him outside to poop in the Winter.
Since he always does what he thinks is best, he doesn’t have a guilty look. If I have to chastise him, he is good at reading the room. He gets contrite, and for a day or so, stays where I put him with no complaints or gives me some space.
What they showed is that dogs don’t really have the depth of understanding of what they’ve done to feel guilty. Instead, the guilty behaviours were much more associated with whether or not the naughty pooches were about to get in trouble with their owner.
Dogs don’t understand anything the way we do. Their brains are wired up a different way. A dog fearing he is about to get in trouble, is close enough to guilt that it isn’t worth making a distinction.
“Sometimes people are worried about why their dog is staring at them so much, but it’s important for your dog to keep an eye on you and how you’re feeling.”
I’m not convinced that this dog behavior expert knows dogs that well. Maybe Sparky is an outlier, but I doubt it. Dogs don’t stare to gauge our feelings. Dogs are trying to impose automatic mind control.
Sparky loves going for car rides. He rarely looks out the window. Most of the time, he sits in the passenger seat, staring at me. I’m driving and making light conversation. He knows that I’m not going to put him on my lap, chastise him, feed him, play with Mr. Moose or take him for a walk. That’s most of what he cares about. No, Sparky is sending a psychic message to control my mind so that I will finally let him drive.
Sparky thinks driving doesn’t look that hard. He knows that I’ve caved on most rules. Sparky is not allowed on the furniture. He wants to go up on the couch, but he never does. Well, not until I started inviting him on the couch to watch TV with me. Because Sparky wished it, and it came to pass, he thinks that his automatic mind control worked. He might be right, what do I know?
Sparky doesn’t know about pedals, and I’m not going to tell him.
When Sparky is on my lap, he occasionally twists around so that he is staring into my eyes. He is not scanning my face, checking involuntary facial muscles for evidence of my emotional state. Sparky is trying to hypnotize me or exert automatic mind control. If I could figure out what he wants, I would probably capitulate.
According to Todd, ears that are up and forward slightly demonstrate that a dog is interested in something, while ears tilting back can be a sign of anxiety. “Some dogs put their ears back to greet people, though,” she adds.
Sadly, those especially floppy-eared friends have lost much of this form of expression, although if they’re down and slightly forward that could be a sign of interest too.
Sparky has adorably floppy ears, but has lost none of his expression. When he boxes his ears, he is focused on an action. If he does the head tilt, he is trying to resolve some confusion.
In a 2017 study conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph and the University of Pennsylvania, strangers approached dogs wearing a mask and a cape, flapping the cape up and down and crouching as they did so.
The team were on the hunt for subtle behaviour signals that indicated a dog was feeling fearful. Yawning was one such signal, not associated with being tired, but instead indicating that the dog was feeling scared of the stranger’s weird behaviour.
I really want to try that experiment. I am skeptical that a yawn means fear. If it did, we would see it much more often in a fearful context. In their experiment, the dogs may have been signaling that they are bored with the tedious ruse. A teaching assistant doing a Phantom of the Opera impression doesn’t correspond to any natural threat known to dogs. Most dogs aren’t going to mistake the TA for Cruella De Vil,
But, of course, tails are also a great way for dogs to communicate. “When dogs are happy they wag their tail really wide and loose. Sometimes their whole body wags too,” Todd says.
I grow weary of this article because a whole book can be written about tail action.
To wrap this up, I’ve never seen Sparky run away with his tail between his legs. He is such a sanguine fella, he may not experience fear, and certainly wouldn’t show it. Instead, if he is baffled with a situation, he would back off, sit down, and look at me. That’s Sparky’s way of admitting that he is in over his head, and it’s time for me to take over.