The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs

by Patricia B. McConnell

Just by shifting forward with our arms out, we could stop the dogs, and by shifting backward and turning away, we could get them to move toward us. No leash, no collars, no control but the effect of our bodies, communicating “come” and “stop” with the turn of a torso. I still don’t understand how they made it.

All dogs are brilliant at perceiving the slightest movement that we make, and they assume that each tiny motion has meaning. So do we humans, if you think about it.

Who dogs are and how they behave are partly defined by who we humans are and how we ourselves behave.

We know that dogs enrich the lives of many of us, providing comfort and joy to millions around the world. Studies even show that they decrease the probability of a second heart attack. We don’t put up with shedding and barking and carrying pooper-scoopers on walks for nothing.

And look what we’ve done for dogs. Canis lupus familiaris, the domestic dog, is now one of the most successful mammals on earth, thanks to hitching his star to ours. It’s been estimated that there are about four hundred million dogs in the world. Many American dogs are eating organic food, going to canine chiropractors and doggy day-care centers, and chewing on millions of dollars a year in toys. Now that’s a successful species.

Dogs are canids, the taxonomic family that includes wolves, foxes, and coyotes. Genetically dogs are wolves, pure and simple. Wolves and dogs share so much of their DNA that they are almost impossible to distinguish genetically. Wolves and dogs interbreed freely, and their offspring are just as fertile as their parents.2

our tendency to want to express love to a dog through hugging can get us both into trouble. Dogs often interpret hugs as aggressive actions, and so they defend themselves from this madness with the only means they have, their teeth. And there we were, just trying to tell them that we love them.

Direct eye contact with a nervous dog is a beginner’s mistake that you either learn to avoid or you get out of the business.

Dogs are brilliant at perceiving minute changes in our bodies and assume each tiny motion has meaning. Small movements that you make result in huge changes in your dog’s behavior. If you learn anything from this book, learn that.

Pip is no different from most of our dogs, who love petting and praise in some contexts but not others. After all, even if you adore a good massage, do you want one in the middle of an important meeting or a close tennis match? Why on earth would a dog, even one who lives to be stroked, want petting in every possible context in her life? We wouldn’t, no matter how much we love a good rubdown.

I think some of us have convinced ourselves that our dogs love us constantly and relentlessly, simply because we’re not very good at reading their nonverbal communications to us. But once you start spending your life with dogs, it becomes screamingly clear that love is only one of the emotions that they feel.

Honing your observational skills is directly related to having a better-behaved dog, because what you do around your dog should be related to what your dog is doing. Just because his movements are subtle doesn’t mean that they’re not important.

One way to practice is to watch and write down what you see. Artists and scientists know this: we don’t really see something until we ask our minds to translate it into words or pictures. So become your own Jane Goodall. Take a sketchbook with you and your dog to the dog park (any paper with a solid backing will do) and start watching, describing, and sketching specific movements of your dog. Focus on which way her body leans and write it down and try to sketch a picture. Notice whether the corners of her mouth (the commissure) go forward or backward and write down when it happens and when it doesn’t. Do her eyes look “hard” or “soft” when she’s greeting another dog? How does her tail set change when she sees another dog? Is it the same change as when she sees a human? Focus on just one body part at a time; otherwise, your brain gets swamped and you can’t really focus on a specific action. Try keeping your notes and sketches together in a journal and go back often to read what you wrote.

With practice your brain gets better at observing changes in behavior, and you’ll develop what’s called a “search image” for a specific posture. You’ll be able to see subtle changes that happen so fast that your friends won’t even notice. That will allow you to respond more quickly and more appropriately to your dog. Without doing anything else, you’ll become a better dog trainer, and almost like magic, your dog will become better behaved.

Dad holds a hand out for “sit” the same way that Mom does for “stay.” Painfully it’s often the smartest and most willing dogs that suffer the most when the family is inconsistent. You can practically see smoke coming out of their ears while they desperately look for a predictable pattern from their humans.

The best way to discover the signals that you send to your dog is to have a friend videotape you. Few of us are truly aware of how we move our bodies when we’re interacting socially, which is one of the reasons that seeing ourselves on video can be upsetting. “Who is that person?” we think, appalled that we close our eyes while we talk or have a habit of scratching our chins.

The next time you see a dog you’d like to greet, stop a few feet away, stand sideways rather than straight on, and avoid looking directly into her eyes. Wait for the dog to come all the way to you. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t want to be petted. So don’t pet her.

Always pet unfamiliar dogs on the chest or under their chin. Don’t reach over their heads to pet them. What would you think if an unfamiliar animal the size of King Kong waltzed up and reached over and behind your head with its huge paw?

The best way to get a dog to come to you is to turn away from him and move in the opposite direction (which is actually “toward you” from the standpoint of the dog).

Dogs want to go the way that you’re going, and to a dog that’s the way that your face and feet are pointing.

The best way that I know to visually “call” a dog to come is to bend down as if in a doggie play bow, turn away from your dog, and clap.

