THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

What a great conversation we’ve had about these behaviors in dogs. I originally posted on this topic on October 10th, and the comments in response have been fascinating. For those of you who’d rather not read through them, I’ll summarize them here, and add some information I’ve found elsewhere.

First of all, I did look at some of the wolf literature (still waiting to hear from folks who work with wolves), and I did find that Zimen, an internationally respected wolf ethologist, discusses 2 of these behaviors in his wolf sociogram in Wolves of the World. I’ll add his comments in the relevant section.

MUZZLES PUNCHES/POKES: As best I could, I categorized your responses about the context of muzzle punches into 4 categories: Excited/Playful, Attention Getting, Warnings with potential Aggressive Intent and Affectionate. Here’s how the responses sorted out (as of this writing, there were 81 responses, note some responses contained multiple examples):

Excited/Playful 14

Attention Getting 30

Warnings: 13

Affectionate: 0

The consensus is strong, and I couldn’t agree more, that context and other postural signals mean everything here. Several of you, wisely, distinguished between ‘muzzle punches’ and ‘muzzle pokes,’ the former being much more forceful than the latter. I appreciate that distinction–I am going to start calling much of what I used to call a ‘punch’ a ‘poke’ (is there a song here?). I also agree completely that, as someone quoted me (thank you!) “It depends,” as being the answer to all behavioral questions.

A muzzle punch given to the face from a dog who had been giving you a hard, cold stare directly into your eyes is something altogether different from a dog who pokes you in the back of the leg to, presumably, get your attention. I would be extremely concerned about a dog who gave me a hard, direct stare and then ‘muzzle punched’ me.

It seems to me there are at least three messages here: Pokes: 1) YO! YOU! Pay attention to ME! or 2) YO! YOU! Wanna chase me? Wanna play? Wanna react in some way for heaven’s sake?” and (Punch) 3) I’m warning you… back off. I also think there is a possibly 4th component here related to herding dogs. Willie changed from biting at my ankles as a puppy when I ran to the phone into muzzle punching the back of my leg when I ran to the phone to racing 2 inches behind me while I turned my head and said “Willlllllll……….” to keep him from punch/poking the back of my leg as I run to the phone. I’ve seen this kind of reactivity and mouthiness in a lot of herding dogs. Yesterday Will played with a 6 month old BC puppy who has just started trying to grab at anything that moves, in this case a walking stick. Will does the same thing: pick up a hose, and Will wants to grab it. Pick up a lamb, and Will wants to grab it. In the case of the pup, it was very clear that it was extremely  hard for him not to react to the moving stick…..GOTTA STOP THAT THING FROM MOVING!!!

I was interested that Zimen described these muzzle poke/punches (exactly as done to Tulip in the video from the first post) as a wolf “quickly pushing its nose into the other’s fur…”. He categorizes it as a neutral social contact, neither offensive or defensive, and speculates that it relates to “olfactory control.” I’m not sure what he means by that, and I’m not convinced that when dogs do it it has anything to do with scent. Although.. I’ve taught Will to sniff on cue (not exactly rocket science, hey?) and I’ve found that he will often push his nose into something I’m holding him to smell. But then, I’ve taught him “Touch” too, and my guess is that he’s confounding the two a bit….

AIR SNAPS

Excited/Playful 14

Attention Getting 1

Warnings: 11

Affectionate: 1

Interesting difference with “Muzzle Punches,” hey? Several of you have seen your dogs do it in what sounds like appropriate play, but only one of you described it in an Attention Getting context. Regarding “Aggressive warning” versus “Playful”, surely this is yet another example of context and other signals being critical to interpretation. Thinking back (always dangerous), it does seem to me that I’ve mostly seen them in a context I’d either describe as a warning (in response to “Lie Down” for example, with direct stare to my face) or in play. Again, it seems that an air snap from a playful dog with a loose body, partially open mouth, squinty eyes would mean something very different than a dog who turned and snapped at your hand while you were trying to groom. That may be one important distinction: is there any obvious target of the snap, or is the dog just snapping in the air?

TOOTH CLACKING

Excited/Playful 10

Attention Getting 3

Warnings: 3

Affectionate:0

Clearly, fewer of you have seen this behavior, and I have to say I’ve probably seen it least of the 3 myself. I have seen a few client’s dogs who stared right at my face and tooth clacked, usually in response to a cue I had given them (similar to the lie down cue above.). In that case I perceived it as a warning. Like many of you, I’ve seen dogs do it when they were aroused, usually during play. One of you mentioned, and I thought this was very interesting, that her dogs did it after their arousal levels increased during play, and the play stopped (arousal inhibition?) for a while after the clacking.

Zimen, by the way, calls this “Snap Clatter,” I lovely description I wish I’d thought of myself. He describes it in the packs he’s watched as an “Aggressive Behavior involving inhibited biting,” and as a “noisy beat made by the teeth when jaws hit together.” It is very different from the much more rapid jaw movement of an extremely excited dog, which most people call Tooth Chattering. By the way, there are 3 other actions that were introduced by your comments: Smiling, Nibbling and the Jaw Chattering associated with “Flehman,” when male mammals test urine for the presence of the molecules associated with oestrous cycles. I think smiling deserves its own post (as requested) and to the commentor whose dog nibbles on her like an ear of corn, Yes! It’s social grooming and is motivated by affiliative and friendly behavior. No fleas on you!

