Everyone learns the same shorthand early on: a wagging tail means a happy dog. It’s one of the most confidently repeated pieces of pet knowledge there is. And yet plenty of wags don’t look anything like the loose, whole-body wiggle that shorthand implies.…
A dog’s bared teeth are one of the least reliable single data points in canine body language, not because they don’t mean anything, but because they mean several genuinely different things that happen to look almost identical for a fraction of a second.…
Most people first notice a dog licking her lips around food, a quick flick of the tongue while a meal gets prepared, and it’s easy to file the whole behavior under simple anticipation.…
Call your dog’s name in the middle of a walk and watch her turn her head to the side instead of meeting your eyes, and it’s tempting to read something deliberate, even a little insulting, into it.…
Picture two dogs meeting the same neighbor on the same front walk. The first one trots up with her eyes going half-moon soft, lids drooping into a slow, deliberate blink before she leans her head into an outstretched hand.…
“Whale eye” is the term behaviorists use for a specific look: white sclera showing at the edge of a dog’s eye, sometimes just a crescent and sometimes, when the eyes widen enough, almost a full ring.…
A sound catches a dog’s attention outside, somewhere beyond the yard fence, and before the dog even lifts its head, both ears have already swiveled forward and locked onto the direction it came from.…
A friend leans down to say hello to your dog, hand out, voice pitched up in that singsong people use with animals they like, and right on cue your dog’s ears fold backward and flatten against its head.…