Dogs may love treats and petting, but they love a good run, too, and it seems to be a wonderful reward for coming when called.

But to a dog, a raised paw can signify submission or a request to play or the beginning of a dominance-related mount, but it never seems to mean “go away.” So I’ve stopped pushing dogs away with my paws. Instead, I keep my hands tucked into my belly and push dogs away with my shoulder or hip, using body language that they understand. Try it the next time some overly enthusiastic dog begins a charge for your lap when you’re trying to relax in your chair. Long before she gets to you, tuck your hands into your belly and lean forward to block her with your shoulder or elbow, sitting right back up after the dog has moved backward. Most dogs won’t give up right away: they’ll try again a few times. After all, they’ve probably been rewarded for crawling up into someone’s lap, even if it’s just with attention, for a long time. It also helps to turn your head away.

If you learn to shift your body backward slightly when you greet a new dog, you usually can ensure that the dog doesn’t perceive your posture as threatening. When you’re slightly sideways with your weight on your back foot, you’ve taken away what ethologists call an “intention movement” to proceed forward, and dogs can read it like a billboard. It doesn’t have to be much; it’s barely perceptible if one isn’t aware of it.

You can avoid a lot of dogfights by relaxing the muscles in your face, smiling with your eyes, breathing slowly, and turning away from the dogs rather than leaning forward and adding more tension.

Humans can do it consciously, doing what wolf researchers call “look aways” by turning our heads to the side when we greet a new dog or we sense that tension is mounting. You can also cock your head, which is something never done by a tense dog on offensive alert. Many mammals cock their head to gather more information about the world around them, and they almost always do it when they’re curious and relatively relaxed. If you cock your head, you are signaling to a dog that you’re relaxed, which can go a long way toward relaxing the dog as well.

Submissive dogs seek interactions, but high-status dogs get to decide whether to grant an audience or not.

What, then, is your dog to think if every time she comes over to you, you instantly drop what you were doing and respond with petting and attention? Who has control of the agenda in the living room? It’s easy to train your dog to demand attention from you. That’s what you unconsciously do if you respond every time your dog requests (or demands) something from you. You might ask yourself what she’ll learn from that. Perhaps she’ll learn that she is always more important than anything else that you might be doing.

If you want your dog to be a polite house dog who is part of your family, then you need to raise her as you would any youngster and teach her how to tolerate not always getting what she wants the instant that she wants it. If your dog pesters you for petting when you need to be doing something else, break off visual contact with him. You can use your torso to push him away with a body block (remember not to use your hands) or turn your head away (chin raised) in a benevolent but royal dismissal. It’s amazing how fast dogs will go away if you break off visual contact with them.

But the look that works best, that we use ourselves when we’re not thinking about it, is that slightly snobby, hard-to-get look when we turn our head away in dismissal. It works with dogs as well as with humans. Honest. Dogs can take you for granted just as anyone else in your social group can, and most of us hate being taken for granted. You might be stuck with it from some of the people you know, but you don’t have to put up with it from your dog.

Almost every dog training book ever written advises dog owners to pick simple commands and use them consistently, and almost every dog owner in the world violates that rule repeatedly.

Here’s another example of how speech confuses our dogs: It’s very popular now for trainers to teach dog owners to ask their dogs to sit and then praise them by saying “Good sit.” But look at those words from a dog’s perspective. If “Sit” means “Put your butt down on the ground,” and you want your dog to do that every time you say it, what could your dog make of hearing “sit” after he’s already done so? I know your dog is smart, but expecting him to read your mind about when “sit” means “Do something” versus when it means “Don’t do anything; I’m referring to something that you’ve already done” is a bit much, even for the smartest of dogs. Rearranging the order of the words is a grammatical change, and asking a dog to understand the rules of human grammar is asking for the moon.

But dogs don’t respond as primates do, and although a loud noise can certainly startle them and get their attention, it doesn’t necessarily get their respect.

The dogs who make my blood run cold are the ones I can barely hear, who stand stiff and still, staring straight at me while producing a low, quiet growl. If barking correlates with a juvenile and submissive condition, then it’s doubtful that dogs read our loud vocal displays as dominant or impressive. Rather, they might see them as a sign of fear or as a sign that we don’t have a lot of control. Many people to whom dogs are drawn are laconic and soft-spoken. I think their lack of “barking” is perceived as a sign of leadership, and dogs are drawn to their sense of self-confidence.

Be prepared with easily accessible yummy treats. (Don’t be cheap. Go for chicken or beef or anything your dog really loves, but keep the pieces very small.) As soon as your dog starts barking, say “Enough” and then walk all the way over to him, moving the treat to within an inch of his nose and making clicking or smooching noises to get his attention. If the treat smells luscious, and it’s right beside his nose, he’ll turn away from what he was barking at and sniff the treat. But don’t give it to him yet. Palm it in your hand while saying “Good boy” a few times and use the treat to lure him away from what he’s barking at. Then give him the treat.

What a joy when your dog hears “Enough,” turns away from the door or window, and comes to you, looking for her treat. Once it becomes learned, you can treat her intermittently rather than all the time.