Here are two photos, taken by a vet student friend and colleague (and owner of the lovely Dobbie, Miska) illustrating another posutre described by Zimen: He simply calls it “Imposing  Behavior” in which one wolf stands next to another, body lifted as if by balloons, head up and tail up.  Miska is the ONLY dog that Will has ever met who is faster than he is, and she is one of the only females he has played with very much (mostly due to who he’s met, I can’t say yet if he has a gender preference). In my mind, Will is absolutely gobsmacked by Miska. He can’t get enough of playing with her, tries to stop her forward motion whenever he can (a few weeks ago he ran in front of her and lunged toward her, she responded with a half a second worth of bitch fury (she was most appropriate). After that, Willie was even more enamored of her (it seemed) but ran outruns around her rather than body blocks, air snaps or muzzle punches to stop her moving forward. He appears to be fascinated by her, but is very nervous–tongue flick-ey, snake headed, Willie’s evil twin-y in the house. (ie, he’s terrified of not being able to control her in the house, which seems vitally important to him.)

Pretty gorgeous, isn’t she! I love Will’s face in this one and the image of 6 month old Max trying to keep up and play with the big kids…. Thanks to Lesanna for the photos! Me thinks Willie’s in love.

I am not sure if the title is more reminiscent of canid communication or some strange, alien kind of cookies, but let’s go with the former. I’m writing this post because I’d love your interpretation of 3 canid behaviors that we’ve been discussing in the comments on one of my posts. I had mentioned a “muzzle punch” somewhere, and in response one commenter inquired if an air snap or muzzle punch was more predictive of a potential bite. Here, in part, is my response and a video with a great example of a muzzle punch from one dog to another: ["Muzzle punching" being a quick forward motion of the muzzle, jaws completely shut, making contact with another individual, "Air snaps" are when a dog moves exactly as if biting, but bites the air instead of an individual or object. Some people just call these 'snaps', meaning the mouth opened and shut but there was no object between the jaws. "Tooth clacking" is when the mouth is opened and shut rapidly several times in a row, and there's a very clear noise of teeth snapping together.]

Here’s from my comment:
“I’m not sure anyone knows the answers about comparative levels of intensity [of the 3 behaviors] and whether they are universal or not (some dogs seem to only muzzle punch, some only tooth clack or air snap.) I do know that “muzzle punching” can be done at varying levels of intensity. Will does it on occasion on the back of my leg when I have run into another area and (I suspect) am not doing what he wants me to do. I take it as a slightly rude, but not aggressive “Yo! You!” It most often happens when I’ve been moving fast, and I suspect in his case it also relates to his strong-eyed herding tendencies.

I don’t say that as an excuse; when Will does it I’ll turn and say his name in a quiet but shocked voice and go back to working on teaching what I do want (Will go slow when Trisha goes fast). His “punches” are more like taps–they can be felt but are not in the slightest bit painful. In 20 + years I have seen one or two dogs punch their owners so hard that they caused discomfort or pain, but that seems very rare to me as I look back on it. Usually they are much more benign. I would love to know what others think of them, how they are interpreted. . .

I’ve always taken air snaps and tooth clacking (mouth opened and shut rapidly, very clear noise of teeth snapping) as more of a threat than a muzzle punch. But I’ll have to think long and hard about why I say that. I”m going to write some of my friends who work with wolves and ask what they observe. Tooth clacks usually seem to be given as a dog is directly facing a person, often looking right into their eyes, and they have always felt to me like “Hear that? Those are teeth! Big, white, sharp, bit-ey teeth! And I know how to use ‘em!” This is not the same as a dog who is doing “tooth chattering,” which is a much faster action, sounds more like the dog is shivering, and usually seen in dogs who are highly aroused and barely able to contain themselves (could be aroused in any way). I don’t see “tooth chattering” as a social signal, while I think “tooth clacking” is. Air snaps also occur more as threats to me than muzzle punches. There’s just something about a dog purposefully (I would argue) keeping his or her mouth shut that I find meaningful. I would LOVE your thoughts on this, and I’ll do some more research on it next week.  The video is at the end of this post (of Kalladin, an adolescent collie and Tulip, my Pyr, at the farm in the “play pen.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Not much time at the farm now, leaving in a few hours to speak at the Border Collie National Specialty. Lassie threw up 5 times this morning, oh dear oh dear. I know.. dogs throw up a lot, but you know, she’s 15+ with compromised kidneys.  I talked to my vet, gave her pepcid, extra water for dehydration. She seems fine now, wanted breakfast (gave her a tiny amount as a test, all went well), so I’ll wait and see, but damn I just hate this….. she’s probably totally fine. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s the video (watch closely, it happens FAST! I use it in seminar to train trainers to be good observers!):