A quiet dog isn’t necessarily a calm dog.
That distinction matters most after a lot has just happened. Maybe visitors have been in the house for two hours. Your dog greeted everyone, followed people between rooms, investigated bags and shoes, reacted to the doorbell, and eventually disappeared to the edge of the room.…
Your dog is perfectly happy in the basement as long as you’re there. She comes down behind you, circles twice on the rug, and drops with a sigh near the sofa.…
A house can be completely familiar to a dog and still contain one room she treats as if it belongs somewhere else.
She follows you through the kitchen, hallway, and bedroom without a second thought.…
One stressed dog may pace from room to room. Another pants even though the house is cool. A third begins drooling, turns their face away, or goes unexpectedly quiet.…
Excessive paw licking is surprisingly hard to sort out because physical and behavioral causes can overlap. A paw may itch, hurt, feel irritated, or have something caught between the toes.…
One trip across the living room doesn’t tell you much. Neither does a second. But by the sixth pass, a pattern has appeared: couch to doorway, doorway to window, window back to couch.…
Leash in hand, you open the back door, and your dog stops two feet short of the frame. Her ears swivel toward the fence line before she’ll even look at the yard.…
The house has been quiet for hours, and your dog has plenty of better-looking places to sleep: the couch, your bed, the warm patch of afternoon sun by the window.…
For years, your dog has been perfectly happy to sleep at the other end of the couch. She’ll follow you into the kitchen if something smells promising or check where you went when a door closes, but usually she drifts back to whatever she was doing.…
Pacing tells you that a dog is moving repeatedly. It doesn’t tell you why.
That distinction matters most when the behavior happens after you leave. A dog may walk from the front door to the window, turn, cross the living room, circle back to the door, and repeat the route again and again.…