Professional animal trainers, who should know as well as anyone how to use sound to communicate to their animals, distinguish themselves from dog owners in one consistent way. They are able to separate their own emotional states from the sounds that they make, making sounds that elicit the response that they want rather than sounds that represent how they are feeling inside.

Agitated humans make sounds that reflect how they are feeling inside. Instead of helping the animal do what is wanted (or stop doing something), those sounds often agitate the animal that hears them.

we found that the pups’ activity levels increased after four short whistles but not after one long, continuous one. Most relevant to dog lovers, four short whistles (comparable to syllables) were more effective than one continuous whistle at training our five-month-old puppies to “come.” That makes sense, given that “coming” usually meant increasing activity.

The general rule is to use short, repeated notes to encourage activity and one single note to discourage it.

I’m always amused when an owner belts out “Come” in one loud, low command. Some of the dogs do indeed come, although some do with heads down and tails tucked, because you can eventually override biology with enough training. But why work so hard? Use a sound that inherently encourages your dog rather than discourages him and training will be more effective and, as important, more fun.

If your dog’s name is short, you could call her to come by saying her name twice and clapping your hands, or you could try the “recall” signal of Scottish shepherds: “That’ll do!” While teaching a recall signal, try encouraging little puppies to come by repeating “pup, pup, pup, pup” and clapping your hands as you run away from them. Smart dog owners clap their hands; make short, repeated whistles; slap their legs; and at all costs avoid harsh single notes that stop dogs in their tracks. Is your dog coming but not fast enough? Sing out “Good dog” as he lumbers toward you and start clapping as you run away from your dog.

If you’re trying to increase your dog’s level of activity, use short, repeated notes. But if you’re communicating an action that inherently inhibits activity in your dog, like “Sit” or “Down,” try to say it only once,

Dogs and humans share an interpretation of high and low sounds (as do many other mammals). A low pitch signifies authority or confidence in both wolves and primates. Simply saying a signal in a lower voice than before can mean the difference between your dog’s ignoring you or obeying. Cool Hand Luke couldn’t be a better example. More than anything in life, he loves to herd sheep. When we’re done with the sheep chores, I call his name twice, “Luke, Luke,” to ask him to come away from the sheep and follow me as I leave the barn. His response is so predictable, I could bet the farm on it: If I say his name in the usual way, with a relatively high pitch, he completely ignores me. Not a head turn. Not an ear twitch. It’s as if it hadn’t happened. If I say exactly the same two words, not louder but lower, he pivots on his hindquarters and runs to my side. It’s the difference between asking and telling.

In general, women’s voices tend to be higher than men’s, so just like my female clients, I needed to practice using a quiet, low voice to inhibit my dog. In particular, it seems as though women’s voices rise higher when we try to get louder, while men are better at keeping their voice low and speaking with power. I know that I’m not the only woman whose voice tends to rise just when I most need it to carry authority.

The rule is actually quite simple, and it’s also almost universal among mammals: high sounds are associated with excitement, immaturity, or fear, while lower sounds are associated with authority, threat, or aggression.

The sense of smell mediates more of our behavior than we ever imagined. Women who live in close proximity to one another begin to menstruate in synchrony, all because of smells of which they’re not even aware.1 Men who are in intimate relationships with women have faster-growing facial hair than men who aren’t, and girls who grow up around men enter puberty sooner than girls who do not. The sense of smell is even an important component of sexual pleasure: fully half of the people who have lost their sense of smell as adults report a decrease in sexual interest. Research on reproductive pheromones (which often can’t be consciously detected at all, even if you try) has led to the use of a pheromone called alpha-androstenol in perfume. Not only does it attract members of the opposite sex (both in our species and in pigs—do be careful on a hog farm), but men rate photographs of women as more attractive if it’s in the air, and women are more likely to initiate interactions if in its presence.

To learn more about how your dog perceives the world, try enrolling your dog in a tracking class.

I’ve often wondered what role scent had in the behavior of aggressive dogs. The most common type of dog-dog aggression that I see is dogs who growl-bark and lunge as they pass by other dogs on a leash. But surprisingly often owners come with dogs who for all the world look as if they’re just dying to play with that cute little Poodle across the street. Typically the preliminaries go well, dogs both take on friendly greeting postures, and then two or three seconds into the greeting, the dog in question explodes and attacks the other dog. Often we’ve been able to eliminate common causes, like inadvertent owner cues (tension on the leash, holding the breath, rounding the mouth) or a reactive response from the other dog. I’m left wondering if smell is an important factor in at least some of these cases. Could the attacked dogs smell like another dog with which the aggressor once had trouble? Or perhaps the victim dogs’ hormonal state elicits an aggressive reaction. Maybe they just smell bad.

In most of those cases, simply eliminating the odor of urine and then marking the area with a different scent can get the dog going in the right rest room again. Once the area is odor-free and clean, sit down on the carpet with your dog and a paperback and spend a little time each day there. In just a few days, that place will smell like a living room instead of a toilet to your pup.